Latest / PNW Haunts & Homicides / The Dark Strangler, Every Landlady's Nightmare | Part 1: Earle Nelson | Portland, Oregon

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The Dark Strangler, Every Landlady's Nightmare | Part 1: Earle Nelson | Portland, Oregon · PNW Haunts & Homicides

0:01
Speaker 1: Nelson escaped at least three times before hospital staff simply
0:05
Speaker 1: stopped attempting to locate him.
0:08
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
0:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is some old time he shit. They
0:14
Speaker 1: were likely a little bit overwhelmed at the time, after all,
0:17
Speaker 1: you know, kind of a few things going on.
0:20
Speaker 2: Like we can't keep chasing this guy.
0:23
Speaker 1: No, like we simply we simply calmed. His frequent escapes
0:27
Speaker 1: earned him the nickname Houdini among the staff, which, honestly,
0:32
Speaker 1: it's far too whimsical a nickname for this, very clearly
0:35
Speaker 1: on whimsical bitch. Hi, Kathy, Hi, Caitlyn, Hi, creepy people. Hello,
0:46
Speaker 1: that was a little a little groggy, he or you?
0:51
Speaker 1: Uh well, I feel like I'm following in your energy,
0:55
Speaker 1: so maybe.
0:58
Speaker 2: Sorry, I'll try to pick up pick the vibe.
1:00
Speaker 1: Now, you're you're all right, You're all right. I get it.
1:07
Speaker 1: I did not sleep in today, and I'm sure that
1:11
Speaker 1: I'm going to be feeling that later. I will be
1:16
Speaker 1: groggy at a later time.
1:19
Speaker 2: I'm just getting it over with now.
1:21
Speaker 1: Yeah. I admire how proactive you are.
1:26
Speaker 2: Thanks, I try. You're welcome. Okay.
1:31
Speaker 1: This is PNW Hanson Homicides, where we chat about true crime.
1:35
Speaker 1: The paranormal and all things spooky in the Pacific Northwest.
1:41
Speaker 1: We also do little taro reading at the end of
1:45
Speaker 1: every episode for a bit of deeper insight into our topic.
1:50
Speaker 1: And if ever there was a case that was so
1:55
Speaker 1: long that we I was like, God, do we cut
1:59
Speaker 1: the taro for time? But we won't. We won't do that.
2:03
Speaker 1: We wouldn't do that to you. No, that's that's sacrilege.
2:07
Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna We're gonna keep it, uh, straight
2:12
Speaker 1: to business and get right to it this this go around.
2:16
Speaker 1: I remember when I first learned about Israel Keys. The
2:20
Speaker 1: thing is as scary as he is. The thought that
2:24
Speaker 1: he might not be the first of his kind was
2:27
Speaker 1: absolutely terrifying. The fact that he's not the only is terrifying.
2:34
Speaker 1: I wish there was something that we could do to
2:36
Speaker 1: identify them. But if there's one thing Bundy has taught us,
2:41
Speaker 1: it's that we often can't until it's too late. So
2:47
Speaker 1: what do we do, like avoid all men? Yeah, well,
2:55
Speaker 1: easy to say when you already shnagged that ring. I know, ladies,
3:00
Speaker 1: while I wouldn't say, we're necessarily talking about an exact
3:04
Speaker 1: one to one today in terms of comparison to Israel
3:07
Speaker 1: Keys or Ted Bundy for that matter. The Pacific Northwest
3:12
Speaker 1: did lose multiple victims to this man who's so soon
3:18
Speaker 1: become somewhat lost to history. Love that for him, well
3:24
Speaker 1: except for that one Hitchcock film, so even that isn't like, oh,
3:28
Speaker 1: he's like immortalized through this like super you know, like
3:33
Speaker 1: cult classic like it is, but also it's not like
3:37
Speaker 1: one of the better known ones, you know, Earl Leonard Ferrell.
3:42
Speaker 1: And there's some debate about the spelling, but we're going
3:44
Speaker 1: with Ferrell literally spelled fe r r al was born
3:51
Speaker 1: May twelfth of eighteen ninety seven in San Francisco. It's
3:56
Speaker 1: not my favorite version of the spelling, but I will
4:00
Speaker 1: say I'm kind of just glad it's not the same
4:02
Speaker 1: as mine. Yeah right, because spoiler he was far from
4:08
Speaker 1: being a San Francisco treat woo. Yeah. He was orphaned
4:15
Speaker 1: before his second birthday and raised by his maternal grandmother,
4:19
Speaker 1: Jenny Nelson, whose surname he eventually took. His mother, Francis Nelson,
4:25
Speaker 1: was of Danish and Irish descent and had been born
4:28
Speaker 1: in Iowa. His father, also born in Iowa, James Carlos Ferrell,
4:35
Speaker 1: was of Jewish ancestry. Don't get emotionally attached because unfortunately
4:42
Speaker 1: or fortunately, they will not be sticking around for story
4:46
Speaker 1: time with us, as implied by the fact that he
4:48
Speaker 1: was orphaned before his second birthday.
4:51
Speaker 2: But okay, I didn't catch on to that. Yeah, well
4:56
Speaker 2: darn yeah.
4:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, don't get emotionally invested in them as characters. They
5:04
Speaker 1: both died as a result of contracting syphilis, which, yeah,
5:11
Speaker 1: it doesn't sound like a fun way to go, but
5:15
Speaker 1: it was a popular one for a while there. Yeah,
5:19
Speaker 1: a lot of people died of civilis. His grandmother, Jenny,
5:24
Speaker 1: was a devout Pentecostal, still raising two of her own
5:27
Speaker 1: younger children, Willis and Lillian, who were both roughly a
5:31
Speaker 1: decade older than Earl, which is kind of I always
5:36
Speaker 1: find that sort of odd. It's kind of off putting.
5:39
Speaker 1: You have like a aunt and uncle that are essentially
5:42
Speaker 1: only a decade older than you, and then you're being
5:44
Speaker 1: raised alongside them. That's got to be kind of awkward.
5:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of it.
5:49
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe that's just me. Family dynamics, yeah, they can
5:54
Speaker 1: be complicated. Though he was raised in a deeply religious household,
5:59
Speaker 1: earl behavior became increasingly disturbing throughout his upbringing. He was
6:05
Speaker 1: expelled from his primary school in San Francisco at age
6:09
Speaker 1: seven dang so young, very young, for what was described
6:16
Speaker 1: as morbid conduct.
6:20
Speaker 2: I want to know, but I don't.
6:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, and fortunately or unfortunately, it's unclear what exactly occurred.
6:29
Speaker 1: But it certainly doesn't seem to bode well.
6:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, to expel a seven year old like that, it
6:36
Speaker 3: has to be really.
6:37
Speaker 1: Bad, right, It's got to be pretty extreme behavior. He
6:42
Speaker 1: was a lone wolf type, likely in no small part
6:45
Speaker 1: due to his violent outbursts, petty theft, and other strange behavior.
6:50
Speaker 1: His grandmother described episodes of him leaving for school in
6:54
Speaker 1: clean clothes and returning in attire that had been reduced
6:58
Speaker 1: to essentially rags, as if he had swapped garments with
7:01
Speaker 1: an unhoused person.
7:03
Speaker 2: Oh, I mean, that's all.
7:07
Speaker 1: It's a little unsettling, Like, how does a kid do
7:10
Speaker 1: that much damage to, you know, their clothing in that Like.
7:15
Speaker 3: It'd be sweet if he actually was trading his clothes,
7:18
Speaker 3: But no, he's just like destroying his own clothes that
7:21
Speaker 3: they love.
7:22
Speaker 2: Strastically different.
7:24
Speaker 1: Okay, he's sure just ravaging the clothing somehow. And I
7:29
Speaker 1: crawling around in the woods, right, I just feel like
7:32
Speaker 1: people also stereotypically had a lot less clothing in this era.
7:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, you had to like fix everything right.
7:42
Speaker 1: There was no such thing as fast fashion, so you
7:45
Speaker 1: weren't getting a new top from she and every other week.
7:48
Speaker 2: Yeah.
7:49
Speaker 1: She also recalled that he quoted scripture in what felt
7:52
Speaker 1: like a compulsive manner.
7:54
Speaker 2: He quoted Scripture.
7:57
Speaker 1: Yes, okay, like compulsively, like to a degree that was
8:03
Speaker 1: not normal to a woman who was extremely religious.
