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Ridiculous History Presents: Criminalia · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: At Target. We come in for black owned coffee and
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Speaker 1: leave with change in our hands. We come in for
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Speaker 1: healthier snacks and leave feeling more fulfilled. At Target, better
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Speaker 1: and unexpected and sometimes amusing. He told me you chased
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Speaker 1: him with a butcher knife, tried to cut off his penis.
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Speaker 1: two sides of every store exactly. All new episodes of
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Speaker 1: Alli on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or
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Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Criminalia, a production
1:18
Speaker 1: of Shonda land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello,
1:27
Speaker 1: and welcome to Criminalia. I'm Maria tram Marquis and I'm
1:30
Speaker 1: Holly Fry. We know that humans have always managed to
1:33
Speaker 1: commit crimes, almost certainly before there was even recorded history,
1:36
Speaker 1: so we decided that we would start looking at those
1:39
Speaker 1: crimes and get our hands dirty. We wanted to dig
1:42
Speaker 1: in and look at some of histories, crimes and criminals
1:44
Speaker 1: to understand them better. And in doing so, we're curious
1:48
Speaker 1: if we can find commonality with our modern world and
1:51
Speaker 1: our modern problems, and whether these crimes look different a
1:54
Speaker 1: little bit of distance on the timeline, and whether any
1:57
Speaker 1: of these perpetrators emerge as more but that it characters.
2:01
Speaker 1: This first season is going to be all about poisoners,
2:04
Speaker 1: specifically women poisoners. Poison is often called a woman's weapon,
2:08
Speaker 1: despite the fact that roughly two thirds of the poisonings
2:11
Speaker 1: committed throughout time have been the work of men. So
2:14
Speaker 1: let's start looking at these women and their motivations and
2:16
Speaker 1: see if any patterns develop. This week, we're looking into
2:19
Speaker 1: the life and Crimes of Tilly Clinic, a Polish immigrant
2:22
Speaker 1: who killed at least one and possibly as many as
2:25
Speaker 1: twenty people and at least one dog between the years
2:28
Speaker 1: nineteen fourteen. And I will confess that when you were
2:32
Speaker 1: telling me about the research you were doing initially on
2:35
Speaker 1: this and you mentioned the dog, I was like, well,
2:37
Speaker 1: I hate her. Um not that it wasn't terrible it
2:40
Speaker 1: she killed people, just you know, that was for me
2:42
Speaker 1: the worst thing that she could have done as well.
2:59
Speaker 1: She was born Tiafila Burick to Michaelina and Michael Burick
3:03
Speaker 1: on October eighteen seventy seven, and Tilly was probably right
3:08
Speaker 1: around four years old when her family immigrated to the
3:10
Speaker 1: United States. They moved from Poland to the Little Poland
3:14
Speaker 1: neighborhood of Chicago, and of the seven children in the family,
3:18
Speaker 1: a Tilly, as she was called, was the eldest. Chicago
3:22
Speaker 1: has a long history of Polish immigration, and Polish Americans
3:25
Speaker 1: have lived in the area for well over a century.
3:28
Speaker 1: In eighteen ninety, around the time Tilly was born, there
3:30
Speaker 1: was a wave of immigration to the United States. At
3:33
Speaker 1: that time, the number of Polish immigrants in the city
3:35
Speaker 1: blossomed to more than twenty five thousand. By nineteen thirty,
3:38
Speaker 1: a few years before she died, that number had grown
3:41
Speaker 1: two hundred and sixty five thousand. Most they lived below
3:43
Speaker 1: the poverty line. Is the tale of immigration in so
3:46
Speaker 1: many ways. So let's set the scene of the actual
3:51
Speaker 1: situation we're talking about today. So this is Chicago in
4:03
Speaker 1: the early twentieth centuries. You couldn't necessarily count on your
4:08
Speaker 1: food and drinks to be clean. Upton Sinclair started publishing
4:12
Speaker 1: the serialized version of his groundbreaking expose a of the
4:15
Speaker 1: meat industry in the US, The Jungle, in nineteen o five,
4:19
Speaker 1: and while that led to the creation of the Meat
4:21
Speaker 1: Inspection Act in nineteen o six, food safety legislation was
4:25
Speaker 1: still in its infancy. But if you were at a
4:28
Speaker 1: restaurant or a club or hotel around the city, there
4:30
Speaker 1: were other dangers when it came to what you consumed
4:32
Speaker 1: at the table. In particular, wait staff were known to
4:35
Speaker 1: target patrons who didn't tip well. Not like the content
4:38
Speaker 1: of the chatter in fight Club, although honestly maybe a
4:41
Speaker 1: little of that. Uh. They usually chose poisons and various
4:45
Speaker 1: other things you really don't want to be in your food.
4:48
Speaker 1: So remember always tip well. But moreover, it turns out
4:52
Speaker 1: that you couldn't really count on food safety at home either,
4:55
Speaker 1: at least if you lived with a Tilly Clinic. During
5:00
Speaker 1: the time that Chicago's most visible criminal element was organized crime,
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Speaker 1: Tilly was quietly becoming the city's most prolific female serial killer.
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Speaker 1: She had allegedly killed between six and twenty people. Like
5:11
Speaker 1: we said, but it was all through arsenic poisoning. So
5:13
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk first just about what arsenic actually is.
