Latest / When Killers Get Caught with Brittany Ransom / Jesse Pomeroy, a teenage nightmare for South Boston

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Jesse Pomeroy, a teenage nightmare for South Boston · When Killers Get Caught with Brittany Ransom

• 0:15
  Everybody, It's here. Killer country.
• 0:17
  My name is Brittany Ransom. And my name is Brian Joyner and
• 0:20
  this is When Killers Get Caught, a podcast devoted to deep dives
• 0:23
  into the lives and psyches of the killers we love to learn
• 0:26
  about. Each week Brian and I will find
• 0:28
  a true Crime Story that resonated with us.
• 0:30
  Then I discuss one well known or lesser known killer and go deep
• 0:33
  into their childhood lives, methodology, and most
• 0:36
  importantly how they got caught. And then we get a little spooky
• 0:40
  and learn something about encrypted or just the
• 0:42
  supernatural, or something that Brian wants to frighten us with.
• 0:48
  So this week in True Crime, I found a story from 2017 taking
• 0:59
  place in the small city in Virginia, shedding in the
• 1:02
  Shenandoah Valley Waynesboro, where someone was taking cats
• 1:09
  and and shaving their underbellies and the legs.
• 1:14
  Why? Nobody knows.
• 1:20
  He's just referring him as the cereal cat Shaver did.
• 1:25
  They catch this person? No.
• 1:28
  This person has not been found. Nope.
• 1:30
  Let's see, the article that I found was from April and it had
• 1:32
  been done 7 times up to that point when they reported on it.
• 1:36
  I couldn't find anything recent. I tried to see if the serial cat
• 1:40
  shaver had been found, but the police said that all the cats
• 1:46
  are returned unharmed. Those slightly bothered they all
• 1:52
  had owners because they were well groomed, wearing collars.
• 1:56
  Police aren't exactly sure what crime they could even charge
• 2:00
  this person with. There has to be illegal in one
• 2:02
  state so but but the owners this is a direct quote would just
• 2:07
  like it to stop. Please.
• 2:12
  I'm just OK. I saw like signs that people put
• 2:15
  up on like, you know, like on posts saying like cat shaving,
• 2:20
  really like people are very upset.
• 2:23
  I thought someone was offering cat.
• 2:24
  I thought you were gonna. That was leading to somebody
• 2:26
  offering cat shaving that like the people in the community were
• 2:30
  putting up posters and stuff like, are you serious?
• 2:32
  Please stop. It has to be a teenager.
• 2:36
  First of all, it has to be a teenager just out there.
• 2:38
  You think so? Yeah, obviously.
• 2:41
  Like getting the neighborhood cats and just shaving them and
• 2:44
  then letting them return home. Well, the best part of that was
• 2:46
  even covered in VICE because it was just so weird.
• 2:52
  I have a question. So they get they get kidnapped
• 2:55
  from home, shaved and then returned.
• 2:58
  Okay now was the shaving. Was it well done shaving?
• 3:05
  They said that it's the entire like underside of the cat and
• 3:09
  its legs, so they're leaving the top fur and the head.
• 3:13
  Yeah, but was it like someone just, like, grabbed the razor?
• 3:16
  Just like, yeah, to a cat. Well, see, at first cops thought
• 3:19
  that this was some like strange person picking up strays and
• 3:23
  like spaying and neutering them because you normally shave the
• 3:27
  underside. But then they realized these
• 3:29
  were people's pets, so they have no idea.
• 3:33
  Those poor cats. I mean, if they didn't shave her
• 3:35
  properly, I I feel for their nipples.
• 3:38
  But I'm just saying like I'm looking at it is.
• 3:42
  Here's a sign on like a a light pose.
• 3:44
  The shaving cats, several neighborhood cats have been
• 3:47
  abducted and had their lower abdomens and groin area shaved.
• 3:50
  This is very upsetting to the cats and their owners.
• 3:52
  If you have any access information about this
• 3:55
  suspicious activity, please contact the Police Department
• 3:58
  and it gives a number. Our cats will thank you.
• 4:02
  No one's seen the person who ever did it.
• 4:04
  There were no witnesses. They don't know if it was done
• 4:07
  alone. You know it.
• 4:11
  It reminds a lot of people of the Watcher case.
• 4:15
  Do you remember that? Was that happened in California?
• 4:17
  Oh gosh, was it California, the Watcher?
• 4:20
  These people bought a house, OK? And they started receiving
• 4:24
  letters is in New Jersey. There we go.
• 4:29
  They were this. And it was a really fancy house
• 4:31
  like, you know, $1.4 million. They started receiving hand
• 4:35
  delivered letters and they were super creepy talking about like
• 4:38
  my grandfather was a Watcher and my father was a Watcher and now
• 4:41
  it's my time to be a Watcher. You know, will the Youngblood
• 4:45
  live in this part of the house? I can't wait to hear their
• 4:48
  voices. Like, super creepy stuff.
• 4:52
  But like nothing ever came from and he'd like the watcher
• 4:54
  delivered a couple more loud letters.
• 4:56
  The broadest is tried to sell their house.
• 4:57
  They couldn't. They tried to like get something
• 5:02
  done to it. And the city, like, wouldn't
• 5:04
  allow them to do any construction onto the area
• 5:07
  because in order for them to put up a fence, it would encroach on
• 5:10
  their, like, neighbor's property.
• 5:11
  And the fence had to be a certain, like, height.
• 5:14
  It was a crazy story and it's completely unsolved.
• 5:16
  So people are like, is this like the Watcher?
• 5:18
  Like the Cat Barber? The cat shaver.
• 5:22
  No, what this reminds me of is of a story I heard.
• 5:27
  I think it was out in either somewhere Midwest or out West.
• 5:34
  Someone was putting cowboy hats on top of pigeons on pigeons
• 5:39
  heads. You know what I mean?
• 5:41
  Maybe this maybe. OK, unlike the Watcher, the
• 5:43
  Watcher is a real creep. This guy.
• 5:46
  Maybe this guy is just, this is somebody who just wants to see
• 5:49
  the world burn. It's just a little bit of
• 5:51
  chaotic energy. This is a chaotic neutral
• 5:54
  character in a D in D game. Chaotic neutral, not chaotic
• 5:59
  evil. Because you're not really doing
• 6:00
  anything bad. You're not breaking any laws.
• 6:02
  And I wouldn't say chaotic good because you are specifically
• 6:05
  annoying people, but you're just trying to cause some chaos in
• 6:08
  the world for funsies. I.
• 6:11
  Guess, but I feel bad because like hair growing back is no
• 6:14
  fun. It grows back weird and not in
• 6:17
  the right direction. For cats, those cats are
• 6:19
  probably hurting right now. Yeah, well, it's been a couple
• 6:22
  years, so hopefully it's never been reported again.
• 6:25
  Like, I can't find any other articles about this past April
• 6:28
  of 2017, so apparently it stopped.
• 6:31
  If you live in Virginia, specifically the Shenandoah
• 6:34
  Valley, please write us an e-mail.
• 6:36
  OK? Caught podcast at Gmail.
• 6:39
  Did the cat shaver stop or is it still going on?
• 6:43
  My goodness, we want to know. I kind of want to know.
• 6:47
  Absolutely. No, don't listen to him.
• 6:49
  I need to know, are the cats still being unwillingly
• 6:54
  barbered? Oh.
• 6:55
  My goodness, I hope they're not. But what is your true Crime
• 7:00
  Story? OK, hold on, hold on, hold on,
• 7:03
  hold on, hold on, hold on. No, I just want to.
• 7:06
  I just wanna ask you another. Just make another statement on
• 7:10
  that. You're a cat shaver.
• 7:14
  I'm just wondering, like how they could shave all those cats
• 7:19
  they must have, Like they must have been wearing some type of
• 7:21
  protective gear because those cats would not take that shit.
• 7:25
  They would definitely scratch the crap out of them or bite
• 7:27
  them at least, because they're getting the underbellies and
• 7:29
  it's strange. I mean, I mean cat won't let you
• 7:32
  touch their underside if they no, unless they really like you.
• 7:35
  This is true my cat. Yeah she she does.
• 7:38
  But anyway, yeah, but I'm just thinking, like, they had to have
• 7:44
  had some type of gear on and it like or just like drug the cat
• 7:49
  or something. OK, so spin on this, right.
• 7:52
  Who has that kind of protective gear?
• 7:54
  People who work with animals or people who pick up strays, they
• 7:57
  have those like gloves that go up their arms.
• 8:00
  So this is somebody who works within the animal welfare field.
• 8:04
  Look, we're giving you guys clues.
• 8:06
  Chaotic. We're giving you guys clues is a
• 8:09
  veterinary assistant or something who's such a ranged
• 8:12
  vet assistant who wants to see the world itch.
• 8:15
  Yes, look at all the veterinaries around in Virginia
• 8:18
  or around that area in Virginia, Shenandoah Valley.
• 8:22
  And you'll probably find your culprit.
• 8:24
  All right. So anyway, let me ask you a
• 8:27
  question. Sure.
• 8:29
  So. If you woke up one day and there
• 8:34
  was $1.2 million deposited into your bank account accidentally,
• 8:40
  of course, what would you do? Well, normally it would say
• 8:45
  where it came from, right? Normally, yes.
• 8:47
  So like if it came from the IRS, I would be like, hello, Mr.
• 8:52
  Government, would you like to take this back?
• 8:56
  Because nobody accidentally puts money in your bank account.
• 9:00
  Nobody does. And if they do, they're going to
• 9:02
  come looking. They will come looking for one
• 9:05
  time when I worked for the state, they accidentally put
• 9:08
  double my paycheck into my bank account.
• 9:11
  And my bank wouldn't give it back to them because they were
• 9:14
  like, this is a different kind of like the way it's deposited,
• 9:17
  it's different than like a regular like check.
• 9:20
  And so all the state did was you just have to pay us back.
• 9:25
  And so they like started like taking like 1/4 of the check
• 9:28
  from the next tracks. Yeah, that's what that happened
• 9:31
  at my one restaurant job. They had overpaid a couple of
• 9:37
  our cooks and they were like, okay.
• 9:42
  We obviously fudge this up, so you guys are gonna have to give
• 9:46
  us that money back. And there and you know, the
• 9:51
  cooks are just, you know, help people just quit and dip.
• 9:53
  No, no, no, no. They were just complaining about
• 9:55
  it like the whole time. Like I like I understand the,
• 9:59
  you know, I I want to keep this like it was your fault for
• 10:01
  putting this in my account so I really shouldn't have to do
• 10:04
  anything about it but like I get it like they it was they messed
• 10:08
  up. So anyway, but I'm guessing
• 10:10
  you're tell me about somebody who didn't give the money back.
• 10:12
  Someone who did, who tried their hardest not to give the money
• 10:15
  back. So this is not, this is not
• 10:20
  something you can win. So the headline reads A woman
• 10:24
  arrested for refusing to return $1.2 million accidentally
• 10:29
  deposited into her bank account, who gave her the money?
• 10:34
  I think it was. It was probably her her job.
• 10:37
  So she's a former Louisiana police dispatcher.
• 10:40
  So she was arrested last week after, you know, she allegedly
• 10:44
  would not return $1.2 million that was deposited in her bank
• 10:48
  account. Her name is Keelan Spadani Okay.
• 10:55
  She's 33. So yeah, she got fired from the
• 10:59
  Sheriff's Office after being charged for theft.
• 11:03
  So she ended up losing her job on top of, yes, probably being
• 11:07
  charged with fraud. So I'm guessing or theft.
• 11:09
  Yeah, I'm guessing. So what she was charged with
• 11:12
  was. Theft that valued over $25,000,
• 11:16
  Bank fraud and illegal transmission of monetary funds?
• 11:19
  Yes. See Is that worth really getting
• 11:21
  charged with Grand Theft? No, absolutely not.
• 11:24
  So what happened is, I guess her job deposited extra funds into
• 11:29
  her account or somebody. Charles Schwab.
• 11:32
  So she was. Oh, Justice.
• 11:34
  Isn't that like a investment company?
• 11:37
  Or is it a bank? Charles Schwab, I'm pretty sure
• 11:39
  that's like, big. Money.
• 11:40
  It doesn't say in the article Charles Schwab.
• 11:46
  But um, but the messed up thing is, yeah, it's brokerage,
• 11:51
  banking, and finance. OK, so yeah, it's a finance
• 11:55
  company. So it's a big finance company.
• 11:57
  Like big money. Yeah, I'm not sure how they got
• 12:00
  her bank account information, so they just accidentally like put
• 12:05
  in the wrong like digit. They probably and sent a. 10 My
• 12:10
  This is what I'm thinking so. What she did was I disappear.
• 12:17
  She she moved the money that she that was deposited into another
• 12:22
  bank account. Absolutely.
• 12:24
  Listen, if you gonna go the criminal route, you gotta do it.
• 12:27
  You need to move that money. So I think it was OK.
• 12:31
  So you're saying there's like an investment place, right?
• 12:32
  Or yeah, yeah, Charles Schwab does investment banking,
• 12:35
  brokerage stuff. So this is probably the her bank
• 12:38
  that accidentally put this money into her account.
• 12:41
  I've heard of other banks doing that.
• 12:42
  Yeah, so. And I've also heard of other
• 12:44
  people try to get away with it, but it was a guy not heard of
• 12:47
  this lady. But yeah, so she moved the money
• 12:50
  to another account, which Schwab couldn't access at all.
• 12:54
  Right, So. So since they were unable to
• 12:59
  contact her, absolutely, I would turn off my phone entirely.
• 13:04
  Listen, if you're gonna go the criminal route, you gotta go all
• 13:06
  the way. Burn our phones.
• 13:09
  Jump to US country that doesn't have extradition.
• 13:14
  Go get lost in Mexico like you just got to go full criminal.
• 13:19
  If you're going this route, you can't stay in your old
• 13:21
  neighborhood. OK, well, they followed A
• 13:24
  lawsuit against her since they couldn't get in contact with
• 13:27
  her. But you know what?
• 13:28
  I have $1.2 million to use for my legal defense.
• 13:32
  Oh. My God, they're not gonna let
• 13:35
  you use stolen money. At this point it's stolen.
• 13:41
  I mean, wouldn't they be able to get it seized at that point?
• 13:44
  Yeah, at Prop. Maybe if you can get to her
• 13:47
  other accountant, I thought. I thought that could happen.
• 13:49
  I thought the government could do that.
• 13:51
  Probably, But yeah, so it says they've so far recovered about
• 13:56
  75% of the money. Oh, she want to spend this breed
• 14:01
  in, she. Yeah, she bought a new house and
• 14:05
  a new car. 2021 Honda Genesis. Hyundai Genesis.
• 14:10
  My bad. Don't want to confuse those.
• 14:12
  Wait, this happened in the last year?
• 14:14
  Yeah. Oh wow, this is recent.
• 14:16
  You would think after how often these sort of things have
• 14:19
  happened that people wouldn't try to get away with it.
• 14:27
  So. I guess the the captain of the
• 14:31
  Sheriff's Office. He says that if anyone
• 14:34
  accidentally puts an extra 0 on a utility bill, they would want
• 14:38
  that money returned or credited to them, right?
• 14:40
  This is no different. So she has no legal rights.
• 14:44
  It also says she has no legal right to the money either.
• 14:49
  So yeah, well here's the question.
• 14:52
  Right. I would actually be quite pissed
• 14:55
  if I was paying my $40 electric bill and I put an extra 0.
• 15:00
  I don't want you to credit my electric bill 307 like $360.00.
• 15:05
  I want the $360.00 back. Exactly, It's.
• 15:08
  What are you saying? No, he said.
• 15:10
  In there you would want it credited to your account.
• 15:12
  I don't want that either. OK, you want a credited back,
• 15:15
  You want a credit or you want the money back?
• 15:16
  I want the money. I would want the money because
• 15:20
  listen, I'm like, listen, I'll credit you.
• 15:22
  Charles Schwab, Here's $100. I'll pay it off and like 100
• 15:26
  years. There you go, $100 a year.
• 15:30
  No, Let's say A. $100 a month? There you go.
• 15:34
  Goodness. Well, the issue with her buying
• 15:36
  that house is that, like, you know, you can't afford.
• 15:39
  I was about to say she can't afford it anymore.
• 15:41
  I bet you you know you can't afford that mortgage.
• 15:43
  I don't know. I won the lottery apparently
• 15:47
  somewhere. But yeah, that's some Well, that
• 15:50
  was like, is one of my Facebook groups that deals with, like,
• 15:53
  being, like, working. Somebody posted that like her.
• 15:57
  She had gotten like a much lower severance check because she
• 16:01
  ended up fighting with the job or whatever.
• 16:03
  And then she ended up getting like a payment of like $20,000
• 16:06
  in her bank account. And she was only supposed to get
• 16:08
  like 2000 or like 1200. And she was just like, what do I
• 16:12
  do with this? And I was like, contact your
• 16:15
  job, stupid. You got one.
• 16:19
  You left the job in bad straight like in on bad terms, and then
• 16:25
  they accidentally gave you too much.
• 16:27
  I'm like, go to your lawyer and tell the lawyer to go check with
• 16:31
  them. So you're saying she your this
• 16:35
  person in your group? Yeah, should have contacted the
• 16:38
  job, but what about this person? Oh no, that Lady absolutely
• 16:40
  should have. That's why I said I would have
• 16:42
  done the same thing. I was just saying if she wanted
• 16:44
  to go full criminal, she need to go all the way.
• 16:46
  You can't go halfway. No.
• 16:49
  You are now on the land. This is your life now.
• 16:53
  Kiana, connect. Connect.
• 16:56
  Whatever her name was, Oh my God.
• 16:59
  This is your life. You are now a woman on the ride.
• 17:04
  I would have put that money into like Visa prepaid card.
• 17:08
  How many Visa prepaid kids you only get?