8:07
Speaker 3: Maybe the religion is like affecting his mental health, that's
8:14
Speaker 3: the reason here.
8:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel as though it seems like, even at
8:22
Speaker 1: this early stage, kind of a fair assumption that's something.
8:26
Speaker 1: There's a screw loose, and whether or not the religion
8:29
Speaker 1: is playing a role is debatable. But Yike's Rachel, his
8:35
Speaker 1: female cousin, said that he had watched her undress on
8:38
Speaker 1: multiple occasions and from here, if things weren't looking bad enough,
8:43
Speaker 1: it's honestly an absolute avalanche. It's it's not good. When
8:49
Speaker 1: Nelson was about ten or eleven, he was struck head
8:53
Speaker 1: on by a moving streetcar as he was riding his bicycle.
8:58
Speaker 2: Well, shit, yeah, I.
9:00
Speaker 1: Feel like, you know, things weren't going well to begin with.
9:04
Speaker 1: But uh, that isn't going to do him any favors.
9:08
Speaker 1: According to some sources, at the time, doctors didn't anticipate
9:13
Speaker 1: that he would ever recover. They didn't really expect that
9:16
Speaker 1: he would survive, probably because he was left with a
9:20
Speaker 1: horrific head injury, some sources even indicating that he was
9:25
Speaker 1: left with a literal hole in his head. Yikes, yeah,
9:30
Speaker 1: which that made me wonder if this was the origin
9:34
Speaker 1: story for the idiom about like a hole in your head.
9:37
Speaker 1: But actually, it turns out it comes from a Yiddish saying,
9:41
Speaker 1: which oddly enough still kind of tracks since his father
9:45
Speaker 1: was Jewish. Either way, etomology is so interesting, Well, rabbit hole,
9:52
Speaker 1: we have to find the little pockets of light where
9:55
Speaker 1: we can. He remained unconscious for nearly a week. When
10:01
Speaker 1: he woke, family members described a permanent change in him,
10:06
Speaker 1: severe headaches, occasional dizziness, memory lapses, and periods of talking
10:12
Speaker 1: to invisible people, and then a lot of the behaviors
10:16
Speaker 1: that were already an issue. It kind of just seems
10:19
Speaker 1: like they escalated at this point.
10:22
Speaker 3: Oh no, yeah, you would hope it would just like
10:26
Speaker 3: maybe change him for like change those parts of him,
10:29
Speaker 3: you know, right, which changes other parts yeah.
10:34
Speaker 1: I mean, not that anyone wants the practice of lobotomy
10:40
Speaker 1: to be picked back up, but one of the things
10:43
Speaker 1: that they were pursuing there was that it typically made
10:46
Speaker 1: people very docile, and it's like, couldn't have had that
10:50
Speaker 1: in this case, Like, right, it's unfortunate. He continued the
10:56
Speaker 1: practice of obsessively reading the Book of Revelation. It is revelation.
11:02
Speaker 1: I always want to say revelations. It is indeed revelation singular.
11:07
Speaker 2: I don't care.
11:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, So he continued that practice as a teenager and
11:14
Speaker 1: could quote and could quote long passages from memory, a
11:19
Speaker 1: habit that he would later weaponize with his victims, which
11:24
Speaker 1: isn't really something that I'm gonna get into, like in
11:28
Speaker 1: great detail. Let's just say like there's kind of a
11:32
Speaker 1: thread of like this guy feels like he may be
11:35
Speaker 1: experiencing kind of some sort of almost religious psychosis. That's
11:41
Speaker 1: kind of it's a broader theme. In his early teens,
11:45
Speaker 1: Nelson began frequenting brothels and bars in San Francisco's Barbary
11:50
Speaker 1: Coast Red Light District. That's where he contracted of venereal disease.
11:57
Speaker 1: Given the prevalence of syphilis at the time, if I
11:59
Speaker 1: had to guess, that would be it. But I did
12:02
Speaker 1: not see it specifically confirmed in any of my source material.
12:06
Speaker 1: It just said venereal disease. So also because it was
12:11
Speaker 1: like still killing people in this era, you know, maybe
12:14
Speaker 1: it was something else.
12:15
Speaker 3: I don't know how did he get that though. Didn't
12:18
Speaker 3: he just go to like the red light district to
12:20
Speaker 3: read them scripture?
12:22
Speaker 1: Yeah you know, that's a really good point, I would
12:25
Speaker 1: have assumed. Yeah, yeah, weird. Yeah, excellent observation, Cassie.
12:31
Speaker 2: Thank you.
12:32
Speaker 1: He grew into an unusually strong, physically fit young man
12:37
Speaker 1: of stocky build, and I'm immediately picturing like the guys
12:43
Speaker 1: of Jersey Shore. But then source material goes on to
12:48
Speaker 1: say with disproportionately long arms and hands. Okay, he would
12:55
Speaker 1: occasionally entertain his family by walking on his hands or
12:59
Speaker 1: lifting heavy objects with his teeth, thereby lending credence to
13:05
Speaker 1: a later moniker, which we will come back, and I
13:09
Speaker 1: think I think you'll understand the connection. Earl's documented criminal
13:13
Speaker 1: record began in nineteen fifteen, at age eighteen, when he
13:18
Speaker 1: was sentenced to two years at San Quentin State Prison
13:23
Speaker 1: for breaking into a cabin in rural plumous County, California.
13:27
Speaker 1: He would claim he believed the cabin had been abandoned
13:30
Speaker 1: because I guess for some reason he thought that would
13:34
Speaker 1: have made it okay, still my yours? Yeah, kind of
13:40
Speaker 1: a I feel like that's the important distinction, is that,
13:43
Speaker 1: uh yeah, still breaking an entering, you know, squatter's right. Yeah,
13:50
Speaker 1: I don't think that was really so much a thing
13:52
Speaker 1: At that point he was gonna champion that. He was
13:58
Speaker 1: parolled on September sixth, nineteen sixteen, and roughly six months later,
14:03
Speaker 1: on March ninth, nineteen seventeen, he was arrested again for
14:08
Speaker 1: petty larceny under the alias Clark and served another six
14:13
Speaker 1: month sentence.
14:15
Speaker 2: I'm Clark, I'm Clark. Now, got last name Clark? Nope,
14:21
Speaker 2: just Clark. Yeah.
14:22
Speaker 1: I don't know if that was supposed to have been
14:24
Speaker 1: his first or last name. I'm not really sure. He's
14:28
Speaker 1: just trying to pull a share.
14:29
Speaker 2: I like to picture it that way.
14:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, honestly, I prefer that it helps lighten the mood
14:36
Speaker 1: a little bit. Then, in late nineteen seventeen, Nelson enlisted
14:41
Speaker 1: in the US military, but he deserted mere weeks later. No,
14:48
Speaker 1: I know, I'm so surprised. That this guy is just
14:51
Speaker 1: not a stand up in rollie.
14:57
Speaker 3: I don't think his mental health could take it, like
15:00
Speaker 3: I think it would have broken him.
15:03
Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's interesting that you say that, because
15:06
Speaker 1: if he is not indeed already broken. Yeah, then in
15:10
Speaker 1: another seemingly compulsive pattern, which I will say, there's a
15:14
Speaker 1: lot of compulsive patterning in this, he would alternate between
15:21
Speaker 1: the Army and the Navy enlisting before again deserting duty
15:26
Speaker 1: a handful of weeks later. Why unclear.
15:32
Speaker 2: There's a lot of why.
15:35
Speaker 1: He was said to have done this four times, each
15:38
Speaker 1: time using a different alias. So Clark Clark, I mean
15:44
Speaker 1: it is okay, like brain injury stuff like you don't
15:49
Speaker 1: maybe always know why you're doing what you're doing, or
15:52
Speaker 1: you make do things that don't make sense, or Yeah,
15:57
Speaker 1: I feel like there's a lot of things in his
15:59
Speaker 1: back background that might lend to an explanation, not excusing
16:07
Speaker 1: any of his behavior, but might help us to understand
16:13
Speaker 1: why certain things occur. During a brief stint in the
16:17
Speaker 1: US Navy in nineteen eighteen, his erratic behavior led to
16:21
Speaker 1: being committed at the Napa State Mental Hospital, the first
16:26
Speaker 1: of several stays there. In fact, a Navy psychologist recorded
16:31
Speaker 1: that he was quote living in a constitutional psychotic state,
16:37
Speaker 1: which feels like a very loaded statement.