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Speaker 1: It is a naturally occurring element in the Earth's crust
5:21
Speaker 1: and in its raw state. As much as it has
5:23
Speaker 1: this instant conjuring of poison, it's not actually harmful the
5:28
Speaker 1: way it naturally exists. Archenic only really becomes poisonous when
5:31
Speaker 1: it's converted into arsenic trioxide, which is better known as
5:35
Speaker 1: white arsenic. White arsenic not only is odorless, but it's
5:38
Speaker 1: tasteless um and it's white or transparent in form, so
5:41
Speaker 1: it's easily confused with sugar or flour. But it's highly
5:44
Speaker 1: toxic when it's inhaled into your lungs or when you
5:46
Speaker 1: ingest it. And it might surprise you that even white
5:49
Speaker 1: arsenic is actually fairly benign in relatively small amounts because
5:55
Speaker 1: it is very lethal at higher doses. In fact, doctors
5:58
Speaker 1: have actually prescribed white arsenic through the years in its
6:01
Speaker 1: low dosage as a treatment for things like asthma, typhus, malaria,
6:07
Speaker 1: even menstrual cramps, and it continues to be administered intravenously
6:12
Speaker 1: as a chemotherapy for a specific type of leukemia. When
6:15
Speaker 1: arsenic is ingested, initially, it causes symptoms such as abdominal pain, diarrhea,
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Speaker 1: and that's often being accompanied by bleeding and vomiting. It's terrible.
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Speaker 1: As the dose gets more and more lethal in the body, though,
6:26
Speaker 1: the symptoms also begin to include convulsion, cardiovascular problems, hair loss,
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Speaker 1: liver and kidney problems, and even organ damage. So not
6:36
Speaker 1: a peaceful way to go. Definitely not sugar no, and
6:40
Speaker 1: despite its potency, it has been used in the production
6:43
Speaker 1: of semiconductors. It's been used as wood preservative, and it's
6:47
Speaker 1: also sometimes found in pesticides. Manufacturers in the nineteenth century
6:52
Speaker 1: started using it for its green pigment in products like
6:55
Speaker 1: paint and wallpaper, fabrics, beauty products, and as food coloring.
7:01
Speaker 1: The list goes on because green is very beautiful color,
7:05
Speaker 1: so sometimes those products would actually make people sick, but
7:09
Speaker 1: at the time, no one was suspecting that the arsenic
7:12
Speaker 1: in them was the problem that was causing their ailments.
7:15
Speaker 1: In the early twentieth century, when Tilly was busy murdering
7:18
Speaker 1: people in her community, the average Americans medicine cabinet was
7:21
Speaker 1: stocked with all sorts of toxic things like radioactive radium
7:25
Speaker 1: for acne, and mercury is a topical antiseptic for cuts
7:29
Speaker 1: and scrapes and burns. Morphine showed up in everyday products
7:32
Speaker 1: and everything from teething medications to cures for heroin addiction.
7:36
Speaker 1: From roughly the late eight into the early twentieth century
7:40
Speaker 1: is considered to be the Golden age of poisoners, and
7:45
Speaker 1: during that time, arsenic specifically caught the nickname the inheritance powder.
7:50
Speaker 1: And you can probably imagine why, hm. The police really
7:55
Speaker 1: didn't have any of the tools to test the corpse
7:57
Speaker 1: for poison. Arsenic was an only easy to acquire, it
8:01
Speaker 1: was hard to detect as a cause of death, which
8:03
Speaker 1: was win win for the Golden Age of poisoners. It
8:07
Speaker 1: was common practice for doctors to treat suspected poisoning with
8:10
Speaker 1: leeches bleeded out or try to identify the poison involved
8:15
Speaker 1: by sniffing the contents of the person's stomach. Remember how
8:19
Speaker 1: we said arsenic was odorless though, Yeah, so you just
8:21
Speaker 1: sniff those contents for nothing. But it was also just
8:25
Speaker 1: unusual for a doctor or a coroner to suspect arsenic
8:29
Speaker 1: as a cause of death, mainly because the symptoms of
8:32
Speaker 1: arsenic poisoning that Maria just talked about, diarrhea and vomiting
8:35
Speaker 1: and abdominal pain are so similar to a lot of
8:39
Speaker 1: other disorders. It's also really hard to place the poisoner
8:43
Speaker 1: at the scene of the murder. Dying can typically take
8:47
Speaker 1: hours or longer if you administered the poison gradually, such
8:50
Speaker 1: as with someone's meals, so the perpetrator could easily have
8:53
Speaker 1: a seemingly airtight alibi for their whereabouts because the window
8:57
Speaker 1: of time had such fuzzy edges. But it actually wouldn't
8:59
Speaker 1: be of the late nineteenth century that a chemist named
9:02
Speaker 1: James marsh would come up with a reliable chemical test
9:05
Speaker 1: for arsenic poisoning. Today, arsenic poisoning is treated with Chilatian therapy,
9:09
Speaker 1: which uses special drugs that bind to metal ions in
9:13
Speaker 1: your blood. So rough on rats was the product that
9:20
Speaker 1: became popular in the late eighteen hundreds. It was composed
9:23
Speaker 1: mainly of arsenic and a little black coal for masking
9:26
Speaker 1: the poison, and while I was advertised for use in
9:30
Speaker 1: killing rats, mice, bedbugs, flies, roaches, it occasionally was used
9:34
Speaker 1: for the very off label purpose of killing husbands. Believe
9:38
Speaker 1: it or not, the marketing slogan for this poison rough
9:42
Speaker 1: On Rats was don't die in the house, thinking, of course,
9:48
Speaker 1: being that the creature you had poison would scurry away
9:52
Speaker 1: to die. It was also really easily available at the
9:56
Speaker 1: local store until he actually got her first bottle of
9:59
Speaker 1: rough On Rats from her cousin, Nelly Kulik, and Nelly,
10:03
Speaker 1: it would turn out, was also a fellow poisoner murder
10:07
Speaker 1: and husbands. According to your accounts from her neighbors, Tilly
10:11
Speaker 1: was sent to have precognitive dreams, meaning that she could
10:15
Speaker 1: predict the future in real life through sort of a
10:18
Speaker 1: sixth sensish kind of way. She began to predict the
10:22
Speaker 1: depths of neighborhood dogs, and she was surprisingly accurate, But
10:27
Speaker 1: it turns out she was just scheduling their depths. We're
10:29
Speaker 1: getting a little ahead of ourselves though. In the progression
10:32
Speaker 1: of Tilly's activities with rough on rats, So we're going
10:35
Speaker 1: to back up to at Target. We come in for
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Speaker 1: black owned coffee and leave with change in our hands.
