Latest / Stuff Mom Never Told You / SMNTY Classics: Female Serial Killers, Part 1

Transcript

SMNTY Classics: Female Serial Killers, Part 1 · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. Welcome to stuff I've
0:08
Speaker 1: never told to your production of I Heart Radio. Okay,
0:19
Speaker 1: I know for some people this is really annoying, but
0:21
Speaker 1: we are moving in to fall and we're moving into
0:24
Speaker 1: our Halloween s content season. We've been waiting for this
0:31
Speaker 1: all year we have, and we've definitely already planned out
0:35
Speaker 1: episodes two months ago. Absolutely, there's gonna be some fiction
0:40
Speaker 1: we think, Oh my gosh, so exciting. I know. UM.
0:44
Speaker 1: And we just did one on true crime and why
0:46
Speaker 1: women loved true crime, and in that we talked about
0:49
Speaker 1: serial killers briefly and why women in particular might love
0:54
Speaker 1: are romantic size serial killers out of curiosity Because you
0:59
Speaker 1: have more like experience in this world of like true
1:02
Speaker 1: crime than I do. Do you prefer like the fictional
1:07
Speaker 1: take on serial killers or do you prefer like the
1:12
Speaker 1: movies that are like, I don't know, like Zodiac where
1:16
Speaker 1: it's based on it but pretty fictionalized, or do you
1:19
Speaker 1: prefer like the true crime UM documentary show. You know,
1:23
Speaker 1: I've actually not watched too many based on true events
1:27
Speaker 1: type of things. So when it comes to movies with
1:29
Speaker 1: like especially right now, as we've noticed, big stars are
1:33
Speaker 1: trying to portray these characters. I don't watch that, and
1:36
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's because, yeah, it weir to
1:38
Speaker 1: me out to see Zach Afron portraying a serial killer
1:43
Speaker 1: from way back when and this level of like, I
1:45
Speaker 1: get it, he like for him, it's a thing about
1:48
Speaker 1: trying to be an actor and all of these things,
1:51
Speaker 1: but for the person who casts him, it is very
1:54
Speaker 1: much a super like Hollywood level of telling the story.
2:00
Speaker 1: And I find that weirds me out a little bit
2:03
Speaker 1: um and that's a whole different conversation. I would rather
2:07
Speaker 1: see conversations about what they found and what they saw,
2:11
Speaker 1: and like documentation and layouts of that. I think that's
2:15
Speaker 1: why I love like Snapped, which is essentially just like
2:19
Speaker 1: a play by play and has interviews with either victims
2:23
Speaker 1: victims families, and that's it, Like, that's kind of what.
2:26
Speaker 1: Of course, they have bad reenactment, and when I say bad,
2:29
Speaker 1: I mean real bad reenactments in them, but at least
2:33
Speaker 1: you get to hear from not only the police, not
2:35
Speaker 1: only the detectives, but the family members who may have
2:39
Speaker 1: been affected by it, so you can hear that level.
2:41
Speaker 1: So that makes me feel a little better to watch
2:44
Speaker 1: it in that realm than a whole completely dramatized version
2:48
Speaker 1: of it, because I also know that that's one of
2:50
Speaker 1: the big things, is the estate of oftentimes the perpetrator
2:55
Speaker 1: to get money. Yeah, it's really gross. Yeah, yeah, I
3:01
Speaker 1: mean that's the consideration. I guess we didn't go too
3:05
Speaker 1: deeply into this in our True Crime one, but the
3:08
Speaker 1: kind of that monetizing of someone else's we talked about
3:12
Speaker 1: it a little bit, but the monetizing of someone else's trauma,
3:15
Speaker 1: and it does feel weird when you're not sure where
3:21
Speaker 1: it's going and who were glorifying. I want to be fair,
3:25
Speaker 1: some of the people who were involved, which were including
3:27
Speaker 1: detectives and lawyers, they monitored, they made money off of it. Two. Yeah, absolutely, well,
3:33
Speaker 1: I feel like in some of the less or less
3:38
Speaker 1: or done is not the right. They're not bad, but
3:41
Speaker 1: sometimes you can tell people who were affected by this
3:44
Speaker 1: are like, oh, I can get money off of it,
3:47
Speaker 1: and sometimes those are family members, right, And it's true.
3:51
Speaker 1: I mean, they're not wrong. It's just odd that we
3:55
Speaker 1: do have this kind of environment of Okay, let's let's
3:59
Speaker 1: make this in to entertainment for people to eat up
4:01
Speaker 1: and discuss. And I always am like trying to remind yourself, yes,
4:04
Speaker 1: there are real people behind this, and they did go
4:08
Speaker 1: through something really traumatic. I once watched Zodiac on an
4:16
Speaker 1: airplane and I foolishly thought it wouldn't be that violent
4:22
Speaker 1: or graphic, and there was a kid sitting next to me,
4:25
Speaker 1: and I remember having this moment of like, should I
4:29
Speaker 1: turn this off? Like these people are getting murdered and
4:34
Speaker 1: there's like an eight year old child. Oh no, But
4:40
Speaker 1: I mean, isn't that strange? Like can you watch it
4:42
Speaker 1: on a plane? Um, just something to have on in
4:46
Speaker 1: the background, right, Yeah, yeah, I do find it hard.
4:51
Speaker 1: I think even fictionalized cases. I say that as if
4:57
Speaker 1: that's somehow better. It's not necessarily, but I even then
5:00
Speaker 1: because I feel like I have a hard line of
5:02
Speaker 1: I can watch horror. I love horror, but I can
5:05
Speaker 1: tell myself this didn't really happen, right, And I struggle
5:08
Speaker 1: with things where I'm like, oh god, I mean, yeah,
5:12
Speaker 1: you're not wrong, because I don't typically watch movies, full
5:15
Speaker 1: fledged movies with Hollywood actors and like high revenue or
5:20
Speaker 1: how high cost productions because and this may be a
5:24
Speaker 1: prime example. Um, so, once upon a time in Hollywood
5:27
Speaker 1: they depicted things that actually happened. And that's just a
5:31
Speaker 1: whole new level of like what just having like it
5:34
Speaker 1: being retold to you and you kind of not necessarily
5:37
Speaker 1: even like I can't get into anything that tells me
5:40
Speaker 1: too many details, like why would you want to read that?
5:43
Speaker 1: You don't, I don't need to read that. I just
5:44
Speaker 1: don't want to know. Gloss it over, tell me what happens,
5:47
Speaker 1: move on. But to have a full fledged re enactment
5:51
Speaker 1: of the violent events to me seems like in such
5:54
Speaker 1: poor taste. And they glorified this and a lot and
5:58
Speaker 1: maybe they maybe some of these movies didn't do it,
6:01
Speaker 1: but I know that the Sharon Tate Martyr was kind
6:04
Speaker 1: of re enacted and once upon a time in Hollywood.
6:08
Speaker 1: Of course, there's other things wrong with that movie, and
6:11
Speaker 1: racism and sexism and all of that, including but just
6:15
Speaker 1: many of those things, Like it's kind of why would
6:17
Speaker 1: you do that? There was no point to that, but
6:20
Speaker 1: that they do it to get that viewership. Yeah, yeah, well,
6:26
Speaker 1: And I was thinking about that when we were discussing
6:28
Speaker 1: in that episode of like there's that line of like
6:31
Speaker 1: sex sells and violent cells and the people who are
6:33
Speaker 1: now making those TikTok videos. I think it's actually really clever.