16:39
Speaker 2: Oh that didn't sound good.
16:42
Speaker 1: No, it turns out it's wildly negative. It's largely bad.
16:48
Speaker 2: Yeah.
16:49
Speaker 1: William Pritchard, a psychiatrist at the NAPA Hospital who conducted
16:53
Speaker 1: a preliminary interview in May of that year, wrote of
16:57
Speaker 1: him he had seen faces, heard music, believed people were
17:02
Speaker 1: poisoning him, and reported hearing voices whispering to him to
17:07
Speaker 1: kill himself.
17:09
Speaker 2: Shit.
17:11
Speaker 1: He also complained of occipital headaches like basically migraines. It
17:18
Speaker 1: like specifically refers to a type that happens when nerves
17:24
Speaker 1: are pinched or hurt, and it has like a very
17:27
Speaker 1: specific way of like traveling through your head and neck.
17:32
Speaker 1: It sounds not great, but also not entirely unfamiliar.
17:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, I think I could probably uh feel that.
17:40
Speaker 1: One, Yeah, you know, and then the fainting spells and
17:44
Speaker 1: dizziness not ideal, no, but you know, if you're having
17:49
Speaker 1: the occipital headaches, I feel like feeling like you're about
17:52
Speaker 1: to faint or that you're dizzy. That kind of tracks
17:57
Speaker 1: as if the hospital staff wasn't already dealing with enough
17:59
Speaker 1: stretch and strained between the influenza pandemic at the time
18:03
Speaker 1: and a whole ass world war because nineteen eighteen wor
18:08
Speaker 1: stuff World War One and then the flu pandemic.
18:12
Speaker 2: Damn.
18:12
Speaker 1: So it was. It was rough times. They were stretched
18:15
Speaker 1: a bit thin. Nelson escaped at least three times before
18:20
Speaker 1: hospital staff simply stopped attempting to locate him.
18:24
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
18:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is some old time. You should. They
18:30
Speaker 1: were likely a little bit overwhelmed at the time, after all,
18:34
Speaker 1: you know, kind of a few things going.
18:36
Speaker 2: On, like, we can't keep chasing this guy.
18:39
Speaker 1: No, like we simply we simply calmed. His frequent escapes
18:45
Speaker 1: earned him the nickname Hudni among the staff, which, honestly,
18:50
Speaker 1: it's far too whimsical a nickname for this very clearly
18:53
Speaker 1: on whimsical bitch.
18:55
Speaker 2: Yeah.
18:56
Speaker 1: At twenty one. In March of nineteen nineteen, he was
19:00
Speaker 1: arrested in Los Angeles for burglary under the name Ferrell,
19:05
Speaker 1: a slight respelling of his own birth surname. And this
19:09
Speaker 1: time I take personal offense because it is spelled my
19:13
Speaker 1: way and I'm not into it. It's also either the
19:19
Speaker 1: laziest alias in his career, thus far or an early
19:23
Speaker 1: sign of how carelessly he'd come to move through the
19:26
Speaker 1: world under different names, because it's like, it's not even
19:29
Speaker 1: that far off from what your actual original last name was.
19:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you change like one letter or.
19:37
Speaker 1: Right, like come on, man. This time he apparently had
19:42
Speaker 1: no intention of serving his time. He spent approximately five
19:47
Speaker 1: months in Los Angeles County jail before escaping from custody
19:51
Speaker 1: there as well.
19:53
Speaker 2: So Houdini, yeah.
19:56
Speaker 1: I mean concerning that, not only is he escaped being
20:00
Speaker 1: from mental health facilities and listen, it was a very
20:03
Speaker 1: different time, but also from jail. Yeah, so I mean
20:10
Speaker 1: certainly not the only dude that was, you know, doing
20:14
Speaker 1: that do but come on, uh, he was a slippery one.
20:21
Speaker 1: He was formally discharged from the Navy in absentia in
20:25
Speaker 1: May nineteen nineteen, roughly a year after his original commitment
20:29
Speaker 1: to the mental health hospital that came about due to
20:33
Speaker 1: his service. So they were like, yeah, I guess I
20:38
Speaker 1: think he's done now.
20:39
Speaker 2: Yeah bye.
20:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, everybody was just like bye. His hospital file was
20:46
Speaker 1: closed with a no indicating he had and this is
20:50
Speaker 1: a quote improved. I guess improvement is something we should
20:55
Speaker 1: always consider in relative terms, but literally what improved.
21:01
Speaker 2: How they said he had improved.
21:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, oh I improved you mean escapade?
21:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, then sure, but like just change up the wording
21:13
Speaker 3: so it sounds good, right, right. We don't have we
21:18
Speaker 3: can't get him back.
21:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's better for us, so we view that
21:23
Speaker 1: as an improved.
21:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, he improved.
21:25
Speaker 1: He's it's much improved for us around here, that is true. Okay.
21:34
Speaker 1: Under yet another alias Evan Lewis Fuller, he took a
21:39
Speaker 1: job as a janitor at Saint Mary's Hospital in San Francisco.
21:43
Speaker 1: There he met Mary Martin. And the density of Mary's
21:49
Speaker 1: in this section is a little rough, so let me
21:51
Speaker 1: know if you need me to to repeat or explain.
21:56
Speaker 2: Okay.
21:57
Speaker 1: There he met Mary Martin, an administrative worker reportedly decades
22:01
Speaker 1: his senior, old enough to be his grandmother. They married
22:06
Speaker 1: in August nineteen nineteen, only lasting though this marriage mere
22:12
Speaker 1: months of cohabitation.
22:14
Speaker 2: Weird, been there. I can't imagine why.
22:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, sometimes you're in a relationship and it
22:20
Speaker 1: turns out as soon as you move in together, everything
22:22
Speaker 1: just implodes. Yeah, I get it.
22:26
Speaker 3: Like, man, she's not baking me those cookies, no more, right,
22:31
Speaker 3: I'm just I was.
22:32
Speaker 2: Trying to think of other old lady things, right.
22:35
Speaker 1: Very like grandma things. And she saw knitting my socks, right,
22:40
Speaker 1: darning my socks.
22:42
Speaker 2: I don't know why it's all on her. I'm just
22:43
Speaker 2: being no, but you know what, it's the misogyny.
22:47
Speaker 1: Well it's not even that though, because I think without
22:52
Speaker 1: even realizing it, you might be sort of glomming onto
22:57
Speaker 1: what is going to become like a really significant and
23:00
Speaker 1: peace I don't even know how to explain it without
23:04
Speaker 1: just saying his issues, whatever they might precisely be with
23:11
Speaker 1: older women, that's going to be a significant factor in
23:17
Speaker 1: the rest of this story. Oh no, okay, oh no,
23:22
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. M Martin later testified that he had subjected
23:29
Speaker 1: her to jealous rages, religious delusions, bizarre sexual demands, and
23:35
Speaker 1: that he engaged in strange behaviors such as prolonged disappearances
23:39
Speaker 1: from the home. And also he did this thing where
23:42
Speaker 1: he would pour glasses of water over his toes like
23:46
Speaker 1: it was a form of bathing.
23:48
Speaker 2: Was he what's that? What's the thing that they do
23:51
Speaker 2: the baptism?
23:52
Speaker 1: He's baptizing right, yeah, and washing the feet of Christ
23:56
Speaker 1: like that's sort of a biblical thing as well.
24:00
Speaker 2: How did I don't.
24:01
Speaker 3: Even get to the point of marrying him, is like,
24:04
Speaker 3: how did he pretend to be normal enough to get married?
24:08
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, the thing is is that
24:11
Speaker 1: people got married a lot quicker then, and it was
24:14
Speaker 1: a lot easier. I think in these very short term
24:18
Speaker 1: like courtships to hyde crazy.
24:21
Speaker 3: It's just it's hard for me to picture him doing that.
24:24
Speaker 3: But I mean, obviously he did well enough.
24:27
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, somehow to some degree. But I mean pouring
24:33
Speaker 1: glasses of water over your toes as a form of bathing,
24:37
Speaker 1: I just sir, this is a Wendy's Like.
24:40
Speaker 2: At least he didn't have dirty feet.
24:43
Speaker 1: I well, I don't know. It's debatable. I feel like
24:48
Speaker 1: we can't really pull it that thread anymore.
24:50
Speaker 2: But I'm okay with it, you know, babe. He bathe
24:53
Speaker 2: as often as you need.