• 17:12
  Like $500 per card? He's going to keep buying it and
• 17:16
  you know you're going to pay like $10 per card for those.
• 17:19
  That that'll be worth it. It's OK.
• 17:21
  I'll still have money. I still have enough leftover.
• 17:23
  Don't, don't. Don't rub your eyes at me.
• 17:29
  You're a mess. Ohh well that was wonderful.
• 17:36
  Was a good, good pile of wonderful.
• 17:38
  And I'm I'm happy we had a good, happy moment because I'm about
• 17:40
  to bring this mood way down. Yay, here we go.
• 17:51
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• 19:07
  And make sure you tell Brittany that I sent you
• 19:19
  so my person of interest this week.
• 19:22
  Well, actually, before we get into this, just like I did
• 19:24
  before when I talked about Ian Hinckley Henley and Anna Myra
• 19:29
  Hinley, I do need to give someone of a content warning
• 19:33
  about my portion of this episode.
• 19:36
  The killer this week is actually a child, and his victims were
• 19:39
  all children, and the crimes against them were particularly
• 19:42
  horrible. If you're listening, I'm going
• 19:45
  to give you a small warning before I go into more details,
• 19:48
  but timestamps will be listed on the information section in the
• 19:54
  blurb for the podcast, so you could absolutely skip over this
• 19:57
  if you don't want to listen to it at all.
• 19:59
  I won't be offended. I understand it's not
• 20:02
  everybody's jam to learn about children being abused.
• 20:07
  OK, thanks for the warning. I had to sit here and listen to
• 20:11
  it. Absolutely you do.
• 20:13
  I'm sorry, you've also been warned.
• 20:15
  You just can't skip ahead. So I did give a little bit of a
• 20:20
  hint about this week's Person of Interest last week when I said
• 20:24
  that they were one of America's youngest and earliest serial
• 20:27
  killers. He's still the youngest person
• 20:29
  in the history of Massachusetts to be convicted of firstdegree
• 20:32
  murder, and at the time, he was the youngest in the United
• 20:35
  States. Interestingly enough, we like to
• 20:38
  think that kids aren't capable of such things.
• 20:41
  But he's not the only child in the world or during this time
• 20:44
  period. In the mid 1800s there was a
• 20:47
  German girl named Marie Schneider who killed a
• 20:49
  three-year old in 1886. She was only 12.
• 20:52
  In 1855, two preteens and Liverpool, England killed a
• 20:56
  classmate with a brick after they lost a game.
• 21:00
  So even though the Ike this makes a lot of people
• 21:03
  uncomfortable, it's not all unheard of and.
• 21:07
  What's interesting is that this wasn't like a rash decision like
• 21:10
  those cases were. Jesse Pomeroy was 14 when he
• 21:14
  committed murder, but he actually started torturing
• 21:17
  children earlier in life, and that all earned him the nickname
• 21:22
  of the Boston Boy Fiend, and he was also referred to as the Red
• 21:26
  Devil. But before he was the boy fiend,
• 21:34
  he was just a little boy. Born on November 29th, 1859 to
• 21:39
  Ruth and Pomeroy and Thomas Pomeroy in Boston, He had an
• 21:43
  older brother named Charles who was two years older than him.
• 21:46
  Boston was this bustling growing city and unfortunately Jesse
• 21:52
  didn't have the best life growing up.
• 21:54
  He's father was an alcoholic, he's a dock worker and they grew
• 21:59
  up in the lower middle class household in a section of Boston
• 22:02
  called Chelsea. His father was a mean drunk who
• 22:06
  was prone to beating them for minor indiscretions.
• 22:10
  Sometimes things simple like skipping school, telling a lie.
• 22:14
  He would use belts and even horse whips on his sons.
• 22:19
  He would take them out behind the outhouse, behind their house
• 22:21
  and just brutally beat them until they started, until they
• 22:25
  were bleeding. For some reason, Thomas always
• 22:32
  made them strip. Naked before he beat them.
• 22:36
  And some psychologists have discussed that this might have
• 22:40
  been the point in Jesse's childhood where he began to
• 22:44
  connect pain and sexual arousal, because this is the same sort of
• 22:49
  abuse that he recreated on his victims years later.
• 22:56
  Jesse The family couldn't keep pets because they always ended
• 23:00
  up dead. The family had pet birds and
• 23:05
  both of their heads ended up twisted off of their bodies.
• 23:09
  He was caught torturing one of the neighbors kittens and after
• 23:13
  that his mother Ruth refused to allow any more pets into their
• 23:16
  home. But that didn't really stop
• 23:18
  Jesse and he ended up killing other animals in his free time.
• 23:22
  Yeah, I don't think just stopping the the pets coming in
• 23:26
  would stop the actions. Nope.
• 23:29
  Yeah, he didn't have a lot of friends because he looked weird
• 23:32
  and kids are cruel. He's reported to have a very
• 23:36
  large head for his frame, which children made fun of.
• 23:40
  He was also born with a white membrane over his right eye that
• 23:43
  made it look like he had a cataract.
• 23:46
  He also sometimes had seizures. He was very sensitive about his
• 23:50
  looks and he was also like a bigger kid in general than other
• 23:55
  kids his age too. He had a large mouth, but with a
• 23:59
  really small upper lip and big ears.
• 24:02
  And what I'm just telling you is that he was an easy target for
• 24:04
  children to make fun of because that's just how it works.
• 24:09
  He didn't have a lot of friends. He hated sports and spent almost
• 24:12
  all of his free time reading stories about the American
• 24:15
  Indian Wars when he did play with other kids.
• 24:18
  And they played like scouts and Indians.
• 24:21
  He was aggressive and violent and he try and reenact the
• 24:24
  things he was reading in his books, which is why he ended up
• 24:27
  not having many friends, right? He's yeah, going a little too
• 24:31
  far. As with most psychopaths, he
• 24:35
  moved from animal torture to human torture, but when he was
• 24:39
  12 years old, his first known victim is 4 year old William
• 24:47
  Payne. Liam Payne was found in a small,
• 24:50
  isolated cabin on Powderhorn Hill near the Chelsea Creek in
• 24:54
  South Boston the day after Christmas on 1871.
• 24:59
  Two men were walking up the hill when they heard a small whimper
• 25:02
  near the building, and as they got closer it got louder and
• 25:05
  they realized it was definitely a child.
• 25:08
  So here's your point where you are allowed to skip.
• 25:12
  Skip off, because there's a lot more victims that come after
• 25:17
  this. And it's a lot of torture.
• 25:20
  Press this button to skip the ad.
• 25:25
  When the men into the building, they were shocked.
• 25:28
  The four year old boy was tied to the center beam of a building
• 25:32
  and he was hanging. And the only way I can explain
• 25:36
  this is if you've seen any movie about slavery in America, it
• 25:43
  looks a lot like it. The way it's described is a lot
• 25:46
  like. He's he was half stripped.
• 25:50
  He just had his pants on. He was tied by his hands to the
• 25:54
  beam so tight that they were turning purple.
• 25:59
  His he himself was hypothermic because it was winter and he's
• 26:05
  four. They had no idea how long he'd
• 26:10
  been there and when they walked around because I guess he was
• 26:13
  facing the doorway when they walked around him to cut him
• 26:16
  down. His back was covered in blood
• 26:21
  and welts and cuts, and the worst part is, it wasn't even
• 26:24
  that he'd been hit with like a belt or a whip, but it was
• 26:26
  something that was. It was an undetermined, blunt
• 26:30
  object. So this would have been an
• 26:33
  extensive beating for it to break the skin goodness.
• 26:39
  A board or something, anyway. The community was.
• 26:44
  Upset, the police filed the report and they attempted to
• 26:47
  talk to William. But he was four and he was in
• 26:50
  such bad shape and he was just so scared that he couldn't tell
• 26:55
  them anything about the person who took him into the cabin.
• 26:59
  Everybody just kind of went OK. Hopefully this was just an
• 27:02
  isolated incident and we won't hear about this anymore.
• 27:07
  About two months later, it's February of 1972. 7 year old boy
• 27:11
  named Tracy Harden is Jesse's next victim.
• 27:14
  He lures him to the same hill and the same building where he
• 27:19
  abused William Payne, promising that he'd be able to see the
• 27:23
  soldiers on the hill. What soldiers?
• 27:27
  I'm not entirely sure this was 1872, so.
• 27:37
  I'm trying to remember what war was happening at this time.
• 27:44
  I did not do good enough research on that.
• 27:46
  My bad. But once they were alone, Jesse
• 27:50
  bound, Tracy beat him. This time he used to switch as
• 27:54
  well as a blunt object. But a lot more must have gone on
• 28:00
  because when Tracy Harden was found, his front teeth had been
• 28:03
  knocked out. Both his eyes were black and his
• 28:07
  nose was broken. He had also been stripped and
• 28:11
  had deep welts on his back, and Tracy could only tell the
• 28:15
  police. That had been an older boy with
• 28:18
  dark hair who had threatened to cut off his Pevis if he told
• 28:22
  anybody anything. His Pevis.
• 28:24
  His penis, she said. Pevis.
• 28:28
  Listen, the police couldn't do much with only a hair color.
• 28:36
  But I think anybody with even a little bit of understanding of
• 28:39
  criminology knows that this isn't where this is going to
• 28:41
  end. He's working on about a 30 to 60
• 28:45
  day cycle at this point. So two more months.
• 28:49
  It's spring 1872. He attacks an 18 year old named
• 28:53
  Robert Robert Mayer. He lures Robert by telling him
• 28:57
  he's going to promises him a trip to the Barnum and Bailey
• 29:00
  Circus. He takes the boy again to the
• 29:03
  powder. Horn Hill Cabin strips him,
• 29:07
  beats him with a stick. This time he made Robert repeat
• 29:11
  curse words while he was beating him.
• 29:14
  Okay, question 2 questions. It's probably the same question
• 29:19
  I have while I'm gonna tell you about the next four attacks.
• 29:21
  Okay first. Question which is how old was he
• 29:25
  at this time? He's 12 and he's, you said an 18
• 29:28
  year. Old No.
• 29:29
  An 8 year old so. The boys ate Okay, don't you
• 29:32
  say? Eating Okay.
• 29:34
  All right, Goodness. Why is no one perhaps
• 29:38
  patrolling? Why are you watching the hill?
• 29:40
  Yes. Yes, I absolutely have that
• 29:42
  question myself. I'm like they're all happening
• 29:45
  at the same location after the first.
• 29:48
  It's an abandoned prop. Do you think maybe we should
• 29:51
  take it down? Yeah, like after the first one I
• 29:53
  would have been had someone like routinely.
• 29:56
  Like maybe the first one, we thought it was a one off, but
• 29:58
  the second one we now have a still, it's an abandoned place.
• 30:01
  You never know what's going to happen in there.
• 30:03
  So I definitely have someone patrolling the area.
• 30:06
  Nope, Nope. And we're going to.
• 30:07
  There's more attacks that happened on powder who are now.
• 30:09
  Like I said, when Robert was found, he told the police that
• 30:15
  his attacker touched himself during the beating and after
• 30:23
  Jesse reached completion. He untied the boy, set him free
• 30:29
  and told him he'd kill him if he told anybody.
• 30:34
  The police are facing just a horde of angry parents, so they
• 30:38
  began A manhunt. After the third attack, they
• 30:41
  started by questioning hundreds of brunette teen boys from
• 30:44
  Boston, but that didn't get them anywhere.
• 30:48
  I assumed Jesse was probably questioned during this time and
• 30:51
  it didn't raise any red flags, so with no help from the cops.
• 30:55
  Parents turned to trying to be more strict with their children,
• 30:58
  telling them to stop speaking to strangers entirely, and a rumor
• 31:01
  spread that. Somehow a rumor spread that the
• 31:05
  the person who was doing the attacks had red hair with a red
• 31:10
  beard, which didn't help anybody find anybody.
• 31:17
  Jesse Pomeroy, No. So his fourth attack happened in
• 31:23
  mid-july of 19 of 1872. He lured A7 year old to powder
• 31:28
  Hornhill with the promise of money if the boy did some
• 31:32
  errands for him. This assault was the same as
• 31:35
  before. After Jesse achieved an orgasm,
• 31:39
  he left the boy in the cabin and escaped.
• 31:42
  So were the were was the the sexual nature added after the
• 31:50
  second one. 3rd and 4th attacks have a sexual element to him
• 31:54
  that's weird and he's only attacking younger children.
• 31:57
  Only younger boys. Locally, they put out a $500
• 32:01
  reward for information that would lead to the arrest of this
• 32:03
  fiendish boy. As the paper referred to him,
• 32:06
  vigilantes began patrolling the streets of Chelsea, trying to
• 32:10
  find who was responsible. So at this point Ruth and
• 32:15
  Pomeroy moves her family away from Chelsea.
• 32:18
  Dad is gone from the picture. Over to a less expensive
• 32:21
  neighborhood across from Chelsea Creek and South Boston.
• 32:25
  Now, some of my sources think that she had an idea that Jesse
• 32:30
  might be committing these crimes, probably because they
• 32:35
  mirrored their abuse that she'd seen her husband commit.
• 32:38
  But it's just as likely that she moved because it might have been
• 32:41
  cheaper. But my thought is that she had
• 32:45
  to realize as soon as she moved to South Boston.
• 32:48
  That the boy fiend attacks begin happening in South Boston too.
• 32:53
  Like that's just too much of A coincidence, but I suppose a
• 32:57
  mother's love is blinding, right?
• 33:02
  His next victim is 7 year old George Pratt, who was walking
• 33:05
  alone on the South Boston shore looking for treasure.
• 33:08
  Jesse offered him $0.25 to do an errand run.
• 33:12
  This time, when George was bound and tied, Jesse began enacting a
• 33:17
  weird fantasy. And he began berating George for
• 33:21
  telling Lyle lies while beating him with a leather belt, though
• 33:28
  this one escalated a bit. Jesse bit a chunk of the boy's
• 33:34
  cheek off and cut George with his fingernails.
• 33:38
  Then he took a sewing needle and began stabbing his body.
• 33:42
  He tried to pry open George's eye with a needle to stab him in
• 33:46
  the eye, but the boy rolled like over on his stomach and like
• 33:50
  shoved his face into the ground. Jesse bit him one more time on
• 33:54
  his left butt cheek and ran away.
• 33:55
  Oh my goodness, this sound like this story sounds familiar.
• 33:58
  Just like. That's OK.
• 34:01
  The police rounded up every feebleminded young person they
• 34:04
  could. They did lineups, but none of
• 34:07
  the victims could pick their attacker out.
• 34:11
  The city was, I mean, Boston was full of like just a righteous
• 34:15
  rage and indignation, and the vigilantes increased their
• 34:18
  patrols. Less than a month after George
• 34:20
  Pratt Jesse kidnapped 6 year old Harry Austin, who he stripped
• 34:25
  and beat just like the others. However, after he beat this
• 34:29
  child, he then took out a pocket knife and stabbed him in the
• 34:33
  back and under his shoulders. He was going to cut off.
• 34:38
  The young boy's penis. But he got spooked and he ran
• 34:41
  away. This is just escalating.
• 34:44
  It is because six days after that, he attacked Joseph
• 34:48
  Kennedy, who was seven. He took him to the marshes and
• 34:51
  beat him. He made Joseph recite an
• 34:54
  explicit version of the Lord's Prayer while stabbing him.
• 34:59
  Then, when Kennedy stopped moving, he cut his face.
• 35:03
  Dragged him to the beach and washed his wounds with salt
• 35:06
  water. I guess just to be like an
• 35:09
  asshole because I'm like, geez dude, you're just rubbing salt.
• 35:15
  In the wound, literally. I know six days after that, a 5
• 35:20
  year old boy was found tied to a train post near railroad tracks
• 35:24
  who have been stripped and beaten.
• 35:26
  When Jesse put the knife to the boy's throat, he was spotted by
• 35:29
  a rail worker and ran away. This boy was finally able to
• 35:33
  give the police some details and he told the cops that his tacker
• 35:36
  was a big boy with an eyeball that looked like a marble.
• 35:42
  So this point now it's escalating to the point where
• 35:44
  now they're happening weekly and the boy with the marble eye was
• 35:49
  definitely on a path to murder because he, I mean he was
• 35:52
  threatening to cut the throat of the most recent victim.
• 35:55
  So on September 21st of 1872, the police came to Jesse's
• 35:58
  classroom. While they were doing a full
• 36:01
  classroom by classroom search of the entire city, but Joseph
• 36:07
  Kennedy was so distressed that he was unable to identify Jesse.
• 36:13
  Now here's an interesting thing. But he's he's the only one with
• 36:15
  the marble eyeball. He is, he is.
• 36:17
  But it's it's beyond the point because just things happen for a
• 36:25
  reason and you never understand why.
• 36:28
  We always talk about, like, serial killers and offenders
• 36:30
  like doing things to get themselves caught, right?
• 36:33
  For some reason, that afternoon, Jesse decided on his way home
• 36:38
  from school, he was going to stop by the South Boston police
• 36:41
  station. He didn't know that Joseph
• 36:45
  Kennedy was still there, being questioned by the police.
• 36:48
  And as soon as Jesse saw Joseph, he like, turned around.
• 36:52
  But Joseph saw him and immediately started going like,
• 36:55
  that's him. That's the one.
• 36:57
  And he took off running, and the police grabbed him within a
• 37:01
  block and put him in prison. They kept him there for hours,
• 37:06
  kind of like in the dark. And they pulled him out.
• 37:10
  And then they threatened him with 100 years in prison, and he
• 37:16
  broke down and confessed. That's the one thing you can
• 37:21
  threaten the child with. They'll believe you and they
• 37:23
  will believe you. I'm going to put you in jail for
• 37:27
  100 years if you don't tell me what you did 100 years.
• 37:29
  That's affinity. Oh my God, it's my whole life.
• 37:32
  Yeah, it is. But anyway.
