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A Nightmare Before Halloween, Part 2
4k Plays3 years ago
…1 campfire…
…1 dark forest…
…31 bone-chilling stories…
…Will YOU survive the night?
This Halloween season, enter the woods for a unique and truly epic podcast experience! Around the campfire Shane Waters will introduce 31 crime podcast hosts, including Coffee and Cases. Each host brings a new, nerve-wracking true story to the circle. It’s an extra special, two part, five-hour, Halloween event, but before hitting play you might want to ask yourself…can you really handle this much murder and mayhem?
So, pull up to the fire and brace yourself for ‘A Nightmare Before Halloween’
…but be warned…
…bad things happen in these woods….
Podcasts are listed here in order of appearance:
In this Part 2 Episode:
- True Crime Island [https://tinyurl.com/y6kk2npj]
- Based on a True Story [https://tinyurl.com/37axzn5z]
- The Asian Madness Podcast [https://tinyurl.com/yckkxbjn]
- Sistas Who Kill [https://linktr.ee/Sistas.Who.Kill.Podcast]
- Hometown History [https://link.chtbl.com/hometownhistory]
- Coffee and Cases [https://linktr.ee/coffeeandcases]
- Military Murder [https://tinyurl.com/yc5fxjyh]
- Dystopian Simulation Radio [https://tinyurl.com/khpw786w]
- Cults, Crimes & Cabernet [https://linktr.ee/cultscrimesandcabernet]
- Morbidology [https://tinyurl.com/mshyvxyt]
- Dark Pountine [https://tinyurl.com/ycydanm9]
- Hillbilly Horror Stories [https://tinyurl.com/567vxrkz]
- True Consequences [https://tinyurl.com/39fpfv3h]
- Gone Cold [https://tinyurl.com/ytzxudt8]
- Crime Stories with Nancy Grace & Crime Online [https://tinyurl.com/3dxp47wf]
- True Crime IRL & True Crime Sleep Stories [https://tinyurl.com/ykzwmnxr]
In the last Part 1 Episode:
- Foul Play: Crime Series [https://link.chtbl.com/foulplay]
- Murder She Told [https://tinyurl.com/55473exk]
- Crime Salad [https://tinyurl.com/4pbtdtpc]
- Crimelines [https://linktr.ee/crimelines]
- Frightful [https://link.chtbl.com/frightful]
- Reverie True Crime [https://linktr.ee/paigeelmore]
- Rotten to the Core [https://link.chtbl.com/Rotten]
- The Trail Went Cold [https://tinyurl.com/2zydj3y]
- Once Upon A Crime [https://www.truecrimepodcast.com]
- Criminology [https://tinyurl.com/yvuu9u8d]
- The Peripheral & Generation Why [https://link.chtbl.com/ThePeripheral]
- Live, Laugh, Larceny [https://linktr.ee/Live.Laugh.Larceny.Podcast]
- The Hidden Staircase [https://link.chtbl.com/TheHiddenStaircase]
- True Crime Cases with Lanie & It's Haunted...What Now? [https://linktr.ee/LanieHobbs]
- Obscura: A True Crime Podcast & Disaster [https://link.chtbl.com/obscura]
Recommended
Transcript
Welcome and Introduction
The Disappearance of Nima Louise Carter
00:00:44
Speaker
Hello, friend. I'm glad to see you weren't too spooked last time, and you've returned to the woods. Here, take your place next to the campfire. It's all ready for you.
00:00:59
Speaker
If you haven't listened to part one of this Halloween episode, I highly recommend that you do. We have 31 stories from 31 different crime podcasts. All the podcasts are listed in order of appearance, along with a link on where you can find them. I am your friend to guide you through the darkness. Shane waters from foul play crime series. Oh, my friend finally just showed up by the way.
00:01:36
Speaker
Maybe now is a good time to introduce you to my friend, Campbell. His accent alone might help ease your fear. Campbell is the host of True Crime Island, and this is the tale of who killed little Nima Louise Carter.
00:01:54
Speaker
So grab a beer and pull up a deck chair. It's Halloween. And it was Halloween night in 1977, Lawton, Oklahoma. At 606 Southwest 23rd place, George and Rose Carter have put their daughter, 19 month old Nima Louise, to bed. George and Rose then retired to their own bedroom to sleep.
00:02:16
Speaker
The quiet of the night was broken by little Nima crying in the other room. George and Rose would let Nima cry it out rather than go in to see her. They didn't want a spoiler, a decision they would regret for the rest of their lives. You see, on this Halloween night there was evil lurking at 6.06 23rd place. In the morning Rose was alarmed as she went to get Nima out of a cot.
00:02:42
Speaker
Neema wasn't there, and a search of the house failed to find her. The Carters didn't lock their back door, a thing a lot of people back in the day didn't do. George and Rose called police, but a search of the area failed to find their daughter.
00:02:56
Speaker
Now there'd been some strange goings on before that Halloween night. The Carter's home had been broken into when photos of Nima had been scattered behind a shed in the backyard. Now this happened just days after their dog had been poisoned.
00:03:13
Speaker
On Wednesday 23rd November, Neema's body would be found on the floor of an abandoned house at 1916 D Avenue, just minutes from the Carter's home. Although she'd been found on the floor of the kitchen, she'd had been in an old refrigerator, suffocated and it looked like someone had entered their house, opened the fridge and her body had fallen out.
00:03:38
Speaker
Police on the scene were shocked at the similarity of an unsolved case from the year before where three and a half year old twin sisters, Tina and Mary Carpicha were found locked in an old fridge in an abandoned house less than a mile from where Neema was found and it was near train tracks.
00:03:58
Speaker
Now Mary suffocated but Tina survived by being able to breathe some air from a worn seal on the door. The twins had disappeared from the Grandma's house on the 8th April 1976 and found on the 10th.
00:04:13
Speaker
They'd both been beaten, bitten, and put in the fridge and left to die. Now these old fridges were before they had magnetic locks, and they were able to be locked by the handle at the front, and this prevented the girls from escaping. But Tina was able to identify her abductor. It was her babysitter, 16-year-old Jacqueline Roboto.
00:04:37
Speaker
Now this was backed up by a girl who heard her screams from the fridge that day and opened the door. It was 11 year old Kathy Ford who asked Tina who did this to her and Tina replies, Jackie Boo.
00:04:52
Speaker
Not only were the two cases similar in that the kids had been left in fridges to die, but Jacqueline Robodeau had previously babysat for the Carters as well. But police in 1976 didn't have any real leads to follow until that Halloween murder of Nima. Now they then interviewed the now 18 year old Robodeau and she of course denied any involvement in either of the crimes and police couldn't get a confession from her.
00:05:21
Speaker
Anyway, Jacqueline Robodeau would eventually be charged in the death of Mary Carpicha and after a mistrial she would eventually be convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to life imprisonment. Now, Tina had testified that Jackie had entered their grandma's living room at 3 North West 28th Street where they were watching the telly on the afternoon of April 8th 1976 and told them to come with her.
00:05:47
Speaker
They walked several blocks to the house where they were told to get into the refrigerator and their Aunt Thomasina would come get them later and take them for ice cream.
00:05:57
Speaker
Now what's also disturbing about this case was that a Mr and Mrs Craig that lived nearby saw Robido walking near the house and she had hold of the two little girls arms by the wrists and they were trying to pull loose. Now Ms Craig said that afterwards they saw Robido walking alone. Now they also said she didn't report this to the police at the time because I guess like other people I didn't want to get involved.
00:06:28
Speaker
Jeez. Jacqueline Robodeau would never be brought to justice for the Halloween murder of Niemakata. Robodeau would die in prison on the 26th of August 2005, age 46. So, to my question at the start, who killed Niemakata? Well, I think we can safely say Jacqueline Robodeau did it, and she probably broke into the house and threw Niemakata's photos behind the shed, and I reckon she poisoned the doll as well.
00:06:57
Speaker
Why? Well it looks like the Carter's got a new babysitter and Robiddo was pissed off. Robiddo had spoken to a friend at the local quickie mart after George Carter had told her that they had another babysitter. Now she said, they told me that was my job. Well if that's the
Historical Context of The Crucible and Salem Witch Trials
00:07:16
Speaker
way he wants it, so be it.
00:07:19
Speaker
a jealous rage or a psycho killer. Lucky they finally locked her up so she couldn't kill again. So I've been Campbell Ford from True Crime Island. Have a happy Halloween. Don't forget to lock your doors and make sure you delete your browser history. Good night.
00:07:38
Speaker
The accent helped, right? Based on a true story is hosted by Dan. It's the podcast that compares your favorite Hollywood movies with history. You can take it from here, Dan. One of my favorite movies to watch around Halloween is 1992's The Crucible. That movie is actually based on a play by Arthur Miller. So it's not necessarily trying to tell something directly from history, but nevertheless, it tells the story of the Salem witch trials.
00:08:08
Speaker
So let's take a few minutes to learn more about the true story as we dig into the history behind The Crucible. It's dark. Winona Ryder's character, a girl named Abigail Williams, wakes with a start. There's a girl in the bed with her, and with a little shake, Abigail wakes her up.
00:08:33
Speaker
Quietly, the two girls get out of bed and put pillows in their place. They carefully cover the pillows with blankets so if anyone were to peek in at them, they would think that the two girls were still in bed. Then they sneak downstairs and out the side door. The camera cuts to another house and we see more girls sneaking out of their homes as well. Then an overhead shot shows even more girls as they quietly make their way down the empty dirt streets of the town.
00:08:59
Speaker
If you pause the movie, you can see 12 girls at any one time on the screen. And speaking of pausing, let's pause the movie ourselves for a moment here because it doesn't give any sort of indication of time, date, or location.
00:09:13
Speaker
So before we continue further, let's turn to history to date what we're seeing here and give ourselves a geographical setting. All of this is happening in Salem, Massachusetts on the east coast of the United States. That's about 15 miles or 24 kilometers to the north of Boston. The year is 1692. Salem has been in existence for 66 years and has quickly grown to being one of the most important seaports on the new continent.
00:09:42
Speaker
In 1692, of course, the United States wasn't really a thing yet. So Salem was an English colony. More specifically, it was one of the settlements in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Boston was considered another settlement in that same colony. If we go back to the movie, Abigail and the other girls were on their way into the forest. Once there, a slave named Tituba leads them in some sort of ritual. The girls start swaying back and forth as Tituba chants.
00:10:11
Speaker
One of the girls says, make a spell on Joseph Baker, Tituba. Make him love me. Another one calls out, make Daniel Poole my husband. This whole opening sequence of the love spell ritual in the forest outside of Salem is, well, to be honest, we don't really know if it's true or not, but it's probably not. You see, there's so much about the events surrounding the story that we just don't know. It was 1692, after all, and not everything was documented.
00:10:38
Speaker
With that said, what we do know of the events leading up to the Salem Witch Trials, the evidence suggests that it was not because of a love spell ritual being conducted in secret in the forest like we see in the opening scenes of the movie. One of the sources of documentation that we do know about comes from a man named Reverend John Hale. He wrote a book in 1697. You can find the full text of the book linked over at based on a true story podcast.com slash 143.
00:11:07
Speaker
But here's a quote from his book that gives us an idea for what might have started the whole thing. I fear some young persons through a vain curiosity to know their future condition have tampered with the devil's tools.
00:11:22
Speaker
So far, that here by one door was open to Satan to play those pranks. I knew one of the afflicted persons who, as I was credibly informed, did try with an egg and a glass to find her future husband's calling, till there came up a coffin, that is a spectre in likeness of a coffin.
00:11:43
Speaker
and she was afterward followed with diabolical molestation to her death, and so died a single person, a just warning to others to take heed of handling the devil's weapons lest they get a wound thereby. Another I was called to pray with, being under sore fits and vexations of Satan, and upon examination I found she had tried the same charm.
00:12:06
Speaker
And after her confession of it, and manifestation of repentance for it, and our prayers to God for her, she was speedily released from those bonds of Satan. This iniquity, though I take it not to be the capital crime condemned, Exodus 22, because such persons act ignorantly, not considering they hereby go to the devil, yet borders very much upon it.
00:12:31
Speaker
and is too like Saul's going to the witch at Endor and Haziah sending to the god of Ekron to inquire. What Reverend Hale is referring to is something known as Umanci or sometimes referred to as a Venus glass. It was thought to have been something like a crystal ball, something used to tell one's future.
00:12:51
Speaker
Remember that scene in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban where Harry is in Professor Trelawney's divination class and he sees the tea leaves at the bottom of the cup to reveal the grim? Well, it's basically what this charm was, except instead of tea leaves, they used an egg. The basic concept of this method of divination is to provide some sort of heat and drop an egg onto it. Then you read the shape that the egg white takes when it starts to solidify.
00:13:18
Speaker
As Hale mentioned, the girls seem to have been using this as a way of telling who their future husbands might be. So you can see how this, the idea of the rituals that we're seeing in the forest, in the movie, looking, trying to cast love spells and things like that could be turned into what we see. As the story goes, the two girls who started playing with this form of divination might've been Abigail Williams and Betty Parris.