10:45
Speaker 1: We come in for healthier snacks and leave feeling more fulfilled.
10:49
Speaker 1: At Target, better days are within our reach. What we
10:52
Speaker 1: value most shouldn't cost more. Hey, I'm Gabrielle Collins, period
10:59
Speaker 1: drama nerd and you're behind the scenes guide to Bridgetin
11:03
Speaker 1: On Bridgetain the Official Podcast. We're learning how this fantasy
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Speaker 1: world dipped in history came to life. Daphnie, her costume
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Speaker 1: design really is about the elegance of simplicity. It's just
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Speaker 1: color and shape. We went old school and we got
11:21
Speaker 1: to scenic cartists then, who painted the backings for us
11:24
Speaker 1: by hand. These dukes are all like in their late
11:27
Speaker 1: twenties early thirties. Almost all of them are unmarried, really
11:32
Speaker 1: good looking, and none of them have syphilis. Can you
11:35
Speaker 1: imagine when he looks into your eyes and then he
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Speaker 1: dips you. We just heard this sort of ripping sounds. Yep.
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Speaker 1: Apple podcasts, or anywhere you get your favorite shows. Hi,
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Speaker 1: this is Ali went Worth, host of Go Ask Gali
12:00
Speaker 1: Season two. We'll be back soon with more new episodes.
12:03
Speaker 1: But what you can do is binge the first half
12:04
Speaker 1: of season two or revisit our first spectacular season. Everyone
12:09
Speaker 1: has to deal with money, and typically like people don't
12:11
Speaker 1: talk about it. It's like this quiet thing that everyone
12:14
Speaker 1: wants to avoid. But then everyone wants to live this
12:17
Speaker 1: life and doesn't matter what how you define that life,
12:19
Speaker 1: but you need money for it. Just a few of
12:21
Speaker 1: our fabulous guests this season are former editor of People
12:24
Speaker 1: magazine Jess Cagel, New York Times bestselling author Isabel Gillies,
12:29
Speaker 1: and writer and Oprah's favorite life coach Martha Beck. And
12:32
Speaker 1: people come to me now and they will say negative things,
12:35
Speaker 1: and I think, I, respectfully do not give a crap
12:39
Speaker 1: what you think because I'm a crazy old that now
12:42
Speaker 1: and you can't stop me. That's great. Our guests have
12:46
Speaker 1: so much to say. One lesson isn't enough. Listen to
12:49
Speaker 1: Go Ask Ali on the I Heart Radio app or
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13:00
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Criminalia. Tilly was married to John mckaywitz.
13:08
Speaker 1: His name may have been Joseph, not John. Records aren't
13:11
Speaker 1: entirely consistent, but we're gonna go with John because that's
13:13
Speaker 1: what the majority of records from the time referred to
13:15
Speaker 1: him as. That is one of the delights word I'm using,
13:21
Speaker 1: ironically of doing historical research, particularly when you are talking
13:25
Speaker 1: about UH immigrants, because there was not a vested interest
13:29
Speaker 1: always in the government in keeping accurate records about them,
13:34
Speaker 1: so you often have these these people's stories that get
13:37
Speaker 1: really muddy because their names do shift around in the
13:40
Speaker 1: historical record. Anyway, by all accounts, this couple UH Tilly
13:46
Speaker 1: and John were well liked in their community, and their
13:49
Speaker 1: marriage appeared by all accounts to be happy. Tilly made
13:53
Speaker 1: her life as a housekeeper, but it was also during
13:56
Speaker 1: this time that Tilly started telling neighbors about some vision
14:00
Speaker 1: that she was having. She was, as we mentioned before
14:02
Speaker 1: the break, an alleged psychic who was skilled specifically at
14:06
Speaker 1: predicting deaths. This included predicting the death of her own husband, John,
14:10
Speaker 1: who had left her a thousand dollars when he died
14:12
Speaker 1: in nineteen fourteen. The coroner's report listed his death as
14:15
Speaker 1: a result of heart trouble, nothing suspicious there was no
14:19
Speaker 1: reason at the time to suspect that John had been
14:22
Speaker 1: poisoned by his wife. The nickname black widow, which is
14:26
Speaker 1: often given to women who kill their lovers in order
14:29
Speaker 1: to inherit their wealth, would eventually be bestowed upon Tilly,
14:33
Speaker 1: but not just yet. Here's a little more in detail
14:36
Speaker 1: on John's sudden end. Okay. In the beginning of nineteen fourteen,
14:40
Speaker 1: Tilly began telling friends and those in the community that
14:43
Speaker 1: she dreamed that John was ill. She expected he would
14:46
Speaker 1: be on his deathbed in just a few weeks um
14:48
Speaker 1: and when he died in January that year, the cause
14:52
Speaker 1: of death was listed as heart trouble and till he
14:54
Speaker 1: collected a thousand dollars in life insurance. I guess after
14:58
Speaker 1: nineteen years she just didn't want to go to um.