• 37:35
  The next day he was taken to the main Boston City jail.
• 37:38
  They brought the other boys who'd been attacked, who all
• 37:40
  identified him. They took him to a magistrate
• 37:43
  and all the victims recounted their abuse for the court.
• 37:47
  His mother took the stand to defend him, crying and saying he
• 37:50
  was a good boy who was so obedient and worked really hard.
• 37:54
  She left out the part where he killed her birds.
• 37:57
  And you're just going to ignore the fact that all these boys are
• 38:01
  accusing him all these separate times?
• 38:06
  Jesse testified, too, and he simply said quietly, I couldn't
• 38:10
  help myself while he looked at the floor.
• 38:14
  The juvenile justice magistrate ordered Jesse to go to the House
• 38:17
  of Reformation, As in Westborough until his 18th
• 38:20
  birthday. Newspapers reported that both
• 38:23
  Jesse and his mother cried as he was led away in handcuffs.
• 38:28
  So back in the 1800s, reform schools were just how they dealt
• 38:32
  with youth offenders, and reform schools were about hard labor,
• 38:35
  discipline and teaching the child who was their vocation.
• 38:40
  Now I I have some issues with the Westboro House of
• 38:43
  Reformation because it was an allages school and it was for
• 38:48
  kids convicted of any crime. And also parents could send
• 38:52
  their kids there if your kid was too much to handle.
• 38:57
  So we have a whole slew of criminal activity here and non
• 39:03
  criminal activity. So obviously this is the kind of
• 39:07
  place where things are pretty jacked up and it just sounds
• 39:13
  like the United States. Well, you know what though?
• 39:18
  Not every state is like that because.
• 39:20
  In Pennsylvania, we do house prisoners based on their kind of
• 39:24
  crime. You're not going to find someone
• 39:27
  who's murdered people with someone who has like a lower
• 39:30
  tier drug approach. Because near us Camp Hill Prison
• 39:34
  is where they do the process of like psychologically testing
• 39:38
  them and figuring out if they can be in like certain
• 39:41
  populations. Like that happens down the road.
• 39:46
  But they didn't do that at all here.
• 39:47
  It was just a free for all. Everybody can come to this
• 39:50
  place. If you don't want to go to
• 39:51
  school, set in the reform school.
• 39:54
  You tortured 7 boys. You also go to reform school
• 39:57
  like, just not people who should be in the same room with each
• 40:00
  other. Just maximum security reform
• 40:01
  school. And it it was a pretty bad
• 40:04
  place. And 100 years later, scholars
• 40:06
  have debated whether it reformed really anybody.
• 40:09
  Probably not. Children offenders were made to
• 40:12
  work on tasks like making brass nails.
• 40:14
  Making chairs, silver plating, and then they had four hours of
• 40:18
  regular class work. And then the discipline style
• 40:21
  was very much like the military. On the surface this might seem
• 40:25
  like a good way to deal with a misbehaving child, and
• 40:27
  definitely more humane than a lot of adult prisons at that
• 40:30
  time. But in any sort of closed
• 40:34
  facility where you have child deviancy, it always is a little
• 40:39
  bit like Darwin. Kill or be killed.
• 40:41
  Eat or be eaten. And it's especially bad because
• 40:45
  most of them weren't there for the same kind of things, like
• 40:48
  Jesse Pomeroy. They were there for nonviolent
• 40:51
  offenses like shoplifting or stubbornness, which was is an
• 40:56
  actual thing I found. Send your kid to reform school
• 41:02
  for being stubborn or you can not.
• 41:06
  All I can say is thank God I was born in 1987 and not 1887
• 41:11
  because I would have been sent to reform school.
• 41:17
  I was a pain in the arse. But Jesse gets there.
• 41:24
  He realizes right away that if he wants to get released before
• 41:26
  his 18th birthday, he has to show them that he's reformed.
• 41:29
  His records show that he is a model inmate.
• 41:33
  And I find this really interesting because there's
• 41:35
  another serial killer who also went to a juvenile facility and
• 41:39
  was a model inmate, and his name is Ed Kemper, also someone who
• 41:45
  is particularly brutal. It just lends me to believe that
• 41:51
  Jesse had a similar kind of pathology and an ability to
• 41:54
  control himself and learn from the prison system, which is not
• 41:59
  a good thing. Now, Jesse wasn't really teased
• 42:03
  here. The older boys were rude, but
• 42:06
  the younger boys knew why he was there and avoided him entirely.
• 42:10
  Oh. Yeah, of course he avoided.
• 42:12
  Now, they part of the discipline here was that they would flog
• 42:16
  you if you got in trouble. He avoided all of that.
• 42:22
  But he was interested in watching other children get in.
• 42:26
  Trouble. Did Was he?
• 42:28
  Was he like a tattletale? Oh, wait till you find out he
• 42:30
  got listen. So he was originally assigned to
• 42:33
  make chairs, but after like shortly after that they
• 42:36
  realized, Oh no, he's such a good boy.
• 42:38
  They removed that and they gave him a job as a whole monitor,
• 42:42
  so. He was a professional snitch.
• 42:45
  No, no, no, no. And tasked with maintaining
• 42:49
  order in his dorm and pretty much snitching on the other boys
• 42:52
  in the dorm. Not this kid.
• 42:54
  No, absolutely not. Listen, there was one point in
• 42:59
  the history while he was there that someone left an unlocked
• 43:02
  door and about half of the kids ran away.
• 43:06
  Jesse did not. What do you mean?
• 43:09
  So there was like a almost like a prison escape, but for the
• 43:12
  children. Someone didn't lock one of the
• 43:14
  outer doors and those kids escaped.
• 43:17
  Like half of them ran away and Jesse stayed.
• 43:19
  And stayed because he didn't want to get in trouble.
• 43:21
  He wanted to get out early or, you know, or he wanted to keep
• 43:25
  his little. That is a power or something
• 43:27
  like that. There was one blemish on his
• 43:30
  record that was written about Once one of his teachers asked
• 43:34
  for help killing a snake outside of their classroom in the back
• 43:37
  garden. Jesse very happily helped her.
• 43:41
  Not only did he kill it with a stick, but he beat the snake
• 43:45
  until it was nothing more than a pile of blood and bones for a
• 43:48
  snake. You had to kill her.
• 43:51
  You could just leave it. Exactly.
• 43:52
  Poor Danger Noodle. But that's because he loved to
• 43:56
  kill things. So he got a chance to kill
• 44:00
  things and help. So while he's in the reform
• 44:05
  school, his mother is back home in Boston launching a campaign
• 44:09
  to get him released. She's like he's too young to be
• 44:12
  in prison. He he's not the kind of like
• 44:14
  he's too young to commit those kind of crimes.
• 44:17
  The police obviously have arrested the wrong person.
• 44:19
  She wrote letters to the reform school to anybody who would help
• 44:22
  her. She pointed out that he was had
• 44:24
  been coerced into confessing by the police, which is true,
• 44:28
  because they did leave him in the darkness for hours and
• 44:31
  threatened him. And he should have had a lawyer,
• 44:34
  or at least his mother should have been allowed there while
• 44:37
  they were questioning him. So she wasn't wrong.
• 44:39
  She she was right about that. But.
• 44:41
  They did break the law to get the confession.
• 44:43
  But ma'am, ma'am, how long has your son been in this reform
• 44:47
  school? First of all, it's not even
• 44:48
  prison. It's a reform school.
• 44:50
  Not even that long. How long was he in there?
• 44:54
  I'll tell you how long he ends up there, but like, she started
• 44:56
  this immediately. Okay.
• 44:57
  But God, I was gonna try to make a point like if he was in there
• 45:01
  for like, I don't know, a month or so, then have all these like
• 45:07
  crime. Stuff.
• 45:08
  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The crimes?
• 45:10
  Yes, the Boston fiend stopped. Oh, I wonder why it stopped is
• 45:14
  because they caught the right person and he's in reform school
• 45:18
  now. Her letters really didn't help
• 45:21
  much. Jesse actually helped himself.
• 45:24
  A state investigator visited Ruth.
• 45:26
  They determined that her home wasn't a danger and that his
• 45:29
  mother wasn't the reason why he was a total psychopath.
• 45:32
  They checked out his brother Charles, who was upstanding and
• 45:36
  hardworking. Charles had a paper route.
• 45:38
  And he ran a newspaper stand outside of his mother's dress
• 45:41
  shop. Yeah, Charles was a
• 45:44
  overachiever. And both Charles and Ruth
• 45:47
  promised that if Jesse was released early, he'd come and
• 45:50
  work at the newsstand and at the dress shop.
• 45:53
  And Ruth promised to keep an eye on him.
• 45:56
  The investigator decided that since Jesse's dad had left and
• 46:00
  he'd had so much free time. He had been allowed to just
• 46:04
  drift, and he must have been influenced by outside forces.
• 46:08
  That's why he started out molesting children.
• 46:12
  Even the police in Boston were forgiving of him.
• 46:16
  The captain told the papers that it would be good to give Jesse a
• 46:20
  chance to redeem himself. So less than 18 months into a
• 46:26
  fiveyear sentence, he was released.
• 46:30
  And set loose on a public that had forgotten what happened.
• 46:35
  Wait, wait, Wait 18 months? 18 months Okay well into a five
• 46:39
  year sentence. He was supposed to be there from
• 46:41
  13 to 18, right? Okay.
• 46:43
  So all this stops, ma'am. Okay.
• 46:46
  I'm just, I'm just gonna say, well.
• 46:48
  Listen, Ruth is a mess. Ruth continues to be a mess.
• 46:52
  Just you wait. Just you wait to see how messy
• 46:55
  Ruth is. I'm just saying, ma'am, all this
• 46:58
  stuff stopped for 18 months. Through denial, complete and
• 47:01
  total denied while he was in reform school.
• 47:03
  And I bet you it starts right back up after he gets out.
• 47:07
  Coincidence, I think. It's worse.
• 47:10
  Okay, I'm gonna stop interrupting you.
• 47:11
  Continue over your story. Your horrible story.
• 47:14
  Well, the worst thing that for me here is that no one warned
• 47:17
  the neighbors or even his past victims and their families that
• 47:20
  he was being released. Oh, see?
• 47:22
  No, you're fucked. Up.
• 47:23
  Well, normally if someone commits a crime against you when
• 47:26
  they're released, like the state sends you a letter and says.
• 47:30
  This person who did such and such thing to you as being
• 47:32
  released from prison, but I that's now I and on top of not
• 47:37
  not only just the PTSD from like having like just the thought of
• 47:43
  that person getting out and then also fearing for your life that
• 47:48
  they might come in reactor and revenge on you so.
• 47:54
  Well, this was an oversight that made it very easy for him to
• 47:58
  find a new victim when he got back.
• 48:01
  So March 18th, 1874, six weeks after coming home, Jesse opens
• 48:09
  up his mother's shop and the newsstand on the 300 block of
• 48:12
  Broadway in South Boston. Another employee at the shop was
• 48:18
  a young boy about Jesse's age showed up as the and he was as
• 48:21
  Jesse was sleeping the store and the two begin to talk.
• 48:25
  That boy is named Rudolph Carr. As the two talked, 10 year old
• 48:30
  little girl named Katie Curran entered the store asking to buy
• 48:33
  a notebook. She had a new teacher and was
• 48:36
  really and had gotten permission to run to the store just before
• 48:39
  school from her parents. She was expected to be home by
• 48:42
  8:30 AM. She'd already been to another
• 48:45
  shop and was told that they were sold out.
• 48:48
  Jesse told her they had one, but it had an ink stain on it and
• 48:53
  offered her a discount. And then Jesse told Rudolph to
• 48:57
  go to the butcher shop to get scraps to feed the cat, and he
• 49:01
  took Katie downstairs into the basement to look at the
• 49:04
  inventory. By the time she realized that
• 49:11
  they weren't going to look at inventory, it was entirely too
• 49:14
  late. Jesse later confessed that he
• 49:18
  choked her and cut her throat, dragged her behind a water
• 49:21
  closet and put rocks and ash over her body.
• 49:25
  His confession left out the fact that her head was severed and by
• 49:30
  the time she was so bad, like by the time she was found, she was
• 49:32
  so badly decomposed. They couldn't tell all of her
• 49:35
  injuries. But they were aware that he had
• 49:37
  spent a particular amount of time stabbing her lower abdomen
• 49:41
  and groin area, and he was just there, alone, so he had all the
• 49:47
  time in the world. Well, not that much time.
• 49:49
  After killing her, he washed his hands in the water closet and
• 49:52
  went upstairs to meet his brother.
• 49:54
  So this happened in minutes. Katie's disappearance caused
• 50:01
  concern. Within an hour of her not
• 50:03
  returning home, her mother was out looking for her.
• 50:06
  The local store clerk at a store called Tobin's told her he'd
• 50:11
  sent her to Mrs. Pomeroy store because they were out and
• 50:15
  Katie's mother freaked because she had heard about the Pomeroy
• 50:20
  boy. Who had just come back from a
• 50:22
  facility and so she assumed the worst.
• 50:24
  So she stopped by the police and told them what she had been told
• 50:28
  and the police told her Jesse's not a danger to anyone anymore.
• 50:32
  Plus he only hurt little boys in the past.
• 50:34
  Never heard a girl before. And OK, there is some
• 50:37
  criminology basis for this because generally, generally
• 50:43
  they don't cross. So if this is someone who's
• 50:46
  getting some level of sexual satisfaction from harming little
• 50:50
  boys, he's not going to get the same sexual satisfaction from
• 50:54
  harming a girl. However, he wasn't beating
• 50:57
  Katie. No, he was getting off on the
• 51:00
  murder here. Killed her.
• 51:01
  He didn't beat her. No, no, no, no, no, no.
• 51:04
  Yeah. I mean, OK, let me let me just
• 51:07
  say her mom that smart lady. Her mom's A was her mom's A1.
• 51:12
  Mom was like, you sent her to the pomeroid.
• 51:14
  Why would you do that? Yeah, Don't don't know that boy.
• 51:17
  I heard about that boy. A little devil.
• 51:19
  Hell no. I don't know my daughter.
• 51:22
  Well, they sent her home. They said Mrs. Curran home and
• 51:25
  they were really patronizing about it too, saying like,
• 51:29
  listen, Katie probably just wander off.
• 51:31
  We'll find her in a day and bring her home.
• 51:34
  So a day later nothing happened and.
• 51:39
  Rudolph Koer told the Currans Katie had been in the store when
• 51:44
  he was there, so Mrs. Curran went back to the police and she
• 51:48
  was like, so the boy who works at the store with Jesse said
• 51:53
  that she was at the store and the police were like, well, the
• 51:56
  corps boy is a known liar, but we'll send a detective to look
• 51:59
  into it. The detective went to the dress
• 52:02
  shop and was met. With a rude Mrs. Pomeroy who
• 52:07
  felt that she had been harassed by her neighbors and now she was
• 52:10
  being harassed by the cops. Of course, because she has no
• 52:12
  idea what's actually going on, she's never had any idea what's
• 52:15
  going on. I mean, technically she has, she
• 52:17
  just said a denial. But whatever.
• 52:19
  The detective walked around the shop, didn't find anything
• 52:22
  because he didn't go into the basement.
• 52:25
  Weeks went by. Neighbors wondered if she's been
• 52:28
  shipped off to a convent by the father.
• 52:30
  At the time, Boston was a very like Protestant area and anti
• 52:34
  Catholic. So then a more credible witness,
• 52:40
  more credible than the teenage boy.
• 52:42
  Rudolph came forward and told the cops that he thought he'd
• 52:46
  seen Katie being lured into a wagon, and police closed the
• 52:51
  case, saying that she'd been kidnapped.
• 52:57
  So we're wait a wagon, OK? Before cars.
• 53:02
  Before cars. Yeah, I know.
• 53:04
  OK, OK. You're thinking it's a little
• 53:09
  more. We're still.
• 53:10
  It's not even 1900 yet, honey. Sure, I'm like.
• 53:15
  Like you like a wagon. Like a red wagon?
• 53:17
  Yes, that's what I'm thinking. Of you Really?
• 53:20
  Fuck, I was thinking, okay, wait, someone was just pulling
• 53:24
  around a wagon and like, hey, I'm going to go for a ride in my
• 53:27
  little red wagon? Oh my God, Okay, I'm sorry.
• 53:32
  That's. Great, So, and I literally wrote
• 53:37
  this in my notes, Jesse is back on his bullshit and trying to
• 53:43
  lure small boys into abandoned buildings in South Boston.
• 53:48
  Oh my God. Okay.
• 53:49
  Most of the children are smart enough to refuse his offers of
• 53:52
  candy, money or trips to the circus.
• 53:55
  Unfortunately, there's one boy who wasn't aware of who Jesse
• 53:58
  was because he was only five years old and his name was Harry
• 54:00
  Field and he saw Jackie. He saw Jesse walking, pretending
• 54:04
  to be lost, and he offered. Jesse offered Harry 5 cent to
• 54:09
  help him get to Vernon St. and the two walked hand in hand all
• 54:13
  over South Boston as Jesse looked for a place to kill this
• 54:16
  boy. Now Harry was lucky.
• 54:19
  Because a local teenager saw the two of them walking and started
• 54:23
  yelling at Jesse and pretty much cussing him out in the street.
• 54:27
  The two of them get into an argument and that teenager pulls
• 54:32
  their hands apart and tells Henry run home smart.
• 54:37
  I'm like the same thing like. That yes, that's like he was
• 54:42
  like why are you walking around with a 5 year old?
• 54:44
  You're 14. What's wrong with you?
• 54:46
  Hey, yo-yo, what are you doing that little kid?
• 54:51
  So yeah, that that would be the that random strange boy saved
• 54:56
  that child's life. Thank you random little boy.
• 55:00
  OK, Also these these five year olds just wandering around the
• 55:06
  streets? South Awesome.