00:13:46
Speaker
they got scared when the egg white revealed the shape of a coffin, presumably predicting some horrible fate, kind of like what we saw with Harry Potter. So it's not likely that they were performing the love spell rituals that we see in the movie. Instead, they were using eggs as a form of divination or immensely.
00:14:05
Speaker
Think about it that the next time you crack an egg over your pan, the shape you see when the egg white hits the heated pan was one of the ingredients that went into the Salem witch trials hysteria. On the other side of that, Reverend Hale's words also give us a peek into the mindset of Christianity of the day, as he mentions the charm being the bonds of Satan. In fact, Reverend Hale's book opens with a scripture verse from Isaiah eight verses 19 and 20.
00:14:32
Speaker
When they say unto you, seek unto them that have familiar spirits and unto wizards that peep to the law and to the testimony. If they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them." The witch that Reverend Hale mentions is also from the Bible, the witch of Endor. That comes from 1 Samuel chapter 28 verses 6 through 8. When the first king of Israel, Saul, sought out the counsel of a witch in the city of Endor.
00:14:59
Speaker
He asked the witch to, quote, divine unto me by the familiar spirit and bring me him up, whom I shall name unto thee, end quote. As that story goes, King Saul asked for the spirit of his old mentor and prophet of God, Samuel. But things didn't turn out so well when the spirit of Samuel prophesied the Israelites would be defeated by the Philistines the next day in battle.
00:15:23
Speaker
And so you start to get an idea for why the Christians in Salem could see this as an example of cause and effect. Essentially, there are dire consequences for getting help from a witch. Between February of 1692 and May of 1693, more than 200 people were accused of what we now know as the Salem witch trials.
00:15:46
Speaker
30 of those were found guilty by the court and 20 of those 30 were killed, 19 by hanging and one by being pressed to death when he refused to go to trial. Looking back on it, many historians have suggested the Salem witch trials became an excuse for people to steal land and possessions.
00:16:06
Speaker
After all, when someone was accused, all their assets would be forfeited to the crown. Remember, it was an English settlement and not the United States. The United States was not a country yet, but it's not like the king personally took the assets of those accused. That's just how the law works. And then those assets would usually come up for auction. And often the accuser would coincidentally be the one purchasing or simply taking ownership. That's how the assets would change hands legally. So those accused would lose their possessions and someone else would swoop in
00:16:35
Speaker
to take them over. It was all legal. Meanwhile, lives were ruined and even lost in the process.
Spooky Tales from Taiwan and Beyond
00:16:43
Speaker
It wasn't until 18 years later, in 1711, that a bill was passed to officially restore the good names and rights. 578 pounds was split amongst the survivors and relatives of the accused. It's tough to calculate the exact amount from that time, but as close as I can figure, that's probably about $42,000 in today's US dollars.
00:17:07
Speaker
So far, there has been a lot of tales from the US, but the world is a really big place. Jessica is the host of the Asian Madness podcast. She specifically covers crime on the Asian continent. Who better to bring us a tale from her home country of Taiwan?
00:17:27
Speaker
Many of you may not be familiar with Taiwan and what it's like. But just like any other place around the world, we have some specific spots that are said to be extra haunted. One of these places is a tunnel in Taipei City called Xinhai Tunnel. What's so special about this place? Well, for one thing, this tunnel is notorious for all the accidents that have taken place in and around it.
00:17:54
Speaker
Another reason is because the western entrance of the tunnel leads directly to the second municipal funeral parlor in Taipei City. Not only that, the mountain in which the tunnel is carved from is home to many old graves. So if you drive during the day and you look up, it might just seem like any old regular mountain. But if you look closely, you can see there are many traditional gravestones lined up all around it.
00:18:23
Speaker
Almost everyone is aware that this tunnel is known to be haunted. Many people who drive through this tunnel are wary and extra careful.
00:18:33
Speaker
It might be a bit superstitious, but it doesn't hurt to be alert while driving through tunnels. Many people have reportedly seen a womanly figure walking in the tunnel, and some have even heard a woman's voice near them when driving. It should be impossible to hear something like that so clearly when you're driving through a tunnel, which leads us to today's tale. A taxi driver experienced something quite extreme,
00:19:00
Speaker
And this is his story.
00:19:04
Speaker
One night he was making his usual rounds around the city, and that's when he drove through the tunnel. At the entrance, he found an expressionless young woman waving at him, so of course he stopped and let her get in. He didn't think much of it. The area was close to the city, so not exactly in the middle of nowhere. The woman was very pale, almost sickly. The driver didn't pry.
00:19:31
Speaker
just simply asked her for her destination. She gave him an address and off he went. They drove around and the driver was feeling somewhat uncomfortable, like something in the air didn't feel right, but he chalked it up to him being superstitious and tired. Eventually, the taxi driver arrived at their destination, and as the woman was about to get off, she calmly told the driver that she didn't have money on her.
00:20:00
Speaker
and asked if he would please wait outside while she went in and got her purse. Well, it's not like the driver had much of a choice, so he agreed to this. The woman got out, entered the residence, and thus began the waiting game. The driver waited and waited, and time seemed to go by even more slowly in the middle of the night.
00:20:23
Speaker
Finally, 20 minutes went by and he was a little frustrated. He wanted to continue on his taxi route, or maybe even go home. So he got out of his taxi, went out to the residence and pressed on the doorbell. It was late, so it took a few tries, but eventually a man answered. The taxi driver explained that he dropped off a young woman about 20 minutes ago and she said she needed to get her purse and that he was still waiting.
00:20:53
Speaker
The man on the other end of the call box eventually walked out, and it was an older man. He handed the money over to the taxi driver and apologized. The driver was a bit confused, but before he could ask or say anything, the older man opened his mouth once again. According to him, his daughter had passed away in a car accident a while ago in Xinghai Tunnel, where she was picked up that night. Ever since then,
00:21:21
Speaker
she would appear sporadically, hail taxis, and ask them to drop her off at her home. The driver had no words for this older man. He simply thanked him, gave him his condolences, and got back in his taxi. Understandably, he decided to call it a night and headed straight home afterwards.
00:21:44
Speaker
So that's one of the many many tales involving this Xinhai tunnel. Probably the most haunted tunnel in Taiwan. I know that this tale is probably more on the sad and depressing end rather than the spooky side. But can you really not get spooked out as well knowing you gave a lift to a ghost? It's perfectly normal to feel a mix of emotions. And this is one of those cases.
00:22:12
Speaker
I don't give the lifts to anyone, and that was a good example as to why. May I ask, have you ever heard of summoning the Candyman? Mara and Taz from Sisters Who Kill are here to share the tale. Our players this week are the plantation owner, the murderer,
00:22:40
Speaker
And Daniel Robertel, the candy man. There once lived a man named Daniel Robertel. Daniel was a slave who worked on a plantation in New Orleans. Narlings, as they like to call it. But he wasn't just any old slave. This man was also a talented painter. I mean,
00:23:02
Speaker
Hands down, everybody loved to see his paintings. So his owner, the plantation owner, decides that he wants Daniel to paint a portrait of his daughter. His beautiful, loving, snow white flaked skinned daughter. Now, paintings, of course, as most of you know, they take time, especially really good ones. So that meant that Daniel had to spend a lot of time with his owner's daughter. And he ended up falling in love with her.
00:23:33
Speaker
which is one big mistake. The plantation owner of course found out about this and he was pissed. I mean, he was livid to the point that he grabbed a mob of people, a mob of angry white men to go get Daniel.
00:23:51
Speaker
The mob came and they were armed with pitchforks and they were ready to catch Daniel. They chased him through the fields and they finally caught him. And when they caught him, they were near an old barn. Daniel, he had been running and hiding and he was exhausted and he literally could not run anymore. The mob came up, they grabbed Daniel and they were all starlin' at him with a snaggle-tooth self. And they took a rusty saw and they cut off.
00:24:16
Speaker
Daniel's right hand, the hand that he was so famously known for painting these beautiful portraits, the hand of a slave that fell in love with his master's daughter. The next thing the mob did was go and find a whole bunch of honey
00:24:33
Speaker
Don't ask me why these white folks had all this honey, but they did and they doused Daniel's body in this honey and threw him in a beehive. They watched and they laughed and they snickered and they kept making Daniel stay in this beehive until the bees stung him to death.
00:24:51
Speaker
Now listen, the average person can safely tolerate 10 stings per pound of your body weight. This means that although 500 stings could kill a child, the average adult can withstand over 11,000 bee stings before dying. So needless to say, Daniel suffered a painful pain.
00:25:13
Speaker
painful death and it wasn't fast either. His arm is throbbing from his hand being cut off and on top of that his body is swelling due to all the bee stings. And as if this is not enough, the plantation owner comes over and holds a mirror to Daniel's face so that he could look at himself.
00:25:35
Speaker
He mocks Daniel and says, bet my daughter won't like you no more. Bet that's the end of that. So Daniel was like, man, this is really messed up. They could have just killed me, but you gonna torture me to death?
00:25:49
Speaker
I admit. So before Daniel dies, he looks into the mirror and he whispers, Candyman. Now this puts a curse on the plantation owner, the mob, and anybody else who darespeak his name. The plantation owner and the mob, they all end up dying in mysterious ways.
00:26:07
Speaker
Nobody was ever able to explain it. Due to the excruciatingly painful way that Daniel died, his spirit was never able to rest. Years after passing, his ghost rose from its grave. Daniel's ghost appears with a hook for a hand, dressed in a black trench coat with fur on the collar. Under his black trench coat is a hollowed-out chest cavity
00:26:29
Speaker
covered in honey and bees. Legend has it that those who have summoned the candy man were killed with his hook, and if that didn't work, the swarm of bees would finish them off. If you decide that you want to talk to the candy man,
00:26:44
Speaker
All you gotta do is say Candyman five times while looking into a mirror, and he will appear. Candyman. Candyman. Candyman. Candyman. Now y'all got it. All right, y'all, we have a part of our show called... Well, I'm not black. I'm O.J.
00:27:05
Speaker
I ain't do it, but if I did, this is how I would've got away with it. I ain't do Halloween last year, but if I did, I would've been Reggie from Rocket Power. I ain't do it, but if I did, I would've dressed up like Josephine Baker. But you know, a lot of people dress up as Josephine Baker because she is a vaudeville performer that is very famous. But when a lot of people do it, they ended up doing blackface.
00:27:31
Speaker
So we have a couple minutes left and we're going to tell you guys why chewing blackface for Halloween is a horrible thing.
Cultural Awareness and Halloween Myths
00:27:39
Speaker
Blackface is inappropriate any time, but people like to think that they can get away with it because it's Halloween and you're supposed to dress up as something. But there's like an actual history behind blackface and why it's demeaning. It's not even just blackface, it's cultural appropriation and all types. But blackface has been frowned on since black minstrel shows of the 18th and 19th century.
00:28:01
Speaker
Like, this is a long history of demeaning behavior that you can't just excuse with the date of a holiday. Right. So Blackface actually first showed up in American theater. And fun fact, it is the only form of theater that is original to America. Everything else was made outside
00:28:20
Speaker
made or originated outside of this country. And it is made by actors burning cork. And later they use shoe polish to paint their faces black so that they could play these stereotypes of what they thought black people were. To pass on the ideas that black people that were from the South were lazy, ignorant.
00:28:39
Speaker
superstitious, hypersexual, meant to only be mammies or pickaninnies. And they did this by also playing music, song, and dance. They did this not only by creating stereotypes about Black people, but they also tried to give this illusion because Blackface, the art of Blackface,
00:28:59
Speaker
started way before the Civil War, so they were giving this illusion through art and propaganda that slaves on the plantation were happy. They're singing and dancing and shucking and driving and eating watermelon, so they must be having a good time. That's why slavery is a good thing. Blackface was something that started off in vaudeville shows and then made its way to the great white way known as Broadway. From there, it was the most popular form of entertainment.
00:29:22
Speaker
To the point where black performers that may have worked the vaudeville circuit, they ended up having to cork up. Corking up is basically when you burn the cork and you paint your face black. Famous black performers had to cork up at that time because that was the only way that they would be able to perform. Because that was the only way that white people would accept entertainment from a black performer. That was the only way that they would accept any type of black media.
00:29:49
Speaker
So, when you guys are picking out your Halloween costumes this year, not saying that you can't be somebody outside your race, but you don't have to darken your skin to do it. You can be Wakanda if you want to. Just don't paint your skin black, right? I sang some white boys dressed up as the Migos, and it was one of the best costumes. I think I did. And they were still white boys. And still white boys. I know exactly who they were.
00:30:11
Speaker
There's a way to do it. Also, do not dress up as people's culture. People's culture are not a costume. Do not put on headdresses and all that stuff. They have a meaning. They have a purpose. And it's not for you to get voted best dressed at a party. All right? Thanks. So until next time, happy Halloween.
00:30:36
Speaker
Candyman. Well, I didn't call this the Nightmare Before Halloween for nothing, I guess. Good luck to both of us. A lot of my friends here tonight have two podcasts, as do I. I'd like to share a little history with you for my podcast, Hometown History. Did you know there is a different Candyman too?