6:37
Speaker 1: And if you haven't heard this episode yet, we were
6:40
Speaker 1: just talking about usually women we were making TikTok videos
6:42
Speaker 1: who are also makeup videos. But it's like a really
6:45
Speaker 1: clever combination of combining makeup videos with maybe you would
6:50
Speaker 1: be listening to a podcast in the background, but also
6:52
Speaker 1: giving you like a way to separate yourself out. But
6:56
Speaker 1: there are instances like that where it just feels so clear,
7:00
Speaker 1: or that you're just pretty callously thinking, oh, this will
7:05
Speaker 1: this will sell, or like you take this murder of
7:08
Speaker 1: this woman and this will sell. All of that. We
7:16
Speaker 1: did want to bring back some of our classic episodes
7:20
Speaker 1: that we did on women who are serial killers and
7:26
Speaker 1: our fascination with them, our cultural fascination with them. So
7:30
Speaker 1: please enjoy part one of this two part classic look
7:33
Speaker 1: at women who are serial Killers. Hey, this is Annie
7:41
Speaker 1: and Samantha. I welcome to stuff I never told your
7:43
Speaker 1: protection of I Heart Radio's House networks. Today we are
7:56
Speaker 1: tackling a topic that I think a lot of you
8:00
Speaker 1: probably are you familiar with because we were just discussing
8:03
Speaker 1: before we started. There's so many podcasts, so many podcasts
8:07
Speaker 1: dedicated to serial killers. Yes, and even some two female
8:11
Speaker 1: serial killers. UM. And I was so excited when we
8:15
Speaker 1: were talking about, you know, Salween time we need to
8:17
Speaker 1: do things, and I'm like, well, one of the things
8:18
Speaker 1: I'm interested in our female serial killers because I find
8:21
Speaker 1: it fascinating and I love watching things like Snapped, which
8:24
Speaker 1: is not necessarily about serial killers, but why women kill
8:27
Speaker 1: or any of those reasons. And I'm like, it's so
8:29
Speaker 1: different from your typical like BTK or any of that
8:32
Speaker 1: that I kind of I've been doing. So I was like,
8:34
Speaker 1: let's talk about that. I didn't realize how much work
8:36
Speaker 1: that was gonna be. Yeah, this one turned into a
8:39
Speaker 1: two parter. UM should have realized to that if there
8:43
Speaker 1: are entire podcasts where one episode is dedicated to a
8:47
Speaker 1: lot of the killers that we're going to talk about
8:49
Speaker 1: on here, but of course it would be hard to
8:52
Speaker 1: wrangle into one episode, right. I think also was really
8:56
Speaker 1: funny it's um all the YouTube channels not funny, but
8:59
Speaker 1: just how many YouTube channels there are dedicated to investigations,
9:05
Speaker 1: these theories, these reasonings. It's it's it's a whole thing.
9:08
Speaker 1: It is um, it's a whole genre. It is extremely
9:12
Speaker 1: popular among some people. I actually am not people are
9:16
Speaker 1: always kind of shocked because I'm not into true crime. Um,
9:19
Speaker 1: this was a lot of this was very new to me. Um. Well,
9:23
Speaker 1: you know when we sat down and I started telling
9:25
Speaker 1: you about all of them, You're like, well many, there's like,
9:27
Speaker 1: you know, three or four, And I was like, oh no, oh, yeah,
9:32
Speaker 1: there was a lot. I've learned a lot, um And
9:36
Speaker 1: so yeah, where we split this into two episodes. This
9:38
Speaker 1: first part is signed kind of more like a basis
9:41
Speaker 1: what we're talking about, and then history serial killers of
9:45
Speaker 1: lore of history and you know, older ones, and then
9:49
Speaker 1: in part two will look at some more modern serial killers. Yes,
9:55
Speaker 1: I am fascinated because one of the things that I
9:57
Speaker 1: also love is watching things like queminam lines SVU all
10:01
Speaker 1: of those things. Thought the SVU as the right part,
10:03
Speaker 1: but much like any of the other shows, they take
10:07
Speaker 1: what really happened and then make it, you know, even
10:09
Speaker 1: more so crazy and reading all of these I'm like, oh, wow,
10:13
Speaker 1: that's in this episode of the show. Most of the
10:18
Speaker 1: ones I know are the older ones because something like
10:20
Speaker 1: Supernatural has them as ghosts, right, right, but both Yeah,
10:24
Speaker 1: I was kind of shocked at how Um I sort
10:27
Speaker 1: of missed a lot of this and I was trying
10:30
Speaker 1: to think about because there was rumors of a serial
10:32
Speaker 1: killer where I grew up. I don't know if it's
10:35
Speaker 1: a serial killer, but there was a person who was
10:37
Speaker 1: killing young women, and I remember that fear of you know,
10:40
Speaker 1: suddenly going somewhere alone was like, you can't do it
10:44
Speaker 1: having accur few Uh he I don't know, I don't.
10:49
Speaker 1: I think he was caught fairly quickly. Um. And that's
10:53
Speaker 1: something else before we get into this trigger warning for violence,
10:56
Speaker 1: sexual assault, and acrophilia general grizzly this. Um. Yeah, I
11:03
Speaker 1: was just thinking when that happened, When that serial killer
11:06
Speaker 1: thing was happening, one of my friends UM went missing.
11:11
Speaker 1: She was was totally fine, she just didn't communicate well
11:14
Speaker 1: with anyone where she was going. So everyone thought she
11:17
Speaker 1: was somewhere else and she was none of those places.
11:19
Speaker 1: But for like a couple of hours, we we thought
11:22
Speaker 1: like maybe she had been uh the victim, because her
11:27
Speaker 1: parents like called in a panic and like where and
11:30
Speaker 1: I threw up from like nerves. Um. So I just
11:33
Speaker 1: like an understanding as we go through this that these
11:36
Speaker 1: are real people, real victims. Some of them, I imagine,
11:40
Speaker 1: like every year and an anniversary or something gets they
11:42
Speaker 1: get contacted by reporters. UM. So just something to keep
11:47
Speaker 1: in mind, right, UM. And I think a lot of
11:49
Speaker 1: the things that you're not The reason I had said
11:51
Speaker 1: before that I'm fascinated by them is because, um, of
11:55
Speaker 1: the backstory and of the reasoning is. And I don't
11:57
Speaker 1: know why. I'm very caught up in that of fortunate.
11:59
Speaker 1: I think that's like my social work and my education,
12:02
Speaker 1: and also that I work with you who get into trouble,
12:06
Speaker 1: and not that they're going to come out of serial
12:08
Speaker 1: colors or anything, but you see the beginnings of Oh,
12:11
Speaker 1: these are the foundations of why things may have happened
12:14
Speaker 1: or gone down this road. And again, not to excuse
12:17
Speaker 1: anything in anyone, but it's really kind of fascinating to
12:20
Speaker 1: have a whole history and look at that individual. Yeah,
12:23
Speaker 1: and you are certainly not the only one who has fascination. UM.