• 55:07
  I am just imagining because in all of these cases, these little
• 55:11
  kids were just kind of walking around their neighborhoods and
• 55:14
  so I'm just wondering if we just lived in a different time.
• 55:17
  Over 100, like 130 years ago, let me tell you where you could
• 55:21
  just chill and walk around, let me tell you.
• 55:24
  I mean, OK, I will say that I remember being like 8 years, 8
• 55:28
  or no even younger than that, maybe 6.
• 55:31
  And there was a Chinese store on the corner of my block, and my
• 55:35
  grandma gave me money and sent me to like she gave me not only
• 55:39
  money, but she gave me a list. And sent me to the store and I
• 55:43
  like, gave it to the lady at the store.
• 55:46
  And the lady gave me a bag and I walked back up the street.
• 55:50
  So that was only in the 90s. No, I mean it took us a while to
• 55:56
  my mom walk to the store by itself.
• 55:59
  Well, see, it's completely different.
• 56:00
  Because then when I got adopted, like my people didn't let me go
• 56:02
  anywhere. Yeah, not in this town like I'm
• 56:07
  just trying to. It's just wild that it's like a
• 56:08
  six year old. I was allowed to walk down like
• 56:10
  a street in Philadelphia completely by myself.
• 56:13
  That's highly dangerous. No, I would never do that.
• 56:15
  Now I can Philly. Oh my God.
• 56:16
  But no. Well, my grandma was kind of a
• 56:18
  crazy lady. I'm just, I'm just saying like,
• 56:21
  I live in a very suburban neighborhood, of course.
• 56:25
  And my kids, I got a 5 year old and an almost 7 year old and I
• 56:34
  would never let them out of the house without me.
• 56:37
  They're barely like they can go into the backyard.
• 56:41
  I start to be in the backyard with them.
• 56:42
  Absolutely. Like, I can't and it's not
• 56:45
  fenced off, so of course I gotta be out there with.
• 56:47
  I just would not let them out of the house by themselves.
• 56:50
  I totally vibe with you on that. I feel that way too.
• 56:53
  Like, it's just it was a different time and you're gonna
• 56:59
  you're gonna go for a loop because the last victim was four
• 57:01
  years old. I'm fucking tired.
• 57:04
  The last one tired of shit. Won't talk about it anymore.
• 57:08
  Tell you the motherfucking kids walking around these
• 57:11
  motherfucking streets. So last victim was his name was
• 57:17
  Horace Milan and the Milans. This is actually like a really
• 57:20
  twisted fact. They moved into town and they
• 57:23
  actually moved across the street from Katie Curran's family April
• 57:32
  of 1874. The youngest Milan was four
• 57:36
  years old. He's described in all of the
• 57:40
  sources that I have as angelic. Yeah, Blonde hair, sweet face.
• 57:47
  And his mom had a I don't I she liked to dress him up.
• 57:55
  Aw, very fancy clothing and see. See, when I think of parents who
• 58:02
  do that, I think of them treating their children like
• 58:03
  doll babies, I mean, But I like to put I like buying dresses for
• 58:09
  Cassandra. Yes, I mean, I I bought her
• 58:13
  ribbons for her hair. But exactly.
• 58:17
  See, I mean she. But she likes.
• 58:18
  She loves dresses, so. I understandable.
• 58:21
  I also love dresses. So do I.
• 58:23
  So there you go. But I'm on horses.
• 58:28
  Last day alive, he wore a black velvet hat with a golden tassel,
• 58:32
  a black and white jacket, and a red and white checkered shirt
• 58:35
  with velvet trim and black pants.
• 58:37
  That fucking drip. Exactly.
• 58:40
  It was very fancy. Now Horace loves sweets, and
• 58:45
  early one morning he pretty much like grabbed a couple pennies
• 58:49
  from his mom's purse and like, dipped out.
• 58:52
  I don't even think like she knew.
• 58:55
  He just was like, I'm going to the bakery and walking down the
• 59:01
  street. He met Jessie Promoray, who
• 59:03
  offered to walk with him. They went to the bakery and
• 59:08
  Horace bought a small cake for himself.
• 59:10
  And then Jesse offered to show him the harbor because he was
• 59:14
  new to Boston. What a good friend to a four
• 59:17
  year old, 4 year old. Remember that.
• 59:19
  Who cares? He will care about that.
• 59:21
  Listen, all Horace cared about was he had a cake in his hand
• 59:23
  and he was eating it. Yeah, he's like.
• 59:25
  I'm pretty sure and we're gonna find somewhere so I can sit down
• 59:27
  and eat this. Cake, Pretty much.
• 59:28
  He's like we going to OK, whatever.
• 59:31
  But interestingly enough, many witnesses saw them walking
• 59:34
  together, and even one of them reported that Jesse looked
• 59:37
  weirdly excited. Yeah, cuz he found a little
• 59:40
  Angel he wanted to kill. She testified later that his
• 59:43
  expression was so odd that she went inside to put her glasses
• 59:47
  on to go look at him more closely because it seemed weird.
• 59:53
  A second witness saw them and assumed that they were brothers
• 59:56
  because they were walking hand in hand.
• 59:58
  This is about 40 minutes after they left the bakery.
• 1:00:00
  He wasn't sure why the boys were out near the train checks, but
• 1:00:03
  he kept his opinion to himself. Bad, bad decision.
• 1:00:07
  Then they wandered past an older boy named Robert Benson who was
• 1:00:11
  digging clams, that boy testified, and remembered
• 1:00:15
  thinking that the little boy was too nicely dressed to be walking
• 1:00:20
  around like the muddy marshes. Robert didn't actually know who
• 1:00:24
  Jesse was, and so he wasn't suspicious like the other people
• 1:00:28
  in South Boston were. Also, while they were talking to
• 1:00:34
  Robert, Jesse heard a gunshot. And he was like, what's that?
• 1:00:39
  And they're like, oh, there's some guys over there shooting
• 1:00:42
  wild duck. So those were grownups.
• 1:00:44
  So Jesse made sure to go in the opposite direction of where the
• 1:00:47
  adults were. The last person to see Horace
• 1:00:50
  alive outside of Jesse was a man on the beach.
• 1:00:53
  He only noticed because he said that the older boy kept looking
• 1:00:57
  over his shoulder as if someone was following them, and nobody
• 1:01:00
  was following them. When they were finally alone,
• 1:01:05
  Jesse was like, Do you want to sit down?
• 1:01:07
  And so they did. And Jesse took out his knife and
• 1:01:12
  he cut Horace's throat. He was not efficient with this
• 1:01:17
  attack because Horace was still alive and fought back.
• 1:01:25
  He's no match. A four year old is no match for
• 1:01:27
  a 14 year old. He's His hands and arms had
• 1:01:31
  signs of defensive wounds. Eventually, Jesse did manage to
• 1:01:36
  cut through his windpipe, which ended the fight.
• 1:01:41
  He continued to stab and cut the body, also focusing on the
• 1:01:45
  genitals here as well. There were deep marks in the
• 1:01:48
  sand from Horace, like digging his feet in dozens of cuts on
• 1:01:53
  his arms and hands, and at one point his hands have been
• 1:01:56
  clenched so tightly that his fingernails left marks in his
• 1:02:00
  palms. It was not a not a good death.
• 1:02:07
  And then, like to add insult to injury, Jesse just leaves the
• 1:02:11
  body on the beach to be found like he didn't even care that
• 1:02:18
  poor little kid. Around 4:00 PM there are two
• 1:02:22
  brothers who are playing along the beach.
• 1:02:24
  They thought that it was a doll at first.
• 1:02:27
  When they got closer, it realized they realized it was a
• 1:02:29
  person. They'd seen a few of the
• 1:02:31
  grownups who were hunting ducks and went back and got help.
• 1:02:34
  That was there were four men who were duck hunting.
• 1:02:37
  So two of them stayed back while two others went to go find the
• 1:02:42
  police. The Millen family had been
• 1:02:45
  searching for Horace since noon. Yeah, at 5:30.
• 1:02:52
  His father, they had been searching the neighborhood.
• 1:02:54
  His father reported him missing with the police.
• 1:02:56
  He described what his son was wearing.
• 1:02:58
  And we look like the police told him they would keep an eye out.
• 1:03:01
  At this point, the police didn't actually know that a body had
• 1:03:05
  been taken to the coroner to be examined.
• 1:03:08
  The coroner was a team of six men, and they sat down to gather
• 1:03:12
  as much evidence as they could to give.
• 1:03:14
  The police counted dozens of defensive wounds, 18 stab wounds
• 1:03:17
  to the chest. He had a punctured eyeball,
• 1:03:20
  completely mutilated genitals. Thankfully, almost all of those
• 1:03:25
  were delivered after Horace was dead.
• 1:03:28
  Because that would be horrible to experience while you were
• 1:03:30
  alive. The kill was cutting his throat.
• 1:03:36
  They released that report to the police, but they also released
• 1:03:39
  it to the papers, which was common to do at that time
• 1:03:42
  because they were trying to, you know, find out who did it.
• 1:03:46
  The police then issued A bulletin trying to identify the
• 1:03:48
  victim. And South Boston, the South
• 1:03:51
  Boston precinct was like, oh, we know who that is.
• 1:03:54
  So before this gets printed in tomorrow's papers.
• 1:03:57
  They go, and it's 9:00 at night. They go to the mill and house to
• 1:04:00
  tell them what happened. There was only ever really one
• 1:04:06
  suspect, of course, as it should have been.
• 1:04:10
  Immediately people were like is definitely that one, but since
• 1:04:19
  no one had been informed that Jesse was home.
• 1:04:22
  The police, the police chief initially thought that Jesse was
• 1:04:26
  still in reform school. So they were like, well, he
• 1:04:28
  can't be in reform school and also here in Boston murdering
• 1:04:31
  children. Wait, the police weren't even
• 1:04:34
  notified of this? Different precincts, No.
• 1:04:37
  Like nobody was. As I said, no one was informed
• 1:04:40
  and he came back home from reform school, not just the
• 1:04:42
  neighborhood or where the heck he was living.
• 1:04:44
  Well, so originally they worried there was another killer.
• 1:04:47
  But then the saw South Boston Chief of police informed the
• 1:04:51
  other police precinct No. Jesse Pomeroy has been home for
• 1:04:55
  about two months now. Y'all should have been told as
• 1:04:57
  this. They picked him up immediately.
• 1:05:01
  Ruth is upset. Jesse's like I didn't do
• 1:05:05
  anything wrong. Don't worry about it mom.
• 1:05:09
  Six officers interrogate him, demanding to know Have you seen
• 1:05:12
  Horace? Do you have any connection to
• 1:05:14
  the mill and family? He totally keeps his cool, but
• 1:05:17
  he doesn't have an alibi for where he'd been from the morning
• 1:05:20
  to the afternoon. So then I decided to check his
• 1:05:22
  clothes. He has a small dark spot on his
• 1:05:26
  shirt, about the size of a thumb, a scratch on his face and
• 1:05:31
  marsh grass stuck to his shoes. They ask him, do you carry a
• 1:05:36
  knife? And at first he doesn't want to
• 1:05:38
  tell them, but then he says yeah, so the police go to his
• 1:05:43
  house. And find the knife, which is
• 1:05:46
  still covered in blood and dirt. Clean it.
• 1:05:49
  He didn't even clean it. They gave that to the coroner
• 1:05:53
  and left Jesse in herself for the night.
• 1:05:55
  Damn 14 year olds. The next morning, they got to
• 1:05:58
  the beach to compare Jesse and Horace's shoe prints.
• 1:06:02
  They tracked the prints to an area called Mckay's Wharf, and
• 1:06:06
  they made a plaster cast of the footprint in the sand.
• 1:06:09
  Which really hadn't been done before.
• 1:06:11
  So they sort of created a new thing to be done in police work.
• 1:06:15
  Look at you guys. In this case, look at you guys
• 1:06:18
  go. This is now, like a thing we do
• 1:06:19
  all the time. It's like a yeah.
• 1:06:23
  Thing Jesse Hsu had a small indentation in it, and with that
• 1:06:27
  they were able to prove that he had definitely been at the scene
• 1:06:29
  of the murder. So they wake him up when they
• 1:06:32
  come back from the beach. They're like bang, bang, bang,
• 1:06:35
  come on buddy. But he's still acting like a
• 1:06:38
  cool guy. So then they say, well if you
• 1:06:44
  didn't do it like why don't we take you to the Funeral Home so
• 1:06:48
  you can see the body and Jesse's like, no, I'm good I killed
• 1:06:52
  them. Why didn't you want to see your?
• 1:06:56
  English pretty much. He was like, Nope, I don't want
• 1:06:58
  to see that. Why not?
• 1:07:00
  Why not? You did?
• 1:07:01
  It so he admits that he killed him, but then he says please
• 1:07:04
  don't tell my mom. He had been gotten caught
• 1:07:10
  stealing or something. Oh my God.
• 1:07:15
  The Boston Globe referred to him as a moral monstrosity.
• 1:07:18
  This is a direct quote. He had no provocation and no
• 1:07:21
  rational motive for his atrocious conducts.
• 1:07:24
  He did not know the little ladmillon at all, but enticed
• 1:07:27
  him away and cut and hacked him to death with a pen knife merely
• 1:07:31
  for sport and the papers. Ripped into the parole board.
• 1:07:39
  How dare you release him back into the general population?
• 1:07:44
  How dare you? So we only have one issue here
• 1:07:51
  because he's still 14, he's still juvenile, and the
• 1:07:55
  punishment for murder at the time was hanging, but they had
• 1:07:58
  never killed a child before and nobody wanted to start.
• 1:07:45
  And without telling anybody about.
• 1:08:02
  Well, we can try this time. And also on the outside of this,
• 1:08:06
  Ruth and Charles are struggling. No one wants to shop at their
• 1:08:09
  businesses anymore. Obviously the only people who
• 1:08:12
  stop by are there to gawk at where the boy Fiend worked.
• 1:08:15
  Ruth insists her son is innocent and a month after his arrest,
• 1:08:19
  they have to close the store. So there was another business
• 1:08:22
  nearby that offered to buy her shop so she would have some
• 1:08:25
  money to give her a little help. And so as they are doing the
• 1:08:30
  expansion. They find Katie Curran's body
• 1:08:33
  when workers are digging. Wait, so wait, wait.
• 1:08:39
  Hold on. Hold on.
• 1:08:39
  Hold on. Hold on, hold on.
• 1:08:41
  So during this whole time, I'm guessing the mom and the
• 1:08:47
  brother, they just never went down.
• 1:08:50
  Yeah, it seems like it must have been the area.
• 1:08:52
  Probably unfinished because they like the way they describe is he
• 1:08:55
  put her under rocks, but I'm like if she had to be found by
• 1:08:59
  people digging. That doesn't just sound like he
• 1:09:02
  just put a little rocks on her. That must have been like a
• 1:09:05
  completely unfinished area and he could just pile some rubble
• 1:09:10
  on top of her and move on. So it was a space that they
• 1:09:13
  didn't. Yeah, they never used Okay.
• 1:09:13
  They would never. That's just wait, wait, another
• 1:09:20
  question. He stabs her, right?
• 1:09:22
  Yes, there was. He just cleaned them.
• 1:09:24
  He cleaned. He washed himself off in the He
• 1:09:27
  washed himself open. OK?
• 1:09:29
  Yep. OK, kept moving.
• 1:09:30
  OK, so at this point, the whole community is like, Oh yeah,
• 1:09:34
  Jesse definitely did this, but the police are like, do you
• 1:09:38
  think his family was a part of it?
• 1:09:40
  No, obviously it was him. So they bring them in for
• 1:09:44
  questioning. But it also protects them
• 1:09:46
  because a mob of people have gathered outside on Broadway and
• 1:09:50
  are demanding justice. Because her house was across the
• 1:09:54
  street from the dress shop, so, like, there was nowhere to go.
• 1:10:00
  When confronted with all this information, Jesse just shrugged
• 1:10:02
  and was like, I don't know anything.
• 1:10:04
  The police were like, how about this?
• 1:10:06
  We're going to give you 2 days to think about this.
• 1:10:09
  And if you can't tell us anything about Katie Curran's
• 1:10:12
  death, we're going to have to assume Charles and your mother
• 1:10:15
  had something to do with this when they came back.
• 1:10:19
  He gave them a confession with all of the details on how he
• 1:10:22
  killed Katie and he was like my family had nothing to do with
• 1:10:26
  it. When he was asked why he killed
• 1:10:28
  Katie, he said. I don't know.
• 1:10:31
  I wanted to see how she would act like a person being killed.
• 1:10:37
  Yeah, Jackass. So he I feel like he falls under
• 1:10:40
  the the kind of partially like killers who just do it for the
• 1:10:45
  thrill. Now, with the second murder
• 1:10:49
  under his belt, it definitely seems like he might become the
• 1:10:52
  youngest person executed in Massachusetts.
• 1:10:55
  The only thing that could save him would be if they could prove
• 1:10:58
  he was insane, and they did that using something called the
• 1:11:00
  McNaughton Rules. This came from a trial in
• 1:11:04
  England in 1830. This man named McNaughton,
• 1:11:06
  killed the Prime Minister's secretary because he believed
• 1:11:09
  that the Prime Minister was part of a conspiracy to kill him.
• 1:11:13
  He was acquitted due to being obviously unwell.
• 1:11:17
  But the public was very upset, and so they created something
• 1:11:21
  called the McNaughton Rules to determine if a defendant was
• 1:11:23
  incapable of understanding the charges against him, unable to
• 1:11:29
  assist in his own defense, or unaware of the difference
• 1:11:32
  between right and wrong at the time he committed the offense.
• 1:11:35
  The same thing we talked about in the Herbert Mullen case, it's
• 1:11:40
  it's very much the difference between Anatoly Onna Prienko.