00:31:12
Speaker
Halloween is really a special time, isn't it? Especially for me. You can see why if you know who I am. Look up a little. That's me, a jack-o'-lantern. At Halloween time every year, I sit up here and watch everybody go by. It's a nice and scary time, isn't it? All those wonderful costumes and masks and makeup. I think about how much fun Halloween is.
00:31:38
Speaker
I also worry a little bit about the things that can spoil the fun of Halloween. Those kinds of things scare me too. The best part of old Halloween safety PSAs, like that one, was the long list of well-intentioned but often terrible advice. Like, don't wear black. What about this color? A white costume makes an unusual different kind of witch, who's more likely to be safe on Halloween night.
00:32:06
Speaker
Another suggestion was to wear large fluorescent reflective panels all over your body so you're basically glowing in the dark. A good way to make any costume easier to see at night is to decorate it with reflective tape or reflective patches. This one was a little more reasonable. Expand the eye holes in your mask. Now, how about the mask? Any problem with it?
00:32:34
Speaker
Do you remember how hard it was to see out through those little eye holes? To be safe at night, you have to be able to see clearly, as well as be seen. We can improve the mask by cutting larger holes to look out of. Or, if you want to have even less fun. There is an even safer way. You can simply not wear a mask.
00:33:04
Speaker
But as every 80s or 90 kid knows, the greatest threat was always the candy. You see, some people think it's fun to play tricks with your treats. Watch out for candy wrappers that have been torn or punctured. That might be a sign of tampering. There might be things in the candy. So break open candy bars before you eat them. Cut fruit into pieces before you eat it, just in case something's been stuck in it. Watch out for things that look like candy, but might be medicines or drugs or even poisons.
00:33:34
Speaker
Don't eat anything that doesn't look right. If it looks funny, it might not be so funny if you ate it. Treats are so much fun to collect, it'd be awful to have them spoil your Halloween fun by making you sick. Corey's treats won't make her sick, and I hope yours won't make you sick either.
00:33:52
Speaker
This idea that strangers were trying to poison you was everywhere when we were kids. Every kid in America heard this warning, every single Halloween. And if people gave you fruit or cookies or unwrapped candy, your parents probably made you throw it away. The irony of all this hysteria and fear was that it came back to one case in Texas where a man named Ronald Clark O'Brien used a giant pixie stick to poison his own son.
00:34:20
Speaker
O'Brien laced five of these pixie sticks with potassium cyanide and handed them out on Halloween night. He gave two of them to his children, Timothy and Elizabeth, on whom he had recently taken out life insurance policies. In order to disguise the source of the poisoned candy, O'Brien gave two more pixie sticks to his neighbor's kids. He gave the fifth to a ten-year-old from his church. Fortunately, four of the children were not in the mood for pixie sticks.
00:34:48
Speaker
Unfortunately, Timothy O'Brien's 8-year-old son did eat his and died on the way to the hospital later that night. This next clip is from live coverage from the courthouse during O'Brien's murder trial in 1975. Most of today's testimony came from Jimmy Bates, a close friend of the O'Brien family.
00:35:10
Speaker
Bates said that before Halloween, O'Brien asked if he could bring his children over to trick-or-treat with the Bates children on Halloween night. Both families ate dinner together, and then the fathers took the children trick-or-treating. Bates said O'Brien went to one house where no one appeared to be home, and after the children had scampered ahead to the next house, O'Brien came off the front porch carrying the pixie sticks.
00:35:31
Speaker
He gave the pixie sticks to the children and then later took them back and said he wanted to stop at his car for a moment. Bates said when O'Brien came back into the Bates house, he returned the pixie sticks to the children. Later that night, Timothy O'Brien died from eating a poison pixie stick.
00:35:47
Speaker
O'Brien was found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to death by electrocution. He was executed by lethal injection nine years later, on March 31, 1984, in the middle of the night. In the words of the prison chaplain, the most despised person ever escorted into the death house was Ronald Clark O'Brien, a short, puffy man who had been absolutely friendless during the eight and a half years he'd been in prison.
00:36:13
Speaker
In the week before he was scheduled to be executed, in fact, inmates at the walls had even petitioned to be allowed some manner of organized demonstrations to show their disdain for the former optician who had been convicted of murdering his 8-year-old son. Even if you've never heard this story before, you probably know O'Brien's nickname. They called him the Candy Man.
00:36:37
Speaker
Obviously, this is an extreme story involving a heinous crime, but there's a lesson in it, even for those of us who are not planning to poison a family member this Halloween. Personal relationships matter. If the people closest to you are not trying to kill you, it is likely, no one will. We often have this idea in life that we have to make everyone happy.
00:36:58
Speaker
We have to make everyone like us. In reality, we just have to be kind and faithful to the people in our inner circles and in our neighborhoods. And if we do that, chances are extremely good that no one will die. Over 90% of homicides are committed by people we know and of all violent crimes,
00:37:17
Speaker
Homicide is the least likely to be committed by a stranger. If you lose your job, your money, your status, but all your most important relationships are healthy, you're probably going to be okay. So this Halloween season, I'd encourage you again to invest in the things that matter. I'd also like to encourage you to wear black and a mask if you'd like, and to not ruin your costume with reflective panels or cut your candy bars into little pieces before you eat them.
00:37:49
Speaker
If you can do all that, then you won't have to worry about scary, real things happening on Halloween. Right? Right. Have a fun and a safe Halloween, weenie.
00:38:22
Speaker
History can be spooky sometimes too, right? Do you enjoy coffee? How about true crime?
Unsolved Cold Cases: James Adamski
00:38:28
Speaker
Well, Maggie and Alison cover lesser known cases and they like their coffee hot in cases cold on the coffee and cases podcast.
00:38:38
Speaker
The setting for our case this week, Maggie, is New York, the towns of Chiktawaga and Depew, New York, to be exact, on the evening of Saturday, October 30th, 1982. 18-year-old James Adamski had on his costume, he was going for what he called the American gigolo look.
00:39:03
Speaker
The Richard Gere film had just come out two years earlier, and I'm sure James, this 18-year-old, was loving the idea of going as a young man looking for a sugar mama. Oh, I'm sure. I'm positive. Now, Maggie, this was a different time since it wasn't until 1988 that all states in the US had raised their drinking age to 21.
00:39:29
Speaker
Oh, I feel so dumb. I didn't even know that there was a different age. I didn't know this either until I started researching this case. But at the time, it was legal at the age of 18 to drink in New York. And that was precisely James Adeece's plan.
00:39:46
Speaker
He was heading from his home on View Court in Chictawaga to the 5 and 23 bar at the corner of Transit Road and Walden Avenue in DePue. They were having a Halloween Eve celebration and it was one of those pay a cover charge and drink all night deals.
00:40:05
Speaker
Okay. So I feel like very, um, typical experience for a lot of 18 year olds. Yes. And I'm thinking it happened on Halloween Eve because Halloween Eve was a Saturday. Oh yeah. Halloween was on a Sunday before making the two mile walk from his home to the bar. He let his parents know he'd be home later. And then when passing by his eight year old younger brother, Andy,
00:40:29
Speaker
already in his costume and ready to go get as much candy as humanly possible. James kissed his little brother on the forehead and said, have a good time trick or treating, kid, as he strode out the door. I know. I can imagine like a little ruffling of the hair. Yeah, me too.
00:40:49
Speaker
At the bar that night, like most 18-year-olds I'm sure would, James made the most of the all-you-can-drink, and by most accounts was quite inebriated by the end of the night. Yeah, again, as most 18-year-old people would be. Yes. While James was a happy-go-lucky, thoughtful guy, he did get into an argument that evening with some other patrons at the bar, but
00:41:17
Speaker
it luckily quickly de-escalated before anything got out of hand or got physical or anything like that. James left 5 and 23 in the wee hours of the following morning, October 31st. And 5 and 23 is the name of the bar? Correct. Okay.
00:41:34
Speaker
He left the bar walking south in the company of a young woman and walked along transit road near Broadway with her for part of his journey back home before parting ways around 3.30 a.m. So I'm assuming because you say a young woman, we don't know this lady's name. I have not seen her name printed anywhere, no. But Jane Zadamsky never made it home.
00:42:04
Speaker
His brother Andy recalled to journalists Dan Herbeck and Karen Robinson of the Buffalo News, quote, when he didn't come home the next morning, my mother knew something was wrong. He was very respectful of our parents. He would never have stayed away all night without telling them, end quote.
00:42:21
Speaker
You know what this reminds me of? It reminds me of the episode we did, episode 150 on Kurt Soba that he tells his parents he's gonna be out and they just kind of trust him and they go to bed, but then when they wake up he isn't there. Yeah, it's super similar because James kind of had that same relationship with his parents. So when he didn't come home, that was so out of character for him that his parents immediately alerted law enforcement when he didn't come home.
00:42:50
Speaker
However, even with launching a large-scale search, officers found no sign of James. Nearly two months after his disappearance, though, on December 26th,
00:43:07
Speaker
Two rabbit hunters were out in a rural wooded area right by some railroad tracks near Ransom Road in Lancaster, New York, when they approached what looked like a thicket. Upon moving some leaves and twigs out of the way, thinking that they would scare rabbits out into the open, they instead discovered a body buried in a shallow grave and covered with those twigs that I mentioned.
00:43:34
Speaker
The very next day, police had identified the body as that of James Adamsky. He was still dressed in his costume from the night he went missing, though his body was found in a location four miles from where he had last been seen.
00:43:52
Speaker
The cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head. From what law enforcement speculated was an instrument like a baseball bat, a two by four or a tire iron. Oh my goodness. That is such a wide range. Yeah. Our tire irons, the things that you use when you're changing a flat tire, those skinny things. Hmm.
00:44:16
Speaker
He had been dealt numerous blows to the head, making it clear that this was a homicide and not an accident. But finding the perpetrator would prove harder than they thought because James was a young man whom everybody seemed to adore and who had no known enemies. Who would want to harm someone like that? And while there was the argument at the bar, those individuals were questioned by and cleared by law enforcement.
00:44:46
Speaker
Yeah, and you said it de-escalated quickly, so that makes me think they kind of resolved it on their own. And the girl he walked partially with, the last other than the perpetrator to see him alive, was also questioned and cleared as well.
00:45:02
Speaker
Police did collect some of the twigs that had been covering James's body because those twigs were of a similar length and had clearly been broken off of nearby trees.
00:45:17
Speaker
which told law enforcement that the perpetrator had touched them while attempting to conceal James' body. So it wasn't as though his body were there two months and so random branches had fallen. Yeah, it was just natural. Exactly. This is purposeful concealment. Those twigs were sent to a laboratory to test for fingerprints, but they were unable to find any.
00:45:39
Speaker
But what about his clothes? There should be something on those. Yes, and you're right because while an attempt at obtaining DNA evidence was unsuccessful with the twigs, law enforcement do still have his Halloween costume and they do hope that one day DNA testing will advance enough that the clothes will point them directly to James' killer.
00:46:00
Speaker
And it advances, I feel like every day we're learning about new advancement, so I'm sure that's possible. Exactly. In the meantime, what police need most is for someone, anyone, with information about that night to come forward to detail everything that they remember. The smallest and seemingly insignificant memory of that night could be all they need to solve this case.
00:46:24
Speaker
And they do believe Maggie because of the body's location so far away that someone had picked James up in a car. I wonder if it was someone he knew. Well, they speculate on that. We don't know. It was either someone he knew and so he willingly accepted a ride from them and then something went awry along the way or he was forced into a car by someone with an intent to cause harm.
00:46:54
Speaker
But despite many uncertainties, one detail actually stands out to me. And that is that his body was found in a rural area that was not easily accessible. So they needed to be familiar with the area. That's what it seems to say to me.
00:47:11
Speaker
While James's father passed away in 2000 and his mother in 2005 without any closure, his brother Andy and James's other siblings still live with hope of answers. Andy recalled the devastating aftermath of his brother's murder in the Buffalo News article, Cold Case Files 34 years later, Halloween Murder Haunts Family. And how his mother became so overprotective of the rest of her children, always worried that they too would be killed.
00:47:41
Speaker
Of his older brother James, who he looked up to so much, Andy said, quote, my brother was such a good person. He was the type of person who would give you the shirt off his back just so you'd have a shirt.
00:47:55
Speaker
If they ever do catch the person and the whole story comes out, I know what will be hard for me, but it's even harder not knowing." To close, here are a few words from a detective of the Lancaster Police Department.
00:48:12
Speaker
My name is Robert Cornell. I'm a detective with the Katalancaster Police Department in New York. My department is still actively investigating the homicide of James Adansky. If anyone has any information on this case, anything would be helpful to our investigation. If you could please call our police department.
00:48:31
Speaker
There's an $11,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest and indictment in this case. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Lancaster Police Department at 716-683-2800.
00:48:49
Speaker
You could buy a lot of candy for $11,000. Mama Margot is the host of military murder, which focuses on crimes committed by military members, veterans, and sometimes their spouses. Don't worry, you don't have to have knowledge about the military to listen. Now, let's jump into this true spooky tale.
Crimes of Passion and Tragedy
00:49:14
Speaker
In 1993, an army sergeant named Steven was notified that his wife was in the hospital. At the hospital, his wife confessed that she was pregnant. Steven was like, wait, I had a vasectomy, how can that be? The wifey eventually confessed that she had an affair. Steven pressed his wife to learn who she had an affair with.