15:02
Speaker 1: She's like enough. After receiving that payout on John's life
15:05
Speaker 1: insurance policy, Tilly actually remarried pretty quickly. See, now, that's
15:10
Speaker 1: the thing. She remarried quickly often, And I have to
15:13
Speaker 1: I always sort of wonder like if she would follow
15:15
Speaker 1: in love with someone new and be like, oh, I'll
15:17
Speaker 1: kill my husband and we'll start out fresh with like
15:19
Speaker 1: this new thousand dollars. It's just my own personal theory. Yeah,
15:22
Speaker 1: I think there's merit to it. But her new husband,
15:26
Speaker 1: Joseph Riskowski, died just three months after they got married,
15:30
Speaker 1: and he happened to leave his widow twelve hundred dollars
15:34
Speaker 1: in cash and seven dollars in insurance money. Not only
15:40
Speaker 1: did Tilly predict Joseph's death, she went on to predict
15:44
Speaker 1: the deaths of her third husband, although they may or
15:47
Speaker 1: may not have been married. It's a little sketchy, uh,
15:50
Speaker 1: and her fourth husband, as well as children, she cared
15:53
Speaker 1: for a few neighbors and possibly some other family members.
15:56
Speaker 1: And not only did she joke with neighbors that her
15:58
Speaker 1: fourth husband, Frank, had quote two inches to live, which
16:04
Speaker 1: is a really interesting, fascinating turn of phrase, she allegedly
16:12
Speaker 1: taunted him on his deathbed and said things like it
16:15
Speaker 1: won't be long now and you'll be dying soon, which
16:20
Speaker 1: is in my own home, Like you got to it
16:25
Speaker 1: just to live. I don't know, right, It's like callous
16:29
Speaker 1: on a level that's hard to comprehend, right right. She also,
16:38
Speaker 1: in an act of both cruel and creative, knitted herself
16:42
Speaker 1: a morning hat um as she sat by his bedside
16:46
Speaker 1: while he was dying. She even so far as to
16:48
Speaker 1: purchase a thirty dollar bargain coffin to keep in the
16:51
Speaker 1: basement of her house waiting for his death. That storage
16:55
Speaker 1: dreament was a little unsettling request made of her landlord, um,
16:59
Speaker 1: who began to be a little suspicious of Tilly after
17:02
Speaker 1: that came in. Frank did die on ap and it
17:09
Speaker 1: is said that when it happened, Tilly played dance music
17:12
Speaker 1: in the room. The coroner listed Frank's cause of death
17:16
Speaker 1: as bronchial pneumonia. Tilly's poisonous predilections unnoticed. She once again
17:22
Speaker 1: collected on his life insurance, this time in the amount
17:25
Speaker 1: of six seventy five dollars, nearly as much as the
17:30
Speaker 1: last two. I know she's downgrading the insurance situation with
17:34
Speaker 1: each one. They're going faster now, you know. It's just
17:36
Speaker 1: not enough time to like build up to the thousand.
17:39
Speaker 1: That's another theory I have. UM. It's interesting and grimly
17:44
Speaker 1: fun to note that Frank Antilli's home at Winchester It's
17:48
Speaker 1: a house in East Dillage in Chicago, shows up on
17:50
Speaker 1: the Old Fourth Where social networking site as Old Lady
17:53
Speaker 1: Tilly clinics haunted house. Even today, Tilly was still not arrested.
17:59
Speaker 1: The that didn't happen until after she botched an attempt
18:03
Speaker 1: at poisoning husband number five, that was Joseph Clinic. She
18:07
Speaker 1: and Joseph had gotten married in July of ninety one,
18:10
Speaker 1: again not long after Frank's demise, and Clinic is said
18:14
Speaker 1: to have been a relatively wealthy man, but Tilly did
18:18
Speaker 1: not like that. He also apparently had a wandering eye,
18:21
Speaker 1: and by October of nineteen twenty two, he was in
18:24
Speaker 1: the hospital experiencing arm numbness, leg paralysis, and other symptoms
18:29
Speaker 1: consistent with severe arsenic poisoning. So while he was in
18:33
Speaker 1: the hospital, Tilly's husband recalled that his food had tasted
18:36
Speaker 1: strangely lately. And here's one big red flag. He remembered
18:40
Speaker 1: the dog dying after eating scraps of food till he
18:43
Speaker 1: had cooked. Her husband also stated he'd planned to press
18:46
Speaker 1: charges against her until he kissed him. Such a strange
18:50
Speaker 1: dynamic at play, But uh, it was not poisoning Joseph
18:55
Speaker 1: that she went on trial for. While Tilly was arrested
18:57
Speaker 1: initially for the attempted murder of Joseph Clinic, who would
19:00
Speaker 1: survive her poison his hand um after an investigation into
19:04
Speaker 1: the deaths of her previous husbands. The crime Tilly was
19:06
Speaker 1: eventually tried for was the murder of Frank, her third husband,
19:10
Speaker 1: but even as she was taken in, she appeared completely
19:14
Speaker 1: indifferent to the whole situation. It is said that she
19:18
Speaker 1: told the arresting officer, who was Lieutenant William Malone, the
19:21
Speaker 1: next one I want to cook dinner for is you?