• 1:11:43
  Who was hearing voices but knew entirely what he was doing the
• 1:11:46
  entire time, versus John Hinckley, who did not think it
• 1:11:50
  was wrong to shoot President Reagan to get the favor of a
• 1:11:54
  Hollywood celebrity like Hinckley definitely thought he
• 1:11:59
  was. What do you mean?
• 1:12:00
  It was perfectly all right to kill him.
• 1:12:02
  They told me to do it, so it's in line, but it's an important
• 1:12:06
  distinction to make. So for Jesse, they need to
• 1:12:09
  figure out now if he's aware that what he was doing was wrong
• 1:12:12
  at as as it was happening. So at the time they called
• 1:12:16
  psychiatrist alienists. Weird word, but I just refer
• 1:12:22
  them as doctors here. Three different doctors examined
• 1:12:24
  Jesse 2 for the defense and one for the prosecution.
• 1:12:28
  He got close to one of the defense doctors named Doctor
• 1:12:32
  John Tyler, and he told Tyler about molesting the young boys.
• 1:12:37
  And how it was because he had an impulse that would just come
• 1:12:40
  over him, and he told Tyler how he would get this sharp pain in
• 1:12:45
  his head that would go from one side to the other and it
• 1:12:48
  wouldn't stop until he hurt somebody.
• 1:12:52
  Then he got a letter from his mom saying don't tell the
• 1:12:57
  doctors that you did anything unless you really did something.
• 1:13:00
  And if you didn't do it, definitely deny it.
• 1:13:04
  And he interpreted that as. Absolutely deny everything.
• 1:13:09
  So two months before trial, he recanted his entire confession
• 1:13:12
  to the doctors, and no amount of prodding could make him change
• 1:13:15
  his mind on this. God damn.
• 1:13:19
  You mom. The final report issued by Tyler
• 1:13:21
  said that Jesse had no pity for the boys he tortured or the
• 1:13:25
  murder victims. He had no sorrow or remorse for
• 1:13:27
  his acts, but he gave 2 conflicting opinions.
• 1:13:31
  He said Jesse knew right from wrong, but that he was.
• 1:13:34
  Forever going to be a threat to society and need to be
• 1:13:37
  restrained so that no one else could be endangered because he
• 1:13:40
  was definitely 100% insane and they were like, oh, that didn't
• 1:13:45
  answer. Was he insane when he did it
• 1:13:48
  though So it didn't help. The trial was set and his
• 1:13:54
  attorneys were just hoping to keep him alive.
• 1:13:58
  Jesse apparently thought he'd only go to jail for about 5
• 1:14:00
  years and then he'd be allowed to join the Navy.
• 1:14:05
  Absolutely not. I don't know what sort of weird
• 1:14:10
  thought this kid had, but you know what?
• 1:14:11
  That's what that's kids are weird.
• 1:14:13
  That's, let's say, teenagers are.
• 1:14:14
  Yeah, there you go. So Trial started December 8th,
• 1:14:17
  1874, and just like many of the trials we discussed on the
• 1:14:20
  podcast packed, it's the event of the century.
• 1:14:23
  It was on front page news all down the Eastern Seaboard.
• 1:14:27
  Despite this being very exciting for all the gawkers, it wasn't
• 1:14:30
  long and drawn out like a lot of modern trials are.
• 1:14:33
  They picked a jury in under an hour, began opening arguments on
• 1:14:37
  the same day. Prosecutor began by just
• 1:14:40
  straight up telling the jury the definition of murder.
• 1:14:43
  And I'm going to be really honest.
• 1:14:44
  This isn't funny, but it's funny because it was reported by local
• 1:14:49
  newspapers that he was very droll and quite boring.
• 1:14:54
  The prosecutor? Well, yeah, it's not.
• 1:14:58
  They were like. He's not exciting at all.
• 1:15:01
  God, this guy sucks. What do you want for?
• 1:15:04
  What do you want from them? Come on now.
• 1:15:06
  You know what people want. They want Tom Cruise.
• 1:15:09
  You can't handle the truth. They they want excitement in the
• 1:15:13
  courtroom. People don't realize that real
• 1:15:14
  law is boring. They want Keanu Reeves up in
• 1:15:17
  there. Oh my God.
• 1:15:19
  They want what was that? Who's?
• 1:15:20
  Who's the one who yelled. You can't handle.
• 1:15:22
  The truth is that. That's the one about the the
• 1:15:26
  naval officer who was hurt. Yes, that one.
• 1:15:29
  That's what they want. They want that excitement.
• 1:15:31
  They don't realize that real law is boring and it's a lot of
• 1:15:34
  paperwork. So the prosecutor just, it calls
• 1:15:40
  all the witnesses who saw Jesse walking the horse on the beach.
• 1:15:43
  They all can't rereport their previous stuff that they told
• 1:15:47
  the police. He brings out the shoe cast.
• 1:15:50
  The police discussed the confession.
• 1:15:52
  Throughout all of this, Jesse is unfazed.
• 1:15:56
  Even during the more gruesome discussion of what happened
• 1:15:59
  during the murders. He sits leaning back in his
• 1:16:01
  chair with his hands behind his neck, like relaxing during the
• 1:16:07
  trial. Then the defense start.
• 1:16:10
  Now see, Jesse's attorney was giving him the razzle dazzle.
• 1:16:16
  He explains an excruciating detail about how Jesse learned
• 1:16:20
  to harm these boys from his alcoholic, runaway dad.
• 1:16:25
  He went into all of Jesse's past crimes, and he asked the court
• 1:16:29
  to think about could Jesse be sane after experiencing all of
• 1:16:35
  that? That's just the opening argument
• 1:16:39
  here. So in laying on the defense to
• 1:16:42
  prove that Jesse was legally insane.
• 1:16:44
  He brought up witness after witness to back it up, and he
• 1:16:46
  starts with Ruth Pomeroy. Ruth tells the court about how
• 1:16:50
  Jesse had all of these childhood and illnesses that addled his
• 1:16:53
  mind. He had a brain fever.
• 1:16:55
  He had seizures. He suffered after all of that.
• 1:16:58
  He suffered from insomnia, dizziness, violent headaches.
• 1:17:02
  They bring in witnesses from their old neighborhood who
• 1:17:04
  discussed how he would like, try and hurt animals.
• 1:17:08
  And then he would like run off, holding his head in pain.
• 1:17:11
  One of his teachers would discuss how he would have these
• 1:17:13
  really loud outbursts and when he would get in trouble he would
• 1:17:16
  like, get mad and be like, no, it's not fair like a child.
• 1:17:23
  Then they brought in Robert, who still had the scars from when
• 1:17:29
  Jesse attacked him. And I don't know why the defense
• 1:17:33
  did this. They were trying to show how
• 1:17:37
  crazy this attack was. But it definitely backfired
• 1:17:40
  because it made the jury so angry that they were like, Oh
• 1:17:44
  no, there's no way we're acquitting this point.
• 1:17:45
  Absolutely. After that, the doctors
• 1:17:48
  testified. Dr. Tyler restates his report.
• 1:17:51
  Jesse is a lunatic, needs to be kept in prison for life.
• 1:17:54
  But the prosecutor cross examined him and got Tyler to
• 1:17:57
  admit that Jesse showed no other signs of madness outside of
• 1:18:02
  murder and torture. Which is weird, because you
• 1:18:04
  know, if you're insane, I would expect to see something.
• 1:18:07
  See it? Outside of just the clinic, so
• 1:18:12
  second doctor thought that Jesse was legally insane, but under
• 1:18:15
  cross examination admitted that Jesse fleeing the scene was
• 1:18:20
  definitely to avoid punishment, which meant he knew it was
• 1:18:23
  wrong. Then Doctor George Chote was the
• 1:18:27
  3rd doctor and he was the doctor for the prosecution.
• 1:18:30
  So it was no surprise that he called Jesse cunning and deeply
• 1:18:34
  manipulative and free of all mental defects.
• 1:18:37
  That one sounds a lot more true. Just just saying.
• 1:18:42
  Maybe closing arguments. And then after five hours of
• 1:18:44
  deliberation, the jury came back determining he was guilty of
• 1:18:48
  first degree murder, but they requested clemency for him
• 1:18:52
  because he was so young. However, this is not something a
• 1:18:56
  judge can do. Clemency can only be granted by
• 1:18:57
  the governor, so the judge ordered Jesse to be taken to a
• 1:19:02
  cell and await execution. So unlike now in 21st century
• 1:19:08
  death row, inmates in the 19th century did not wait for 20-30
• 1:19:13
  years on death row. You were lucky if you were on
• 1:19:17
  death row for a year. Then.
• 1:19:19
  See, this is. I'm just saying this is, I'm
• 1:19:23
  sorry, continue. However, the thing here was that
• 1:19:26
  nobody wanted to do it, but the public wanted justice for Horace
• 1:19:32
  and Katie. So they were like, hey, let's
• 1:19:35
  take this to the governor. So the governor at the time, his
• 1:19:38
  name was William Gaston, though it's spelled Gaston.
• 1:19:41
  And it really made it really made it hard for me not to call
• 1:19:45
  him Governor Gaston. No one hangs like Gaston.
• 1:19:55
  I quit little boys like Gaston. Oh, we're going to hell.
• 1:20:03
  Well, well, here's the thing. So Gaston did what every
• 1:20:05
  politician does. He elected a committee to study
• 1:20:10
  it and report back. Oh, come on, you just had a
• 1:20:12
  freaking trial about this. Nope.
• 1:20:14
  Nope. The committee is torn.
• 1:20:16
  And so Gaston asked the citizens of Boston what to do.
• 1:20:19
  And so they do a public hearing and people speak for and against
• 1:20:22
  it, and it goes all day long. Governor's like, okay, I'm going
• 1:20:27
  to take this into account. And then nothing happens for
• 1:20:32
  weeks. And while nothing happens,
• 1:20:36
  another disturbed man in his 20s kills a little boy in Boston.
• 1:20:42
  And the people in Boston are like, what are you going to do
• 1:20:45
  about the Pomeroy boy? Because somebody else is now
• 1:20:50
  killing boys because they know that they won't get murdered for
• 1:20:54
  it. So the governor's like, all
• 1:20:57
  right, bring the committee back. We're going to have the
• 1:21:00
  committee vote, committee votes 5 to 4 to allow the sentence to
• 1:21:04
  stand. Jesse will hang, but Governor
• 1:21:08
  Gaston won't sign the death warrant.
• 1:21:11
  This actually probably cost him his position as governor because
• 1:21:16
  in 1876, Alexander Rice ran on the Hang Jesse Pomeroy platform
• 1:21:23
  and won. Obviously, he was elected.
• 1:21:26
  He's like, listen, if you elect me, I will hang Jesse Pomeroy.
• 1:21:31
  I will hang that child. I will kill that child if you
• 1:21:36
  will elect me. Oh my God.
• 1:21:39
  I would love to find like, any sort of old.
• 1:21:42
  I looked, I tried. I wanted to see a picture or a
• 1:21:46
  poster or anything that listed this.
• 1:21:51
  Couldn't find it all. Oh my God, I guess, you know,
• 1:21:55
  governor of Boston, not as important as, you know, holding
• 1:21:59
  on to like old presidential papers.
• 1:22:02
  Right. Boom, I said.
• 1:22:06
  Governor of Boston, Governor of Massachusetts.
• 1:22:08
  Oh my goodness. There's no governor.
• 1:22:10
  I I kind of. I knew what you meant.
• 1:22:11
  But yeah, but regardless, Alexander Rice is elected 1876.
• 1:22:18
  So in August of 1876, he brings together his advisors and he's
• 1:22:22
  like, listen, I'm not going to hang this kid.
• 1:22:25
  Dude, come on. That was your whole thing.
• 1:22:28
  I was with you. I voted for you.
• 1:22:31
  I went back in time. I voted for you.
• 1:22:33
  Come on. I moved to Boston.
• 1:22:35
  I went back in time, moved to Boston, and but yo, you probably
• 1:22:40
  couldn't even vote in Boston. You probably we couldn't.
• 1:22:42
  Neither of us could. I'm like, what are you doing
• 1:22:44
  here, boy? I don't.
• 1:22:48
  I don't think the you're given a Southern accent and this is a
• 1:22:51
  Boston accent. You never know, so I I might
• 1:22:54
  even try a Boston. Accent, but this is this was in
• 1:22:57
  the North too. But you know, Oh no, no, there
• 1:22:59
  were, listen, there were no rights in the north as well.
• 1:23:01
  So sundown towns existed in the north.
• 1:23:05
  I digress. He says choose advisors.
• 1:23:09
  Like, listen, the people of Boston have had about two years
• 1:23:12
  to calm down. He's like, I think they'll
• 1:23:15
  accept a sentence less than death, but it still needs to be
• 1:23:19
  severe. So the governor orders that he
• 1:23:23
  will spend his life not only behind bars but in solitary
• 1:23:27
  confinement, which we know now in modern day is pretty bad.
• 1:23:32
  I mean, solitary is considered torture, so I guess it's okay to
• 1:23:37
  torture the torturer. I don't know.
• 1:23:44
  Jesse was allowed a monthly visit from his mother at the
• 1:23:48
  President Charlestown, and he had a pretty boring existence.
• 1:23:52
  Once his mother died, the only people he ever saw were the
• 1:23:55
  guards patrolling. His brother had died in the war.
• 1:23:57
  So yeah, I think that was in like 18 nineties.
• 1:24:02
  His brother died. Every so often a reporter would
• 1:24:06
  phone the president and ask about him, but they were never
• 1:24:09
  allowed to actually talk to him or interview him.
• 1:24:12
  Over time, governors came and went.
• 1:24:16
  They all met the most famous prisoner in Massachusetts, and
• 1:24:19
  then they went on their way. He ultimately spent 41 years in
• 1:24:23
  solitary confinement. And then in 1917, they kind of
• 1:24:27
  relaxed his sentence a little bit.
• 1:24:29
  They said that he at this point he's meddled and they let him
• 1:24:33
  go. In general population,
• 1:24:36
  originally, when he's released, he's known as like, the worst
• 1:24:39
  prisoner there. For a time, something that like
• 1:24:41
  kind of, like made him happy. Many of these prisoners had
• 1:24:44
  grown up hearing about him. But then something worse
• 1:24:49
  actually happened, because after enough time, he kind of became a
• 1:24:55
  faceless inmate who nobody knew about and nobody was afraid of
• 1:25:00
  anymore. And that was kind of worse than
• 1:25:03
  solitary confinement for him, because for a sociopath who
• 1:25:07
  liked being known as the the boy fiend of Boston, being forgotten
• 1:25:12
  is terrible. But he never showed any remorse
• 1:25:18
  the entire 58 years he was in prison.
• 1:25:21
  He never apologized to his victims or any of their
• 1:25:23
  families. By 1929, he was in poor health.
• 1:25:28
  He's 71 years old and they finally moved him to a
• 1:25:31
  Bridgewater prison farm for better medical care.
• 1:25:36
  It was actually his first and only ride in an automobile, cuz
• 1:25:39
  he had been in prison for so long he didn't know anything
• 1:25:41
  about any of the new life outside of the prison.
• 1:25:43
  That's right. They have wagons.
• 1:25:45
  The little red wagons they're riding me.
• 1:25:48
  A few reporters actually watched his transfer and reported that
• 1:25:52
  he was a deadened creature, gazing with lustreless eyes upon
• 1:25:57
  a world that means nothing to him.
• 1:26:00
  It's like okay, so we're both saying, reporters wrote.
• 1:26:05
  Real flowery back then, that. Was fantastic.
• 1:26:08
  I love how they wrote that. That's just like, imagine,
• 1:26:11
  that's like a a dragon, OK, A dragon has been sealed away.
• 1:26:16
  Yeah. And lazing with lustreless eyes
• 1:26:19
  upon a world that means nothing. To him.
• 1:26:20
  And then he finally gets out. And it's just like, I don't care
• 1:26:24
  about any of this going on outside of me.
• 1:26:27
  I'll Yeah, but yeah, he died two years later at that prison.
• 1:26:31
  The press referred to him as the most friendless person in the
• 1:26:34
  world. Of course, his only wish when he
• 1:26:38
  knew he was going to die was that he'd be cremated.
• 1:26:40
  Since his brother had died and his mother died of old age, he
• 1:26:43
  had no living family and no one to care for him, so his only was
• 1:26:46
  die. He was like cremate me, scatter
• 1:26:48
  me when they end the wind and so that's what they did.
• 1:26:52
  And that kind of ends the saga of the boy fiend of Boston.
• 1:26:58
  A pretty horrible kid. That was terrible and horrible
• 1:27:02
  person. I mean, I knew about him.
• 1:27:06
  I just didn't know all the details.
• 1:27:09
  Yeah, I think I've heard this story before.
• 1:27:11
  I think I mentioned him in one of the tik toks when I talked
• 1:27:15
  about children that kill. But I mean, that was a one
• 1:27:18
  minute video, not an hour of discussing his entire life that.
• 1:27:23
  Was bad? Oh yeah.
• 1:27:25
  I definitely agree with the the group of people who were like,
• 1:27:28
  why did y'all let him out? I mean, I think he still would
• 1:27:31
  have been a menace to society at 18.
• 1:27:33
  He probably would have gotten out and killed somebody at 18,
• 1:27:37
  but then there wouldn't have been any dispute.
• 1:27:39
  They would have just hung him because he was an adult.
• 1:27:42
  Exactly. See, you know the the real issue
• 1:27:44
  there was it took them two years to decide to put him in
• 1:27:47
  solitary. And those little babies would
• 1:27:49
  have lived a little longer. True.
• 1:27:54
  Poor kids. Yeah, this is a rough one.
• 1:27:58
  I hated every moment of it. That's why it took me a long
• 1:28:00
  time to finish it. You're making fun of me for
• 1:28:04
  doing an all nighter to finish my notes, but whenever it's like
• 1:28:08
  a kid thing, it takes me forever.