24:55
Speaker 1: I you know. I just worry though that based on
24:58
Speaker 1: the description, like are the toes the only thing being bathed?
25:03
Speaker 2: I just clean?
25:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just I have follow up questions. I don't
25:09
Speaker 1: know that I want the answers to them, but they're
25:12
Speaker 1: they're rattling around in there, so for what that's worth.
25:20
Speaker 1: On May nineteenth, nineteen twenty one, Nelson posed as a
25:24
Speaker 1: Plumber to enter the home of twelve year old Mary
25:28
Speaker 1: Summers at fifteen nineteen Pacific Avenue in San Francisco. Once inside,
25:35
Speaker 1: he attempted to sexually assault the young girl in the basement.
25:40
Speaker 1: Fortunately for her, when she screamed, her younger brother came
25:43
Speaker 1: to her aid, oh, I know, and she's only twelve,
25:50
Speaker 1: so I don't know what these young brother I know,
25:55
Speaker 1: I'm not sure exactly how old he was, but either way,
25:58
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, he probably saved her life.
26:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, or saved its some trauma at least at minimum.
26:07
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, I don't think that it was
26:12
Speaker 1: going to end well, and I don't think that she
26:14
Speaker 1: was intended to survive that encounter. So he was arrested
26:20
Speaker 1: hours later. While writing the trolley because you know the
26:24
Speaker 1: San Francisco dy have the trolley. It's again. It just
26:28
Speaker 1: really it sounds so whimsical and old, tiny and cues,
26:33
Speaker 1: and then the backstory is just so not that but.
26:39
Speaker 3: Just Houdini on a trolley. I didn't just try to
26:42
Speaker 3: murder a twelve year old girl.
26:44
Speaker 1: Right exactly? Yeah, pay no attention to the man behind
26:50
Speaker 1: the curtain. Following this offense, a competency hearing found him dangerous.
26:57
Speaker 1: M h no dah. He was then recommitted to the
27:01
Speaker 1: NAPA State Mental Hospital. I'm sure, much to the chagrin
27:05
Speaker 1: of any of the current staff familiar with his previous antics.
27:09
Speaker 3: They sent him back to the same place he kept
27:12
Speaker 3: escaping from.
27:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, can you imagine he's just gonna do it again.
27:18
Speaker 2: This guy's dangerous. I know what to do with him.
27:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's send him back to the place that he
27:25
Speaker 1: kept escaping from, famously kept escaping from.
27:29
Speaker 2: He already knows how to get out. Yeah, oh my god. Okay.
27:34
Speaker 1: Before his eventual discharge in nineteen twenty five, he would
27:38
Speaker 1: escape twice more from the.
27:39
Speaker 2: Hospital only twice.
27:42
Speaker 1: Only twice. You know, that's an improvement over his previous
27:46
Speaker 1: escape record.
27:48
Speaker 2: He was tired.
27:49
Speaker 1: I guess The following year would mark the beginning of
27:52
Speaker 1: his known killing spree. So everything up to this point
27:57
Speaker 1: is really kind of like his low key background. It's
28:02
Speaker 1: really just like the years when he was I would say,
28:06
Speaker 1: more of a nuisance than anything.
28:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, but definitely like his escalation.
28:15
Speaker 1: Yes, as we go through, I think escalation is so
28:19
Speaker 1: interesting to kind of examine in the context of all
28:24
Speaker 1: of his crimes and the story because you can really
28:27
Speaker 1: see it laid out. It's very interesting and I'll try to,
28:30
Speaker 1: you know, kind of touch on it throughout. But Nelson's
28:34
Speaker 1: victims were overwhelmingly middle aged women. Apparently, I'm like, is
28:40
Speaker 1: that mommy issues, grandma issues, ex wife issues, all of
28:44
Speaker 1: the above. He frequently targeted female landlords or women operating
28:49
Speaker 1: boarding houses, as well as women that were showing their
28:52
Speaker 1: own properties currently on the market for sale. He'd scanned
28:56
Speaker 1: the classified section for room rental and houses for sale
29:00
Speaker 1: to locate victims. Arriving well dressed, carrying a clearly worn
29:06
Speaker 1: Bible exhibiting a polite, relatively calm demeanor hardly made him
29:11
Speaker 1: seem like much of a threat, effectively disarming his victims,
29:16
Speaker 1: or most of them.
29:18
Speaker 2: That Bible man.
29:20
Speaker 1: I know, not the Bible man couldn't be him. Witnesses
29:24
Speaker 1: from multiple cities where he would eventually strike described him
29:28
Speaker 1: as mild mannered, charming, soft spoken on first impression, and
29:33
Speaker 1: chillingly unusually well versed in scripture and all of it's terrible.
29:40
Speaker 1: But for some reason that part really unsettles me. Yeah,
29:44
Speaker 1: it does, because it's like so clearly at odds with
29:50
Speaker 1: what he actually is. I think, Yeah, that's why it's
29:55
Speaker 1: it's uncomfy. Once alone with the victim inside the home,
30:00
Speaker 1: Nelson would strangle her, typically with an item from her
30:04
Speaker 1: own environment a cord rag scarf for another article of clothing.
30:11
Speaker 1: He then sexually assaulted the corpse before concealing the victim's
30:16
Speaker 1: body and stealing small items from the victims, such as cash, clothing,
30:20
Speaker 1: or jewelry. In some cases, among them victims in Portland.
30:25
Speaker 1: He went to unusual lengths to conceal the victim's body,
30:30
Speaker 1: like using steamer trunks or putting them in the attic.
30:34
Speaker 1: He would then travel, often hitchhiking or stowing away on
30:37
Speaker 1: freight trains, sometimes hundreds or even thousands of miles before
30:41
Speaker 1: killing again.
30:43
Speaker 2: I just have had a horrified look on my face
30:45
Speaker 2: this whole time.
30:46
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't always translate for audio, but sometimes
30:51
Speaker 1: you can feel the weight of silence, and so hopefully
30:54
Speaker 1: that's what everyone is.
30:56
Speaker 2: Yeah.
30:57
Speaker 1: I'm also going to say here that even as a
31:00
Speaker 1: true crime podcaster, one truly can hit the limit with
31:04
Speaker 1: certain words, and in this case specifically, I'm referring to
31:09
Speaker 1: rape or sexual assault. The descriptions of the crimes committed
31:13
Speaker 1: against individual victims, by and large, do not deviate from
31:18
Speaker 1: the MO I've just described. As I was drafting, if
31:22
Speaker 1: I had not sort of agreed amongst me, myself and
31:27
Speaker 1: I that we didn't need to repeatedly list off all
31:33
Speaker 1: of the different aspects of his EMO, I was like,
31:36
Speaker 1: we're just going to be saying rape or sexual assault
31:40
Speaker 1: like dozens of times.
31:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm okay with that.
31:44
Speaker 1: So aside from one victim who completely breaks the mold
31:48
Speaker 1: on his m you can assume that, even if I
31:52
Speaker 1: don't specifically state it, Unfortunately, his victims were, with almost
31:57
Speaker 1: zero exception, violated it this way after death. It's so ikey,
32:03
Speaker 1: and the after death part is particularly yes, icky, But
32:09
Speaker 1: in a way, I'm like, God, at least maybe they
32:13
Speaker 1: weren't experiencing that.
32:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, that's true.
32:18
Speaker 1: That is the only thing that I find that I
32:21
Speaker 1: can sort of try to grasp that as Okay, it's
32:28
Speaker 1: not great, but it helps me feel a little bit better.
32:32
Speaker 3: Like one thing didn't add to the horrific murder they experienced,
32:37
Speaker 3: like the things they went through already.
32:39
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah.
32:41
Speaker 1: Physical descriptions from witnesses were consistent enough that newspapers had
32:46
Speaker 1: a working sketch of him well before capture. A dark
32:50
Speaker 1: stocky man with a receding hairline, protruding lips, long arms,
32:56
Speaker 1: and unusually large hands. These features led the San Francisco
33:01
Speaker 1: Press to nickname him the gorilla Man and gorilla killer.
33:07
Speaker 2: Oh.
33:08
Speaker 1: Others tracking his westward then eastward migration called him the
33:13
Speaker 1: dark strangler.
33:15
Speaker 2: I like gorilla man, better.
33:19
Speaker 1: Put a pin in that you might not love it.