00:49:34
Speaker
The wife wouldn't give him much information except to say the person's rank, which was specialist. And once she told her husband that the guy she was cheating on him with was a specialist, he didn't even bother waiting around for the name because Steven knew exactly who it was. It was his best friend. So Steven then marched his pissed off self off to the military base and there he began to hunt for his wife's lover.
00:50:02
Speaker
Mind you, the wife had asked Steven for a divorce and even though he was hesitant at first, he had finally said yes before this incident.
00:50:13
Speaker
Fast forward to the military installation which happens to be in Germany and Steven is looking for his ex-best friend. He finds the specialist. The specialist name is Greg and Greg is in a phone booth. The phone booth is in front of the dining facility during dinner time so there are plenty of people around. Greg doesn't see Steve coming and in fact he's on the phone with Steven's wife. Eventually he sees Steven and he tells the woman, your husband is here and then the call goes dead.
00:50:44
Speaker
At the phone booth, Steven and Greg are fighting to the death. Then all of a sudden, Greg collapses. A circle of onlookers gather around. It looks like Steven is whooping on Greg because Greg is just laying there while Steven keeps punching him. But Steve isn't punching him. He's actually stabbing him. Greg is laying there motionless and people are watching. And then Steve starts to make some sort of chopping motions with what eventually turns out to be a knife.
00:51:14
Speaker
He gets up and starts kicking Greg repeatedly on the head until the head physically detaches from the body. Everyone is now watching in horror. They are probably hiding now as Steven picks up the man's head. He scoffs and says aloud, that's what you get for being an adulterer. Then Steven drives off with Greg's head in tow.
00:51:38
Speaker
Minutes later, there is a commotion at the hospital. A blood-soaked Steven walks into his wife's hospital room and grabs something from his bag. It's Greg's head. He places it down next to her and forces her to look at it and then he says, now you can picture this for the rest of your life.
00:51:58
Speaker
Steven was immediately arrested and it wasn't hard to prove he did it. There were dozens of eyewitnesses after all, and Steven confessed to the doctors in the hospital. Months later, at his military court martial, also known as a trial, he put on the good soldier defense, evidence that he was the best thing since sliced bread and he had never ever ever ever done anything wrong in his life.
00:52:23
Speaker
Ultimately, Steven was convicted of killing Greg and was sentenced to life in prison. But the army general in charge of this court-martial ended up reducing Steven's sentence to 30 years. Needless to say, this former soldier served less than 30 years due to good time and was released. Crazy story, right? Bet you thought it was an urban legend, but it's not.
00:52:52
Speaker
I don't even have a comment for that story. I'll just leave it. My friends at the dystopian simulation radio are here to share an underwater nightmare that takes place on the floor of a cave that has taken several lives in its time.
00:53:11
Speaker
In 1996, expert cave diver Nuno Gomez of New York City was awarded a Guinness World Record for the deepest dive in Bushman's Hall, a cave in South Africa. Gomez descended over 270 meters down to the depths of the cave.
00:53:28
Speaker
where it took only 14 minutes to plunge into the darkest depths of what the locals call Bousmanes Hat, where he spent just four minutes at the bottom in an expedition that took a total of 12 plus hours to complete. The lengthy stint factored in a decompression schedule to stave off the bends, a painful decompression sickness that can cause pain, paralysis, and death if a diver ascends to you quickly.
00:53:57
Speaker
Nuno Gomez made it out from the deepest depths of the Bushman's cave, with his life intact. But the same could not be said to those before and after him. Bosemongat claimed the life of Eben Linden in 1993, after Layden passed out, descending 60 meters.
00:54:21
Speaker
The cave also took the life of Dion Drea, who was only 20 years old when he blacked out in the Bushman's cave while doing an air dive. He died at around 70 meters, his body sinking 270 meters to the bottom where it would remain for a decade.
00:54:46
Speaker
David Shaw was a technical diver, pilot, father and husband, and lover of all things extreme. His wife, Anne, knew that there was always a risk that Dave may not return from his adventures, but knew how passionate he was about his endeavors and had never dreamed of denying him of them.
00:55:06
Speaker
David had some close calls in the past, but he always believed that God was watching over him. He was constantly testing his limits and pushing the boundaries to see how far he could go. David began scuba diving in his early 40s. He enjoyed it right away, but it wasn't challenging enough. And soon he began pursuing more technical dives. This is where Dave became interested in cave diving.
00:55:33
Speaker
In order to dive deeper for longer, divers use rebreathers, a specialist diving apparatus that recycles the air. David Shaw purchased his own rebreather, but felt limited by what the equipment had to offer. So he made some edits of his own that would allow him to descend even deeper.
00:55:58
Speaker
Dave had always been interested in exploring untouched pockets of the earth, of which few remain. And he believed cave diving offered unexplored territory that he could be the first to see. Bushman's Hole, a submerged freshwater cave in northern Cape, South Africa, west of Johannesburg, called Dave's name.
00:56:25
Speaker
And on October 28, 2004, he completed a record-breaking dive of 270 meters.
00:56:36
Speaker
To enter the cave, a diver must first climb down rocks before connecting with the water below, and descend into a narrow tube that widens as it goes deeper. The main part of the cave is around 60 meters down, and a rope attached to the ceiling of the main cave guides the diver through the cavernous black abyss. Without the rope, a diver would find themselves disorientated.
00:56:59
Speaker
with nothing but darkness in every direction. Divers carry powerful lights for this reason, strong white beams cutting through the void alerting other divers on the mission of their presence.
00:57:12
Speaker
When David resurfaced, he said he had spotted the body of Dion Drea, whose body had been suspended 270 metres down in the cave for an entire decade. David described turning his head to the left while on the cave floor, where he found himself face to face with Dion Drea, his face still covered with a mask.
00:57:34
Speaker
Dave added that at that depth he struggled to breathe and knew he had to resurface. David Shaw felt compelled to retrieve Dion Dreyer's body. Not only had he seen it during his dive, the image of which had played on his mind since resurfacing, but he had even experienced a premonition of finding Dion's body in a dream he had just a couple of days before the dive.
00:57:58
Speaker
David, a father himself, went to Dion Dryer's parents and told them of his plans to retrieve their son's body. They were ecstatic at the news and had always wanted their son's remains back on dry land so they could honor his memory and lay him to rest. Dion's body had been in the cave for so long that it was assumed that his remains would be skeletal.
00:58:30
Speaker
To prevent the bones from slipping out of his diving suit and dispersing in all directions, it was agreed David would carefully put the remains into a customized body bag that he would take down with him. At that depth, David Shaw would have a maximum of five minutes to load Dion's skeletal remains into the bag.
00:58:56
Speaker
This included cutting the dive suit off Dion's body. Always pushing the limits, David decided that he wanted to salvage Dion's equipment, which was lodged on the cave floor. He planned to tie a separate rope to the equipment, with the hope of excavating it and dragging it to the surface.
00:59:20
Speaker
Within two months, David Shaw returned to South Africa prepared to retrieve Dion's body. On January 8th, 2005, with a camera mounted to his helmet, David descended into Bushman's cave for what would tragically be his final dive. With a camera mounted to his helmet to film the dive and Dion Drea's family waiting patiently at the surface of the cave to receive his remains, David plunged into the water.
00:59:49
Speaker
Factoring in the lengthy ascent for adequate decompression to avoid the bends, David would be in the water for approximately 12 hours, with 12 minutes to dive to the bottom and a mere 5 minutes spent preparing Dion's remains for excavation. Dion's body was expected to break the surface around 1.5 hours into the dive, but this would not be the case.
01:00:13
Speaker
At 6.15am, David plunged into the darkness, never to resurface alive. The mission was supported by a team of 30, including two world-renowned support divers and others meeting him along the way at various depths of the dive.
01:00:36
Speaker
One of the team divers, Don Shirley, waited at a depth of 220 meters, waiting for David to meet him. But when he looked below, he could see no sign of movement. Just a still spotlight. Static on the cave floor. Unmoving.
01:01:02
Speaker
The diver descended to assist David, but the handset on his wrist cracked under the pressure before surpassing 240 metres, and he made the decision to return to the surface. David Shaw died attempting to retrieve Dion Dryer's body.
01:01:25
Speaker
When the team pulled up the line, they found Dion Drea's body attached to it, as well as the body of David Shaw, with the camera still attached to his dive helmet. Although he had lost his life, he had completed his mission of salvaging Dion's remains from the cave floor. When the team reviewed the footage, they watched David Shaw's last moments alive.
01:01:54
Speaker
The video showed David Shaw on the cave floor, his hands pale white in front of him, pulling out the body back. Although it was assumed that after 10 years Dion's body would have been skeletal, the body instead seemed to be in a more preserved state. Almost a state of mummification with buoyancy. Dion's body unexpectedly floated up before David
01:02:24
Speaker
making the task of getting it into the body bag more difficult. In the footage, David becomes tangled in the line, a rope wrapping around his torch and arms, making the job almost impossible.
01:02:42
Speaker
David attempts to cut himself free from the tangle with his scissors, but misses the rope multiple times, struggling and slipping backwards on the sloped cave floor. His breathing becomes laborious and his hands start shaking. When it was time to leave, David knew this and attempted to swim up, but he was tangled in the ropes, unable to free himself.
01:03:17
Speaker
The increased breathing caused by David's struggle produced significantly more CO2, eventually depriving him of oxygen and causing him to drift off, his light still hanging as he floated unconscious. The final scene of David's life showed his hands motionless, the line he failed to cut wound loosely between his fingers.
01:03:42
Speaker
Despite meticulous planning, David died alone on the cave floor. His teammates helpless and unable to save him. Forced to look down at his light, unmoving and still. Maybe our Christmas special can take place at that cave? Whitney and Melissa are the hosts of cult crimes in Cabernet.
01:04:11
Speaker
Four times a year they travel to locations to help the family members of the murdered and missing. I'll let them take it over from here. Mount Pleasant, Michigan is a city located in the heart of the state. If you need a visual and are aware of how Michigan looks like a mitten, Mount Pleasant is right smack dab in the center of the palm.
01:04:34
Speaker
It has a population of just under 22,000. The main campus of Central Michigan University calls Mount Pleasant home. It is truly a college town, as when school is in session, the population almost doubles in size.
01:04:53
Speaker
Mount Pleasant is also home to the Christ's Community Fellowship. This is a very small church, so small that the congregation was of about 14 people at its height. It was led by Pastor John D. White who came with a past.
01:05:15
Speaker
White was a veteran of the Navy and also had worked as a long-haul truck driver in his early years. Before becoming head of the fellowship, he lived in Battle Creek, Michigan, which is a little over 100 miles south of Mount Pleasant. In 1980 is where our first report of violent behavior really begins. White was 22 years old when he invited his 17-year-old neighbor, Teresa Etherton, over to show her his stock car race track setup.
01:05:43
Speaker
Teresa walked down into the basement where White attacked her and stabbed her 15 times before choking her. Teresa remembers White's hands around her neck and saying, quote, you're going to go now. I'm really sorry you had to go like this, but what the you're just a woman.
01:06:01
Speaker
Teresa is obviously a badass and survived the attack and White was arrested after Teresa reported him to police. He pled no contest and in 1981 he was sent to prison for 10 years.
01:06:17
Speaker
After being incarcerated for two years, he appealed and was released. Teresa did not hear of his release until one day while standing in line at a store, she heard his chilling voice and turned around to see White smiling at her. This was the first time the justice system failed a victim of John White's while leaving him free to hurt more people.
01:06:46
Speaker
There is a gap in White's criminal history after he was released in the mid 80s. He wasn't connected with any crimes until July of 1994. White had gotten married, had one kid with one on the way, and they were living near Kalamazoo, Michigan at the time.
01:07:02
Speaker
White was working maintenance at a textile facility where he met a 26-year-old woman named Vicky Sue Wall. The two struck up an affair, and the evening of July 11, 1994, surveillance footage confirmed that the two met in the Meyer grocery store on Gull Road. Vicky got into the black pickup truck with John at around 3 a.m., and the two left the lot, and Vicky was not seen again. She was reported missing, and police would call White in for questioning.
01:07:30
Speaker
He told the police that the two were having an affair, that they did meet at the Myers parking lot, and that he returned her to her home later. There was no evidence to hold him on any charges, so he was free to go after questioning. White checked himself into the Kalamazoo Regional Psychiatric Hospital not long after Vicki went missing. Six weeks after Vicki was last seen alive, her body was found just two miles away from that Myers grocery store.
01:07:59
Speaker
This was in a rural area. She was found naked except for a shirt and a bra that had been wrapped around her neck. Her body was very decomposed. The medical examiner could not determine the cause of death and very little evidence was found. White refused to speak with police again and would not take a lie detector test.
01:08:23
Speaker
His pickup truck was searched and with the help of Luminal, blood was found in several areas. In early September 1994, about a week after Vicki's body was found, White would be arrested at the psychiatric hospital. Only having the blood evidence inside White's pickup truck and very little other evidence, first degree murder charges wouldn't hold up in court.