• 1:28:11
  I understand it. I understand like I stopped
• 1:28:13
  doing this to myself. Stop doing myself.
• 1:28:17
  Stop doing it to both of us. I'm sorry.
• 1:28:21
  Killing me over here, Smalls, No.
• 1:28:40
  So what do we have on the spooky side of life?
• 1:28:43
  Let me just say this episode's gonna be long, okay.
• 1:28:48
  And I do not apologize for that. So let me pull this story out of
• 1:28:56
  my hat. So you know what I always loved,
• 1:29:03
  even as a little kid? The Jersey Devil.
• 1:29:06
  Besides that okay anime. Besides anime?
• 1:29:17
  Scary movies. Yeah, you ask what you love.
• 1:29:22
  That's what I know. You're naming all this stuff,
• 1:29:24
  that's true. I don't know.
• 1:29:26
  I'm not just. Not right.
• 1:29:27
  You're not hitting the right button, OK.
• 1:29:31
  Magic. Are we gonna talk about what I
• 1:29:35
  think we're gonna? Talk about No, I'm not talking
• 1:29:41
  about witchcraft right here. No.
• 1:29:44
  I'm talking about stage magic. No, you're a delight.
• 1:29:49
  I love you so much. I only wish we had cameras for
• 1:30:00
  this. I know.
• 1:30:01
  See how happy I absolutely am right now?
• 1:30:04
  My goodness, this is just say his name.
• 1:30:08
  Say his name. Let me get in my story Okay now.
• 1:30:13
  I remember when I was like, I don't know 10 or 12 and.
• 1:30:17
  We took our yearly trip down to Florida.
• 1:30:20
  There's this place in like the Orlando area.
• 1:30:23
  It's like this little amusement type of strip.
• 1:30:27
  I don't know what you want to call it, but it's called Old
• 1:30:30
  Town Okay and we would just walk down, up and down the streets
• 1:30:35
  cuz they had great shops. Yeah.
• 1:30:36
  Do you walk by yourself? No, I did not.
• 1:30:41
  Didn't no see no. We're in different state,
• 1:30:44
  definitely. No.
• 1:30:45
  I definitely have heard, though Orlando's kind of rough.
• 1:30:47
  Yeah, outside of the tourist areas, it's not a place you
• 1:30:50
  wanna be chilling out by yourself.
• 1:30:52
  No, absolutely not. So as walking down the streets
• 1:30:56
  of Old Town, I, like, literally stopped dead in my tracks
• 1:31:01
  because I saw this wondrous shop.
• 1:31:05
  It was a magic shop if my eyes were bright.
• 1:31:10
  And I begged my parents to go, my mom to go inside and my God,
• 1:31:17
  my tiny mind exploded. And there was like magic tricks
• 1:31:23
  lying in the walls. They had like monster masks.
• 1:31:25
  They had Todd pads. They were wants they had.
• 1:31:29
  And all this also, like even now if I saw this, it's like they're
• 1:31:33
  just nice to go into. I've seen them as a grown up and
• 1:31:36
  I'm like, this is just cool. I don't want to buy any of those
• 1:31:39
  little boxes of tricks, but they're cool places, I.
• 1:31:41
  Would still freak out. I would still blow like mine
• 1:31:43
  would still be blown. So I was in heaven.
• 1:31:48
  So I left that store with like a magic wand and like, you know,
• 1:31:53
  little coin trick. So I was freaking happy.
• 1:31:58
  Funny thing is, like my siblings and my siblings and their dad,
• 1:32:03
  they would, they'd clown me because I bought it and I didn't
• 1:32:08
  know how to use it. Well, you could.
• 1:32:13
  Learn after that my mom and I was into knives.
• 1:32:16
  So here we are. So why am I talking about my
• 1:32:27
  childhood again? And why am I talking about
• 1:32:30
  magic? Well, because we're finally
• 1:32:35
  going to sit down and talk about one of the greatest magicians,
• 1:32:39
  illusionists, and medium debunker, Harry Houdini.
• 1:32:43
  Yeah, buddy. Oh yeah, I've been waiting for
• 1:32:48
  this one. I've been wanting to hear about
• 1:32:51
  how Houdini hated psychics. I love it.
• 1:32:57
  Oh, goodness. I'm glad you're happy.
• 1:33:00
  You know how you were like, thank you for this gift.
• 1:33:03
  Yes, When I talked about Debbie. Yes, thank you for this gift.
• 1:33:09
  This is my favorite thing. This is another gift you had
• 1:33:12
  your gift with the horns only I got.
• 1:33:13
  See, I got you 2 gifts this year, all right?
• 1:33:15
  I gotta do better. I gotta find you another person
• 1:33:19
  who justifiably murdered, like 20 people.
• 1:33:22
  There you go. Righteous.
• 1:33:26
  Murder. Righteous murder.
• 1:33:27
  I loved it so much. So what I'm going to talk about
• 1:33:32
  this week is not the magic side of you know, Houdini.
• 1:33:36
  Of course not. But how This man kind of made it
• 1:33:40
  his mission to debunk mediums. That's right.
• 1:33:47
  So I'd say the catalyst for his debunking journey would be the
• 1:33:52
  passing of his mother in 1913. So after her death, he was, you
• 1:33:58
  know, unsurprisingly overcome with grief.
• 1:34:02
  Feel you been there, buddy. Yeah, it's not a good time.
• 1:34:06
  So I guess what he did was that sometimes he would lie on her
• 1:34:11
  gravestone or, you know, and then just, you know, speak to
• 1:34:15
  the earth. Like speaking to her.
• 1:34:17
  Ohh, wow. Yeah.
• 1:34:18
  I haven't even visited my mom. I can't.
• 1:34:22
  I just feel like it would be an overwhelming experience.
• 1:34:25
  So I'm just gonna, like, love you from afar.
• 1:34:28
  But he decided to go to her gravestone and talk to.
• 1:34:30
  Her. Yeah, This is just, he was just
• 1:34:32
  like, he called like multiple searches.
• 1:34:35
  I looked at, they called like, he called her his Angel on
• 1:34:37
  earth. So yeah, she was like his world.
• 1:34:42
  And it was like I I cannot relate to that, of course,
• 1:34:49
  because my mother is still alive, but.
• 1:34:52
  I just. I feel for you.
• 1:34:54
  I absolutely can. Feel for him.
• 1:34:57
  I feel for you. Yeah, I would.
• 1:35:03
  It's one of those few things people like.
• 1:35:04
  I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
• 1:35:07
  That's it's that bad. Losing a parent is that bad.
• 1:35:14
  I once read an article from the Guardian and we talked about how
• 1:35:20
  he had an uncle who had gotten like a blown up in a war, like
• 1:35:26
  an explosion happened, and he had shrapnel in his body.
• 1:35:29
  And he said that like every once in a while a piece of shrapnel
• 1:35:32
  would just decide to start moving and it would very
• 1:35:35
  painfully force its way out of its body.
• 1:35:38
  And that is grief, and it just keeps coming and coming.
• 1:35:42
  It doesn't stop. So that's I feel for Harry.
• 1:35:48
  So all this time. Talking to her grave, he was
• 1:35:51
  always wondering if there's a way to communicate with the
• 1:35:54
  dead. Right.
• 1:35:56
  So and con spiritualism with such one living person could
• 1:36:03
  commune with the dead with the assistance of a medium through
• 1:36:07
  seances and back then this is when they used to do that thing
• 1:36:11
  with the table, right? And everyone sat around the
• 1:36:14
  table and. That fun stuff, it was like a
• 1:36:18
  big to do. Now people are like, I'm gonna
• 1:36:20
  sit with you in your living room and we're just gonna talk.
• 1:36:23
  But this was like a big deal. Yeah, no Luigi boards right now.
• 1:36:29
  Oh gosh, you're not a fan. So, fun fact, I don't know if
• 1:36:35
  you knew about this, but Harry Houdini actually performed fake
• 1:36:39
  seances during his early years as a magician.
• 1:36:42
  No, I I didn't know he did that. I thought that he just hated
• 1:36:48
  them. No, this is before he hated
• 1:36:50
  them, so so was he, like, scamming people?
• 1:36:55
  No, this was part of his magic act.
• 1:36:57
  Okay. Like, I know a lot of magicians
• 1:37:01
  back in that day actually did stuff like this.
• 1:37:04
  But yeah, but yeah, so he, like, really wanted to believe in
• 1:37:10
  spiritualism. But he knew that there might be
• 1:37:12
  frauds out there, of course, like this stuff he was doing.
• 1:37:17
  So the years now 1920, he becomes friends with the author
• 1:37:22
  of the Sri like home novels Conan Doyle.
• 1:37:28
  Wow. So both author Arthur and his
• 1:37:32
  wife were believers of spiritualism.
• 1:37:35
  His wife, Jean, was also a practicing medium.
• 1:37:39
  Oh no. So Doyle's interest in
• 1:37:43
  spiritualism came after the death of his son in World War
• 1:37:48
  One. He publicly endorsed the
• 1:37:51
  practice by donating money to popular mediums of the time.
• 1:37:57
  I just don't see this going well for their friendship.
• 1:38:02
  So. So while Houdini was in England,
• 1:38:05
  you know, he'd hang out with his buddy Arthur.
• 1:38:08
  He'd invite them. Hit the dohails to his shows and
• 1:38:12
  he hang out with them at their place.
• 1:38:16
  They were homies, basically. One day Houdini and his wife
• 1:38:21
  Bess, Arthur and Jean were sitting at lunch and Houdini's
• 1:38:25
  doing tricks for, you know, Arthur's kids.
• 1:38:27
  And when spiritualism comes up, so this is when Jean tells them
• 1:38:32
  that, you know, she's a practicing medium.
• 1:38:35
  And Houdini is like, here we go with this bullshit.
• 1:38:39
  Oh, OK. But you know, he he doesn't say
• 1:38:42
  anything because you know, that's his friend's wife.
• 1:38:45
  So so he holds his tongue. But he does ask he he asked him
• 1:38:50
  to suggest, you know, a medium for him to visit, and he
• 1:38:53
  promises to go with an open mind willing to believe that's a lie.
• 1:38:58
  No, look, I believe, OK. I would no, I believe that he he
• 1:39:04
  truly like. He wasn't going to these things
• 1:39:08
  just to debunk them at first. Like, you know, I'm just going
• 1:39:13
  to go. I know it's a lot of bullshit,
• 1:39:15
  but, you know, I'm just going to go and see, you know what it's
• 1:39:18
  like, basically. Like, that'd be like asking me
• 1:39:23
  to go like, see Sylvia Brown and be like, just keep an open mind,
• 1:39:26
  Brittany, and I'm like. No.
• 1:39:28
  Yeah. I can't.
• 1:39:28
  I can't. Not with her.
• 1:39:30
  I can't. No, not at all.
• 1:39:31
  It would need to be some unknown.
• 1:39:32
  Never been on TV, psychic. Not somebody who makes money off
• 1:39:36
  of this. I don't trust them.
• 1:39:37
  Oh my. God fuck Sylvia Brown.
• 1:39:39
  Anyway, so to recommend any Britain and supposedly most
• 1:39:48
  famous medium in England. Let me say he wasn't impressed,
• 1:39:55
  OK? So she basically did everything
• 1:39:58
  Houdini did when he did his fake seances, doors opening, chairs
• 1:40:04
  rocking back and forth, candles flickering, the whole 9.
• 1:40:07
  Yards. But how do you make that fake?
• 1:40:10
  What I don't know. Magic.
• 1:40:21
  Ohh, I said How do you make it fake?
• 1:40:23
  And you said magic. There you go.
• 1:40:26
  He stays friends with Arthur as of this though.
• 1:40:29
  Ohh, that's nice. Like, he's still, you know, he's
• 1:40:31
  still friendly with him. He he's not like an asshole.
• 1:40:34
  Like, you sent me to this person and she's obviously a fake.
• 1:40:38
  Like she's the most famous in like England, though.
• 1:40:42
  And she's obviously a fake. Ooh, I mean, Houdini was a
• 1:40:46
  famous magician, so yeah, she should have known.
• 1:40:51
  She should have, like, put on her best foot forward or
• 1:40:53
  something. Like you can't be doing, like
• 1:40:56
  the basic stuff you do for the normies, like Harry Houdini's
• 1:40:59
  coming to your show like get, you know, give him the razzle
• 1:41:03
  dazzle. Yeah, Razzle Dazzle exactly did
• 1:41:06
  not help her. So the Doyles are visiting New
• 1:41:10
  York. The year is 1922 now, so.
• 1:41:15
  Doyle and Houdini are attending the banquet for the Society of
• 1:41:21
  American Magicians when Houdini says he'll demonstrate how a
• 1:41:26
  magician fakes spiritualism. He fakes.
• 1:41:32
  He fakes spiritualist phenomena, is what was said.
• 1:41:37
  So Arthur obviously is upset about this.
• 1:41:41
  He says he didn't want to see spiritualism mocked.
• 1:41:44
  So Houdini does another trick. He does a trick with his wife
• 1:41:47
  and Doyle's jacket and puts her in her chest and whatever.
• 1:41:54
  So it is, it's a it's. I'm pretty sure it's a great
• 1:41:58
  trick to watch not to read about.
• 1:42:03
  So now they're in Atlantic City same year.
• 1:42:10
  And you know, Doyle is in the Houdini's or I guess, yeah, she
• 1:42:13
  still has a they're, you know, they're at a hotel.
• 1:42:19
  And Jean Doyle offers to help Houdini commune with his mother.
• 1:42:27
  Bad decision. Houdini tries to be optimistic.
• 1:42:34
  So, you know, during the seance she uses automatic writing.
• 1:42:37
  You know what that is? Okay.
• 1:42:40
  Awesome. So it's for anybody who doesn't
• 1:42:42
  know, it's basically just the medium is like, I guess they're
• 1:42:46
  communicating with the spirit and then the spirit talks to the
• 1:42:49
  medium. You make yourself like a
• 1:42:50
  conduit, yeah. And you hold a pencil and they
• 1:42:54
  close their eyes and then whatever gets drawn that's
• 1:42:56
  supposed to come from. The Spirit.
• 1:42:59
  The Spirit. Yes.
• 1:43:02
  So she wrote things, so words and stuff for this one.
• 1:43:07
  So she wrote things like. This is from Houdini's quote.
• 1:43:12
  UN quote, Mom, I think I remember this one.
• 1:43:15
  Things like I'm happy or it's so different over here, you know,
• 1:43:20
  vague messages like that. Houdini both knows this, so for
• 1:43:28
  one, Gene wrote in English. Yep, I do remember hearing about
• 1:43:32
  this. His mom was like German.
• 1:43:35
  Or something. Houdini and his mom are German.
• 1:43:38
  Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember those.
• 1:43:40
  And his mom only speaks German or spoke German, and on every
• 1:43:48
  page there was a cross at the top.
• 1:43:51
  His mom was Jewish. Didn't remember that one though.
• 1:43:58
  I remember the fact that he was mad because he was like if she
• 1:44:01
  had said anything it would have been in German, not in so
• 1:44:06
  medium. Who didn't know German would
• 1:44:08
  have been like, I do not. This sounds like she's growling
• 1:44:11
  at me from the afterlife, if I'm honest.
• 1:44:13
  Listen, German is an aggressive sounding language.
• 1:44:16
  But you can tell what it is. You can be saying like, I love
• 1:44:18
  you and it sounds vicious. Oh my God, just look it up.
• 1:44:22
  This is just German is a hardcore language.
• 1:44:24
  Yes. Nothing.
• 1:44:25
  It's not cool. It just sounds real intense.
• 1:44:28
  So Can you imagine? You're just like, all right, I'm
• 1:44:29
  just going to listen and all of a sudden you just hear somebody
• 1:44:31
  like a DMX and in your ear. Well, if she's being a conduit
• 1:44:35
  for her, she could be able to still write that stuff, though.
• 1:44:39
  Do you know how to write in German?
• 1:44:40
  Okay. But she's being a conduit.
• 1:44:42
  The spirit is controlling her hand, so she will be able to
• 1:44:45
  true. If she really was being a
• 1:44:46
  conduit, then she would have probably written in German.
• 1:44:49
  Exactly. Also, though, she just was not
• 1:44:52
  being a conduit. She was just trying to be nice.
• 1:44:55
  Yes, and all you did was make him angry.
• 1:44:57
  Yes. Also, the science was on his
• 1:45:01
  mom's birthday and Gene or was a bad time.
• 1:45:06
  Or his mom did not mention it at all.
• 1:45:11
  When you know Houdini said this to you know Doyle's.
• 1:45:15
  You know, I'm pretty sure you said it in the most politely
• 1:45:18
  play the most polite way ever, Arthur.
• 1:45:23
  Is initially, you know, defensive, of course, he said.
• 1:45:27
  Houdini's mom could have learned English in heaven.
• 1:45:30
  Yep, I do remember hearing that too.
• 1:45:34
  And that spirits don't care about the earthly calendar, so
• 1:45:40
  she wouldn't bring up her birthday.
• 1:45:43
  Look, let me tell you something. I'm gonna care about the earthly
• 1:45:46
  calendar. Yeah, right.
• 1:45:47
  Listen, listen. If you out, if I outlive you,
• 1:45:50
  you best believe November 6, 2057.
• 1:45:54
  I'm gonna be over here. How you doing, Brian?
• 1:45:57
  What's up? Oh my God, yeah.
• 1:46:00
  If you do a seance for me and it's on 5720, like 87, yeah,
• 1:46:05
  what am I over here cutting my life down to only like 50 years?
• 1:46:09
  On my birthday and you don't bring me a gift.
• 1:46:13
  I'm gonna come to the say on and the first thing I was gonna come
• 1:46:16
  out of my mouth is where's my present?