33:23
Speaker 1: Witnesses who had brief encounters with him repeatedly sighted his
33:27
Speaker 1: dark piercing eyes as his most memorable feature. So the
33:34
Speaker 1: racism of it all am I right?
33:38
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I guess.
33:40
Speaker 1: Because these gorilla comparisons weren't invented for white men like
33:45
Speaker 1: Earl Nelson, but could be used to dehumanize him very
33:49
Speaker 1: effectively all the same. And while there's a large part
33:56
Speaker 1: of me that is okay with dehumanizing a violent, sexual
34:01
Speaker 1: serial killer, these racist tropes that had been used against
34:05
Speaker 1: black men for decades, if hundreds of years, really were
34:09
Speaker 1: simply being repurposed because his behavior didn't match up with
34:14
Speaker 1: white society's own self image. So by committing the crimes
34:19
Speaker 1: that he did, it was like he gave up his
34:23
Speaker 1: whiteness in a way.
34:25
Speaker 3: Ew yeah, interesting, I was just like he's got big
34:29
Speaker 3: hands and these, Harry, I get it.
34:31
Speaker 1: Right, right, And in that sense, yes, if it weren't
34:36
Speaker 1: for some of like kind of the very pointed language
34:41
Speaker 1: that was like it. They were clearly drawing parallels to
34:46
Speaker 1: how this type of like racist charged language was applied
34:51
Speaker 1: in other situations. I would say, oh, great, yeah, it's
34:55
Speaker 1: just but it's very rarely that simple and certainly not
35:00
Speaker 1: in this era. It it's a little ichy, and by
35:03
Speaker 1: that I mean a lot ichy actually. But at the
35:07
Speaker 1: peak of his spree, Nelson averaged one murder roughly every
35:11
Speaker 1: three weeks. In the ten days between June first and
35:15
Speaker 1: June tenth of nineteen twenty seven, he killed at least
35:18
Speaker 1: five women across three cities and one international border.
35:23
Speaker 2: Not so many, I know, you know.
35:26
Speaker 1: And the other thing, it's just occurring to me too,
35:29
Speaker 1: because I was like, I feel like I have to
35:31
Speaker 1: caution you, like no, you don't like the gorilla thing.
35:34
Speaker 1: And I'm like, it's so telling that like through a
35:37
Speaker 1: more modern lens and like not really thinking about it
35:42
Speaker 1: in those like you're not having the mindset of like, oh,
35:46
Speaker 1: I'm drawing this parallel to him being like, you know,
35:49
Speaker 1: an African American man making them into like an animal.
35:54
Speaker 2: Yeah.
35:56
Speaker 1: So it's like because I don't know, it's just that
35:59
Speaker 1: just sucks. It just sucks. Yeah.
36:04
Speaker 3: I mean his other nickname though, too was like what
36:07
Speaker 3: the dark Strangler?
36:08
Speaker 2: That too cool?
36:11
Speaker 1: Right, exactly? Yeah, I don't want to give him the
36:14
Speaker 1: cool factor. I know. Yeah, there's you know, honestly, there's
36:20
Speaker 1: just there's kind of no winning with giving them sort
36:24
Speaker 1: of a moniker. It feels like, but can we just
36:28
Speaker 1: call them all shithead? Right? Shithead number one, shit right
36:32
Speaker 1: number ten? Yeah, shithead number or you know, shithead of
36:37
Speaker 1: Cincinnati or you know. Yeah. Nelson's first known murder took
36:44
Speaker 1: place in San Francisco at twenty thirty seven Pierre Street,
36:49
Speaker 1: where he murdered sixty year old Clara B. Newman on
36:53
Speaker 1: February twentieth of nineteen twenty six. To gain entry, he
36:57
Speaker 1: posed as a prospective tenant using the name Roger Wilson
37:01
Speaker 1: before strangling and sexually assaulting her. Post mortem, he hid
37:07
Speaker 1: her body in a vacant apartment within the house her nephew,
37:12
Speaker 1: Merton Newman, who I'm surprised I got that out on
37:16
Speaker 1: the first take. Merton Newman feels like a little bit
37:18
Speaker 1: of a tongue twister. I don't know why. Merton Newman Senior,
37:23
Speaker 1: who lived on the second floor of the boarding house,
37:26
Speaker 1: saw Nelson as he was leaving through the front door
37:29
Speaker 1: and would later positively identify him, making him the only
37:33
Speaker 1: person to see Nelson within literal moments of any of
37:38
Speaker 1: his crimes. Wow, most people, because there are a number
37:43
Speaker 1: of people that were able to identify him. Most people
37:46
Speaker 1: were called seeing him in the area or seeing him
37:50
Speaker 1: talking to a victim. But it was like in within
37:54
Speaker 1: a period of like days or hours leading up to
37:58
Speaker 1: a murder. It was never like right before or right after.
38:04
Speaker 1: So it was just a very direct connection to that
38:08
Speaker 1: particular murder.
38:10
Speaker 2: That is so sad for him to have seen it,
38:13
Speaker 2: not in like how long did it take for anyone
38:15
Speaker 2: to notice that she was like something was wrong with her?
38:19
Speaker 1: I mean, I have to imagine, since he lived in
38:21
Speaker 1: that same building and you know that's a family member,
38:26
Speaker 1: she ironically was probably identified as you know, being like
38:30
Speaker 1: missing or that something was off, maybe quicker than some
38:34
Speaker 1: of the others. Over the next handful of months, Nelson
38:39
Speaker 1: went on to kill four additional women in California. March second,
38:43
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty six in San Jose. He strangled sixty three
38:48
Speaker 1: year old Laura Bale with a silken cord whilend so
38:52
Speaker 1: tightly it actually embedded in the skin of her neck.
38:57
Speaker 2: That terrific.
38:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, acting suspiciously while similarly dressed to the real killer
39:04
Speaker 1: got another man, Joe Casssek I'm guessing on the pronunciation
39:10
Speaker 1: of the last name. It got him arrested for the crime. Initially,
39:15
Speaker 1: whoa I know, But the Austrian native was eventually cleared.
39:19
Speaker 2: Thank goodness.
39:21
Speaker 1: I know that was far from being a guarantee at
39:24
Speaker 1: that point in history. It's kind of hard to reverse
39:28
Speaker 1: the tide on something like that. Back in his stomping
39:32
Speaker 1: grounds on June tenth of nineteen twenty six, he claimed
39:36
Speaker 1: his next victim, Lillian Saint Mary, also sixty three, before
39:41
Speaker 1: moving on to Santa Barbara. That's where he carried out
39:46
Speaker 1: the murder of Olie Russell on June twenty fourth, nineteen
39:50
Speaker 1: twenty six, who was also strangled with a cord. Still,
39:57
Speaker 1: this case was different as it was the first that
39:59
Speaker 1: police explicitly connected to the earlier murders. And we are
40:04
Speaker 1: going to talk about this again because it is wild
40:08
Speaker 1: the synchronicity of like that particular case and like how
40:14
Speaker 1: it just how it plays out. Okay, So Allie Russell,
40:19
Speaker 1: that's a name that we're going to come back to.
40:23
Speaker 1: As the summer drew to a close, he claimed another
40:25
Speaker 1: California victim on August sixteenth, nineteen twenty six. It's a
40:31
Speaker 1: week from today.
40:33
Speaker 2: Yea, yeah.
40:36
Speaker 1: Mary c nesbit in Oakland before heading north. She had
40:41
Speaker 1: been strangled with a towel and raped in the bathroom
40:44
Speaker 1: of a vacant apartment, where her husband, Stephen discovered her body.
40:50
Speaker 2: Oh god.
40:52
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, it feels like the overwhelming majority of these victims
40:57
Speaker 1: were discovered by people that have been uniquely scarred by
41:02
Speaker 1: that experience, like family members. And I cannot even fathom.
41:09
Speaker 1: I just I and I refuse to imagine.
41:13
Speaker 2: No one should have to see that. That's no.
41:16
Speaker 1: Witnesses reported having seen a stranger with a peculiar smile
41:21
Speaker 1: outside the building. The mail carrier had taken note of
41:25
Speaker 1: seeing that same weird smiling. Weirdo, man, I.
41:30
Speaker 2: Don't like that description at all.
41:33
Speaker 1: Nope, No, how did you put it? He's a stranger
41:38
Speaker 1: with a peculiar smile.
41:41
Speaker 2: What's a peculiar smile?
41:43
Speaker 1: Like I I think that it's all in the eyes.
41:49
Speaker 1: In that case, I think he.