12:28
Speaker 1: So let's start with a definition from the Federal Bureau
12:32
Speaker 1: of Investigation. Serial killer is a series or of two
12:36
Speaker 1: or more murders committed as separate events, usually but not always,
12:39
Speaker 1: by one offender acting alone. UM. The murders typically take
12:42
Speaker 1: place over several months to allow for a cooling off period,
12:46
Speaker 1: usually an emotional period. UM. And this is what separates
12:49
Speaker 1: it from like a mass murder um. But this definition
12:54
Speaker 1: is not without its flaws, and you, like me, may
12:56
Speaker 1: be shocked to learn that it's kind of hard to
12:58
Speaker 1: come on and except that generally accepted definition, actually gang
13:02
Speaker 1: members in theory could meet that criteria. For example, serial
13:06
Speaker 1: killers frequently but not always, have a sexually deviant motive,
13:10
Speaker 1: but this is not usually true for female serial killers. Yep.
13:16
Speaker 1: More on that in a moment. The National Institute of
13:18
Speaker 1: Justice includes that in their definition, their definition being two
13:21
Speaker 1: or more murders with a psychological motive and a sexually
13:24
Speaker 1: deviant overtone. In that way, it could be classified as
13:28
Speaker 1: a sex crime. But again, not all serio killers, especially
13:31
Speaker 1: female ones, have displayed sexually deviant behavior. That Zodiac killer
13:35
Speaker 1: is a famous example of a male serial killer who's
13:38
Speaker 1: not sexually motivated. And side note, When I was in
13:42
Speaker 1: ninth grade and we were for some reason, we all
13:44
Speaker 1: took this test in class because we were reading Dante's Inferno,
13:47
Speaker 1: and we took this quiz about which serio killer you
13:50
Speaker 1: would be, and I got the Zodiac. I have so
13:53
Speaker 1: many questions, but not so much about why you would be,
13:57
Speaker 1: but why why were y'all thinking I don't know, and
14:02
Speaker 1: it was there were like for people who got someone
14:05
Speaker 1: might say Jack the Ripper there, we would kind of
14:07
Speaker 1: look at them askew because I felt like the zodiac
14:10
Speaker 1: was a bit of a like they say, are you
14:14
Speaker 1: sure it wasn't the FBI testing group of people just
14:17
Speaker 1: just to check and be like, oh, we're gonna go
14:19
Speaker 1: ahead and flag them. Oh no, I hope not saying okay. So,
14:24
Speaker 1: women of females of serial killers are often motivated by
14:27
Speaker 1: financial reasons, altruism, sympathy, our love and if you're like,
14:32
Speaker 1: how that hell can that be? Killing people for altruism? Um?
14:37
Speaker 1: We do have a lot of examples of that in
14:40
Speaker 1: in these episodes, and it could be something like killing
14:43
Speaker 1: a baby who in the killer's mind has no future. Um. So,
14:49
Speaker 1: although I imagine it's simple enough to remember a time
14:52
Speaker 1: in your life when you in passing, I thought about
14:55
Speaker 1: killing someone or hurting someone because they had done you wrong,
14:59
Speaker 1: or they've done someone you love wrong, but you didn't
15:02
Speaker 1: do it, but you had the thought. It's kind of
15:04
Speaker 1: like I just recently read I think it was a
15:07
Speaker 1: tweet that said if you haven't at least thought about
15:10
Speaker 1: killing your significant other at least once you didn't truly
15:13
Speaker 1: love them that was the one. And then also and like,
15:16
Speaker 1: so I married an ax murderer. Love that movie? Have
15:18
Speaker 1: you seen this movie? Okay? Uh, it's Mike Myers, one
15:23
Speaker 1: of his first movies. He's in bed with his wife
15:26
Speaker 1: at that point, and she was like, it's so intimated.
15:29
Speaker 1: We're so close that I could just kill you at
15:30
Speaker 1: any moment. Like he freaks out because obviously at the beginning,
15:32
Speaker 1: the whole synopsis of the movie is that is she
15:35
Speaker 1: a killer or whatever? But yeah, but I thought it
15:37
Speaker 1: was really kind of funny. I'm like, oh, yeah, you
15:40
Speaker 1: can trust you have to really trust that you're not
15:42
Speaker 1: gonna get that other person. Well, you know, that's one
15:48
Speaker 1: thing I was thinking about when I was researching this,
15:50
Speaker 1: because again, this is all pretty new to me. Um
15:55
Speaker 1: because you always here, they seem so normal, will they
15:59
Speaker 1: fit in all those all those things? But for a
16:01
Speaker 1: lot of these cases, maybe the person did seem normal
16:07
Speaker 1: unless you were like the authorities, because a lot of
16:10
Speaker 1: them could have been caught like way earlier. And that
16:13
Speaker 1: surprised me because I always heard that kind of trope
16:16
Speaker 1: like oh they're so no. I never ready guess and
16:19
Speaker 1: that's still there. But a lot of them had run
16:22
Speaker 1: ins with the law, like got arrested for something very
16:26
Speaker 1: similar we're called in like social services was called in.
16:30
Speaker 1: That kind of blew my mind. Well, some I think
16:33
Speaker 1: that there's not or there shouldn't be a strict definition,
16:36
Speaker 1: but rather a prototype and varying degrees to fitting that prototype. Yeah. Yeah,
16:42
Speaker 1: sear Killings are about as old as humanity is, our
16:45
Speaker 1: dark shadow haunting all corners of the world where people reside.
16:48
Speaker 1: I did read something I wasn't able to verify it,
16:50
Speaker 1: but I did read that there are more serial killers
16:52
Speaker 1: in the United States. They are relatively rare, though, making
16:55
Speaker 1: up less than one percent of murders annually. And on
16:58
Speaker 1: top of that, only of that one percent are female
17:03
Speaker 1: or estimated b female, So that's about one in six
17:05
Speaker 1: zerio killers as female. Despite or maybe because of the
17:10
Speaker 1: small percentage, we humans have a morbid fascination with zero killers.
17:14
Speaker 1: This is from an official FBI report on serial killers. Quote.
17:17
Speaker 1: There's a macabre interest in the subject, in the topic
17:20
Speaker 1: that far exceeds its scope and has generated countless articles, books,
17:23
Speaker 1: and movies. This broad based public fascination began in the
17:26
Speaker 1: late eighteen eighties after series of unsolved prostitute murders occurred
17:30
Speaker 1: in the White Chapel area of London. These murders were
17:33
Speaker 1: committed by an unknown individual who named himself Jack the
17:36
Speaker 1: Ripper and sent letters to the police claiming to be
17:39
Speaker 1: the killer. The report even cites silence of the Lambs
17:43
Speaker 1: as kickstarting our kind of cultural interests and serial killers
17:46
Speaker 1: are like re kick starting it, and goes out on
17:49
Speaker 1: to point out that the media's betrayal of serial killers
17:52
Speaker 1: causes confusion about what is a serial killer, what constitutes
17:56
Speaker 1: a serial killer, and the FBI. And in this report
17:59
Speaker 1: they go through some of the resulting pervasive myths point
18:03
Speaker 1: by point. So big one is um. Not all serial
18:06
Speaker 1: killers are loners. A lot of them have families and
18:09
Speaker 1: or are very active in their community. Not all serial
18:12
Speaker 1: killers are white males. A lot of them are, but
18:14
Speaker 1: not of them. Not all serial killers are sexually motivated.