19:24
Speaker 1: You made all my trouble. After eighteen hours of interrogation,
19:29
Speaker 1: Tilly confessed to her crimes, admitting to mixing rat poison
19:31
Speaker 1: into her victims food and drink note plural. It's interesting, right,
19:35
Speaker 1: Like eighteen hours of interrogation is considered extreme, it is,
19:40
Speaker 1: and she just gives it all up. Then there's that
19:43
Speaker 1: whole thing of like is this a coerced confession at
19:47
Speaker 1: that point, But her later behavior makes it seem like
19:50
Speaker 1: she's she's pretty down with this information being uh one
19:55
Speaker 1: true and part of public records. Yeah, she's a badass.
19:59
Speaker 1: Just to grains of arsenic is enough to kill almost anyone,
20:03
Speaker 1: uh and as much as eight grains were found in
20:06
Speaker 1: Frank's organs, so enough to kill four people. Authorities decided
20:11
Speaker 1: to exhume Tilly's other husbands and found their stomachs each
20:15
Speaker 1: contained lethal doses of arsenic, and although evidence existed to
20:19
Speaker 1: convict her of as many as twenty murders by arsenic,
20:23
Speaker 1: only one charge resulted in a conviction. Although she was
20:26
Speaker 1: not the only woman and wife in her community to
20:28
Speaker 1: be arrested for suspicion of poisoning, she was the only
20:31
Speaker 1: one of them who was sentenced. You remember how we
20:34
Speaker 1: mentioned her cousin earlier. Authorities went on to investigate a
20:39
Speaker 1: possible poison ring in the Little Poland neighborhood, arresting other
20:44
Speaker 1: local women in what the assistant state attorney at the
20:46
Speaker 1: time that was, a man named William McLaughlin called quote
20:50
Speaker 1: the most astonishing wholesale poisoning plot uncovered. He wanted the
20:55
Speaker 1: death penalty for Tilly, but without better evidence, the other
20:59
Speaker 1: women who had been rounded up just had to be released.
21:03
Speaker 1: As Tillie's story unfurls, it becomes apparent that it wasn't
21:07
Speaker 1: just husbands that she poisoned. She played fast and loose
21:10
Speaker 1: with rough on rats, poisoning people who irritated her and
21:12
Speaker 1: dogs who barked too much. In the neighborhood life was
21:15
Speaker 1: especially risky if you were one of Tillie's cousins. In
21:18
Speaker 1: nineteen twelve, Tilly's cousin, Stanley Zaczuski, died at the age
21:22
Speaker 1: of sixteen. Tilly, who was in her mid thirties at
21:26
Speaker 1: the time, tended on him while he was ill. Another cousin,
21:30
Speaker 1: Stanley's sister, Still, died in nineteen thirteen. She was twenty
21:34
Speaker 1: three at the time, and again Tilly played the role
21:38
Speaker 1: of caregiver. After her husband Frank's death, Tillie started seeing
21:42
Speaker 1: a man named Joseph Grantkowski, like lovers before him. Joseph
21:46
Speaker 1: died in nineteen fourteen after jilting her and back to cousins.
21:51
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifteen, Tilly's cousin Helen died at age fifteen.
21:54
Speaker 1: Another cousin, Nick Micko, became sick from arsenic poisoning, but
21:59
Speaker 1: he was lucky enough to actually recover. In nineteen nineteen,
22:03
Speaker 1: Tilly's cousin Rose died after attending Tilly and Frank's wedding party.
22:09
Speaker 1: Tillie may have been involved in the poisoning of woe
22:11
Speaker 1: Jack Strummer, who was the husband of her cousin Nellie.
22:14
Speaker 1: The same Nellie from she procured her rat poison. It
22:18
Speaker 1: turns out that Tilly wasn't only cooking arsenic in two meals,
22:22
Speaker 1: she was also a confectioner. Twizzlers may make mouse happy,
22:26
Speaker 1: but you definitely want to skip Tilly streets. So uh.
22:30
Speaker 1: Stella Gooskowski, sister of Tillie's former boyfriend Joseph, got sick
22:35
Speaker 1: after she ate a candy that was given to her
22:37
Speaker 1: by Tilly after the two women had an argument. Joseph
22:42
Speaker 1: died from tainted candy as well. Rose Split had also
22:45
Speaker 1: stayed un Tillie gave her arsenic confused candies after Joseph
22:49
Speaker 1: Clinic talked to her. So jealous, Tilly was willing to
22:52
Speaker 1: go after innocent women who her husband even dared to
22:55
Speaker 1: converse with. So let's keep going because we're only about
22:58
Speaker 1: halfway through the body count. There was also a woman
23:01
Speaker 1: named Bessie kop Sick, sister in law of Tilly's husband Frank,
23:05
Speaker 1: who fell sick after eating Tillie's cooking, but Bessie recovered. Children,
23:10
Speaker 1: primarily relatives, were also on Tillie's hit list. At least
23:14
Speaker 1: four children in Tillie's sphere were poisoned between nineteen seventeen.