01:08:50
Speaker
White pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to eight to 15 years. John claimed to love Vicky and that her death was just an accident. While incarcerated, John was seeing a psychologist. He told his doctor that he had murderous fantasies and was turned on by necrophilia. He also claimed to have learned that his fantasies were wrong and that he was aware of that and that he had been reformed.
01:09:20
Speaker
When White was released on February 11, 2007, he was set on being a man of God. He moved to Mount Pleasant into a mobile home neighborhood about 11 miles west of town. He took on the pastoral role at the Christ Community Fellowship Church where he met and fell in love with Sally Gay. The two would get engaged and Sally moved in with him in the neighborhood and her daughter Rebecca Gay and her son lived just a few doors down.
01:09:45
Speaker
The church knew of his past, but believed in redemption and that John had been reformed. A few weeks before Halloween in 2012, John's fantasies started creeping back in. On Halloween Eve, John was at his home, drinking heavily when his urges overtook him. He walked a few doors down to Rebecca's trailer in the early morning hours, carrying a rubber mallet and zip ties.
01:10:16
Speaker
He entered her home and hit her in the head repeatedly until she was unconscious. He then took a zip tie, placed it around her neck, and tightened it, strangling her to death. Rebecca's three-year-old son was sleeping in the next room.
01:10:32
Speaker
John then took the rubber mallet, towels he used to clean up the mess with, and placed all of it in trash bags with Rebecca's body. He loaded it into his pickup. He took her body about a mile from her home and disposed of it in a ditch behind a tree line. John then returned to Rebecca's home
01:10:50
Speaker
and cared for her son Conway, as he had before. He dressed him in his Halloween costume and met his father in a grocery store parking lot to exchange custody. When Rebecca didn't show up for work on Halloween, her coworkers became concerned and reported her missing. John took to his congregation pleading for prayers for her to be found.
01:11:15
Speaker
The very next day, while being questioned, John admitted to murdering Rebecca and told police where they could find her body. He claimed his motive was his fantasies fueled by the necrophilia pornographic material that he had been watching for weeks leading up. He couldn't remember if he sexually assaulted Rebecca after her death or not, but she was found nude.
01:11:36
Speaker
He admitted to taking her car to a bar nearby called The Barn Door to stage her disappearance as a kidnapping. His confession was not the only nail in his coffin. Authorities were able to find Rebecca's blood and her necklace inside of his truck. Fingerprints and DNA all tied back to John as well. He was not clean or meticulous in any way when committing this murder.
01:11:58
Speaker
This time, the justice system did not fail. Authorities were prepared to put him away for good. In April of 2013, White was sentenced to 56 years in prison, at the time he was 55 years old. John only lasted a few months in prison, and on August 28 of 2013, he was found hanging in his prison cell from self-inflicted asphyxiation.
01:12:27
Speaker
Revival attempts were made, but unsuccessful.
01:12:32
Speaker
Do you think Whitney and Melissa give listeners free Cabernet? We should find out. My friend Emily is coming to the campfire next.
Cultural Misunderstandings and Gun Control
01:12:40
Speaker
Her podcast is Morbidology, where she covers a new crime case each week, taking an in-depth look at any systemic failures that may have had a part to play in the crime. Now let's travel back in time to August of 1992 to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where our crime takes place.
01:13:01
Speaker
Yoshihiro Hitori was a 16-year-old Japanese exchange student who moved in with the Haymaker family. He was affectionately known by his friends and family as Yoshi. Yoshi was the third exchange student that the Haymakers had hosted, and the second from Japan. Yoshi settled in perfectly. He enjoyed fishing with the family, and he always made sure to help out with his share of the chores.
01:13:29
Speaker
Brian Haymaker stated, he was throwing his heart into everything. He was making friends. He was adventurous. He was having trouble with English, but he was going on anyway. When Yoshi came to America, he was enrolled at McKinley High School, where he was known as a fun-loving and conscientious student who almost always had a smile on his face.
01:13:54
Speaker
His classmates said that he could always make them laugh, especially when he randomly broke into a Western dance step. As his friend Mandolin Fawn said, no matter who was rude to him, no matter what happened, he always had a smile on his face. In fall of 1992, Halloween was fast approaching and Yoshi could hardly wait for his first Halloween in the United States.
01:14:21
Speaker
He and Webb, who was the teenage son of the Haymakers, had been invited to a Halloween party, which was being held on the 17th of October. Yoshi had already picked out the perfect costume for somebody who was known for their impromptu dances. He was dressing up as John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, donning a tuxedo and white jacket, and topped off with some jewellery around his neck.
01:14:49
Speaker
Webb wasn't as excited as Yoshi and he opted out of wearing a costume that night.
01:14:55
Speaker
The Halloween party was being held at the host family of another Japanese exchange student. The purpose of the Halloween party was for exchange students to get to know other exchange students so that they could share their experiences and make new friends. When Yoshi and Webb arrived in the neighbourhood, they went up to 10311 East Brookside Drive.
01:15:21
Speaker
The home was adorned with all the Halloween decorations one would expect for a Halloween party, but Yoshi and Web were unfortunately at the wrong home. They had transposed two numbers in the address of the home where the party was being held and ended up at 10311 instead of 10131. The house belonged to Rodney Pierce and his wife Bonnie. Yoshi and Web approached the front door staff and knocked on the door.
01:15:52
Speaker
Bonnie opened it up, screamed, and then Slamda closed. She hollered to Rodney to go and get his gun. When Yoshi and Webb realised that they must have been at the wrong home, they turned around to walk back towards their car in pursuit of the correct home. As they were standing on the footpath outside the home, trying to figure out their next move, Rodney appeared at the door beside the carport,
01:16:23
Speaker
He was armed with a .44 Magnum revolver. He shouted at the teenagers to freeze. But Yoshi, who was just learning English, didn't understand what this command meant. Yoshi shouted out, we're here for the party, as he proceeded to walk towards Rodney. While it isn't known for sure, there's every chance that Yoshi thought that the gun was a prop. Part of the Halloween party.
01:16:52
Speaker
when Yoshi didn't freeze. Rodney fired his gun point blank at him before running back inside. Yoshi crumbled at the ground as Webb ran to the home next door, screaming for help. The neighbour, Stanley Lucky, immediately called an ambulance and then bolted outside to try and assist Yoshi, who lay critically injured, outside Rodney's home.
01:17:19
Speaker
Neither Rodney nor his wife offered any assistance. They stood inside their home peering out the window, even shouting at Stanley to go away when he came to help Yoshi. Webb and Stanley attempted to comfort Yoshi, who was bleeding heavily. They held his hand as he sobbed. Both Rodney and Bonnie stayed inside their home until police descended on the scene. Yoshi was bundled into an ambulance.
01:17:49
Speaker
But tragically, he died en route to hospital. He had been shot once in the chest. The bullet had perforated his left lung, and then exited out his back. As news of the sense the shooting swept across the city like wildfire, many people were left wondering how something so tragic could have transpired.
01:18:11
Speaker
Holly Haymaker, whose family was hosting Yoshi, said that if Rodney had in fact shouted freeze at Yoshi, he wouldn't have understood what it meant. As Holly said, Yoshi struggled with English. Rodney was taken into custody but he wasn't arrested. Bud Connor of the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Department said that there was no criminal intent on Rodney's part and stated that he was well within his rights to shoot Yoshi.
01:18:42
Speaker
The case was then turned over to the district attorney's office for a decision to be made on whether any action would be taken. It would be determined that Rodney would be facing a grand jury investigation. Just the day after the shooting, all of Japan's national television networks offered a lesson in English as the anchors explained how the word freeze could be used to mean don't move or I'll shoot you.
01:19:10
Speaker
The shooting broke headlines in Japan where the shooting of anybody, in particular teenagers, were extremely rare. In fact, officials of both the government and the students sponsoring programs said that they never even thought that it would be necessary to teach high school students how to deal with possible gun attacks.
01:19:33
Speaker
At the time, tensions between America and Japan were high, and the shooting only amplified the tension, with a lot of people saying that the shooting had reflected a decline in American society.
01:19:46
Speaker
As one TV reporter said, America, what a country. You can't even walk around outside and be safe. Many people live in fear all the time over there. On the 20th of October, a memorial service was held at the Unitarian Church of Baton Rouge, where around 300 mourners packed in. During the emotional service, Yoshi's mother, Miko Hatori, said that she and her husband felt sympathy for Rodney.
01:20:17
Speaker
Turning to the crowd, she said, We are sorry in our awareness of Mr. Pierce's suffering from this most unfortunate event. She went on to say that she was perplexed by how easily accessible guns are in America before stating, without them, Mr. Pierce wouldn't have been put in the position he's in right now. Her words prompted a standing ovation from the mourners, as it highlighted her true compassion even in the face of adversity. Holly Haymaker also spoke.
01:20:46
Speaker
During the service, she recollected how on the first day that Yoshi entered her home, he put his arms around her and called her mum. She described how he slotted right in with the family and became an integral part almost immediately. She told the mourners how Yoshi liked to keep his room tidy and he loved dancing in the kitchen.
01:21:05
Speaker
Towards the end of the service, Yoshi's father, Masachi Hitori, thanked the crowd for coming to bid farewell to his son, who'd left the world with much undone. He said that despite their heartache, his family were dedicated to the mission Yoshi had undertaken to make friends in America and strengthen the ties between Japan and the United States. In a news conference the following day, Rodney's lawyer, Louis Unglesby, said that Rodney felt great regret over what he had done.
01:21:34
Speaker
He said that his client was not a criminal, but a person who was afraid of becoming the victim of a crime. He said that it was a dark night, and Rodney hadn't realised that Yoshi was dressed up for a Halloween party. In early November, it was announced that a grand jury had rejected a second-degree murder charge, and instead returned a manslaughter indictment against Rodney for shooting Yoshi.
01:21:59
Speaker
Following the decision, Rodney surrendered and his lawyer announced that he was expecting his client to post bond. Just the following day, Rodney posted a $100,000 property bond and was released from custody while awaiting trial. He pleaded not guilty to the charge.
01:22:18
Speaker
within a month of the shooting. Japan collected over 800,000 signatures on a petition urging the United States to adopt stricter gun control. They presented US Ambassador Michael Armacost with the petition, who said that the petition would make a positive contribution to the debate on gun control in America. He also said that he would transmit the petition to the White House. Rodney's trial would begin in May of 1993.
01:22:46
Speaker
During opening statements, Defence Unglesby said that Rodney shot Yoshi because he thought that he was protecting his wife and three children from an intruder. Prosecutor Doug Moreau asked the jurors not to judge Rodney as a person, but judge his conduct on the night of the shooting.
01:23:03
Speaker
He described Rodney as criminally negligent and said that he should be convicted of manslaughter. He said that after Rodney opened the door, after it had been slammed closed by Bonnie, Yoshi interpreted this as an invitation to the party they had been searching for. The jury would hear a recorded interview between Rodney and investigators. He detailed how Bonnie told him to get his gun and he didn't even question why.
01:23:30
Speaker
He said that when he went outside he saw Yoshi who was wearing a white suit and carrying something which turned out to be a camera. He said that Yoshi appeared to be laughing but when he failed to stop moving he shot him. He said that he was protecting his family but when he was asked if he knew what he was protecting them from he simply said no. Prosecutor Moro argued during the trial that the actions of the couple were not reasonable.
01:23:57
Speaker
He said that it hadn't been rational for a man of 6 feet 2 inches tall to be afraid of a friendly and unarmed boy who weighed just 130 pounds. A boy who rang the doorbell before walking away. Yoshi had an attempt to break in. He wasn't wearing a scary mask. He wasn't armed. He was simply looking for a Halloween party.
01:24:21
Speaker
Following all of the testimony, the jury were sent away to deliberate. Under Louisiana law, homicide can be justified for a number of reasons, including what is known as the Shoot the Burglar law, which allows people to protect themselves from intruders. It took just three hours for the jury to reach a verdict. They found Rodney not guilty of manslaughter. Many in court applauded when the forewoman announced the verdict.
01:24:49
Speaker
Yoshi's parents said that they weren't surprised, but they were disappointed.
01:24:54
Speaker
Rodney was later found to be liable to Yoshi's parents for $650,000 in damages. With this money, Yoshi's parents founded two charities in their son's name. One was to fund US students wanting to visit Japan, while the other was for gun control. His parents later presented President Bill Clinton with a petition signed by 1.7 million Japanese citizens calling for stricter gun laws.
01:25:23
Speaker
that became big supporters of the Brady Bill, which mandated background checks and a five-day waiting period for the purchase of guns in the United States. The shooting of Yoshi had truly been instrumental in the passage of the bill. Following his acquittal, Rodney Pierce claimed that he would never own a gun again, and he admitted that he had simply overreacted to his wife's fear.
01:25:50
Speaker
This overreaction caused a teenage boy in the frontier of adulthood to lose his life in the most terrifying way imaginable.
01:26:02
Speaker
So what do you think? Should he have been found guilty? Mike Brown from Dark Poutine joins us from north of the 49th parallel. That's Canada if you didn't know. Canadians are known for their politeness, but as Mike will remind us, a recent sword attack in Quebec City shows us some Canadians have a dark side too.