41:50
Speaker 2: Had like I can't you do it because I'm.
41:54
Speaker 1: Not, Because you can't it's hard to replicate.
41:58
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
42:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, the mail carrier had taken note of seeing him
42:03
Speaker 1: lingering for about a.
42:04
Speaker 2: Week just smiling.
42:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, just hanging out, smiling creepily. Mary's husband, stephen Nesbitt,
42:12
Speaker 1: was held in jail for two days before being cleared.
42:16
Speaker 1: So that seems to be kind of a pattern as well.
42:19
Speaker 1: It's like family members are finding them and then also
42:22
Speaker 1: of other individuals, oftentimes the husband or another man for
42:28
Speaker 1: whatever reason that is unfortunately falsely accused.
42:32
Speaker 2: That's so sad.
42:34
Speaker 3: I know, and I get why, but it's still like, right,
42:37
Speaker 3: you had to find her and then also get like accused. Right,
42:41
Speaker 3: was this the same guy that found his wife?
42:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, he found her and then was initially believed
42:50
Speaker 1: to be the perpetrator, which again, like statistically, we like
42:54
Speaker 1: we understand that, like that is so often the case,
42:57
Speaker 1: but yikes. By mid October of nineteen twenty six, Nelson
43:02
Speaker 1: had made his way to Portland, where the killing of
43:05
Speaker 1: his first victim in the state, thirty five year old
43:09
Speaker 1: Beta B. Withers, marked multiple slight deviations from his normal
43:14
Speaker 1: mo o. To start, she was obviously much younger than
43:18
Speaker 1: a lot of the other women that he had previously killed,
43:22
Speaker 1: but he also seemingly went to greater lengths to conceal
43:26
Speaker 1: her body after the murder than he frequently did. It's
43:31
Speaker 1: not the only time, but he's certainly not going to
43:35
Speaker 1: this much trouble every time. He had stuffed her into
43:38
Speaker 1: a steamer trunk in the attic of her home, beneath
43:41
Speaker 1: the clothing stored inside.
43:45
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
43:47
Speaker 1: Sadly, these measures of concealment did not prevent the discovery
43:51
Speaker 1: of her body by her fifteen year old son. No, no,
43:57
Speaker 1: I know, I know. On the date of her murder,
44:01
Speaker 1: October nineteenth, she had met with her beau at the
44:04
Speaker 1: time and her son for lunch. Witnesses established that she
44:10
Speaker 1: had seemed cheerful as she worked in her flower beds
44:12
Speaker 1: after returning from lunch that afternoon, likely because she believed
44:17
Speaker 1: the room she'd been advertising for rent for weeks finally
44:21
Speaker 1: had a take her and it was.
44:23
Speaker 2: The wrong person, it sure was.
44:26
Speaker 1: Her son had been concerned when he returned home only
44:30
Speaker 1: to find that his mother didn't seem to be there.
44:33
Speaker 1: Even in some fashion, expressing concern that she may have
44:37
Speaker 1: taken her own life so prior to the promise of
44:40
Speaker 1: renting the room, her finances had actually begun to look
44:45
Speaker 1: quite dire, so he thought, Wow, maybe things are so
44:49
Speaker 1: bad that she killed herself. It was only after a
44:53
Speaker 1: thorough search that her body had been recovered, appearing as
44:56
Speaker 1: though she might have been smothered to death, the least
45:00
Speaker 1: referring to it as an I shit you not the
45:03
Speaker 1: strangest suicide they had ever seen.
45:07
Speaker 2: No, because it's not.
45:12
Speaker 1: Right.
45:12
Speaker 2: Clearly, she didn't put herself.
45:15
Speaker 1: Oh my god, she didn't put herself in a trunk
45:19
Speaker 1: in the attic. Okay, but okay, we're going to spend
45:24
Speaker 1: a little bit more time on this than a lot
45:26
Speaker 1: of I couldn't, I couldn't not. So here we are
45:32
Speaker 1: far from the ppb's proudest moment, but with a caveat admittedly.
45:37
Speaker 1: Two days after the murder occurred, a story titled in
45:41
Speaker 1: all caps, poetry Inspires Suicide in Trunk appeared on the
45:48
Speaker 1: front page of The Oregonian that confirms some of the
45:52
Speaker 1: most bizarre details of the suicide theory. Police initially believed
45:58
Speaker 1: suicide because Withers had a motto or poem on her
46:02
Speaker 1: wall about putting troubles in a strong box, which is
46:10
Speaker 1: very eerie. The police literally interpreted this as her taking
46:15
Speaker 1: the phrase to mean she should stuff herself into a
46:18
Speaker 1: trunk to die. We might need to talk about symbolism,
46:24
Speaker 1: metaphor simile, you know, give them a little bit of
46:27
Speaker 1: a toolbox for understanding those things.
46:32
Speaker 3: Man, I need to like look around my room and
46:33
Speaker 3: see what's on my walls because someone might interpret it
46:36
Speaker 3: is if I die.
46:38
Speaker 1: Right. Continuing on the train of taking everything very literally,
46:43
Speaker 1: they reconstructed the scene by having someone else get into
46:47
Speaker 1: the trunk to demonstrate that self inflicted smothering was physically possible.
46:52
Speaker 1: So there was some due diligence on that piece of things.
46:57
Speaker 1: A corner's jury was convened on October TI, twenty eighth,
47:00
Speaker 1: resulting in an even split. Half believed her death was
47:04
Speaker 1: a suicide, albeit certainly strange, and the other half were
47:10
Speaker 1: equally certain it was a homicide. Before you know, a
47:14
Speaker 1: pattern sort of becomes clear emerges if you will. So
47:18
Speaker 1: to be fair, it wasn't just the cops that were
47:21
Speaker 1: tricked into considering the theory of suicide. And here's the
47:25
Speaker 1: part that kind of it bugs me in a way
47:29
Speaker 1: about this. It's I wonder whether that was Nelson's intent.
47:34
Speaker 1: That's perhaps a little bit harder to say, Like did
47:37
Speaker 1: he see that on her wall and go, oh, I know,
47:42
Speaker 1: I'll stuffer in a trunk and they'll think it's suicide.
47:45
Speaker 1: Maybe that's far fetched.
47:46
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't think. I don't. I think maybe,
47:50
Speaker 2: if anything, he saw.
47:51
Speaker 1: That on the wall and inspired him, inspired him to
47:55
Speaker 1: do that.
47:56
Speaker 2: Maybe, But I think it was just a coincidence.
48:00
Speaker 1: I kind of yeah, I kind of leaned that direction
48:03
Speaker 1: as well. But something about that is just like, ugh,
48:06
Speaker 1: this is so weird. It's given all of my hebes
48:10
Speaker 1: the GBS. Nelson hadn't waited long to seek out his
48:15
Speaker 1: next victim while in Portland. He followed up Beta's murder
48:20
Speaker 1: the very next day, October twentieth, with another heinus crime,
48:24
Speaker 1: when he attacked fifty nine year old Virginia Ada Gray
48:28
Speaker 1: Grant of East twenty second Street in a vacant property
48:33
Speaker 1: that she owned. Can we just take a moment to
48:37
Speaker 1: respect I love the four names. Yeah, Virginia Ada Gray Grant.
48:43
Speaker 1: Her body was discovered behind the homes basement furnace and
48:49
Speaker 1: her death was initially misattributed to heart failure. She did
48:54
Speaker 1: have a known health like a heart condition, and it
48:58
Speaker 1: did seem like, you know, maybe she hadn't been the
49:00
Speaker 1: most well. So I feel like in some of these cases,
49:05
Speaker 1: it's not totally unreasonable. It's just unfortunate that there were
49:09
Speaker 1: like sort of extenuating circumstances or other factors that sort
49:15
Speaker 1: of maybe led people astray at first, is all. Also, though,
49:21
Speaker 1: it was noted that some of her valuable jewelry she
49:23
Speaker 1: always wore was missing, so that that tips scale, I
49:26
Speaker 1: think as well.
49:27
Speaker 2: For sure.
49:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're like, well, she didn't die and then steal
49:33
Speaker 1: her own jewelry. Now it's unclear which crime occurred first,
49:39
Speaker 1: but that very same day, Missus M. D Lewis of
49:44
Speaker 1: the Selwood neighborhood became a survivor of the Dark Strangler,
49:50
Speaker 1: WHOA Nelson arrived at the home that she was showing,
49:56
Speaker 1: muttering house for sale as he.