23:18
Speaker 1: Nineteen eighteen, Dorthy Spara died at age two. Twins Sophie
23:22
Speaker 1: and Ben Strummer also died. John Strummer was the only
23:26
Speaker 1: one to recover Lillian's Strummer, who was in her early teens,
23:29
Speaker 1: lived at Tillie's home for a year when she became
23:31
Speaker 1: deathly ill from the food and suffered heart trouble. So
23:35
Speaker 1: skip ahead just a few years to March ninety three
23:39
Speaker 1: and a man named Myers goes missing. Suspicious. Uh, maybe
23:44
Speaker 1: he might have been one of Tilly's husband's, but he
23:47
Speaker 1: was more likely just a boyfriend. Records from this time,
23:50
Speaker 1: as we've mentioned, not always robust, and a lot of
23:53
Speaker 1: times people would just claim to be spouses without going
23:55
Speaker 1: through the paperwork, kind of like common law, but more
23:58
Speaker 1: like they were just like, well, we lived together, and
23:59
Speaker 1: we live as a married couple. Either way, the risk
24:03
Speaker 1: of dying was obviously considerably high for any of Tilly's paramours,
24:08
Speaker 1: legally wed or not. I don't think she cared about
24:10
Speaker 1: the paperwork, just just the life insurance. At her trial,
24:15
Speaker 1: Tillie wore the black hat that she had made when
24:17
Speaker 1: her third husband, Frank, had been on his deathbed. She
24:19
Speaker 1: had also warned to his funeral as she had planned. Historically,
24:24
Speaker 1: in Chicago in the early twentieth century, women who were
24:27
Speaker 1: brought to trial for murder, which was usually murder of
24:30
Speaker 1: their husbands, were almost always acquitted. If a woman was
24:35
Speaker 1: unlucky enough to be convicted, she was generally going to
24:39
Speaker 1: be given an amazingly light sentence in comparison to men
24:43
Speaker 1: who had stood trial for murder, and it really helped
24:46
Speaker 1: your case. If you were very feminine, weeping a bit
24:50
Speaker 1: and flirting would always help. In the years leading up
24:53
Speaker 1: to Tillie's trial, twenty eight women had been charged with
24:55
Speaker 1: murder in Cook County, where Chicago is located. Twenty four
24:59
Speaker 1: were acquitted. It is probably no coincidence that all twenty
25:02
Speaker 1: four of those women were considered conventionally attractive. Up the
25:07
Speaker 1: only four were found guilty Hilda Axeland, who was not
25:11
Speaker 1: considered a beauty Vera Trepagnier who was middle aged, Emma Simpson,
25:16
Speaker 1: who was determined to be insane, and Dora Waterman, who
25:19
Speaker 1: also was not known for her looks. On the other hand,
25:22
Speaker 1: the well dressed, well groomed Cora or Queen, who shot
25:25
Speaker 1: her boyfriend over his cheating walked free. Tilly, though, did
25:29
Speaker 1: not have these advantages. She was nothing like skylish Belva
25:33
Speaker 1: Gartner and beautiful Beulah Annam, the killers who inspired the
25:37
Speaker 1: play Chicago. According to Genevieve Forbes, a crime reporter who
25:42
Speaker 1: covered the trial for the Chicago Tribune, Tilly was neither
25:45
Speaker 1: beautiful nor charming. She was described as a middle aged
25:48
Speaker 1: woman forty five who was squat quote unquote, with a
25:51
Speaker 1: greasy complexion and a lumpy figure. Her dull brown hair
25:56
Speaker 1: was pulled back into a nod at the back of
25:58
Speaker 1: her head. Despite having lived in Chicago since she was
26:01
Speaker 1: just a little kid. She spoke only broken English, and
26:03
Speaker 1: it was recorded that she growled, I shudder to think
26:08
Speaker 1: what Genevieve for um. During the proceedings, prosecutors read a
26:14
Speaker 1: list of twenty alleged victims of Tilly, pausing after each
26:18
Speaker 1: name to ask her did you kill this person? And
26:21
Speaker 1: each time she would reportedly shrug, responding to each of
26:25
Speaker 1: the simple yeah, I wish I could have been in
26:28
Speaker 1: this trial. The trial Jedge asked for something called a
26:31
Speaker 1: psychopathic lab report. According to the examining doctor, Tilly was
26:35
Speaker 1: a quote subnormal mentality with an intellect and I quote again,
26:39
Speaker 1: no higher than that of an eleven year old child.
26:42
Speaker 1: As we just mentioned, she didn't really speak English especially well,
26:45
Speaker 1: so let's take these results with a grain of salt.
26:47
Speaker 1: And it was reported she was afflicted with dementia precox,
26:50
Speaker 1: a diagnosis today that would be schizophrenia. She was also
26:54
Speaker 1: described as a rattlesnake, as a heartless woman, and due
26:59
Speaker 1: to the murder's around her, she got the nickname we
27:01
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, Black Widow. Hi, it's Laverne Cox. And on
27:07
Speaker 1: my podcast, The Laverne Cox Show, we're ripping the band
27:10
Speaker 1: aid off. Trauma, resilience dating, diet culture dating, white supremacy dating. Okay,
27:16
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27:19
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27:23
Speaker 1: And honey, we have a lot of fun along the way.