01:26:26
Speaker
In that attack, on Halloween night, a man dressed in what has been described as medieval clothing went on a slashing and stabbing spree with a razor-sharp Japanese-style katana sword. After the attack, two people were left dead and another five were hospitalized, some with serious injuries, and the attacker had fled the scene.
01:26:46
Speaker
One of the most notable buildings in Old Quebec City overlooking the picturesque St. Lawrence River is the historic and posh Chateau Frontenac Hotel. Chateau Frontenac, a National Historic Site of Canada since 1981, first opened for business in 1893.
01:27:04
Speaker
It was here at around 10 p.m. on October 31, 2020 that a black four-door Saturn was left motor still running by its driver, 24-year-old Carl Girard. Girard, dressed in black jogging pants, black leather boots, a short-sleeve kimono, and a black mask, had his sharpened 76.9-centimeter-bladed katana sword in hand.
01:27:26
Speaker
He'd left his home in St. Therese, Quebec, a suburb of Montreal, in the afternoon and had driven the 270 kilometers to Quebec City with murder on his mind. After exiting his vehicle, Girard approached his first victim, a 26-year-old musician named Remy Belanger.
01:27:44
Speaker
Belanger was out or a leisurely stroll. He was listening to a podcast and stood to take a picture of Chateau Frontenac when he noticed a man, clad in black, advancing quickly toward him, sword above his head. Belanger later recalled thinking at first that it was a Halloween reveler playing some kind of joke to irritate him.
01:28:03
Speaker
But when the first blow landed, hitting him in the head, he knew he was in trouble. Belanger put up his hand to defend himself and his fingers were severed. He fell to his knees as the attacker kept slashing and stabbing at him. Remy Belanger managed to pick up his fingers, got to his feet and fled toward the lobby of Chateau Frontenac, screaming for help in both English and French.
01:28:24
Speaker
Remy Belanger was later treated for wounds to his skull, neck, back, chest, arms, hands, and hip. A cellist, Remy was transferred to a hospital in Montreal that specializes in limb replantation. There, doctors worked hard to save his hand so he could play music again.
01:28:43
Speaker
As Belanger ran away, Girard did not pursue him, but turned his attention to 56-year-old Francois Duchesne. He was much beloved as the communications director for the Musée Nationale des Beaux Arts du Québec. He was out for a slow jog.
01:29:00
Speaker
Girard, frustrated by his failure to kill Remy Belanger only moments before, made sure he succeeded this time. He attacked Duchenne from behind, hacking, slashing, and stabbing the defenseless man 13 times on the neck, trunk, and back. Francois lay bleeding on the sidewalk of Dutresseaux Street, where he was tended to by two good Samaritans who had called 911, but it was too late. Francois Duchenne bled to death at the scene.
01:29:28
Speaker
Another couple walking together on Debaud Street, Pierre Lagerville and Lisa Mamoud also encountered Karl Girard that night. They too thought he was wearing a Halloween costume as he walked up to them, saw it in the attack position. Lisa Mamoud didn't feel threatened and smiled at Girard just before he hit Pierre Lagerville. During the attack, Lagerville had screamed for Girard to stop, but the attacker persisted, unfazed.
01:29:53
Speaker
Pierre, who had serious wounds to the skull and shoulder, said, quote, he looks serene. He wasn't in shock mode from what he had just done, end quote. As Karl Girard slashed and stabbed at Lisa Mamoud at least 13 times, Lisa recalled, exclaiming, what are you doing?
01:30:09
Speaker
Luckily, before Gerard could finish the job, Lagerval and Mamoud managed to flee. Gerard's next victim was not so lucky. On Days Rampart Street, 61-year-old Suzanne Claremont had just stepped out the front door to have a cigarette. Suzanne's husband, Jock, inside doing the dishes, was startled by the sound of Suzanne's loyal dog howling like he'd never heard before.
01:30:30
Speaker
A hairdresser, Suzanne was a bright spot in the community during the COVID-19 pandemic, participating in regular, socially distanced gatherings with neighbors to watch the sunset every evening atop the Old Quarter's fortifications. Jacques ran outside to find Suzanne laying on the sidewalk, bleeding heavily from several wounds. He later said, I saw that she had a deep gash in the middle of her forehead, I tried to close the wound with my hands to hold her face together.
01:30:56
Speaker
Their neighbor, an emergency room doctor, ran outside baseball bat in hand. She tried performing CPR, but Suzanne Claremont had lost too much blood. In the last group to encounter Carl Girard was Gilberto Lucillo Porras Alvarado. He was out with three of his friends when they came across Girard all in black, sword at his side.
01:31:16
Speaker
Gerard said Happy Halloween before drawing his sword. Porres Alvarado, who thought the sword was fake at first, said he quickly realized the weapon was very real as the first blows landed. He and two of his friends fled together. The fourth person of the group, a young person whose name is under publication ban, was pursued and injured by Gerard. That young person also escaped, hiding inside a gas station.
01:31:40
Speaker
He was later treated for injuries. Pores Alvarado, who'd suffered cuts to his head and a finger before he managed to escape, spent two weeks in hospital. There'd been a flood of 911 calls, coming in talking about a sword-wielding attacker dressed like a ninja and last seen heading in the direction of the port.
Carl Girard's Attack and Trial
01:31:58
Speaker
Shortly before 1 a.m. on November 1st, 2020, a port officer on patrol in the old port of Quebec noticed a man hiding in a bush. Aware of the attacks, the officer notified police and cops arrived en masse taking the blood-covered man into custody.
01:32:14
Speaker
Carl Girard, who was not talking at first, had no criminal record. It was quickly learned that in 2015, Girard, quote, in a mental health context, had made threats to do just as he did, kill people indiscriminately, and cause as much chaos and mayhem as he possibly could. Why hadn't he gotten the help that he needed at the time?
01:32:35
Speaker
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was one of many dignitaries to weigh in on the situation as the nation woke up to the news of a horrific series of attacks in what is normally a peaceful city. Flags in the province were temporarily brought to half mass to honor the victims.
01:32:50
Speaker
Witnesses and police described Carl Girard as calm and compliant during his arrest. He had no ID and at first refused to identify himself. After he was in custody, it was taken to hospital and later transported to a detention facility to be interrogated. He was charged with two counts of first-degree murder and the killings of Suzanne Claremont and Francois Duchenne.
01:33:10
Speaker
Carl Girard's defense team claimed that the 24-year-old was driven to kill and who his victims were didn't matter at all. He admitted a killing to Shane and Claremont and injuring the five others. But his lawyer argued he was not criminally responsible at the time of the events because he was suffering from a mental disorder. At the outset of the trial was chilling testimony from witnesses to the attacks and surviving victims, all noting Girard's deliberate, eerily calm demeanor during the stabbing and slashing spree that Halloween night.
01:33:40
Speaker
The prosecution had argued that the acts were premeditated, noting Girard had spoken to mental health workers since his late teen years about using a sword to attack people. The Crown's primary expert, psychiatrist Dr. Sylvain Fauchier, concluded that Girard suffered from a personality disorder and was on a narcissistic quest to express his resentment towards society, concluding that there were no signs of delusional thinking, the accused knew very much what he was doing was wrong.
01:34:08
Speaker
Shackled and handcuffed, in the witness box, Girard testified on his own behalf. The accused killer claimed that his goal was to create chaos, change the world and encourage like-minded people. He stated that by the time he was 18 years old he believed he had a top-secret mission to kill and that his life would be sacrificed at the end of it.
01:34:27
Speaker
After Claremont's killing though, he said he began to question his actions. I thought I would have a feeling of accomplishment, but that wasn't the case, Girard told the jury. I decided there shouldn't be one more death, my own or anyone else's." Girard told the court he was fearful when he arrived in Quebec City and didn't want to go ahead with his plan but felt he had no choice. He described the killings as duty. I went against my will. I didn't want to, but I had to, Girard said.
01:34:54
Speaker
I saw lots of people and I attacked them with my sword to execute my mission." Girard then told the jury that the killer no longer existed. There's a Karl Girard with you today who likes making people laugh and helping others, Girard said. It's different from Karl Girard from the mission, who feels obliged to isolate himself, but that's in the past. There's no Karl Girard from the mission anymore.
01:35:18
Speaker
Dr. Gilles Chamberlain, a psychiatrist, testified for the defense, concluding that Gerard was on the autism spectrum, suffered from schizophrenia, and was delirious and in a state of psychosis the night of the killings, unable to distinguish right from wrong. On May 20, 2022, minutes after beginning their fifth day of deliberations, the jury came to a decision, guilty on both counts of first-degree murder.
01:35:42
Speaker
On June 10, 2022, Carl Girard was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole before 2045. Hopefully, residents of Quebec City will rest a little easier knowing that the killer is behind bars for a long time. That said, Halloween will never be the same for those who lost loved ones or lived through the attacks.
01:36:04
Speaker
Did you think I first misspoke when you heard me say sword attack? My next friends that are joining us might have moonshine, by the way. I hope you don't mind.
Hillbilly Horror Stories Segment
01:36:15
Speaker
They are a husband and wife duo, Jerry and Tracy, from the Hillbilly Horror Stories podcast. I have no doubt that you'll love them as much as I do.
01:36:24
Speaker
So Tracy, let's jump in for this episode. We're going to cover a Kentucky story since that's where we're from. We're going to cover a story from Lewis County, which is up around the West Virginia, Ohio border. Mary Lou and her family move into a house. I had Aunt Mary Lou. Is that a fact?
01:36:45
Speaker
Yes. Rest in peace. She's passed on. It was my mommy's sister. Okay. So her family moves into this house. In case anybody cared. Sorry, go ahead. That everyone said was haunted. Everybody in the surrounding area. Now this house at one time belonged to an older couple who was having some marital problems. And during this time, the wife basically kicked the husband out of the home.
01:37:13
Speaker
Well, the husband really didn't have any place to go, so he decided to stay in an outbuilding that was just a few feet from the house. That seems fair. Yeah, the building was actually connected to the house by a walkway. Okay. So it was pretty close, but not in the house. Now this was during a very hot summer, and that building must have become unbearably hot.
01:37:37
Speaker
Hot to the point that the husband was found dead of an apparent heat stroke. Oh wow, dang it's hot. You heard of a fan? Soon after, there were reports of the deceased husband being seen wandering the property on very hot nights. When Mary Lou's family moved into the house, it was spring.
01:38:00
Speaker
So there really were no issues except that the family couldn't seem to keep the door closed on that small outbuilding. I wonder how long it was till Mary Lou found out that he had passed. I don't know. And I would, didn't have any way of researching that. I don't even know what your, any of this happened to be honest with you. Well, I wouldn't want you to lie. Eventually Mary Lou's husband had to lock the door with a padlock.
01:38:27
Speaker
So we're going to fast forward a little bit. Mary Lou's husband goes to work one morning. Mary Lou's just sitting up in the kitchen, drinking her coffee. She hears heavy footsteps coming up the stairs. This is inside the house. And then she hears the back door slam shut. She thought, well, this is odd because anyone leaving through the back door would have had to walk right past her first. Yeah, in the kitchen.
01:38:53
Speaker
Don't act like you know the layout of the house. I do. I got it down in my mind. The footsteps were too heavy for a child, but she went and checked on the children just to make sure and all the children were still sleeping in their beds. She took a look around and she found the back door standing wide open, which is odd because it did slam shut. Yeah, it's open. It's wide open. Yeah, I'd be scared.
01:39:16
Speaker
She decided to ignore the noises that she'd been hearing in the door slamming shut because it was extremely warm outside and she wanted to just shut the door and not let the hot air in. Later that day, she decides to go out and do some work in the yard. It's a little bit of gardening. She sat down under a tree to take a little bit of a break because like we said, it was kind of warm. She hears the back door slam shut again.
01:39:44
Speaker
She knows the sound because she already heard it once that day. So she looks towards the house and she can see the curtains parked in the kitchen window as if someone was peeking out and kind of moving it with their two hands. At a second glance she saw nothing but then she saw the curtains fall back across the window. She immediately gets up, she walks around her house
01:40:10
Speaker
trying to convince herself that she's just imagining all this and she comes across the opened basement door. She was sure that she had locked that door. She assumed that maybe the heat was just kind of making her delusional. She relocked the basement door and then she went back to her work in the yard. She later passed by the door to only find it open again. The basement door? The basement door.
01:40:39
Speaker
And this really shook her up this time. Well, yeah, that's where it's cooler. What are you letting all the hot air in? As soon as her husband got home, she told him about the events of the day. Now her husband couldn't believe what he was hearing. And in fact, he scolded her for believing it herself. Now over the next few weeks, the weather got extremely hot. With that, the paranormal activity increased as well. Or should we say heated up.
01:41:09
Speaker
Uh-huh. Well, you know the paranormal don't like it. They're gonna hate either. Shoot. The building in which the old man died was now padlocked, as we talked about. Even with that being the case, the door was still found standing wide open on several occasions. Mary Lee would lock it back, and time and time again, to no avail. I would have just given up.
