Werewolf Serial Killer

Spain, 1854. The country's first documented serial killer is sentenced to death for the murder of five people. The killer, Manuel Blanco Roma Center, had become the source of national gossip. People called him names like the man of the Sack because of a traveling salesman job he had, or the fat collector because there are rumors that he used a fat of his victims to make soap. And finally, his most famous moniker, The Werewolf of Aries.

C Manuel Blanco. Roma Santo wasn't just a self-professed killer. In fact, he claimed even more victims than stated in his conviction. Roma Santa, though, told the court that he was a werewolf, a claim that the court found important enough to take seriously. This is a study of strange. All right. Well, welcome to the show, everybody. I'm Michael May. Happy New Year. There's a first episode in 2083, and my guest today is R.J. Blake, who is a producer of the other strange podcast in the world.

Strange phenomenon. Do you also comment on. Yeah, yeah, that's right. It's an amazing, amazing show. Do you want to tell people about the show right now? I feel like your explanation will be better than mine. Sure. Yeah. It's like a documentary podcast that uses eyewitnesses and experts to go into tales of the bizarre and the weird. So every episode covers a different topic, whether it's alien or Cryptids or just something like flat out weird.

We have some that are just bizarre myths and bizarre people who lived insane lives and we put them out in seasons. Each one is like a full on documentary. And then we also put out the full interviews with each eyewitness or expert afterwards. Yeah, I'm right in the middle of the Utah Monoliths episode right now, which I'm really enjoying because that was such a true phenomena when that started a couple of years ago. So I know that took a long time for us to put together.

We were actually reporting on that like as it was going on, I got in contact with Brant, who was the helicopter pilot that found it. I think the week that it all started going down. And the thing that I like a lot about that episode that I think goes into why strange phenomenon, what I like about it, and what I also like about a study of Strange because you do the same kind of thing, which is the true story ends up being weirder. Yeah, absolutely. The myth around it.

Yeah. Getting into the whole art world and what has gone on with who's claimed dead and the replication of it, of the monolithic monolith is what is a wild. Yeah. Yeah. Truth is stranger than fiction. It is a very true statement. It always, always is. And it's what makes me mad in the movie industry sometimes, because they'll always like, try to change something in a true story. And it's like, why are you changing it? It's so much more interesting and weird. It's just not as clean.

It's not like, Yeah, well, we did we did episode on this guy named John Murray Speer and it is I had the lead, so I read the whole biography of Mike talked to the biographer and we have to weave so much out of his story just to be able to get it. Yes, yeah. Yeah. You always got to, but you always get to cut down on stuff, which is it's tough, but that's part of it's part of doing anything. Yeah. Yeah. Let me do I'm going to do a quick little little bit of biz here.

I do want to announce that on Patreon, which you can find through our website, a story of Strange Uncommon is start releasing episodes unedited, or at least like mostly unedited, because I'll cut out like bathroom breaks and stuff like that, of course, but I am going to start doing that. Leave those in the leaves. I honestly. Hey, it might be fun, but yeah, check, check that out on our Patreon. And if you're enjoying the show, make sure to subscribe rate review.

And I'll just kind of leave it at that because we all know we all know these things. I always feel weird doing the business, but that's what you get to do. So today, talking about strange things. RJ We do have a werewolf story and yeah, absolutely. He's giving me thumbs up. Now. This is not like a Yeah, this is not like a universal monster movie type of werewolf story. This is a serial killer story and it involves lycanthropy. So have you heard of Manuel Blanco, Roma Santa before? I have not.

Oscar Awesome hospital. You sent me the topic. Yeah. I love werewolves. I think they're very underrated in both the whole scripted community. You don't hear a lot of people talking about werewolves and movies too. I think there's not enough werewolf stuff out there. So yeah, I was shocked when I heard this. Yeah. Yeah. It's. It's truly fun. And I don't know much about werewolf lore outside of, like, movies, so it was really interesting. I'm not going to go too much into it.

I'm going to go into some of it today. But like the law and the history behind werewolves is absolutely fascinating. And honestly, maybe it's just because I don't know it as well, but it seems to be stranger than like vampire legends and stuff. Well, it's like very tied in with vampire legends. Like a lot of early vampires. Stop. Even you. You read Bram Stoker's Dracula. He can also turn into a dog. Not just the bat in that. So there's a lot of interconnected of those, but also with witchcraft.