18:18
Speaker 1: Not all serial killers that travel by interstates. Serial killers
18:22
Speaker 1: can stop killing, the myth being that they can't stop,
18:25
Speaker 1: but they can. Um. Serial killers are either insane our
18:29
Speaker 1: evil geniuses. Actually they usually have average i Q. They're
18:33
Speaker 1: not one of those things, which is what we typically
18:35
Speaker 1: see in the media right. So a long held myth
18:38
Speaker 1: has been that women can't be serial killers. Even seasoned
18:42
Speaker 1: FBI agents and detectives have made that claim fairly recently,
18:45
Speaker 1: and the evolutionary psychologists at Penn State Harrisburg, Marissa Harrison pausitive.
18:49
Speaker 1: We don't want to believe, or just plane don't believe,
18:52
Speaker 1: that women are capable of such horrendous things, but history
18:55
Speaker 1: has shown us that women can be serial colors. This
18:58
Speaker 1: disconnect means that women get away with their crimes for
19:00
Speaker 1: twice as long on an average as men. Harrison conducted
19:04
Speaker 1: a study on sixty four American female serial killers who
19:07
Speaker 1: were active between eight to two eight. She looked at
19:10
Speaker 1: their demographics and found that, on an average in their
19:13
Speaker 1: twenties or thirties and average intelligence, a Christian, middle class
19:17
Speaker 1: and married, the total body count for these women are
19:20
Speaker 1: three and thirty one people, which is pretty impressive. More
19:25
Speaker 1: than half of those victims were children, and about a
19:27
Speaker 1: fourth war the elderly or already ill. Harrison's analysis also
19:32
Speaker 1: found female serial killers were more likely to kill someone
19:34
Speaker 1: they knew like nine of the time, as opposed to
19:37
Speaker 1: the strangers often targeted by male serial killers eight five percent.
19:40
Speaker 1: Of the time, men hunt, women gather to oversimplify, and
19:44
Speaker 1: then female killers more frequently used poison as their method
19:48
Speaker 1: of choice and were often employed in caregiving field. Many
19:51
Speaker 1: had suffered physical and or sexual abuse, and probably were
19:55
Speaker 1: white women. So that means I'm safe. Yeah, right, No,
19:59
Speaker 1: I might not kill you. I don't know of the
20:02
Speaker 1: two of us. I don't know what more likely to
20:04
Speaker 1: be the zero. It's going to what movie you watch?
20:07
Speaker 1: I guess. And even in the media, nicknames from women
20:10
Speaker 1: are gendered, whereas the media nicknames from men generally are
20:12
Speaker 1: more indicative of the brutality of their crimes. Right, and yeah,
20:17
Speaker 1: we have plenty of horrific examples of female zero killers
20:21
Speaker 1: throughout history, and we'll get into some of them after
20:25
Speaker 1: a quick break for word from our sponsor, and we're back,
20:40
Speaker 1: Thank you, sponsoring disclaimer. We're back with a disclaimer. Everyone
20:44
Speaker 1: loves us. Before we get started. A lot of these stories,
20:48
Speaker 1: especially the older ones, which are the ones we're tackling
20:51
Speaker 1: in this one, have perhaps been exaggerated sensationalized over the years,
20:57
Speaker 1: or we're actually I found this interesting stories of men
21:02
Speaker 1: lying about women to get them out of power. Um
21:06
Speaker 1: our fascination with serial killers only exacerbates our tendency to exaggerate.
21:10
Speaker 1: And uh, there are a lot of bad resources out there,
21:15
Speaker 1: a lot of misinformation, so we we did our best
21:19
Speaker 1: to get the good stuff. But I want to say
21:21
Speaker 1: that the top and you guys also remember you're gonna
21:24
Speaker 1: you'll probably be familiar with some of these stories as well,
21:27
Speaker 1: and that's because it's been against sensational lies or dramatized
21:30
Speaker 1: just for entertainment sake. So it's kind of like, oh no,
21:33
Speaker 1: how do we get through all of these right? Um?
21:38
Speaker 1: And I also want to say, this is it? I
21:40
Speaker 1: guess so much? Oh no, maybe it is. Um. I
21:44
Speaker 1: was gonna say that this didn't happen as much in
21:46
Speaker 1: these older examples, but I think it did. A lot
21:49
Speaker 1: of these sources that we found always when their way
21:52
Speaker 1: to say this person wasn't attractive, how in the world
21:55
Speaker 1: could they have had a boyfriend, a husband or lover whatever,
21:59
Speaker 1: Or that they were too pretty to be killers? So
22:02
Speaker 1: that's gross. It's still all about looks like you're not
22:07
Speaker 1: pretty enough to kill? You're too pretty. I I read
22:11
Speaker 1: in multiple places, particularly about one example we're going to
22:16
Speaker 1: talk about, that she people thought she was too ugly
22:19
Speaker 1: to have because she was like having sex with men
22:21
Speaker 1: and then killing them and they're like, no way, right,
22:24
Speaker 1: that's okay, all right. Um So, some historians posit the
22:30
Speaker 1: first recorded serial killer was actually female Locusta, the Poisoner
22:35
Speaker 1: or Locusta of Gaul, who murdered and assassinated people, particularly
22:38
Speaker 1: with poison, as the nickname might suggest, over two thousand
22:41
Speaker 1: years ago in ancient Rome. Others argue that she wasn't
22:45
Speaker 1: really a serial killer, but she was more of a
22:47
Speaker 1: highered assassin. But let's let's talk about her for a second.
22:51
Speaker 1: Um Nero's mother, Agrippina the Younger, employed her Locusta as
22:56
Speaker 1: an assassin for higher Legend goes that she was assigned
22:59
Speaker 1: to the poisoning of Agrippina's husband, Emperor Claudius, and members
23:04
Speaker 1: of the imperial family so as to make a path
23:06
Speaker 1: for Nero to rise up the ranks. Locusta was arrested
23:11
Speaker 1: for her role in Emperor Claudius's death, but Nero overturned
23:14
Speaker 1: her death sentence uh and got her out of jail
23:17
Speaker 1: and appointed her as the official poisoner of the Imperial
23:21
Speaker 1: Roman Court. The official poisoner, Yeah, to do what she loves.
23:28
Speaker 1: She did, and she also opened a school to teach
23:32
Speaker 1: others the art and science of poison. The knowledge she
23:36
Speaker 1: passed on may have led to over ten thousand deaths.
23:39
Speaker 1: With Nero's blessing, she experimented on animals, criminals, and slaves.
23:45
Speaker 1: The Storians suspect she also murdered and molested children, using
23:48
Speaker 1: their blood for alchemy. She was described as possessing Titanic cruelty.
23:55
Speaker 1: She was publicly executed in sixty nine after Nero killed
23:58
Speaker 1: himself with one of her poisoned aggers um and the
24:01
Speaker 1: new emperor condemned her to death. A widely popular, but
24:05
Speaker 1: most likely undrue story is that she was raped to
24:09
Speaker 1: death by a specially trained giraffe and then torn apart
24:13
Speaker 1: and devoured by wild animals while an enormous crowd looked on.