01:41:32
Speaker
Her husband kept telling Mary that there had to be some kind of a simple explanation, but he sure didn't have one to offer up. Right. Yeah. I mean, cause you know, padlocks just become unlocked and taken off the lock and doors to open all the time. True. I mean, I wonder what else was in there. I don't know. I can't imagine there was anything in there that anybody would want to take.
01:41:54
Speaker
One morning she heard noises coming from the kitchen and when she got in there, the whole room was vibrating as if an angry hand was shaking the whole room. There were also sounds coming from inside the walls. It sounded as if someone was tearing at the boards trying to rip them away. Later, that evening as Mary Lou was lying in bed, her son comes running into the room.
01:42:19
Speaker
He said that he heard a noise coming from the attic that was above his room. He said it sounded like someone was trying to get out. She put him in her bed, calming down like most good mothers would. But just as she was about to doze off, the whole house started violently shaking again. Okay, was the husband there? Did he hear it? We'll get to it.
01:42:42
Speaker
The windows were vibrating so hard that it seemed like they were going to basically come out of their frames. And yes, her husband actually witnessed this event. He could no longer deny that something supernatural appeared to be at work here. His answer was to vacate the premises. Looking back at the events years later, Mary Lou realizes that each of these occurrences happened at extremely hot days or hot nights.
01:43:12
Speaker
She said it was almost as if the poor old man's soul was opening doors to get air. Mary Lou says she wonders if maybe someone had locked the door on that outbuilding trapping the old man inside, causing his death and leaving his soul to wander, trying to tear out windows and doors seeking relief from the intense heat. Oh, bless his heart. That's an awful way to go.
01:43:35
Speaker
There would be an awful way to go. That's so terrible. So, yeah, like I said, I don't know what the situation was. I don't know what year it happened. I don't know if somebody did lock the man in and that's why he was so against locks or maybe. Yeah, but who would have known he was in there except for his wife. I don't know. I mean, who else would have a reason to lock the door?
01:43:56
Speaker
Well, that mean heifer. We don't know that she did that. Well, that's just an assumption that could have happened. I mean, it could just be that he wants the door open so he can't be trapped in there. Yeah. It didn't mean that it got locked
Folklore and Ghostly Tales
01:44:08
Speaker
in there. Right. Right. Keep it open now. Yeah. Well, that poor soul.
01:44:13
Speaker
I could smell the moonshine, couldn't you? Bless their hearts. You must be thinking, man, Shane has a lot of friends. And you're right, I do. And isn't it also amazing that this campfire doesn't need replenished with wood?
01:44:34
Speaker
I have four more friends to introduce you to. And here comes Eric Carter Landon now. Eric is the host of True Consequences, which focuses on crime and mysteries in New Mexico and the American desert Southwest. Plus he's a really good person altogether. You'll love him. Eric, take it away. Sometimes late at night on the ditch banks, rivers, lake fronts, and arroyos of New Mexico,
01:45:04
Speaker
People claim to hear the wails and sobs of a woman. She sounds distraught. She cries out. If you ever hear this cry, it's best you avoid any waterways and by no means should you try to find or help this woman. If you value your life, you will close your eyes and go to sleep. Children heed this warning.
01:45:33
Speaker
Be wary of the cries of this woman. I am Eric Carter-Londine and this is Halloween at True Consequences.
01:46:14
Speaker
Maria was the most beautiful woman in her Pueblo. She was well sought after by all the suitable bachelors in town, but she was not interested in any of them. It wasn't until she met a tall and mysterious man from out of town that she even considered dating anyone. He was quite the catch. He was rich, handsome, well-traveled, and the pair started dating. And very soon, they were in love.
01:46:41
Speaker
In a matter of months they were engaged and a short time later the couple were married in a huge celebration. The whole neighborhood was decorated with colorful paper flags and flowers. Within a couple of years, Maria and her husband had two kids. Everything was going perfectly.
01:46:58
Speaker
until one spring night. On the night of March 13, 1550, on the streets of Mexico City, Maria was wandering the streets, grief-stricken and angry. She had never been treated in such a way. The shame she felt was consuming her. How could her husband have embarrassed her like that in front of everyone? She waited faithfully for him while he traveled around the country, and he has the nerve to show up with a new woman in his carriage,
01:47:28
Speaker
He didn't even apologize for what he did, he simply told her it was over and rode away as his new lover laughed. She laughed. Who did they think they were? Maria was the prettiest woman in their neighborhood. She could have any man that she wanted.
01:47:45
Speaker
No one treated Maria that way. Not if they didn't want to suffer. Oh, he was going to suffer. She'd show him. She'd show them all. Maria would make sure that no one tried to hurt her like this ever again. She gathered up her resolve as she headed back to her house. She was wailing loudly as she made her way back to her doorstep. Maria was heartbroken.
01:48:08
Speaker
How could the man of her dreams betray her like this? She walked up the stairs and inhaled the smell of fresh tamales that she had made for her husband's arrival. He was going to pay for what he did. He will never forget this day. She was going to make sure of it. As she approached the bedroom of her children,
01:48:27
Speaker
She gently and silently opened the door. She strolled across the bedroom and walked over to their beds and kissed each of them on their foreheads. Her son Julian and daughter Sophia were softly breathing. She gently woke them and led the pair down the stairs.
01:48:42
Speaker
What's happening, Mama? the boy asked. Don't worry, my love, she said. Where are we going, Mama? Little Sophia asked. Somewhere beautiful, Mihita. They crossed the street and headed to the creek. Mama, tengo miedo. I'm afraid, said Julián.
01:49:02
Speaker
Maria said, I know Mihito. Then she picked up her two children and submerged herself into the forceful stream. Her final thought was that her husband would be destroyed by what she did. Unfortunately, they all perished. As a curse for her horrible deeds, Maria was forced to wander the waterways of the southwestern United States.
01:49:24
Speaker
and Central and South America searching for her children. But her heart was so twisted with vengeance and rage that she became a predatory ghost, seeking out children who misbehave or are foolish enough to wander the bodies of water at night. She became known as La Llorona, or The Weeping Woman. She's been seen in what seems to be a white wedding dress, all the while crying for her children.
01:49:56
Speaker
When an unsuspecting child finds themselves near a river, stream or lake, they are likely to be taken and drowned by La Llorona.
01:50:05
Speaker
This story, or maybe something similar, is told over and over to children in Latino households as a means to keep them away from the water and to make them behave. Other cultures have Santa Claus giving you coal. Well, we have a ghost that will abduct you and drown you. Yeah, I know, it's messed up.
01:50:27
Speaker
But it is such a rich folktale with a long history and it continues to be passed down from generation to generation. All I can tell you is that if you ever hear the cries of a woman looking for her children late at night, don't go near the water or La Llorona just might get you. Thanks for listening and stay spooky New Mexico.
01:51:09
Speaker
Okay, you just heard a tale from New Mexico, so now let's go to Texas. Gone Cold is hosted by Vincent. He covers crime and mysteries specifically in the Lone Star State.
01:51:24
Speaker
In the early 1990s, at age 13 or 14, I joined a group of friends at what was reportedly a haunted attraction off the beaten path in Fort Worth. If I remember right, we timed our arrival there at around midnight.
01:51:41
Speaker
Now I personally did not expect to hear the screams of the ghosts who were said to hunt this area. Rather, it was the punk rock blasting from my older friend's car radio, cigarettes, booze, and a lack of adult supervision that got me there.
01:51:59
Speaker
Many of the folks I was with, however, were there to hear the ghoulish, anguished cries of the apparitions rumored to roam this particular pitch-black, dark, and heavily wooded spot in Tarrant County. They were there for the scare, and we all got one. But it wasn't the result of the roaming ghosts of three teenage girls constantly reliving their deaths thirty years before. Instead, it was the cops.
01:52:29
Speaker
and at the height of the absurd era known as Satanic Panic. It's likely those boys in blue figured they'd busted up what was about to become some sort of devilish ritual or blood sacrifice rather than what it was. A bunch of latchkey kids cutting loose. Several of my delinquent friends and I successfully outmaneuvered and outran the police, luckily for us.
01:52:57
Speaker
Anyway, it didn't matter that the cops broke up the party, though we were somewhat close. We hadn't even gone to the right spot to hear the Lost Souls, the place known as Screaming Bridge.
01:53:19
Speaker
On the night of Saturday, February 4, 1961, Arlington High School juniors Mary Lou, Kathy, Claudia, Donna, Joanne, and Dorothy left an Arlington movie theater as the credits for the film Butterfield 8 starring Elizabeth Taylor began to roll. Packed tightly into Mary Lou's mid-1950s two-door Chevy, the girls went cruising.
01:53:47
Speaker
Perhaps the chilly, foggy night under a near-full moon as inspiration. Five of the girls wanted to show the new girl, Joanne, the area's haunted spots.
01:53:59
Speaker
like Hell's Gate, through which, legend has it, a group of Union spies were led to their hanging deaths at the hands of Confederate soldiers during the Civil War and where the cries and prayers of their ghosts can be heard. And, perhaps, a lover's lane near the railroad tracks where a hobo who had just jumped off the train is said to have been shot to death as he tried to help a woman in a car who was being assaulted.
01:54:29
Speaker
His ghost, if you're apt to believe such a thing, taps on the windows of parked cars, making sure the occupants are safe. Joanne was a recent addition to the student body at Arlington High, and there seemed no better way to break her into the area than to introduce her to local apparitions. But before showing the new girl those sights, the teenagers made their way to another known Lovers Lane nearby.
01:54:59
Speaker
As they did, the girls spoke of an escaped convict, an urban legend about a sometimes masked man with a hook for a hand that terrorized teenagers necking at lovers' lanes, likely a tale inspired by the terrifying and true Texas crimes committed by the phantom killer of Texarkana in the 1940s. There was little doubt the teenagers worked themselves up.
01:55:26
Speaker
They drove to an especially dark and secluded area of Arlington Bedford Road, heading south from Mosier Valley and parked, still eerily whispering the tale of the hook-handed man. After a few minutes, they noticed a car coming toward them, flashing its lights and honking its horn.
01:55:48
Speaker
The driver was shouting at them, but the girls couldn't understand what he was saying. And anyway, they were too spooked to find out. Instead, Mary Lou put the car in drive and stepped on the gas.
01:56:02
Speaker
the driver of the other vehicle was horrified. He'd stopped just beyond a railroad crossing, and between the passing train's lights and those of his own vehicle, he saw blackness where the road's bridge had once been. It was just in time, the young man said he was no more than two feet from the long drop to the ditch below.
01:56:26
Speaker
After backing up, his headlights caught the barricades and sign warning bridge out that some malicious person had removed from the road. But the girls weren't so lucky.
01:56:40
Speaker
Unable to see what was ahead in time to stop, the car carrying Mary Lou, Kathy, Claudia, Donna, Joanne, and Dorothy plunged 25 feet down to the wooded and rocky drainage ditch below. The vehicle slammed into the other side's embankment some 40 feet across. It was approximately 10.15 pm.
01:57:07
Speaker
Later, it was estimated that they were traveling 45 to 55 miles an hour. Mary Lou and Claudia were killed instantly upon impact. Weeks-old ice patches on the road from an earlier winter storm along with the embankment's mud-slicked surface made the rescue operation a difficult one, as did the sleet coming down.
01:57:34
Speaker
When responders and authorities were finally able to pull the girls from the wreckage, ambulances transported them to area hospitals. Kathy died upon arrival at a hospital in Dallas. Donna, Joanne, and Dorothy sustained major injuries that caused lifelong physical impairments. And of course, unimaginable, immeasurable emotional trauma.
01:58:02
Speaker
The wooden bridge at Arlington Bedford Road was burned down by four teenaged arsonists the week prior, though their actions would be labeled in a kind of boys will be boys way by local authorities who called what they did vandalism or mischief. It's long been rumored they'd set that particular bridge on fire because of who crossed it going south.
01:58:28
Speaker
The first freed person's community in Tarrant County, Mosier Valley, or the River Bottoms, as it is also known, was predominantly black in 1961. Some say the boys burned the bridge to impede members of that community's travel into North Arlington. A Tarrant County grand jury later declined to indict the boys, all of whom were white.
01:58:54
Speaker
They deserved a chance to make good, grand jurors said. Quote, no good would come of bliding the entire future of a group of bright and religious young men. Whoever moved the barricades put in place by county employees after these boys destroyed the bridge was supposedly never identified.
01:59:18
Speaker
No one has ever been held accountable for the deaths and injuries of these girls, and the case in my mind remains unresolved. Countless iterations of the origins of Screaming Bridge have been told over the years, including that the girls were cheerleaders who were waved on by a sadistic man who knew what he was leading them to. They were neither cheerleaders nor waved on by anyone.
01:59:47
Speaker
Also, folks say two cars crashed in the middle of the one-lane wooden bridge, which caught fire and gave way, sending the passengers of both vehicles 25 feet straight down. That, of course, isn't even close to the truth.
02:00:05
Speaker
Besides the screams of the three teenage girls who were killed at Screaming Bridge on February 4, 1961, folks have reported phenomena like the rolling in of heavy, mystic fog, whatever that means, and the appearance of Mary Lou, Claudia, and Kathy's tombstones on the surface of the murky, dull water.