It was a big thing. And I know that there was like this this beast in France once that they thought could be a werewolf that like, yeah, the whole French government like aid to go kill this thing. So yeah there's some some interesting stuff with werewolves out there. Absolutely. So the story today is amend. I've already said his name, but. Well, Blanco Roma Center. He is Spain's first recorded serial killer, and this is in the 1850s.

He killed depending on what you read, he killed at least five people up to potentially 13. And I am going to give a bit of a call to action to the listeners out there, because when I was researching this, this is the first like serial killer story where I cannot find details about the murder victims, like at the scene of the crime. So to speak. Like, I don't know what they were killed with, if they were dismembered, if they were stabbed, if they were beat up, if they were strangled.

I don't know any of that. And I think the information exist out there because there are hundreds of pages of court documents. But they're you know, we're thousands of miles away. I can't find anything online that's translated into English. So if people out there, there's people much better than me at sleuthing this stuff out, if any listeners out there can find the details to the the murder victims at the scene of the crime, let me know Send me an email a study of strange edema dot com.

And I can do a follow up because right now it's just like, oh, he killed these people. And it's just kind of. Like actual court documents from eight. Oh yeah, absolutely. That's awesome. Isn't that amazing? So cool. Yeah it's I there's stories I've worked on from documentaries and TV shows where it's like a missing person's from the 1990s and you can't even find like, police records and yet they have hundreds of pages of court documents that from the 1850s in Spain.

So yeah, if anybody can help me out on that, I would love to, to do a follow up and get into some more details on what we'll be able to do today. And this is also a strange case because it is the first or only major court case that involves lycanthropy, which basically just means being a werewolf. But there's two versions of the definition of lycanthropy. There is literally turning into a wolf, a werewolf situation, or this psychological belief that you are a werewolf when you're not.

So it's it's sort of a psychosis that's probably not the right word. And we will discuss both because they are both part of this case. And werewolves, as you've already mentioned a little bit. They're very much influenced by movies and stuff today. But the history of them is influenced by religion and culture and all those other things, just like vampires, as we've already mentioned. And it typically just involves a human who can shapeshift into a wolf like creature and then eat people.

I mean, it's pretty, pretty simple. But, you know, you've got to say it just a guess. And lycanthropy, for the most part, can be traced back to at least the second century B.C. There was a Greek geographer who traveled around the Greek Isles named I'm totally going to butcher this name, so I apologize. Person this Pausanias. I did take Latin for two years, and yet I can't remember how to say this. I think that's better that I would ever date.

Yeah. Yeah. So he he wrote down a bunch of stories during his travels and he related a story of King like Keon, which again, I'm probably pronouncing that wrong as well, who transformed into a wolf because he had sacrificed a child at the altar of Zeus. And in some tellings, the child is his own child. In other tellings, it's someone like there's various versions of this Legends as there are with any any legend. However, he eventually, like, transformed into this, Wolf.

And that's where we get the word lycanthropy from. KING Like in now, as time went on, these things morph and change with culture and religion and history. And in Europe primarily, which is where you see the werewolf legends lore, it's obviously Christianity is a has a huge impact on on the legends and beliefs around werewolves and you say Christianity made you like Christianity. Really Werewolves. Well, yeah. They talk about the physical metamorphosis of people in the carpet.

Carpet? You let them carpet, you let them. There we go. Capital Adam Episcopacy, which is part of the Council of Ankara in 314, which is basically a document that helped the church figure out their relation and their beliefs around magic and witches and transformation. So werewolves do tie in with literature around Christianity and in the fifth century, talk about witches. Earlier there were werewolf trials, much like the witch trials.

And this started in Switzerland, and then it spread throughout Europe. And when I was reading it, I didn't go too much into I guess I didn't want to spend 8 hours on like the history of werewolves today. But it does seem a bit like people were kind of done with witch trials. Like, all right, we did that and they were just like, What's next? Like, we got to do something else for fun. Weight trials about werewolf trials and then. We got to do Werewolf II.

Yeah, I could see a meeting of executives being like, All right, guys, we need something else. What do we got? We got, like. We're we're burned out of this trial. They tanked. We need something new. When it's a new, we get to. We got to bring in the new generation. Yeah, so they swapped over werewolf trials and. Yeah, and that that spread. And so the region of our tail today, it was it's in a region called Galicia in Spain and that's where Roma Sant spent most of his life.