• 1:46:18
  It's my birthday. What I'm supposed to give it to
• 1:46:20
  you? How I'm supposed to give it to?
• 1:46:22
  You pour some lick it out for me, all right, I.
• 1:46:24
  I'll have a cup waiting. I can pour one out for the
• 1:46:28
  homie. I can do that absolutely.
• 1:46:33
  Now at this time, actually forever, Houdini didn't think
• 1:46:39
  that they were fakes or frauds. You just thought they were.
• 1:46:42
  Very self deluded. Yeah.
• 1:46:45
  So he was like she believes this.
• 1:46:47
  I just don't got no thank you. Yeah, what a nice He still
• 1:46:51
  really wants to be friends with them.
• 1:46:54
  So I mean, but the Doyles on the other hand, for some reason
• 1:47:00
  thought that Houdini was moved by the experience.
• 1:47:07
  Parser even went as far as going publicly to say that Houdini was
• 1:47:14
  a spiritualist believer that we've gone too far.
• 1:47:25
  So that was another bad decision on his part.
• 1:47:28
  Well, how do you speak for me? How about that?
• 1:47:31
  Yeah. So Houdini was like, all right.
• 1:47:36
  I've taken all I can stand and I can't stands no more.
• 1:47:41
  So he told the media that spiritualism is a sham and those
• 1:47:46
  who practice it are frauds. And so a few starts between
• 1:47:52
  these two friends. Arthur would write that Houdini
• 1:47:55
  was conceited and self opinionated, and Houdini would
• 1:47:59
  write that Doyle was seen now and easily bamboozled.
• 1:48:05
  They would roast each other this way for a while.
• 1:48:12
  I'm just saying that is a roast. He's like you, easily
• 1:48:17
  bamboozled. You're a silly man, you
• 1:48:20
  feebleminded. Believe anything.
• 1:48:24
  Pull the wool over your. Eyes Ohh goodness so.
• 1:48:35
  At this time, Houdini went on his way to attend as many
• 1:48:38
  seances as possible, so this is when this happened.
• 1:48:42
  To expose mediums. All right then.
• 1:48:46
  This man even would even where this guise is, cuz after a while
• 1:48:53
  people if they recognized it was him they wouldn't do it.
• 1:48:56
  They were like, I won't do the seance if he's here.
• 1:48:59
  We don't like his energy. He would wear like must.
• 1:49:02
  He is bad energy. He's gonna block the.
• 1:49:04
  Spirit. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:49:05
  Really. He's gonna show them that you're
• 1:49:07
  a fake and you're kicking the table underneath.
• 1:49:11
  So yeah, he we're like mustaches and hats and like freaking like
• 1:49:15
  other elaborate disguises. Here's my thing, though, Did he
• 1:49:17
  have a like a like a Russian act?
• 1:49:19
  Like a Russian? Did he have a German accent?
• 1:49:21
  I'm not sure I'm gonna say 'cause he lived in America for a
• 1:49:24
  while. Yeah, but so do you, like, lose
• 1:49:26
  that 'cause if I mean, I feel like if I'm a medium, but like,
• 1:49:30
  no Germans, just none. If you sign up and you are a
• 1:49:34
  German, no thank you. Racist.
• 1:49:36
  No Germans. Listen, I'm trying to keep
• 1:49:39
  scamming people and the Great Houdini is ruining my money.
• 1:49:46
  Oh my goodness. So when he would disguise
• 1:49:50
  himself, you know, sit down, he'd see something that was
• 1:49:52
  fake. He'd stand up and say I am
• 1:49:56
  Houdini. You are a fraud.
• 1:50:00
  Okay you rip off. That's a flax.
• 1:50:03
  I just think he like, I imagine just some ripping off his
• 1:50:06
  mustache. Yes, absolutely.
• 1:50:09
  What if he wore his little like Houdini leotard and he just,
• 1:50:12
  like, pulled up his jacket? I am Houdini.
• 1:50:17
  You are a fraud, ma'am. So yeah, he wrote a book called
• 1:50:23
  A Magician Among the Spirits he Called.
• 1:50:27
  He called the frauds leeches because they exploited grieving
• 1:50:30
  people and he took their money. Yeah, but you know, he didn't
• 1:50:35
  give that book away for free. Of course not.
• 1:50:37
  I mean, no. But hey, he didn't fake.
• 1:50:40
  He didn't fake people out. He gave him the tooth.
• 1:50:43
  He gave him the tooth okay. So there was a committee that he
• 1:50:49
  joined that was part of the Scientific American magazine
• 1:50:54
  They. The committee that he joined,
• 1:50:58
  they had offered a reward. Goodness, was it $2500?
• 1:51:06
  Or? Yeah, that's what it was, $2500
• 1:51:11
  to anyone who could truly demonstrate paranormal powers.
• 1:51:17
  This just reminds me of the people who don't like the
• 1:51:20
  warrants. Look look good, $500 Make a
• 1:51:26
  Spirit of pair right here. We're not touching that.
• 1:51:34
  Oh goodness that. That's kind of like the energy.
• 1:51:37
  Though yeah, I know, it really is.
• 1:51:38
  Make them. Come on, show them to me.
• 1:51:41
  I mean, but yeah, like if you're medium and you're trying to hold
• 1:51:45
  a seance and you want me to believe that is true, like give
• 1:51:48
  me a spirit, give me like, give me something.
• 1:51:53
  So there was one woman who came really close to winning this
• 1:51:58
  reward. I'm not sure if if you've heard
• 1:52:02
  of this, this, this whole. I remember this.
• 1:52:05
  OK, so basically this is like Houdini's greatest opponent in
• 1:52:11
  the on the medium plane. Her name was Mina.
• 1:52:19
  Crandon. No.
• 1:52:21
  So but she was also named Marjorie, just that was I guess
• 1:52:27
  her Medium name. Her people named her Marjorie to
• 1:52:30
  protect her actual name. So basically, for Medium to
• 1:52:37
  receive this reward, Kunini obviously had to be present for,
• 1:52:42
  you know, their seance and he had to know, like the people
• 1:52:46
  that were going to be. In the seance.
• 1:52:52
  So she had been able to show off her talents to many before, you
• 1:52:56
  know, Houdini, you know, got there and many believed that she
• 1:53:00
  was like the real deal and she was known.
• 1:53:04
  She was known to hold her seances okay.
• 1:53:11
  So I'm not going to say this yet, but I guess the way she was
• 1:53:16
  dressed. She would just dress in like a a
• 1:53:19
  nice sheer type robe. All right, yeah.
• 1:53:24
  And Ghost in a show. A lot of like, a lot of, I guess
• 1:53:31
  I'm not gonna say men, but men, they said that she was too good
• 1:53:38
  looking for her own good. That's a weird compliment.
• 1:53:42
  Yeah, I saw. I got to take off Rick.
• 1:53:49
  Not all of us, but this is one part of Wikipedia that she would
• 1:53:54
  sometimes perform her seances in the nude and she would even jump
• 1:54:02
  into the lapse of the male participants.
• 1:54:07
  See, they don't even care if they read me the spirits at this
• 1:54:11
  point. So yeah.
• 1:54:16
  So there's this guy Jay Malcolm Bird, who was a believer of
• 1:54:21
  Marjorie's and also a member of the Scientific American
• 1:54:26
  magazine. He wasn't part of this committee
• 1:54:28
  that Houdini was on, he was just part of the magazine.
• 1:54:32
  So it's kind of a bit of a conflict of interest, don't you
• 1:54:37
  think not? He was a believer of hers and he
• 1:54:41
  was a believer of them titties. I'm sorry, I'm just.
• 1:54:47
  Saying he's a believer of hers and he's part of this magazine
• 1:54:50
  that they're holding a contest for, like to watch her jiggle
• 1:54:53
  and jangle while she pretended to talk to the experience.
• 1:54:58
  Now there are like there is speculation that he was
• 1:55:04
  enchanted by her. That's what I said.
• 1:55:07
  Didn't I say that? Oh, he was.
• 1:55:13
  What's the word sprung? Yes, he was, but yeah, he was.
• 1:55:19
  What's the word? Typmotized.
• 1:55:21
  It typmotized. There you go.
• 1:55:28
  I'm sorry. I'm being crass.
• 1:55:29
  Oh my goodness. She literally didn't make it say
• 1:55:32
  answers. Of course he was.
• 1:55:34
  Listen, I have eyes. I would have probably been like,
• 1:55:38
  oh, look at that. Yeah.
• 1:55:40
  Interesting. Yeah, but her husband was always
• 1:55:42
  in attendance with these seances as well.
• 1:55:44
  OK, I that don't mean I'm gonna do anything to her that don't.
• 1:55:48
  Mean. I'm not gonna look.
• 1:55:49
  Thank you. I'm not gonna.
• 1:55:50
  I'm gonna look at. I didn't say I was gonna touch
• 1:55:52
  her. Oh, my God.
• 1:55:53
  I would not violate her. I would just stare.
• 1:56:01
  Anyway, he told her about this contest.
• 1:56:03
  And you know, she agreed to enter, so Houdini asked him.
• 1:56:07
  He's like, so you think she deserves this prize Bird goes?
• 1:56:12
  Absolutely. I wonder why.
• 1:56:17
  So Houdini, Oh my goodness, attends her seance first thing.
• 1:56:23
  Well, okay. So before he attends her seance,
• 1:56:27
  he gets okay. So this woman, she's from
• 1:56:29
  Boston, Okay? Oh, another Boston story.
• 1:56:32
  Look at this. See you how this happens
• 1:56:34
  randomly. So.
• 1:56:37
  So he gets the Boston right with his partner and the first thing
• 1:56:42
  he finds out is that members of the committee kind of took
• 1:56:46
  bribes from the crandoms, like I guess one of the other committee
• 1:56:56
  members, he got a loan from her husband.
• 1:57:01
  And then Bird also got some type of bribe thing, so he can't
• 1:57:12
  trust anyone to be serious about this.
• 1:57:14
  Yeah, basically. And of course, right.
• 1:57:22
  I already said this. Her appearance.
• 1:57:24
  Enchanted bird. I already said this enchanted.
• 1:57:28
  By the titties. So not getting one by me.
• 1:57:37
  So I'm going to try to explain how she did her seances.
• 1:57:42
  So one part of it was that she had this box.
• 1:57:48
  Oh, you know what? I think I have a picture of
• 1:57:50
  this. So she had this box, there's
• 1:57:52
  this box and it had wires in it and it it was like what was
• 1:57:56
  connected? And there was a bell.
• 1:58:00
  And I freaking closed that damn tab out.
• 1:58:07
  Well, actually, that closed out. No.
• 1:58:09
  OK, so there was. So this is a box, right?
• 1:58:14
  The littlest wooden box she had. And she'd place it on the floor
• 1:58:18
  in like, in between her legs, sort of like by her feet, Like
• 1:58:22
  in front of her feet. And she'd have her.
• 1:58:28
  Arms like bound and her legs bound so she couldn't really
• 1:58:31
  move. Okay them and I guess they would
• 1:58:38
  turn the lights out and when she would commune with the spirits,
• 1:58:44
  I guess she'd have them ring the bell.
• 1:58:46
  And if there was a spirit there, right?
• 1:58:49
  Okay. So where's the box?
• 1:58:53
  You're supposed to show me the box.
• 1:58:54
  Wait, I'm showing. No, I'm showing you like the
• 1:58:56
  diagram of how it was. So it was between your feet.
• 1:59:07
  Now for this test to work, there was one committee member sitting
• 1:59:12
  on her on her one side and her husband or somebody else sitting
• 1:59:16
  on her other side, let me tell you.
• 1:59:19
  How extra this man Houdini was Okay okay.
• 1:59:24
  He. I guess the day of the seance he
• 1:59:30
  uses a What did he say it was? It was a oh, I didn't write it
• 1:59:42
  down, but he wraps like this rubber band type thing.
• 1:59:49
  Around his leg, like below his knee, so that it would get
• 1:59:52
  swollen and tender, so that when he was sitting next to her he'd
• 1:59:59
  be able to feel if she moved her legs to try to ring the bell on
• 2:00:04
  the box. Right, So if she bumped into
• 2:00:06
  him, it'd be like ow. Well, okay, So here's how they
• 2:00:09
  set it up. Okay, Houdini's sitting on like
• 2:00:11
  her left. One side, I don't know.
• 2:00:16
  He's sitting on one side of her and he has a box between his
• 2:00:19
  legs and I think it's Bird that's sitting on her other
• 2:00:25
  side. So Houdini is holding her hand
• 2:00:29
  to make sure she doesn't move, and he has his ankle placed in
• 2:00:33
  front of hers so she can't move. So she can't move.
• 2:00:38
  And here's the here's a picture of basically how it looked.
• 2:00:45
  Geez. So yeah, and behind them was a
• 2:00:49
  cabinet type thing. It's like a divider, I guess you
• 2:00:53
  call it so. So he did this just to make sure
• 2:01:02
  he could feel like any movement from her at all because his leg
• 2:01:08
  was so tender. All right.
• 2:01:11
  So, so he cut off his circulation to try and.
• 2:01:14
  Yeah. All right, that was a whole day.
• 2:01:16
  He had it on the whole day. Jesus, I must hurt a lot.
• 2:01:19
  And that night, that's when he took it off and his leg was just
• 2:01:23
  look like I said extra. This is pretty his fault, Lord.
• 2:01:28
  So of course during the same houses this time they need the
• 2:01:32
  lights off, so the lights go down.
• 2:01:37
  And sure enough, when the lights go out.
• 2:01:40
  He could feel her slowly but surely, like moving her, like
• 2:01:44
  inching her foot towards the box that was between his legs, Like
• 2:01:51
  slowly, like very slowly, like so he like she didn't think he
• 2:01:55
  could feel it. And then when she got to the
• 2:02:00
  bell or the box, she rang the bell, and then he could feel her
• 2:02:04
  slowly moving her foot back. Or was he feeling his leg
• 2:02:14
  throbbing from the lack of blood?
• 2:02:17
  I'm just saying. He no.
• 2:02:20
  He already took the band off though, so it was back to
• 2:02:23
  normal. It was just swollen and very
• 2:02:25
  tender. OK.
• 2:02:28
  Alright, alright. Next part, OK.
• 2:02:31
  There's another part in in the seance is when she OK, so she
• 2:02:35
  has like this spirit guide type thing.
• 2:02:38
  I guess it's. Mediums have this sometimes,
• 2:02:41
  yes. And his name was Walter, and he
• 2:02:46
  couldn't make things levitate, so she had this megaphone.
• 2:02:51
  That's not what spirit guides do.
• 2:02:55
  They're supposed to help you, not perform tricks.
• 2:03:01
  So she had this megaphone that he would make levitate just to
• 2:03:05
  make sure, like the proof that he was there.
• 2:03:07
  Okay. So, like I said, so OK, so it's
• 2:03:13
  still dark, right? And I showed you the cabinet
• 2:03:15
  that's behind her, like a little foldable thing.
• 2:03:17
  OK, so it's still dark. And she asked Byrd to go the OK
• 2:03:25
  Walter asked for an illuminated plaque to put on top of the the
• 2:03:32
  bellbox for some reason. So Bert leaves the room.
• 2:03:39
  And you can hear the cabinet behind her like kind of crash or
• 2:03:50
  move. You said this was like they got
• 2:03:58
  close. How is this closed?
• 2:04:00
  This seems like a complete farce from the beginning.
• 2:04:03
  What do you mean? Yeah, Okay, you said.
• 2:04:06
  Like this one almost made it. No, it did because the reason
• 2:04:10
  why it almost did is because most of the committee members
• 2:04:15
  that were there before Houdini got there.
• 2:04:17
  They were either bribed or okay, I thought.
• 2:04:21
  She had almost convinced Houdini.
• 2:04:23
  No, no, no, no. So I was expecting some level of
• 2:04:26
  almost realness. This is just a complete lie.
• 2:04:29
  No, no, no, no. From the beginning he was like,
• 2:04:32
  fuck this, but no. So okay.
• 2:04:39
  So Houdini is holding both of her hands now because Bird's
• 2:04:42
  gone. And then the cabinet moves right
• 2:04:48
  cuz he probably tripped and fell on it.
• 2:04:52
  You said it made a crash. That's not how it's supposed to
• 2:04:54
  happen, is it? And then, OK, so after it
• 2:04:59
  crashes, she gives Houdini her foot.
• 2:05:01
  So he's in control of both her hands and her feet.
• 2:05:04
  Now he's holding both of them. Yes, at this after the crash of
• 2:05:09
  the cabinet and it's still dark, OK.
• 2:05:16
  So Walter asked Houdini, where would you like me to throw this
• 2:05:24
  megaphone? And Houdini says towards me, and
• 2:05:31
  it's tossed at his feet in Phoenix Wright style.
• 2:05:37
  He's like, objective, you know Phoenix Wright?
• 2:05:41
  Yes. Objection.
• 2:05:42
  Objection. That's what I meant.
• 2:05:45
  I got you. That's why I wrote too.
• 2:05:46
  Objection. Well, anyway, he says it throw
• 2:05:52
  the lights on. And then her husband was
• 2:05:54
  standing there wearing all black.
• 2:05:55
  He says it's in his head. He doesn't say it out loud, so
• 2:06:00
  I'm guessing that the cabinet was closer.
• 2:06:03
  It was right behind her. That's what I wrote, yeah.
• 2:06:05
  He showed a picture of it. It was right behind her.
• 2:06:09
  So Houdini deduced. Was that when Bird got up to
• 2:06:13
  leave? She tilted the cabinet and I
• 2:06:16
  guess the megaphone was sitting on top of the cabinet.
• 2:06:22
  This is, this is. I mean, it's out there, but it
• 2:06:26
  could probably happen. So she tilted the the cabinet
• 2:06:29
  with her foot before she gave her other foot to Houdini.
• 2:06:33
  And on top of the cabinet was a megaphone.