02:00:28
Speaker
On the wrong bridges, folks report seeing the shimmering of headlights, or almost dying as they nearly drive off the structures themselves. Many ghost hunters and pursuers of the paranormal have tried to find the deadly sight, but most often find instead one of two of the wrong concrete bridges in the area that are admittedly scary places in their own right.
02:00:55
Speaker
However, after being replaced with a concrete drainage tunnel filled in with dirt and rock around it soon after the deaths and injuries, no trace of Screaming Bridge has remained for many decades.
02:01:22
Speaker
My next friend is approaching, and before she gets here I have to warn you that I've met her in person before and not to get scared. Yes, I agree, I too think the devil himself is likely terrified of her, but in all honesty, she is a very kind lady. While everyone else has scary tales, I thought it would be really nice to hear a personal story from her.
02:01:54
Speaker
Hello, Nancy Grace here from Crime Stories and crimeonline.com. Halloween is one of my favorite times of the year, and it always has been, but I have to tell you that once I've had the twins, John, David, and Lucy, it's so much more fun. I love everything we do.
02:02:13
Speaker
dressing them up buying candy decorating the house i think i'm the only person in the neighborhood that has so many ghosts hanging from trees and skeletons sitting on patio furniture i love it.
02:02:28
Speaker
I think back when I was a little girl in rural Bibb County, middle Georgia, we were so far out of the city of Macon, which was small itself, being like a 30 minute drive in. So there were very few homes to go and trick or treat with, and it would be so dark.
02:02:52
Speaker
Out in the country at night and we did not have anything like store-bought Halloween outfits I remember for several years in a row I would be a ghost and I was so short I'd actually wear a pillowcase
02:03:07
Speaker
And the pillowcase would cover my head, of course, and go down to my ankles. And we would cut holes in the pillowcase for eyes. That was... I didn't know we were poor. I was perfectly happy the way we were. But that would be my Halloween outfit. And I also remember that it dawned on me much later that the pillowcases had pink stripes.
02:03:29
Speaker
So I was a very scary pillowcase with pink stripes ghost. But it was so much fun. And I remember Miss Julia that lived on a huge farm next to our little spot.
02:03:47
Speaker
would always make caramel apples and dress up like a witch and hand them out from her front porch. That was the big thing, going all the way in the night by foot under the moonlight to get that caramel apple. And believe you me, I absolutely would do it.
02:04:05
Speaker
Of course, there are always older boys or teens scaring all the trick-or-treaters. At that time in my life, I didn't really know what to be scared of. I didn't know anything about crime or scary movies or
02:04:22
Speaker
Anything like that growing up I really only learned about crime when my fiance was murdered just before our wedding and that's when my world blew up and I found out about violent crime and that there were actually things to be scared of in this world. But growing up in rural Georgia where there was nothing to see as far as you could look except for soybean fields and tall pine trees.
02:04:52
Speaker
That was a great way to have Halloween. And I remember my mother would always make a meal, the one we dreaded and hated the most, and we couldn't trick or treat until we ate it. For instance, one year with stewed prunes. Anyway, thanks, Mom. That said, I have great memories growing up with Halloween. Then I had the twins. Now that's a whole other can of worms.
02:05:18
Speaker
That is an extravaganza like no other compared only to their birthday or Christmas. There has to be the right outfit. I remember one year, John David changed outfits. I think it was four times. And the same for Lucy. One year she was a cat. She was a witch.
02:05:37
Speaker
She was some other animal spider. That takes a lot of wardrobe changes. I mean, you got to have one for the school party, one for the church trunk fest, one for the actual trick-or-treating. I mean, and no, she doesn't sit, they don't sit out going, I want five outfits. It's just, mom, I want to be a witch now, or I want to be a cat. I'll never forget when John David wanted to be a bush.
02:06:04
Speaker
a bush so he could sneak up on houses? Well, we got him a ghillie suit.
02:06:11
Speaker
And he looked like a bush. You know, those things you see in war movies when it looks like an empty field and all of a sudden the soldiers all jump up. They're wearing ghillie suits. My son has one. I saved it because I'm sure one day I'm going to need a ghillie suit. I haven't used it yet, but oh, I'm so glad I'm doing this because I just remembered I came up with my costume for this year, last year.
02:06:36
Speaker
I'm going to be Cousin It. I love Cousin It off the Addams family. And I got the most awesome Cousin It outfit. Sometimes I wear it around the house just to scare the children. But now, you know, they've seen me come out so many times. I've got the whole thing. I've got the long hair. It goes head to toe, the hat and the glasses. I can't wait. Now that's deviating from my typical, as predicted, witch outfit.
02:07:01
Speaker
A lot of people ask me, do you go see horror movies at Halloween? And the answer to that is a big H-E-L-L-N-O. No, I don't. Why? I've seen plenty of horror movies in real life. They weren't movies. They were real.
02:07:24
Speaker
triple homicides, one homicide after the next, every type you can imagine, drowning, strangulation, stabbing, shooting, asphyxiation, smothering, manual, ligature, overdose, you name it. I've seen it. Bludgeoning. That's a bad one.
02:07:43
Speaker
So I have no desire to relive those real life experiences on the big silver screen. I'm going to stick with trick or treat. I'm going to help the twins get one of their mini costumes together. I'm going to follow them just as the sun sets at a discrete distance. It's like I'm not even there to make sure that no harm befalls them.
02:08:11
Speaker
We're going to have fun. We're going to hand out candy in the front yard to anybody that comes by. It's going to be a spooky night. And when the children get home, we're going to talk about all the candy they got. We're going to line it up on the floor so they can count it and see who got the most. P.S. is always John David. They're going to run around the house stealing each other's candy.
02:08:40
Speaker
laughing their heads off. They're going to go to sleep too late because it's a school night this year. And then once I know they're asleep, I'm going to go through all their candy to make sure there are no razor blades. And they will never know the real life horrors that are out there. They'll sleep like two little angels.
02:09:10
Speaker
And so will I. So happy Halloween. That will be me, Cousin It. Nancy Grace, signing off. What? That's my very best witch's laugh. How was it? I thought that was pretty good. And I'm looking forward to seeing Nancy Grace and her cousin It outfit. I don't know about you. Okay.
02:09:37
Speaker
Now it's time for our last terrifying tale. This one is to help you go to sleep. Kelly Barron's Brinks hosts True Crime IRL and True Crime Sleep Stories.
02:09:58
Speaker
In 1912 in Veliska, Iowa, the Moore family was considered affluent in their small community, and they were very well liked. Josiah, age 43, was married to Sarah, 39, and together they had a beautiful, happy family with their four children, Herman, Mary Catherine, Arthur Boyd, and the youngest, Paul Vernon.
02:10:24
Speaker
On the evening of June 9th, the Moore family was attending a fun children's day program at their church. Lots of people were going to be there, including their good friends, the Stillinger family. 12-year-old Lina Stillinger and 8-year-old Ina Stillinger were good friends with the only Moore daughter, Catherine.
02:10:46
Speaker
The church event wasn't scheduled to end until about 10pm that evening, and the little stillinger girls were apprehensive to walk in the dark the two miles they'd needed to trek home. The walk home would have been especially dark for the little girls on this particular night,
02:11:04
Speaker
Because the electric company and the Velisca Town Council were in the midst of a dispute about lighting, so the electric company shut off all the lights in the town, making the town extra dark. The Moors arranged sleepover plans with the stillengers, and Lena and Ina accompanied the family of six to their East Second Street home after church services ended.
02:11:28
Speaker
Bedtime would have come a little later than usual this evening, with not arriving home until around 10pm and having guests. So we can assume that all the kiddos were tucked in and sleeping by around 11pm, with JB and Sarah right behind them.
02:11:44
Speaker
Lena and Ina Stillinger slept downstairs in the main floor guest bedroom. Up the steep staircase and just to the left was the bedroom that the four more children shared. In between the two bedrooms was a small door that led into an attic storage space. And this is where it's thought that someone may have been waiting until everyone in the house was fast asleep. The murders are thought to have happened sometime after midnight.
02:12:13
Speaker
They were bludgeoned to death with an axe, leaving their faces unrecognizable. The furious axe swings left scrapes and indentations in the walls and ceilings which can still be seen in the house today. After brutally attacking this family, he went one by one and covered each person's head with clothing to cover their mutilated faces.
02:12:37
Speaker
The sun would rise on Velisca, Iowa the morning of June 10th over a town that would be forever changed. Neighbor Mary Peckham got up at the crack of dawn to hang laundry on the clothesline and found it immediately unusual to see no activity coming from the normally busy Moore House. By 8am, Mary Peckham had a sinking feeling that something just wasn't right next door. She knocked on the door with no answer.
02:13:06
Speaker
She rang for J.B. Moore's brother, Ross, telling him something was going on next door but that she didn't know what. She asked him to come over and check on the family, and he did. Like Mary, he knocked, tried to open the door and all of that, but nothing.
02:13:24
Speaker
He unlocked the house and went inside alone while Mary stayed safe outside the door. The house was eerily still, quiet and dark. He immediately noticed that all of the curtains had been tightly drawn and covered with additional items of clothing to block out any light that could seep in, making the small house seem all the more stifling.
02:13:48
Speaker
When he opened the bedroom door, Ross saw two bodies on the bed and dark stains on the bed clothes. He returned immediately to the porch and told Mrs. Peckham to call the sheriff, and these findings would set into place one of the most mismanaged murder investigations ever to be undertaken.
02:14:09
Speaker
Once the murders were discovered, news traveled quickly in the small town. As neighbors and curious onlookers converged on the house, law enforcement officials quickly lost control of the crime scene. Had these murders been committed today, it's almost certain that law enforcement officials would have easily solved the crime and brought the murderer to justice.
02:14:32
Speaker
Almost 100 years later, however, the Villisca Axe murders still remain a mystery. While no one was ever convicted of the Villisca Axe murders, there seemed to be no shortage of suspects. In the days following the crimes, you could have read about at least four possibilities in any edition of the newspaper. Many of the leads, however, were quickly exhausted, and as time wore on, they began to dwindle.
02:15:01
Speaker
There are many who believe Frank Jones, a prominent Villisca resident and Iowa State Senator, was responsible for the brutal deaths of the Moores and the Stillinger children. Josiah Moore had worked for Frank Jones at his implement store for many years before leaving to open his own store. Moore repeatedly took business away from Frank Jones, including a very successful John Deere dealership.
02:15:27
Speaker
And Josiah Moore was rumored to have had a sexual affair with Jones's daughter-in-law, though no evidence supports this. Were these bad business dealings? And a potential affair? Enough motive for murder? Many people think yes. But many people also think Reverend George Kelly was responsible for the murders. Kelly was an English-born traveling minister in town on the night of the murders.
02:15:53
Speaker
He was described as peculiar, reportedly having suffered a mental breakdown as an adolescent. As an adult, he was accused of being a peeping Tom, and several times asking young women and girls to pose nude for him. In 1917, Kelly was even arrested for the Veliska Axe murders. Police obtained a confession from him, however it followed many hours of intense interrogation, and later, Kelly recanted,
02:16:22
Speaker
After two separate trials, he was acquitted. And finally, in their 2017 book, The Man from the Train, Bill James and his daughter Rachel McCarthy James discuss the Veliska axe murders as part of a much larger series of murders which they believe were all committed by one single serial killer.
02:16:42
Speaker
They conclude that the murderer was Paul Mueller, an immigrant possibly from Germany who was the subject of an unsuccessful year-long manhunt as the sole suspect in the 1897 murder of a family in West Brookfield, Massachusetts who had employed him as a farmhand.
02:17:01
Speaker
The co-authors of the book believe that Mueller was guilty of the Villisca Axe murders, as well as a killing spree that lasted over a decade, killing at least 59 people in 14 separate incidents.
Conclusion and Farewell
02:17:14
Speaker
So who was responsible for the Villisca Axe murders? To this day, we still don't know, but there was a strong possibility that a serial killer was actually at work.
02:17:25
Speaker
To many people it seems as though the house is trying to speak to them. Visits by paranormal investigators have provided audio, video, and photographic proof of paranormal activity. Tours of the home have often been cut short by children's voices, falling lamps, moving ladders, and flying objects.
02:17:48
Speaker
Psychics have stated that there's a presence of spirits dwelling in the home, and many have claimed to communicate with them. Skeptics have come into the home and left believers. Who killed the victims of the Veliska Axe murders? And is the house haunted? You can find out for yourself, and you can even stay there overnight. Have a happy and safe Halloween, everyone, and be sure to lock your doors. Bye-bye.
02:18:19
Speaker
Well, all good things must come to an end. I hope you enjoyed A Nightmare Before Halloween, and don't forget you can find the names of all the podcasts involved in the show notes, along with Where to Listen. Each of the stories you heard in this collaboration were created by those podcasters to give you this extra entertainment, so please, wherever you're listening, let your podcaster know that you appreciate them and what they do.
02:18:44
Speaker
I'd also like to thank my team at Foul Play Crime Series for helping me put together this episode. It was seriously a massive undertaking. Again, I'm Shane Waters and it's been my honor to be your friend in the dark. Good night.
02:19:11
Speaker
Whoa!