24:17
Speaker 1: That is what If you type in her name, will
24:20
Speaker 1: come up a giraffe. So warning about that one. I've
24:23
Speaker 1: never heard of. No use of giraffe as neither an
24:28
Speaker 1: execution tool. I have not either. That's why I have
24:31
Speaker 1: my doubts. But ancient Rome was up to some not
24:36
Speaker 1: so great stuff. One of history's most infamous and notorious
24:40
Speaker 1: female serial killers is Elizabeth Bathory, the Hungarian Countess that
24:43
Speaker 1: is believed to have tortured and killed upwards of six
24:45
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty teenaged female peasants between fifty five and
24:50
Speaker 1: sixteen ten. And this is one of the ones that
24:52
Speaker 1: you and I was talking about, one of the big
24:53
Speaker 1: examples um. That number has never been verified, and was
24:58
Speaker 1: a number an eyewitness report is being in a diary,
25:01
Speaker 1: But then that diary has never been found. So who knows.
25:04
Speaker 1: Her family owned Transylvania, and they were an interesting bunch
25:07
Speaker 1: of people, they were. One of her uncles introduced her
25:10
Speaker 1: to Satanism at a very young age, and an aunt
25:12
Speaker 1: did the same for sado Masochism. So one of one
25:15
Speaker 1: of great family um records indicate that she witnessed the
25:18
Speaker 1: torture of peasants by her father's officer as a child,
25:21
Speaker 1: including one account of a peasant being sewn into a
25:24
Speaker 1: dying horse's stomach and left to die. He must have
25:27
Speaker 1: been really small. I guess you're right. She herself has
25:35
Speaker 1: was prone to fits of rage. By the time she
25:37
Speaker 1: married Count Dusty, she had begun torturing servant girls, and
25:41
Speaker 1: after the count died, she began kidnapping, torturing and killing them.
25:45
Speaker 1: It was widely believed she ate the flesh and bathed
25:47
Speaker 1: in the blood of her victims in hopes of holding
25:50
Speaker 1: onto her youth. The rumors about her are rampant that
25:54
Speaker 1: she pushed needles under the nails of servant girls, or
25:56
Speaker 1: tie them down, covered them up with honey, and set
25:59
Speaker 1: bees and aunts on them. Her favorite implement of torture
26:02
Speaker 1: was reportedly scissors. Once she was discovered, she was sentenced
26:05
Speaker 1: to live out her days in solitary in her castle,
26:08
Speaker 1: which that must be nice. That's what power gets you, huh,
26:11
Speaker 1: just to get to hang out. But she was actually
26:13
Speaker 1: walled in, and some stories claiming she only had slits
26:16
Speaker 1: for food and water and air, So I guess it
26:19
Speaker 1: had to be pretty dark. After only three years, she
26:21
Speaker 1: died in sixteen fourteen. She was known to some as
26:25
Speaker 1: the blood Countess worth mentioning. Some historians believe that all
26:28
Speaker 1: of this was politically motivated. Slanders spread about her relatives
26:31
Speaker 1: to get ahold of Elizabeth's land and so that King
26:33
Speaker 1: Matthias the Second would not have to pay back a
26:36
Speaker 1: debt that he owed her family. Basically, she was powerful,
26:38
Speaker 1: wealthy woman with strategic land, and so men and power
26:42
Speaker 1: sought to ruin her and take her wealth. Hey Annie, Yes,
26:45
Speaker 1: do you know you can actually visit her castle today? Uh?
26:48
Speaker 1: Well I do. Now, then you can purchase the bathery
26:52
Speaker 1: blood wine. What what kind of grapes they used for that?
26:56
Speaker 1: I think it's a peanout noir, I think so. But yeah,
27:00
Speaker 1: if you look up female serio killers, a lot of
27:02
Speaker 1: times she's listed as one of the most prolific in history,
27:05
Speaker 1: like female or otherwise. But a lot of historians think
27:08
Speaker 1: she this was and it was to lock her in
27:12
Speaker 1: the castle so that she she cou in her power.
27:15
Speaker 1: And yeah, from what I understand, she was kind of
27:17
Speaker 1: the beginning of how Dracula yea, and yeah she was.
27:21
Speaker 1: She's thought to be the inspiration one of the inspirations
27:24
Speaker 1: for Braunze Stoker's Dracula. Eighteenth century Russian noble woman Daria
27:28
Speaker 1: Nikolaevna Saltykova is believed to have killed over one hundred
27:31
Speaker 1: servant girls by beating and torturing them. She was well
27:35
Speaker 1: connected and widowed at the age of twenty six, making
27:37
Speaker 1: her the wealthiest widow in Russia at that time. She
27:41
Speaker 1: had a nice property that she inhabited with two of
27:43
Speaker 1: her sons, and over six hundred serfs. For a while,
27:47
Speaker 1: nothing seemed a miss, and she was somebody well respected.
27:50
Speaker 1: She donated churches and charities, But after a love affair
27:54
Speaker 1: ended with her lover leaving her for another woman, a
27:56
Speaker 1: younger woman, Saltikova apparently started to take her ger out
28:00
Speaker 1: on unfortunate serves, primarily young women. She killed women and children,
28:05
Speaker 1: throwing them out in the cold, pouring boiling water on them,
28:08
Speaker 1: breaking their bones. At first, complaints about her actions were
28:11
Speaker 1: ignored because she was so well off in her victims
28:14
Speaker 1: so poor. But eventually the protest of grieving families grew
28:18
Speaker 1: too loud to ignore, and she was charged with the
28:20
Speaker 1: murder of thirty eight women and then to escaped the
28:25
Speaker 1: estate in seventeen sixty two, and they bought a petition
28:28
Speaker 1: for Empress Catherine the Second, who ordered an investigation. She
28:33
Speaker 1: was found sane and unremorseful. This is Saltikova, uh not
28:38
Speaker 1: first Captain the second um. Saltykova was sentenced to a
28:41
Speaker 1: civil execution at Moscow's Red Square, which consisted of a
28:45
Speaker 1: public beating and then an hour spent with a sign
28:48
Speaker 1: chained around her neck that read, this woman has tortured
28:51
Speaker 1: and murdered. She spent the next several years living in
28:54
Speaker 1: complete darkness and a convent basement only for meals when
28:58
Speaker 1: she granted some light in the form of a candle.
29:01
Speaker 1: She was eventually transferred and died in eighteen oh one
29:04
Speaker 1: after thirty or three years civil execution. Interesting. I guess
29:08
Speaker 1: it's like which I would think just by being convicted. Yeah,
29:15
Speaker 1: but they wanted to have a whole public thing for it.
29:18
Speaker 1: I guess it was like that form of Twitter. Yeah.
29:22
Speaker 1: My friend co worker Lauren often says there was no
29:25
Speaker 1: Netflix back then, so this was their entertainment. In eighteen
29:29
Speaker 1: thirty one, Geisha or Gusha Gottfried was arrested and publicly
29:33
Speaker 1: executed in front of a crowd of thirty five thousand
29:35
Speaker 1: people in Bremen, Germany, the city's last public beheading. The
29:40
Speaker 1: spot is marked with a basalt stone or a spinning stone.
29:43
Speaker 1: Over a fourteen year span, she used arsenic to poison
29:46
Speaker 1: fifteen people, including her parents, her children, her two husbands
29:50
Speaker 1: and friends. So she mean, you know, she's a really
29:53
Speaker 1: great person. Some speculate that she had munch House and syndrome.