• 2:06:37
  So. When the megaphone fell off the
• 2:06:40
  cabinet, it landed on her head like a dunt cap, so she just
• 2:06:46
  went boop. And yeah, basically.
• 2:06:49
  So once it landed on her head and she, you know, Walter asked
• 2:06:52
  him where she wanted, he wanted the megaphone to land.
• 2:06:56
  So she just freaking jerked her head towards Houdini.
• 2:07:00
  That's ridiculous. And it fell in his at his feet.
• 2:07:04
  This is what hey. OK, so then what?
• 2:07:10
  OK, so by this time, Houdini was like, OK, she was, he already
• 2:07:15
  knew she was a fraud by, you know, by the end of all of that.
• 2:07:20
  But they come back for two more seances.
• 2:07:21
  Well, actually, they no, they come back for two.
• 2:07:24
  They come back for more seances. I wanna say two more that
• 2:07:28
  sounds. Awful.
• 2:07:29
  I think they're like they're they're at least two more.
• 2:07:35
  So second one is more of the same stuff.
• 2:07:40
  The spirit. Walter wanted to lift the table
• 2:07:42
  that they were sitting at, so everyone had to move back in
• 2:07:45
  their seats, even Marjorie, and then the table starts lifting.
• 2:07:52
  Now, like I said, everyone had to move back and everyone was
• 2:07:55
  astonished. Except for Houdini.
• 2:08:00
  Because while the table was lifting up, he was feeling under
• 2:08:04
  a table, and that's when he felt the head under a head underneath
• 2:08:09
  of the table it was Marjorie's head.
• 2:08:14
  So what she had done was when she moved back in her seat, I
• 2:08:19
  guess she like leaned forward underneath the table to like be
• 2:08:24
  able to rise it up with her head.
• 2:08:27
  That's bizarre. Very bizarre, but I'm guessing
• 2:08:29
  these mediums had to find out creative ways to fake these
• 2:08:34
  seances. This is weird MM.
• 2:08:37
  HM so this right here is one thing.
• 2:08:43
  Was enough to debunker right on the spot.
• 2:08:47
  But the committee, you know, you know, Houdini's like, yo, can I
• 2:08:50
  just, like leave? Can.
• 2:08:52
  Yeah. Can it, like, stop this because
• 2:08:54
  this is freaking ridiculous And the committee is like, no, no,
• 2:08:56
  no, no, no, no, We gotta wait. We gotta wait.
• 2:08:59
  And they can use like, fucking fine.
• 2:09:03
  So they do another box thing. This time, Houdini's wearing
• 2:09:07
  like a a Garter belt because. Just because.
• 2:09:14
  And so he rolls his leg up right?
• 2:09:16
  And Margie is wearing her stockings this time and he uses
• 2:09:21
  his guarded belt just to catch her stockings to make sure that
• 2:09:24
  you know he can feel when she doesn't move because he's not
• 2:09:26
  going to, you know, cut a circulation off again today.
• 2:09:30
  He needs his blood to be flowing so he he catches her stocking
• 2:09:37
  when she starts to move and. And she's like, are you wearing
• 2:09:42
  your Garter belt? And he's like, yeah.
• 2:09:44
  Why? And she's like, well, it's
• 2:09:47
  cutting my skin. Could you could you, like, take
• 2:09:50
  it off? And so he takes it off.
• 2:09:52
  And then he could still move her.
• 2:09:54
  He could still feel her move her leg to the bell and the bell
• 2:09:58
  rings again. So yeah.
• 2:10:02
  So you think this is enough? No, still not enough.
• 2:10:08
  Next. This is where the shake starts
• 2:10:10
  getting. Even more ridiculous, OK?
• 2:10:15
  They construct this large box for her to sit inside.
• 2:10:20
  What? There's a they they put her
• 2:10:22
  inside a large wooden box trap, sort of, yeah.
• 2:10:27
  OK. You know, only her head is able
• 2:10:30
  to stick out in her arms, oh Lord, so that they can still
• 2:10:33
  hold her arms. Oh my God.
• 2:10:35
  And that she won't be able to move.
• 2:10:38
  And get out-of-the-box. My goodness, this is insane.
• 2:10:47
  So as the lights go out, the top of the box is ripped off and
• 2:10:54
  Marjorie says Walter did it, Hoduni says.
• 2:10:58
  This is fucking bullshit. No okay, I appreciate this
• 2:11:06
  statement from Harry Houdini because it is bullshit.
• 2:11:09
  Yeah, OK, so now in between seances, the first one and the
• 2:11:13
  second one, Bird is staying. Well, actually, even before the
• 2:11:16
  seances start, Bird is staying with Marjorie and her husband.
• 2:11:20
  Oh, OK. And after the first seance,
• 2:11:27
  Actually I think it was after. Yeah, no after the second one
• 2:11:32
  when he finds her heading to the table, right?
• 2:11:35
  He goes back and he runs and tells Marjorie and her husband,
• 2:11:38
  hey, he knows you're faking it and he's going to, like,
• 2:11:43
  denounce you. So I don't know what to do.
• 2:11:48
  So there was even an article written by Bird at this time or
• 2:11:53
  written, I guess, from him. Someone else wrote it, but it
• 2:11:56
  was, you know, his accounts praising Marjorie and
• 2:12:02
  newspapers. Even printed this that she had
• 2:12:05
  stumped experts and then she'd even stumped Houdini.
• 2:12:09
  No, that's bad. Don't say that about him.
• 2:12:13
  Houdini was fucking pissed. He was pissed.
• 2:12:16
  He was like, all right, yeah, okay.
• 2:12:20
  So after the first box attempt, when the league got ripped off,
• 2:12:26
  they'd added metal plates to the side so they could latch it.
• 2:12:29
  So we can't get ripped off again.
• 2:12:33
  So the second is it for the box They exclude Bird from, you
• 2:12:37
  know, all the seances. And when Houdini used the box
• 2:12:43
  again, Bird like, he busts in and he's like, why wasn't I
• 2:12:47
  involved in this one? Houdini goes.
• 2:12:52
  Hold on, it's on my phone. Pull it up, you're so slow,
• 2:13:00
  Okay, he says. I eject to Mr. Bird being in the
• 2:13:05
  seance room because he has betrayed the committee and
• 2:13:08
  hindered their work. He has not kept to himself.
• 2:13:11
  Things told him in the strictest confidence, as he should as
• 2:13:17
  secretary to the committee. So he's like, you literally ran
• 2:13:25
  back and told her all these things that we were doing like?
• 2:13:30
  He was like, he's kind of like her accomplice in this whole
• 2:13:33
  thing to make to get her to win this money.
• 2:13:38
  So, so after Houdini says this bird he like, denies it.
• 2:13:46
  Of course. He's like, why you do that?
• 2:13:48
  No, no, no, no, no, no. And then he fesses up.
• 2:13:50
  He's like okay, yes. I just wanted to protect
• 2:13:52
  Marjorie and stuff like that and blah blah blah.
• 2:13:55
  Then he quits Simpin extra. So now she's in the box again,
• 2:14:05
  and at this time, Walter starts accusing Houdini of trying to
• 2:14:11
  set Marjorie up. Why?
• 2:14:13
  How is she trying to set her up, you ask?
• 2:14:15
  He he accuses Houdini's assistant, or yeah, assistant,
• 2:14:20
  of placing A ruler underneath the pillow that Marjorie has her
• 2:14:24
  feet on in the box before she got into the box.
• 2:14:28
  So that she'd be able to use the ruler to to what what he's
• 2:14:35
  saying is that they planted this evidence in there so that they
• 2:14:40
  could say you had this in there. So you use this to ring the
• 2:14:44
  bell, right? Now Moudini also calls bullshit
• 2:14:49
  on this because he's like my assistant didn't do this, blah
• 2:14:52
  blah. But later on there was a
• 2:14:55
  interview with his assistant that said that.
• 2:14:57
  Oh yeah, we've also only put that in there, and I bet you it
• 2:15:02
  came out after he died. But you know when he couldn't
• 2:15:06
  defend himself? Yeah, but a lot of people said
• 2:15:09
  that that assistant, he wasn't, he wasn't being honest either.
• 2:15:14
  So no. Yeah.
• 2:15:16
  So no one really knows how that ruler got there, Ghost.
• 2:15:22
  Yeah. So anyway, he, you know, Walter,
• 2:15:26
  he curses Houdini out. He tells him get the hell out of
• 2:15:28
  the house. So there's one more seance.
• 2:15:34
  OK. Oh my God.
• 2:15:37
  There's one more, one more seance.
• 2:15:41
  So Houdini, this one Houdini is there, is ready to denounce her
• 2:15:46
  at, you know, publicly at this event that they're at.
• 2:15:55
  When, you know, she tells him she's like, Marjorie tells him
• 2:15:59
  she's like, I don't want my son to hear that I'm a fraud.
• 2:16:03
  And then Houdini goes, don't be a fraud then.
• 2:16:11
  So there's another cortraption made to, like, house her.
• 2:16:17
  House her Yes. It wasn't like a box.
• 2:16:19
  It was just like just. Kind of like used to like strap,
• 2:16:22
  basically strap her and so she couldn't fucking move at all and
• 2:16:29
  at the end of the seance nothing happened.
• 2:16:31
  Like nothing happened during the seance because she couldn't do
• 2:16:34
  nothing because. She couldn't fucking do nothing,
• 2:16:37
  so Marjorie didn't win the prize, Bird was outed as an
• 2:16:41
  accomplice of hers and Houdini was satisfied.
• 2:16:44
  Satisfied, I think, because he debunked another medium.
• 2:16:52
  So during her seances, this is a little side note.
• 2:16:57
  Marjorie had been able to manifest some type of, like,
• 2:17:01
  actoplasm from her mouth and her vagina.
• 2:17:06
  Oh no. So it's been debunked as animal
• 2:17:12
  tissue, so it's speculated that she.
• 2:17:19
  Inserted it into herself before the seance, and then she would.
• 2:17:24
  And then, just like the ping pong ball in Tijuana, she went.
• 2:17:27
  She, she, she, she'd whip it out.
• 2:17:31
  So yeah, that's a that's a thing.
• 2:17:32
  Very powerful Kegels. Yeah, yeah.
• 2:17:36
  So that's the thing. Okay 1926 Houdini's constant
• 2:17:45
  medium debunking. With Houdini's constant medium
• 2:17:48
  debunking, the US Senate holds hearings to outlaw fortune
• 2:17:53
  telling the bill was passed and mediums were pissed.
• 2:17:59
  Yeah. Houdini received letters from
• 2:18:02
  medium mediums predicting his very violent death.
• 2:18:08
  Oh, I think I do OK. So let me preface this.
• 2:18:14
  Preface. I don't know why I said it like
• 2:18:16
  that, but it's preface. Houdini was known for being able
• 2:18:21
  to take a punch in the gut from anyone.
• 2:18:23
  He did this by flexing his abdomen, you know, tightening it
• 2:18:28
  so he can be able to take a hit. And he, you know, would take
• 2:18:32
  challenges as well. During one of his shows in
• 2:18:39
  Montreal, the student wanted to test this out.
• 2:18:44
  So before the show, he goes to Houdini's dressing room, sucker
• 2:18:50
  punches the man five times in the gut before Houdini could
• 2:18:55
  prepare himself, you know, with his flexing.
• 2:19:00
  Afterwards, Houdini felt severe pain, but he powered through his
• 2:19:04
  performance. Next few days he had a fever of
• 2:19:09
  104 degrees Fahrenheit. The cause was appendicitis, and
• 2:19:15
  a doctor suggested surgery immediately.
• 2:19:18
  Houdini ignored him and performed one more show.
• 2:19:24
  During the show, he passed out, was revived, and then rushed to
• 2:19:28
  Detroit's Grace Hospital. Now, even though the appendice
• 2:19:33
  was removed, it ruptured and developed.
• 2:19:37
  Yeah, and it developed into what's the word you're trying to
• 2:19:46
  say. Paratonitis, Peritonitis.
• 2:19:51
  There you go. Watch a lot of Doctor shows.
• 2:19:53
  I feel a lot peritonitis. There you go.
• 2:19:57
  So he passed away on Halloween at the age of 52.
• 2:20:01
  Yep. And now on Halloween, mediums
• 2:20:03
  like to try and call him, which is so disrespectful.
• 2:20:09
  So disrespectful. Anyway, he like you.
• 2:20:12
  He didn't. So there were rumors that
• 2:20:16
  spiritualists killed him. So apparently there was a book
• 2:20:21
  that was also written. I forget what the title was.
• 2:20:25
  Apparently Spiritualists they wrote about it's fearless in
• 2:20:29
  Houdini in the book. So apparently spiritualists had
• 2:20:34
  a nasty habit of poisoning people.
• 2:20:40
  And there wasn't really an autopsy to confirm that it was
• 2:20:44
  appendicitis. So it's kind of like maybe he
• 2:20:50
  was poisoned, right? Right.
• 2:20:54
  So, yeah, poor Houdini. Artsa Doyle and his wife said
• 2:21:01
  that during their seance with Houdini, you know, in Atlantic
• 2:21:03
  City, his mother said. That her son would die young.
• 2:21:10
  But they didn't want to tell him that, hoping that it was wrong
• 2:21:15
  after the fact. Hindsight 2020.
• 2:21:19
  So over the next 10 years. Houdini's wife.
• 2:21:21
  This is the last part. Houdini's wife would hold
• 2:21:24
  seances on Halloween to contact her husband.
• 2:21:28
  Oh, I didn't know that she tried to.
• 2:21:32
  Yes. OK, lady.
• 2:21:36
  See. Houdini gave her a code word to
• 2:21:41
  use. I would do something like this,
• 2:21:45
  absolutely. Before he died to make sure she
• 2:21:49
  was really contacting him. That's right.
• 2:21:53
  None of the medium she had, like Hold the Seances could ever tell
• 2:21:59
  her the code word. Do we know what it was?
• 2:22:02
  No coconuts. It's like everybody's like safe
• 2:22:07
  for it is pineapple or some. Bananas, yeah.
• 2:22:11
  You know, I I have a like as a last fuck you, I'm guess I'm
• 2:22:15
  thinking that Houdini gave her the password, like gave his wife
• 2:22:19
  the password, but would never tell the mediums this because he
• 2:22:23
  just was like, fuck you. Yeah, think about it.
• 2:22:29
  Your wife says there's a special code that I should know to meet
• 2:22:32
  you. He's like, fuck you, your butt.
• 2:22:35
  Yeah, suck a Dick. Oh goodness.
• 2:22:42
  And that is my tail. There you go.
• 2:22:44
  It was a great time, you. Got to learn some stuff about
• 2:22:48
  Houdini. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
• 2:22:50
  I did learn some new things about Houdini.
• 2:22:52
  Yeah. And just like we say at the end
• 2:22:56
  of every episode, oh, I do have news.
• 2:22:59
  Oh, you have news. I don't have any more serial
• 2:23:02
  killer earrings. What do you mean they're sold
• 2:23:06
  out? Ohh shit.
• 2:23:08
  So yeah, sorry to anybody who's listening.
• 2:23:13
  I do still have the really cool long knives though, the gold and
• 2:23:16
  silver ones. What the hunter knives?
• 2:23:18
  Not the hunting knives. The ones that are like super
• 2:23:21
  long and shiny and like mirror. Like ohh OK yeah.
• 2:23:24
  Just ohh, those ones. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:23:27
  So do you still have those? But yeah, that's a.
• 2:23:30
  Nice. That's pretty awesome though.
• 2:23:31
  You sold out? Yeah.
• 2:23:34
  God, so not too bad. Not too bad.
• 2:23:37
  No, not at all. Gotta get somewhere in stock.
• 2:23:41
  Brittany's like, no, I'm not making any more.
• 2:23:43
  We'll see, We'll see. We might do something different.
• 2:23:45
  Next time there you go, you know, But as usual, if you are
• 2:23:52
  listening on any platform that allows you to rate or vote,
• 2:23:55
  please do that. We would appreciate it greatly.
• 2:23:58
  Yes, please leave us reviews and you can always e-mail us.
• 2:24:02
  Like I said, if you live in Shendoah Valley, I would like to
• 2:24:06
  know if the Serial cat shaver is still shaving.
• 2:24:09
  That is caughtpodcast@gmail.com please.
• 2:24:13
  I wanna know if he stopped. Are you the serial cat shaver?
• 2:24:18
  Just listen. I won't tell anybody.
• 2:24:20
  You just tell me. That would be awesome, yeah.
• 2:24:22
  If you're the serial cat shaver, please let us know.
• 2:24:25
  We just want to know why. I just.
• 2:24:27
  I want a motive. It was this just like some Joker
• 2:24:29
  level stuff. We're not going to turn you in,
• 2:24:31
  I promise. Absolutely not.
• 2:24:33
  We. Don't even live in Virginia and
• 2:24:37
  you can always find me on TikTok.
• 2:24:41
  Last couple days I've been talking about Munch housing by
• 2:24:43
  proxy or factitious disorder in true crime world.
• 2:24:51
  Brian streams at Foxy Trainer on Twitch.
• 2:24:57
  Yeah, he does not do any tik toks other than to promote the
• 2:25:01
  podcast. That's that's basically what I
• 2:25:03
  do. I'm sorry.
• 2:25:05
  It's OK Media. It's hard to have a lot of
• 2:25:07
  platforms. No worries.
• 2:25:09
  I just don't know how to do it. TikTok.
• 2:25:13
  I'm 32. Leave me alone.
• 2:25:14
  I'm I am 33. You know how to do it.
• 2:25:20
  I'm an old man. Ohh, stop it.
• 2:25:22
  But yeah. Ohh goodness.
• 2:25:26
  But um this is a great night. Yeah, we wish you all a spooky
• 2:25:29
  week. Yeah.
• 2:25:30
  Have a great one. Thanks for listening.
• 2:25:33
  Good night.