27:28
Speaker 1: You have a lot of lesbian fans who love your
27:30
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27:35
Speaker 1: want us to talk openly about the difficult things we
27:37
Speaker 1: all face as humans and as humans in America. Racist
27:41
Speaker 1: white people in the United States will sign their own
27:44
Speaker 1: death certificates. They will vote for policies that crush them.
27:49
Speaker 1: No safety nets, no health care because they feel too
27:52
Speaker 1: much like entitlements. And those are folks of color, right.
27:55
Speaker 1: Listen to the Laverne Cox Show in the I Heart
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29:56
Speaker 1: I Heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get
29:59
Speaker 1: your podcasts. Because of the evidence beyond the single murder,
30:03
Speaker 1: investigators obtained permission to exhume the corpses of Chili's dead
30:07
Speaker 1: husbands for arsenic toxicity testing. Newspaper headlines covering the trial
30:11
Speaker 1: featured headlines like three more bodies to be exhumed in
30:14
Speaker 1: clinic case, and bodies of other relatives will be exhumed.
30:18
Speaker 1: All those cousins, all those cousins, all, yeah, the children
30:23
Speaker 1: and dogs thing. I just obviously killing anybody is bad,
30:27
Speaker 1: but uh. Tilly, though, stuck to a story that Frank
30:31
Speaker 1: had died of alcohol poisoning and that she had absolutely
30:35
Speaker 1: not killed her mouses. She said, quote, I loved them,
30:39
Speaker 1: They loved me. They just died, same as other people.
30:42
Speaker 1: She continued, I'm not responsible for that. I could not
30:45
Speaker 1: help if they wanted to die. Contrary to her statement
30:49
Speaker 1: during the trial, the coroner accusingly asserted, quote, there is
30:52
Speaker 1: no question that Mrs Clinic poisoned everyone. She wanted to
30:56
Speaker 1: get out of the way. After the jury deliberated for
30:59
Speaker 1: just an were in twenty minutes, Tilly was found guilty
31:02
Speaker 1: of the murder of her third husband, Frank kop sick
31:05
Speaker 1: In Judge Marcus Kavanaugh sentenced her to life in prison
31:10
Speaker 1: without the possibility of parole. That was the harshest sentence
31:14
Speaker 1: ever given to a woman in Chicago. At that time,
31:17
Speaker 1: for jurors thought she should be given the death penalty.
31:20
Speaker 1: At the time, no woman had ever been sentenced to
31:22
Speaker 1: death in the state of Illinois. Uh The Chicago Tribune
31:25
Speaker 1: reporter Forbes called her gruesomely cruel and went on to
31:29
Speaker 1: say that Tilly is a spectator in her own drama.
31:32
Speaker 1: While on all accounts, Tilly is considered to have been
31:35
Speaker 1: friendly to the other prisoners once she was incarcerated, she
31:39
Speaker 1: definitely did not want to talk about the poisonings. It
31:43
Speaker 1: has said that she would yell, quote, I didn't rob nobody.
31:46
Speaker 1: I didn't shoot nobody. I didn't poison nobody. I didn't
31:50
Speaker 1: everybody picks on me. Everybody makes eyes at me like
31:53
Speaker 1: they're going to eat me. Why do they make eyes
31:55
Speaker 1: like that? I tell the truth. Anything I did, I
31:58
Speaker 1: did to myself, nobody else. She was incarcerated at the
32:03
Speaker 1: Illinois State Penitentiary at Juliet with one stipulation. It said
32:07
Speaker 1: that while Tilly enjoyed the few food served to her
32:09
Speaker 1: in prison, the judge declared that she never be allowed
32:12
Speaker 1: to cook for her fellow inmates. After thirteen years of incarceration,
32:16
Speaker 1: she died on November ninety six, so Tilly clearly does
32:21
Speaker 1: seem to have had a certain detachment and a callousness
32:25
Speaker 1: about the crime she was found guilty of, and that
32:27
Speaker 1: cannot have helped her case. But we also can't disregard
32:30
Speaker 1: another significant influence in the outcome of her trial, which
32:34
Speaker 1: we briefly touched on, that you might hope something like
32:37
Speaker 1: physical appearance wouldn't matter today in the courtroom as it
32:40
Speaker 1: clearly did in Tilly's day. You might surprised to hear
32:43
Speaker 1: that the judge and jury can still be swayed by
32:45
Speaker 1: a pretty face. What we know from study upon study
32:49
Speaker 1: is that most people, even without being conscious of it,
32:51
Speaker 1: consider physically attractive adults to be healthier, more intelligent, and
32:56
Speaker 1: to have better personalities than those who are not consider
33:00
Speaker 1: as esthetically pleasing. In fact, in economics, there's a phenomenon
33:04
Speaker 1: known as the beauty premium, and on the opposite side
33:07
Speaker 1: of the spectrum there's what's called the ugliness penalty um.