29:56
Speaker 1: By proxy. She was well liked before she was found
29:58
Speaker 1: out she was actually known the Angel of Breman. They
30:01
Speaker 1: used her death mascore as any you just explained to
30:04
Speaker 1: me was what, So it's this obsolete pseudoscience that um
30:09
Speaker 1: where they would try to predict mental traits based on
30:12
Speaker 1: the bumps on your skull, among other things. So they
30:14
Speaker 1: used hers to try to predict female, yeah, female patterns.
30:19
Speaker 1: And also just want to mention, because I've never heard
30:21
Speaker 1: of this before, but that spinning stone thing, that's literally
30:24
Speaker 1: a place where local spit that's what it sounded. Yeah,
30:28
Speaker 1: so I'm thinking they used that to think a spit
30:30
Speaker 1: on her blood essentially. Yeah. Yeah, you can visit this stone.
30:34
Speaker 1: It's still there. And I was looking at the tourist
30:36
Speaker 1: thing and it said don't be alarmed if you see
30:39
Speaker 1: locals spitting on the ground at this one spot. It's
30:41
Speaker 1: all spitting stone. So we need to start go ahead
30:44
Speaker 1: and put planning our next jobs to all of these
30:46
Speaker 1: different places. Okay, well we're gonna have to bounce it
30:53
Speaker 1: out because I'll be drinking the wine. Um. But I
30:58
Speaker 1: actually have been to this next place, um, which is
31:01
Speaker 1: Madame Marie Delphine La Laurie's house. So yeah, that's who
31:05
Speaker 1: we're talking about. Many of you may know this one
31:07
Speaker 1: from American horror story or perhaps from a ghost tour
31:10
Speaker 1: you've taken in New Orleans. Madame Laurie was a slave owner,
31:14
Speaker 1: owner of a massive plantation, and a socialite who threw
31:17
Speaker 1: these huge, lavish parties. She married three times. Her first
31:22
Speaker 1: two husbands died. Her third husband was a doctor named
31:25
Speaker 1: Leonard La Laurie. Rumors persisted of Madame La Laurie's cruelty
31:29
Speaker 1: to her slaves, but these rumors remained unsubstantiated. One man,
31:35
Speaker 1: afraid of Madame Laurie's punishments, flung himself from a third
31:38
Speaker 1: story window, a window that remains cemented shut to this day.
31:42
Speaker 1: Another girl, Leah, who was whipped after brushing Laurie's hair
31:46
Speaker 1: too hard um, also jumped from a window or maybe fell.
31:50
Speaker 1: Some people witnessed ltt Laurie bearing her body. So these
31:53
Speaker 1: two instances, there's a lot of lore about Madame La Laurie. Um.
31:58
Speaker 1: These two are the ones that most historians agreed happened,
32:02
Speaker 1: actually happened right um. So Madame La Lauri was fined
32:07
Speaker 1: three dollars for bearing this body um and had to
32:10
Speaker 1: sell off a nine of her slaves, but she just
32:12
Speaker 1: got her family to re buy them and then give
32:15
Speaker 1: them back to her, and the authorities looked the other way.
32:17
Speaker 1: I think they kind of knew that was happening and
32:19
Speaker 1: just really care enough to do anything. In four, a
32:24
Speaker 1: slave of Madame Lulauri's changed the stove set a fire
32:27
Speaker 1: in the hopes of killing herself. When authorities arrived to
32:31
Speaker 1: the scene, they found this elderly enslaved woman chained to
32:34
Speaker 1: the stove, and she had formed them that she had
32:36
Speaker 1: started the fire to end her life because she had
32:38
Speaker 1: been told she would be taken to the attic, and
32:41
Speaker 1: no one returned from the attic. And also there was
32:45
Speaker 1: a lot of neighbors kind of gathering at this point
32:49
Speaker 1: because they had seen Madame lu Laurie collecting like furs
32:53
Speaker 1: and jewelry or items, but not really caring that about her.
32:58
Speaker 1: Slaves were in this house and they were like where
33:00
Speaker 1: are they? Um, So, of course the authorities went into
33:03
Speaker 1: the attic and what they found was horrifying. Slaves were
33:07
Speaker 1: chained with spiked iron collars, clearly tortured, and in many
33:11
Speaker 1: cases their skin had been flayed. Accounts, Oh, there's so
33:14
Speaker 1: many stories. This is one of the things where people
33:16
Speaker 1: aren't really sure because as time went on, they got
33:20
Speaker 1: more and more grotesque account's tale of slaves with limbs missing,
33:24
Speaker 1: still alive, or missing their tongues, mouth stone shut, one
33:29
Speaker 1: slave skull being sawed off with a spoon in his brains.
33:32
Speaker 1: Another reportedly had her legs and arms broken and reset
33:35
Speaker 1: to resemble a crab um. Yet another was wrapped in
33:39
Speaker 1: her own human intestines. Slaves and cages, corpses and body
33:44
Speaker 1: parts littered about a bucket of heads, a woman whose
33:47
Speaker 1: skin had been peeled off in spiral patterns so as
33:50
Speaker 1: to resemble a caterpillar. Some sources claim that there were
33:55
Speaker 1: only a handful of victims. Others claimed that there were
33:57
Speaker 1: over one hundred. And it's really hard to say great
34:00
Speaker 1: rumors and all the things that were sensationalized over time
34:04
Speaker 1: from fact, but yes, the records seemed to indicate for
34:09
Speaker 1: sure there were slaves in the attic, and that they
34:11
Speaker 1: had been tortured and chained with inward facing spiked collars.
34:16
Speaker 1: Outreached by these heinous acts are maybe just the fact
34:19
Speaker 1: that she left her slaves in the attic to burn
34:21
Speaker 1: in a fire um mom before thousand people formed to
34:24
Speaker 1: find Madame Muldaurie. But she was nowhere to be found. Um.
34:28
Speaker 1: The story goes that she escaped with her slave car driver,
34:32
Speaker 1: UM fled to Paris. A plaque in the St. Louis
34:36
Speaker 1: Cemetery asserts that she died in Paris. Um. Some believes
34:40
Speaker 1: she faked her death in Paris and returned to New
34:42
Speaker 1: Orleans to live out her life something she never actually
34:45
Speaker 1: left New Orleans. In New Orleans lore, she is known
34:49
Speaker 1: as the Savage Mistress. So, like all the other names
34:52
Speaker 1: on this list, fascination has led to a lot of
34:55
Speaker 1: dissection and speculation of our story and her motives. Um.