And they still believe like there was, were a lot of local beliefs in werewolves in this section of Spain. And it's kind of like the northwestern part of Spain, like just north of Portugal for people that that know geography and to understand the beliefs of werewolves in Galicia. I won't actually quote something that I read on Galicia Alive XCOM about Werewolves. The causes behind this transformation are diverse. Curse, enchantment, divine punishment and action of the Devil.

Werewolf Folklore and Galicia specifies that the seventh child of any union is likely to be afflicted with a curse. If the child is a girl. She's liable. Liable to become a witch. If a boy, a werewolf, The Godfather may ward off the curse by saying certain prayers at the baptism. Generally, the curse doesn't manifest until later in life, and afflicted werewolf will feel compelled to address at a crossroads and wallow in the mud.

If a wolf has already wallowed there, the transformation occurs in the werewolf uncontrollably attacks and eats defenseless people and babies. So that is. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot to unload there. And notice here, when I was like, you know, we're influenced by movies and stuff today when it comes to werewolves, they, you get bit by a werewolf or whatever. But there's a ton of various beliefs throughout the history of werewolf lore about how the transformation takes place.

And it's not like it is in the movies. It's curses, divine punishment. Like they said, the devil is obvious, especially in Spain, where there's a lot of Catholicism, and the devil is a big part of the belief of this. There's also some I read about, like if you drink water out of a footprint of a werewolf, you will then also become a werewolf, which is an interesting. That's a very interesting movie.

I caught my dog licking out of a puddle the other day, so I've got to actually make sure that he's not a werewolf. You got to be careful about, like, keeping it like a £20 werewolf by, you know, pretty can get pretty vicious. Hey, small and feisty. And that's actually part of talking. Now. Roma Santa himself, which we'll get into, was a very tiny person. So he had a bit of that small dog syndrome. So very feisty. Werewolf.

You know, one other thing I thought was interesting about what you just said was the, um, the aspect of adolescence for the witch or the werewolf once more, going very much into straight up puberty like that moment where hair is growing, you're getting wild. You have so much energy unbound. That's a very interesting moment there. That's that's that's an amazing observation, I think, because that historically, I didn't think about that.

But that has to have some impact on the belief of these kind of things you would imagine. I think that has to be a huge part of it.

And with a child eating too, that's been used for centuries to demonize people, cannibalism, it was actually used to demonize Christians at a certain point because when Christianity was first becoming a growing religion, like during the Byzantine Empire, before Constantinople adopted it, there was rumors that Christians and Catholics were baby eaters, because all that came out was that there's people drinking the blood and eating the body of their savior. What are they doing? Eating babies.

So, yeah, very interesting, very interesting connections. I'm going to age myself with this comment, but I'm a big fan of Eddie Izzard, and like most Americans I became a fan of fan of his is is born, you know, shoot. What was it called Dressed to Kill? Was his comedy cameo in like 2000. Yeah and he does the whole thing is a vampire is a bit of like wait that's you're drinking the blood. That's vampirism. You're a vampire. Yeah. Blood of Christ. What are you doing? Yeah, very true.

So our our serial killer today, Manuel Blanco. Roma, Santa. He was born on November 18th in Galicia, Spain. And this is. I had to work on my as much as I'm going to mispronounce everything today, which is just normal for me, I do work on it. That's the sad part because I do actually spend a lot of time.

But my my brain, having taken Spanish in America, where we're influenced from from all the Spanish speaking countries south of the United States, the pronunciation would be more like Galicia or Galicia. But in Spain they have that bit of that, like Lisp kind of thing. So it's Galicia, Spain, and he was born in 1809. And one of the interesting things about Roma isn't that everything you read about him brings up is that he was raised as a girl.

He was actually raised as Manuela until he was six, and that is because his parents actually thought he was a girl. His parents were Miguel Blanco and Maria Roma Center. And today and sort of the modern thinking, we suspect that Roma Santa was intersex. And just because I wanted to understand this correctly, I'm going to quote from the Intersex Society of North America.

Intersex is a general term used for a variety of conditions in which a person is born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn't seem to fit the typical typical definitions of female or male. For example, a person might be born appearing to be female on the outside, but have mostly male typical anatomy on the inside. Sometimes a person isn't found to be intersex, isn't found to have intersex anatomy until she or he reaches the age of puberty. Oh, that's that's an interesting time.