49:58
Speaker 2: Brushed past her.
50:00
Speaker 1: Okay, very weird and it's only going to get weirder,
50:05
Speaker 1: and I can totally see why she was like, uh, nah,
50:10
Speaker 1: I don't want none of that.
50:12
Speaker 3: So he like wasn't being chill and like nah, tricking
50:15
Speaker 3: people like he usually does.
50:17
Speaker 1: Not super chill. Yeah, which is interesting because I think,
50:22
Speaker 1: you know, if he made his way to uh, our
50:25
Speaker 1: good friend Virginia first, and this is him just kind
50:29
Speaker 1: of becoming unhinged and the escalation ramping up, then maybe
50:34
Speaker 1: it makes sense that he didn't have any chill, or
50:37
Speaker 1: you know, maybe he went to missus M. D Lewis
50:41
Speaker 1: first and he realized he was getting a little sloppy,
50:45
Speaker 1: and so that's why he you know, got back in
50:48
Speaker 1: line before he approached Virginia. I don't know, it's hard
50:53
Speaker 1: to say. It's just an interesting aspect of it, with
50:56
Speaker 1: you know, not knowing which one occurred. First, he shouted
51:01
Speaker 1: from upstairs for her to come look at what's wrong
51:04
Speaker 1: with this door? Then when she refused from the basement,
51:09
Speaker 1: he called her, look what's wrong with this furnace? No, dude,
51:14
Speaker 1: why do you keep trying to get me to go
51:16
Speaker 1: to other rooms that are more isolated in the house
51:20
Speaker 1: and point out things that are wrong, Like just make
51:23
Speaker 1: a note. I'm not gonna follow you.
51:26
Speaker 2: No, your penis is gonna be out or some shit.
51:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, like you're already acting odd. Come look at this phoenix,
51:33
Speaker 1: don't look at the Oh my God, that's so scary.
51:38
Speaker 1: Missus Lewis retreated outside and called for him to come
51:42
Speaker 1: see the flowers she'd planted. She's like, oh, do you
51:44
Speaker 1: can play this game? Come see this shit that's outside
51:47
Speaker 1: where everybody can see us.
51:50
Speaker 2: Get out of my house. Yeah, yeah, smart.
51:52
Speaker 1: He responded to hell with your flowers as he left.
51:57
Speaker 1: She survived by refusing to enter the rooms he directed
52:00
Speaker 1: her too. I mean, just because she trusted her gut. Really. Unfortunately,
52:06
Speaker 1: just a few blocks away, Mabel H. Fluke thirty seven
52:10
Speaker 1: would not be so lucky. She was holding an open
52:14
Speaker 1: house for the home she and her husband had previously
52:16
Speaker 1: shared before his passing two years prior. Ever, since she
52:21
Speaker 1: had been living with her parents in Saint John's and
52:24
Speaker 1: renting out the home where they had lived. She wanted
52:28
Speaker 1: to visit her brother in Independence, Oregon, and was hoping
52:31
Speaker 1: to find a new tenant before making the trip. Seemingly
52:35
Speaker 1: aware of her plans, her parents weren't initially concerned when
52:39
Speaker 1: she did not return home. She was gone overnight and
52:43
Speaker 1: they were like, that's fine. She's trying to fix up
52:46
Speaker 1: the house and get it ready and get a new
52:48
Speaker 1: renter in there. When her father did search the marital
52:52
Speaker 1: turned rental property. Finding no trace of her, he phoned
52:56
Speaker 1: the police to report her missing. Police discovered her body
53:00
Speaker 1: in a dark corner of the attic at the rental
53:03
Speaker 1: property two days later, on October twenty third.
53:07
Speaker 2: The attics. Yeah, like, how do you even get like that?
53:12
Speaker 3: Seemed so hard to get a body up in an attic.
53:16
Speaker 1: And I just don't you know, in some of these cases,
53:19
Speaker 1: like it's impossible for us to really.
53:21
Speaker 2: Know, Like maybe he lured her up lied.
53:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, I mean it's possible. That seems to be
53:29
Speaker 1: kind of part of his mo is, sort of luring
53:32
Speaker 1: people where he wants them so that he can get
53:35
Speaker 1: them from the right angle. That has a lot to
53:37
Speaker 1: do with it because of the strangulation of it all.
53:42
Speaker 1: She had been strangled with a dresser scarf and her
53:46
Speaker 1: jewelry had been stolen. Thankfully, these facts of the case
53:50
Speaker 1: helped investigators to quickly determine this was not yet another
53:55
Speaker 1: bizarre suicide in the city of Roses. So you know
54:01
Speaker 1: they got one they fingered it out, Yeah, and dresser scarf.
54:09
Speaker 2: I was like, what is that?
54:11
Speaker 1: Essentially it just looks like a table runner, but people
54:15
Speaker 1: used to put them on their dressers in their bedrooms
54:19
Speaker 1: and stuff that would protect it from like if you
54:22
Speaker 1: have a cup of coffee or a glass of water.
54:25
Speaker 1: It protected it from all kinds of things, because, of
54:28
Speaker 1: course all of the furniture was made of wood. In fact,
54:31
Speaker 1: according to local historian J. D. Chandler, it was the
54:35
Speaker 1: day after the discovery of Mabel's body that Patrolman Russell
54:40
Speaker 1: of the Portland Police Bureau became the first to suggest
54:44
Speaker 1: that the recent spate of murders in the city might
54:48
Speaker 1: be the work of the Dark Strangler, who had been
54:51
Speaker 1: tormenting Californians along the coast for months.
54:55
Speaker 2: So they put it together even though it was a
54:57
Speaker 2: different state.
54:58
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Well, and here's how I told you this
55:02
Speaker 1: was going to come back. This shit is wild. He'd
55:05
Speaker 1: received a letter from his cousin, George Russell, living in
55:10
Speaker 1: Santa Barbara at that time, whose wife, Allie Russell, had
55:17
Speaker 1: herself met her dreadful end at the hands of the strangler.
55:22
Speaker 3: Oh no, oh my god. So otherwise they might not
55:26
Speaker 3: have known.
55:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, they might not have fully made that connection. It's
55:32
Speaker 1: hard to say, whoa because you could have an awareness
55:37
Speaker 1: of these crimes occurring in California and think like, well,
55:41
Speaker 1: that's especially back then, it's like, oh well that's that's
55:45
Speaker 1: not here, you know.
55:47
Speaker 2: Yeah.
55:48
Speaker 1: Nelson would then return to his home state once more
55:51
Speaker 1: and strike again. On November eighteenth, nineteen twenty six, A
55:56
Speaker 1: friend who had visited the victim, fifty six year old
55:59
Speaker 1: Anna Edmunds of San Francisco, recalled seeing her speaking to
56:04
Speaker 1: a strange man in her parlor regarding a business deal
56:08
Speaker 1: related to her home, so assuming that she was probably
56:13
Speaker 1: trying to sell it or like maybe rent on a room.
56:16
Speaker 1: The following day, missus H. C. Murray, a pregnant twenty
56:22
Speaker 1: eight year old woman of Burlingame, California, was attacked by
56:26
Speaker 1: a man posing as a potential buyer while showing her home.
56:30
Speaker 1: But perhaps Nelson was getting a little bit sloppy, because
56:34
Speaker 1: she too survived. I mean, thank goodness, pregnant, she later
56:41
Speaker 1: told reporters, I realize now that he was trying to
56:44
Speaker 1: get me to look up towards the ceiling so that
56:47
Speaker 1: he could get behind me and grab my throat. Ugh,
56:52
Speaker 1: absolutely chilling.
56:54
Speaker 2: Mama bearer instinct in her right.
56:58
Speaker 1: Well, and I will say, if you're pregnant, And I
57:01
Speaker 1: don't know how far along she was, but she's probably
57:04
Speaker 1: just like, you know what, I am so sick of
57:07
Speaker 1: men and they're just so entitled. And he's like, look
57:11
Speaker 1: over here, look at this, and she's like, you know,
57:14
Speaker 1: at the last time that I listened to a man,
57:17
Speaker 1: that's how this happened, as she points to her belly.
57:25
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's like that movie trope of like
57:27
Speaker 1: you did this, don't worry about what's going on back here, right,
57:32
Speaker 1: pay no attention.
57:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh man, that's so scary though.