34:58
Speaker 1: Some poset that her husband made been the main culprit,
35:01
Speaker 1: driving her to violence and committing a lot of it
35:03
Speaker 1: himself as the minted medical test. In some tellings, he
35:06
Speaker 1: was experimenting with Haitian voodoo potions and the attempt to
35:09
Speaker 1: make slaves more docile. Others virgins say that the seventeen
35:13
Speaker 1: seventy one murder of Madame LaLaurie's uncle by slaves, along
35:16
Speaker 1: with Haitian slave revolt and her experience during the eighteen
35:19
Speaker 1: eleven slave uprisings in New Orleans, led to a general
35:22
Speaker 1: atmosphere of increased tolerance of violence against slaves, even though
35:26
Speaker 1: Louisiana and theory had one of the only laws in
35:28
Speaker 1: the books to prevent cruelty against the enslaved, and that
35:31
Speaker 1: all of these events had a huge influence of La
35:33
Speaker 1: Loi's behavior. Over one slaves were beheaded as a result
35:38
Speaker 1: of the eighteen eleven uprising, which is a lot. Their
35:42
Speaker 1: heads were put on display and their corpses hung from
35:45
Speaker 1: the city gates. Some historians claimed that unfortunately and disturbingly enough,
35:49
Speaker 1: slave owners were so terrified of their slaves killing them
35:51
Speaker 1: in their sleeves, despite iron collars were not actually unusual,
35:55
Speaker 1: especially in rural parts of Louisiana. However, that kind of
35:58
Speaker 1: brutality was not as common are perceived as acceptable in
36:01
Speaker 1: New Orleans, which is probably why such a large mob
36:03
Speaker 1: formed after discovering what Madame Mulaurie did. When English writer
36:07
Speaker 1: Harriet Martineau arrived to New Orleans at six, details of
36:11
Speaker 1: it became marquis um more embellished, giving birth to the
36:14
Speaker 1: legend of the gory ghost story that is Madame Mlauri. Yeah, yeah,
36:20
Speaker 1: that one. I is one of the ones I am
36:21
Speaker 1: familiar with um And speaking of ghost stories, I have
36:25
Speaker 1: another one I'm familiar with um. But first we're going
36:27
Speaker 1: to take a quick break for a word from our sponsor,
36:43
Speaker 1: and we're back, Thank you sponsor, and we're back with
36:47
Speaker 1: Lizzie Borden. Yes, so there is a kind of rhyme
36:52
Speaker 1: about her. Lizzie Borden took an X gave her mother
36:56
Speaker 1: forty wax. When she saw what she had done, she
36:58
Speaker 1: gave her father forty one. So yeah. In the eighteen nineties,
37:02
Speaker 1: Lizzie Borden allegedly killed her father and stepmother with an ax.
37:06
Speaker 1: Her family was well off and Lizzie was an unmarried
37:09
Speaker 1: thirty two year old Sunday school teacher. One morning, when
37:12
Speaker 1: her father returned home, Lizzie informed him that Mrs Borden,
37:16
Speaker 1: her stepmother, whom she did not get along with, had
37:19
Speaker 1: left the house. He went into the living room to
37:21
Speaker 1: sit on the sofa. The maid was not feeling well
37:24
Speaker 1: and retreated to her room to lie down for a bit.
37:27
Speaker 1: She awoke to Lizzie screaming that her father was dead.
37:30
Speaker 1: His face was horribly bashed in and disconfigured. Sullivan. The
37:35
Speaker 1: maid um ran to get a doctor. Neighbors called the police.
37:39
Speaker 1: Lizzie told the gathering crowd that her family hadn't been
37:41
Speaker 1: feeling well for days, and she suspected poisoned milk. Her
37:45
Speaker 1: story has since become quite exaggerated and the stuff of
37:48
Speaker 1: nightmare legend um, but okay, for when the doctor arrived,
37:54
Speaker 1: the maid went upstairs to check for Mrs Borden and
37:57
Speaker 1: found her dead in a pool of her own blood.
38:00
Speaker 1: The authorities determined that Mrs Borden had been struck nineteen
38:03
Speaker 1: times with the hatchet. Mr Borden eleven times, his nose
38:06
Speaker 1: had been cut off from his face, and one of
38:08
Speaker 1: his eyes sliced in half. When the bodies were later examined,
38:11
Speaker 1: no poison was found in their systems. At first, Lizzie
38:15
Speaker 1: was not a suspect. It wasn't until authorities pursued a
38:17
Speaker 1: lot of leads that turned out to be nothing that
38:19
Speaker 1: they started to suspect Lizzie, basically because she was kind
38:21
Speaker 1: of the only one left um for one. They never
38:24
Speaker 1: found the note that Lizzie claimed Mrs Borden received summoning
38:27
Speaker 1: her out of the house, and Mrs Borden never left
38:30
Speaker 1: in any case. Right um the day prior to the murders,
38:34
Speaker 1: it was discovered that Lizzie attempted to purchase persic acid
38:38
Speaker 1: are cyanide, but was denied since she did not have
38:41
Speaker 1: a prescription for it. A friend of Lizzie's claim to
38:43
Speaker 1: have seen Lizzie burning address a few days after the
38:46
Speaker 1: murders because it was stained and could no longer be warned.
38:49
Speaker 1: That was all the judge needed to charge Lizzie with
38:52
Speaker 1: the murders, and her trial was a media circus. Her
38:56
Speaker 1: lawyer claimed she could not have committed the murders because
38:59
Speaker 1: the closed Lizzi War when the neighbors arrived were clean,
39:01
Speaker 1: and nowadays some people believe that's because she committed the
39:04
Speaker 1: crimes naked. Yeah. Some witnesses claimed to have seen some
39:10
Speaker 1: suspicious characters looking about the Boarding home in the days
39:14
Speaker 1: leading up to the murders. This was enough for Lizzie
39:16
Speaker 1: to be declared not guilty. I did not know that.
39:20
Speaker 1: I thought she had been declared guilty. Um. She and
39:23
Speaker 1: her sister inherited their father's estate and they bought a
39:26
Speaker 1: nice house. Lizzie died in ninety seven. Theories abound to
39:31
Speaker 1: this day about who killed the board and some say
39:33
Speaker 1: it was the work of Mr Barden's illegitimate son and
39:36
Speaker 1: the Boarding sisters covered it up, or that they worked together,
39:39
Speaker 1: or that Lizzie killed them all on her own but
39:41
Speaker 1: with the blessing of her sister and this brother. Some
39:45
Speaker 1: believe Lizzie and the maid were having an affair and
39:47
Speaker 1: carried out the crime together. Her story has been turned
39:50
Speaker 1: into movies, TV shows, books, and the house where the
39:53
Speaker 1: murders happened is now a museum tourists flocked to every year.
39:56
Speaker 1: This is growing, Corless is growing. Oh well, Okay, I
40:02
Speaker 1: like I go on the haunted, haunted doors. I'm not
40:05
Speaker 1: gonna lie, right, And that's also why I know a
40:10
Speaker 1: little bit, because I also would watch all of these
40:13
Speaker 1: characters come back to haunt something. Right. So. In the
40:16
Speaker 1: Victorian England, Amilia day Are, also known as the Redding
40:19
Speaker 1: baby Farmer, is believed to have killed possibly hundreds of children.
40:23
Speaker 1: She turned to murder as a way to support her
40:25
Speaker 1: daughter after her husband died. She started baby farming, essentially
40:29
Speaker 1: taking infants into her home and being paid to care
40:31
Speaker 1: for and wet nurse them. During this time period, this
40:34
Speaker 1: was an option for women pregnant with an illegitimate child.
40:37
Speaker 1: They could pay a fee and give birth to add
40:39
Speaker 1: a baby farm and pay the farm to care for
40:41
Speaker 1: them and arrange an adoption instead of caring for these babies.
40:44
Speaker 1: So Dia took the money and strangled them either or
40:47
Speaker 1: starved them or gave them a concoction laced with opious
40:50
Speaker 1: called Mother's Friend. Huh, that's nice title. She did this
40:54
Speaker 1: for thirty years before she was caught and executed by hanging,
40:57
Speaker 1: which is why the estimate of victims is in the hundreds.