33:10
Speaker 1: But that's just not limited to economics, it's just how
33:13
Speaker 1: humans work with each other. In recent years, studies have
33:16
Speaker 1: also found that as humans, we generally consider attractive people
33:19
Speaker 1: in our society to just be better people, whether that's
33:23
Speaker 1: in the workplace, at school, in relationships, or in the
33:27
Speaker 1: courtroom where you would hope and expect to find impartiality.
33:31
Speaker 1: Studies in the last few decades have found that juries
33:34
Speaker 1: tend to be biased in the favor of good looking defendants.
33:37
Speaker 1: This can mean people considered to be attractive or not
33:40
Speaker 1: only found guilty less often, um, but that they also
33:43
Speaker 1: received less severe sentences when they are found guilty. Unattractive
33:48
Speaker 1: however you define it. Defendants, on the other hand, were
33:51
Speaker 1: more likely to be served with longer and harsher sentences
33:54
Speaker 1: and average of twenty two months longer in prison. And
33:57
Speaker 1: that's even today. So while Tilly we could never paint
34:01
Speaker 1: as a good guy in any of this, uh, she
34:07
Speaker 1: definitely still was also a victim of this kind of
34:10
Speaker 1: weird bias that people won't even acknowledge that they have. Right,
34:17
Speaker 1: we feel that we're above it. Now that we're not,
34:19
Speaker 1: we're clearly not know And the thing is, it's one
34:22
Speaker 1: of those things that's insidious, right, like we all have it.
34:25
Speaker 1: We all have these biases. So you can't presume that,
34:28
Speaker 1: in recognizing that they exist, that you have overcome your
34:31
Speaker 1: own because it's hardwired almost in some ways, it's not
34:36
Speaker 1: really hardwired. You can relearn it, but it takes an
34:38
Speaker 1: awful lot of conscious effort, absolutely, and a constant conscious
34:42
Speaker 1: effort probably for the rest of your life. You're always
34:44
Speaker 1: practicing it. Yes, um, but in uh less downer talk, Hey, Maria,
34:55
Speaker 1: it's my favorite time of the show, cocktail hour. Yes, indeed,
34:59
Speaker 1: what's your Poison? Our our time where we'd come up
35:01
Speaker 1: with a little something, something that will relate to the
35:05
Speaker 1: show in a fun way. And since we've been talking
35:08
Speaker 1: about Tilly, and since she was a Polish immigrant, I
35:11
Speaker 1: wanted to do something in honor of her Polish heritage.
35:15
Speaker 1: So I squirreled around on the Internet for a while
35:19
Speaker 1: because I couldn't come up with anything on my own. Um,
35:23
Speaker 1: and I discovered this recipe. It's called a few different things.
35:28
Speaker 1: The name that I enjoy is Polish kiss. And what
35:31
Speaker 1: this is is Zubrowka vodka, which is a bison grass vodka.
35:38
Speaker 1: Did you say bison grass vodka? I did. That's interesting. Yeah,
35:43
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's the grass that bison prefer,
35:46
Speaker 1: like fine bison everywhere. I don't I swear by this grass,
35:50
Speaker 1: just I don't know. It has a blade of grass
35:54
Speaker 1: in the bottle. I also came across this drink called
35:57
Speaker 1: a Frisky bison Ak polish Kiss, so clearly so the
36:08
Speaker 1: polish Kiss is. The version that I found was one
36:12
Speaker 1: point five ounces of this bice and grass vodka and
36:17
Speaker 1: then five ounces of apple juice. And the way it
36:21
Speaker 1: was touted when I read about it was that it
36:23
Speaker 1: tastes just like apple pie. And does it? It does not,
36:31
Speaker 1: at least not the version I made. Now, let me
36:36
Speaker 1: back up the truck for a minute, because I don't
36:38
Speaker 1: want to blame the recipe maker. I but it's delicious,
36:43
Speaker 1: it's just not like apple pie. I think probably if
36:46
Speaker 1: you are making it with normal apple juice from the store,
36:49
Speaker 1: it probably does start to taste like apple pie. But
36:52
Speaker 1: I bought um organic unsweetened hippie apple juice to go
37:01
Speaker 1: with the vodka. So what happened is that it tastes
37:05
Speaker 1: like you have just picked a fresh apple off of
37:08
Speaker 1: a tree and taken a bite of it, because that
37:11
Speaker 1: vodka has that grassy flavor that makes it feel like
37:15
Speaker 1: a fresh plant based item. And it's absolutely beautiful. It's
37:20
Speaker 1: very crisp, sounds delicious, It's like it's a summer day cocktail.
37:24
Speaker 1: For sure. It was very delightful. I could see that
37:28
Speaker 1: she would probably drink that while she was waiting for
37:30
Speaker 1: her husband to die, Like while she was knitting her hat,
37:32
Speaker 1: She's like, Oh, I just don'tthing refreshing to drink while
37:36
Speaker 1: I will say this, I will say this, that cocktail
37:39
Speaker 1: vibes to me a little too fancy for her. I
37:41
Speaker 1: picture her as like a bear drink. It does seem
37:43
Speaker 1: a little fancy. And remember Chicago in the twenties, probably
37:46
Speaker 1: not like I want fancy imported vodka. I doubt I
37:50
Speaker 1: would like the imported bison grass vodka from my homeland.
37:54
Speaker 1: Probably didn't come up much, I guess, but I guess now.
37:58
Speaker 1: But that is this week's What's Your Poison? Uh And
38:03
Speaker 1: thank you for joining us again on Criminalia. If you
38:05
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