57:38
Speaker 1: I know. As the holidays approached, Nelson showed absolutely no
57:44
Speaker 1: sign of slowing down, and he'd made his way back
57:47
Speaker 1: to the Pacific Northwest again. Oh okay, yep, he's a
57:53
Speaker 1: rambling man. On November twenty third, nineteen twenty six, just
57:59
Speaker 1: two days before Thanksgiving, he struck down forty eight year
58:02
Speaker 1: old wealthy widowed Seattleite Florence Fifthian Monks inside her home.
58:09
Speaker 1: What a name I know, I mean, And she sounds
58:14
Speaker 1: like seatite, my god, or and like definitely also sounds
58:19
Speaker 1: like a wealthy widow, doesn't she.
58:21
Speaker 2: Yeah.
58:23
Speaker 1: Her body was discovered stuffed behind the basement furnace by
58:26
Speaker 1: the Holmes caretaker. Oh I know, in Portland, Oregon, just
58:33
Speaker 1: a few short hours away, her stolen jewelry would resurface.
58:38
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, cat, you know how they liked to take
58:44
Speaker 1: trophies Like that's kind of I mean not all of them,
58:48
Speaker 1: but most of them, and probably secretly all of them.
58:52
Speaker 1: In late November, still in Portland, Nelson rented a room
58:57
Speaker 1: at Sophia Yates's lodging house on Third Avenue, using the
59:02
Speaker 1: alias Adrian Harris. He spent Thanksgiving with Yates and her
59:07
Speaker 1: other lodgers, offering to pay for the entire holiday dinner
59:11
Speaker 1: and impressing them as polite, soft spoken and intelligent, but
59:16
Speaker 1: also something of a religious fanatic. You don't say.
59:22
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, it didn't go yet, right.
59:26
Speaker 1: He gave Yates and another lodger, Emily Crawford, pieces of
59:31
Speaker 1: jewelry as gifts, later identified as items stolen from Florence
59:37
Speaker 1: monks in Seattle.
59:39
Speaker 3: That is, it's like gross to think about him giving
59:42
Speaker 3: away like a dead woman's jewelry, but like, why are
59:46
Speaker 3: you even giving jewelry to these women that you just met?
59:50
Speaker 1: Well, and you know what I got to say, Normally
59:52
Speaker 1: I'd be like, these women are trash because they are
59:56
Speaker 1: going to live to make him regret whatever that was
1:00:01
Speaker 1: like I don't know why he did this, but he does,
1:00:04
Speaker 1: like he certainly comes to regret it. This is so
1:00:08
Speaker 1: fucking funny. It's like Jerry Jerry Yates received nicer gifts
1:00:16
Speaker 1: than Crawford. The two women argued about it, and Harris
1:00:20
Speaker 1: quote unquote burst into the room and said, I'm going
1:00:24
Speaker 1: to beat it. You two will have the police up next,
1:00:27
Speaker 1: then fled, leaving two days rent unused.
1:00:31
Speaker 2: Huh.
1:00:31
Speaker 1: They were arguing about who got nicer gifts from him,
1:00:35
Speaker 1: and He's like, that is weird.
1:00:40
Speaker 2: Much.
1:00:41
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was like, okay, weird behavior on their part,
1:00:44
Speaker 1: but at the same time, like there is a not
1:00:47
Speaker 1: insignificant chance that like it might have saved one or
1:00:50
Speaker 1: both of their lives. So yeah, like stay petty.
1:00:54
Speaker 2: I guess he was. I just can't like, what was
1:00:59
Speaker 2: he trying to do that don't know, I don't they
1:01:03
Speaker 2: don't understand.
1:01:04
Speaker 1: I don't get it. By the end of the holiday weekend,
1:01:08
Speaker 1: Nelson was right back at it. That Monday, November twenty ninth,
1:01:13
Speaker 1: Blanche Myers forty eight, was apparently immediately uneasy upon meeting Nelson,
1:01:20
Speaker 1: telling the landlady just prior to the attack, I didn't
1:01:24
Speaker 1: like his looks very much. His looks, apparently off putting
1:01:28
Speaker 1: enough for her to question him about his drinking habits.
1:01:32
Speaker 2: His weird dead eyes and right peculiar smile.
1:01:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course she was right to be suspicious. At
1:01:41
Speaker 1: the time, she was having lunch with a gentleman friend,
1:01:44
Speaker 1: but she closed the deal, returning to her midday meal
1:01:48
Speaker 1: with four dollars in rent paid by Nelson for the
1:01:51
Speaker 1: room and unfortunately fatal transaction. Later, she was strangled with
1:01:59
Speaker 1: a handkerchief while showing him an upstairs room. Sadly, in
1:02:07
Speaker 1: I just I hate it. Sadly, her son was the
1:02:11
Speaker 1: one to discover her body stuffed under the bed. That
1:02:17
Speaker 1: bed became significant as police were able to recover fingerprints
1:02:21
Speaker 1: from the iron bedpost, marking the first significant physical evidence
1:02:26
Speaker 1: in the case.
1:02:28
Speaker 2: That's great that.
1:02:30
Speaker 1: That piece is that rocks that keep touching stuff?
1:02:34
Speaker 2: Right?
1:02:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, ideally just like stop touching ladies, you know, but like, please,
1:02:42
Speaker 1: while we're here in this situation, at least there's that.
1:02:47
Speaker 1: The Oregonian reported the third floor of the Portland Police
1:02:50
Speaker 1: Bureau became a and this is a quote veritable madhouse
1:02:56
Speaker 1: of citizen tips. During this time, the Portland Police Bureau
1:03:00
Speaker 1: issued a public warning cautioning landladies against showing rooms unaccompanied.
1:03:06
Speaker 1: Their acknowledgment of the situation was blunt. The statement said,
1:03:12
Speaker 1: I do not wish to unduly alarm the people of Portland,
1:03:16
Speaker 1: but there is no denying the situation is grave. This
1:03:21
Speaker 1: marked the end of his time in the Pacific Northwest,
1:03:24
Speaker 1: but he remained a free man as he traveled on
1:03:28
Speaker 1: to the Midwest.
1:03:30
Speaker 3: Oh, he finally got out of there. He's like, gosh, shit,
1:03:33
Speaker 3: they're catching.
1:03:33
Speaker 1: On right exactly now. If you've made it this far,
1:03:38
Speaker 1: you're probably thinking, holy shit, I am about like chest
1:03:43
Speaker 1: height deep into this story. And that's true, but there's
1:03:49
Speaker 1: still a lot left to go. And then also a
1:03:52
Speaker 1: tarot reading. So it turns out this one's a two parter.
1:03:56
Speaker 2: It's long.
1:03:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're just finding that out for ourselves for certain
1:04:01
Speaker 1: now in this moment as we record it. So, uh, surprise.
1:04:06
Speaker 3: So we kind of lied to at the beginning when
1:04:08
Speaker 3: we said there's a tarot read in every episode.
1:04:10
Speaker 1: I kind of intended that this might be a single episode,
1:04:16
Speaker 1: Like more often than not we just do like a
1:04:18
Speaker 1: single taro reading in that case, but this is just
1:04:22
Speaker 1: it's so massive and it'll only make it that much
1:04:26
Speaker 1: more massive to do two separate tarot readings. So we're
1:04:30
Speaker 1: gon we're gonna cut it there, and then we'll come
1:04:34
Speaker 1: back in part two and do the tarot reading. Maybe
1:04:38
Speaker 1: I will just do my own private, little personal reading
1:04:45
Speaker 1: and we won't do the full like interpretation in the episode,
1:04:48
Speaker 1: but maybe I'll share that so we can throw them
1:04:52
Speaker 1: off the scent. We can still post a tarot reading
1:04:55
Speaker 1: to the socials, but they'll have no idea what's coming.
1:05:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, I'm down for that.
1:05:02
Speaker 1: Should we say goodbye to the creepy people?
1:05:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's let's leave them hang in here?
1:05:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, you got this, guys. We'll see you in a week.
1:05:12
Speaker 2: In there exactly.
1:05:14
Speaker 1: That's what I was thinking of, how creepy day. We'll
1:05:18
Speaker 1: see you next Thursday.
1:05:21
Speaker 2: Unless you have weird eyes and a peculiar smile.
1:05:24
Speaker 1: Well, I mean actually that that definitely means we will
1:05:28
Speaker 1: see him again next next Thursday. Oh no, I thought
1:05:36
Speaker 1: we were okay, all right, yeah,