41:00
Speaker 1: She'd been caught previously foot killing babies, but released after
41:03
Speaker 1: being charged with neglect. See this is one of the
41:05
Speaker 1: examples where I was like, huh, but I also read
41:08
Speaker 1: a lot of things saying disturbingly enough again that was
41:12
Speaker 1: kind of like for the course, Yeah, okay, very disturbed.
41:20
Speaker 1: At the beginning of the twenty century, Amy Archer Gilligan
41:23
Speaker 1: ran what seemed to be a nursing home in Connecticut.
41:26
Speaker 1: Suspicions arose about Gilligan after several of her patients named
41:29
Speaker 1: her on their life insurance policies before dying, and authorities
41:33
Speaker 1: discovered she'd purchased a lot of arsenic Over a five
41:36
Speaker 1: year period. She poisoned over forty eight people, and she
41:39
Speaker 1: was the inspiration behind a Broadway show and later a
41:41
Speaker 1: movie called Arsenic. An old lace it's good movie, you've
41:45
Speaker 1: seen it. I shouldn't be surprised. I like weird old movies,
41:51
Speaker 1: so I'm really into like black and white and way
41:54
Speaker 1: back when musicals too. So okay, all right. Victorian American
41:58
Speaker 1: Bell Gunnis began her killing spree in Indiana by murdering
42:01
Speaker 1: her husband the day of two overlapping life insurance policies.
42:06
Speaker 1: She then drew men and with newspaper as describing herself
42:09
Speaker 1: as a comely widow. And they also said triflers need
42:13
Speaker 1: not apply um so i as to kill them after
42:16
Speaker 1: marriage or taking out well, definitely after taking out a
42:19
Speaker 1: life insurance policy. I guess the marriage wasn't always the case.
42:23
Speaker 1: A week after marrying Peter Gunness, his baby daughter died unexpectedly,
42:28
Speaker 1: and he himself died in an accident not long after.
42:31
Speaker 1: The circumstances were suspicious enough that a coroner investigated, but
42:36
Speaker 1: um Bell was cleared. Her daughter Jenny told a classmate,
42:41
Speaker 1: my mama killed my papa. She hit him with a
42:43
Speaker 1: meat cleaver and he died. Don't tell a soul. Poisoning
42:47
Speaker 1: and bludgeoning was Gunness's m O, and her kill count
42:51
Speaker 1: is estimated to be over forty when she was discovered
42:56
Speaker 1: or kind of the gig was up. I guess she Well,
43:01
Speaker 1: it gets kind of confusing, but some people think she
43:07
Speaker 1: faked her own death by setting a house fire, but
43:10
Speaker 1: not before killing her children and leaving their hacked up
43:12
Speaker 1: bodies in their beds to make it more believable, right,
43:16
Speaker 1: But some people think that Um, the farm hand did it.
43:22
Speaker 1: He set the house on fire, and that's certainly what
43:24
Speaker 1: people thought at this time. Because there was a body
43:29
Speaker 1: found of a female, headless corpse, people assumed to be Gunness.
43:35
Speaker 1: So there was this trial about the farm hand because
43:39
Speaker 1: you know, they discovered eleven bodies in the hogpin, including
43:42
Speaker 1: Gunnis's foster daughter Um, so that that there was this
43:46
Speaker 1: trial about the farm hand. He was generally accepted to
43:51
Speaker 1: be the killer, but he claimed Gunnis did it and
43:55
Speaker 1: that Gunnis framed him. She was compared to Lady Macbeth.
43:59
Speaker 1: Her home was called a horror farm or a death garden,
44:02
Speaker 1: and up to twenty people visited the farm in a
44:04
Speaker 1: single weekend. Kind of during this whole time period because
44:07
Speaker 1: there was so much media coverage of it. Um inventors
44:10
Speaker 1: there so old ice cream popcorn in an item called
44:13
Speaker 1: Gunness stew Yes. UM. Prosecutors in this trial for the
44:19
Speaker 1: farm hand argued that Gunnis had quote engaged in the
44:23
Speaker 1: wholesale slaughter of humanity. UM. When investigators realized that the
44:27
Speaker 1: headless body of the woman they assumed to be Gunnis
44:29
Speaker 1: was in fact not her, a panic spread. Sightings of
44:33
Speaker 1: her were reported everywhere UM. And there has been some
44:37
Speaker 1: semi recent updates to this one because UH. In two
44:42
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, forensic anthropologists UM found this body who
44:46
Speaker 1: they think was Gunnas or maybe not Gonnas, but they
44:49
Speaker 1: tested the DNA and they compared it to sample's Gunnis
44:51
Speaker 1: had left on a postage stamp UM and the results
44:55
Speaker 1: were inconclusive of right. But in ninth thirty one, there
45:01
Speaker 1: was another woman who was awaiting trial for poisoning a
45:05
Speaker 1: man UM named Esther Carlson, and some people suggest that
45:13
Speaker 1: that was Gunness. So yeah, rumors abound about her. She
45:19
Speaker 1: looked a lot like Gunness, and she had a photo
45:22
Speaker 1: of the children that looked like Gunness's children UM and
45:26
Speaker 1: was about the same age, in same emo, same thing poisoning. Yeah,
45:32
Speaker 1: so we may never know. So in you up in
45:35
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties, Dagma Overby's job was taking care of
45:38
Speaker 1: children born outside of wedlock once again, but she instead strangled, drowned,
45:42
Speaker 1: or burned them. She's estimated to have killed up to
45:45
Speaker 1: twenty five children. Allegedly, she was only found out when
45:48
Speaker 1: a woman changed her mind and went back for her
45:50
Speaker 1: baby and over by couldn't tell her the address where
45:53
Speaker 1: she asked where the child would be placed. The case
45:56
Speaker 1: use so much publicity in details were so horrific, her
45:59
Speaker 1: home country of Denmark changed some of their childcare laws.
46:02
Speaker 1: At the time, Denmark did not put our women to death,
46:05
Speaker 1: quote unquote, so they changed it to the No, they
46:10
Speaker 1: just changed the childcare laws. But that's just what they said.
46:12
Speaker 1: They would have put her to death. But yeah, um,
46:17
Speaker 1: so that's is some examples from the past, from like
46:23
Speaker 1: the far back past. Uh. And it brings us to
46:26
Speaker 1: the end of this our part one look at female
46:30
Speaker 1: zero killers. But we do have a part two. Yes,
46:34
Speaker 1: we have a lot more to say, uh and you
46:36
Speaker 1: can you can catch that in the coming days. Well,
46:40
Speaker 1: I I don't know when you're listening to this. It
46:41
Speaker 1: could be any time. But in the meantime, we would
46:45
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. Um if you have thoughts
46:48
Speaker 1: about serio killers. Or why we are so fascinated with them,
46:52
Speaker 1: or if you have more details that we may not
46:54
Speaker 1: know about, or a zero killer we missed. Um. You
46:56
Speaker 1: can email us at Stuff Media, mom Stuff at i
46:59
Speaker 1: heeart Media dot um. You can find us on Twitter
47:01
Speaker 1: at mom Stuff podcast or on Instagram at Stuff I've
47:04
Speaker 1: Never Told You. Thanks as always for a super producer,
47:07
Speaker 1: Andrew Howard. Thank you, Andrew, and thanks to you for
47:10
Speaker 1: listening Stuff I've Never Told You his production of I
47:12
Speaker 1: Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my
47:14
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
47:17
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to favorite shows