Some people live and die with intersex anatomy without anyone ever knowing. And this is about a birth per 15 births. So it's rare, but it happens all the time. It is not. Yeah. Yeah. And we have a lot better understanding of this today, obviously. I think historically they would have used the term hermaphrodite and typically historically you can assume that people that are intersex are bullied and mistreated and misunderstood.

There's a lot of history of infanticide when something isn't quite right, which is just just awful. And yeah, so it is assumed that Roma Santa was intersex. He it wasn't puberty when they figured this out. It was actually at the age of six. So they figured it out very early on. A doctor is allegedly the one who told the parents he's he's actually a boy. They didn't legally change his name till to man. Well, until he was eight. So some stories you read, he was a girl until eight.

It's No, no, they actually knew it at six, but they just didn't legally change the name for a few years. We don't know anything about how he was treated growing up, but I do want to mention that because we can make some assumptions that he might have been mistreated not just by people in town, but also potentially even his parents. And we don't know. I just you got to think about those kind of things. I imagine.

And I would imagine as a heavily Catholic region is probably not treating somebody like that very well. I think we see that today. Yes, absolutely. As he aged, he was described as being very short. He was under five feet tall. He had blond hair and a lot of the engravings and paintings you see of him, he has dark hair, but that's probably just because his hair darkened as he got older. Mine did.

I was I was a blond kid for some of my life and then my hair dark and he there are so many interesting little anecdotal stories about him being like a really kind of temperamental person. And because of the whole intersex saying the older stories attribute a lot of that to him being different, like, Oh, is it? Testosterone levels are all messed up. It makes him really mean, right? And it's just like, no, I think he just might have might have been a kind of mean person for for whatever reason.

I don't think it's. Necessarily probably just like probably a very mistreated person, if you know, is redirecting a lot of their anger towards how they were treated. Um, very unfairly and yeah that's. And take it out. Yeah. Now he was very smart, he was educated, he could read and write and do arithmetic, which was uncommon in the small towns of Galicia, Spain at that time. So modern researchers assume that his parents were well-off, that they had a lot of money because you had to.

You had to have money to pay for education at that time. So they assume he came from a well-to-do family. Now, on March 3rd, 1831, he married Francisca Gomez Vasquez, and he became became a tailor. And some of the stories say dressmaker tailor. So obviously he's sewing, he's mending clothes, he's creating clothes, and in 1834, his wife, Francisca, died.

Now finding information about his wife like her name, The exact date of their marriage was really they that was the hardest part of my research because I was like, wait, when wrote me? Because people just mention it, they don't give details. And again, records 1850s other side of the world in Spain. That's that's not hard to understand. But what's frustrating is I don't know how she died. So again, if people out there are researching this and have information, I want to know how she died.

He was never a suspect in her death. I don't even know if she. Was. Killed. Like, maybe there was a health reason. But you do have to ask when you're dealing with a serial killer. Like could this have been his first victim? And that would be, you know, her thing? She died. Oh, she she died in 1834. And I would assume she was around the same age. He was so in her twenties. So she was young.

So, yeah, it'd be really interesting to find out if there are or is information about her death outside of just how she died. And he wasn't suspected of anything weird. Yeah. I would also say during that time, almost anything could kill you about. True. It is true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You get a cut on your toe. That thing could kill you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I've been a little devil's advocate.

Absolutely. And that's very honest. If people have been listening to my kind of recent episodes, I've done a number of episodes in the 19th century now, and I keep being like, life was hard. People went missing, people died. Like, it's like, you're not going to suspect murder right away because this stuff happens all the time. Even on Ancestry. So I joined ancestry like five or six years ago because I always wanted to know about my ancestry and my family.

My grandparents, whenever I asked them, would always got me. You don't want to know about that. And that's like all I ever learned in my family. So I had a side. Oh, there's nothing weirder. Mysterious. Just my relatives were all like southern farmers for hundreds of years on every side of my family. But what's funny is when you when you go through all the records on ancestry, so it's a lot of like birth records or census records. Everybody had like 20 kids and half of them die super young.

And so you'll find the same name. So you'll be like, Wait, It said they had a daughter named Rose, born in 1851. But then it says they had a daughter named Rose, born in 1858. And you're like, Oh, it's because the first rose died. So they they used the name again, like it was just keep going. That's interesting. I never thought about that before. Yeah, that's very interesting. Yeah, it happened.

I don't know if that was like a cultural thing in the South where my family's from or something, But yeah, you see a lot of the same name Get used with a lot of the kids at the time tell you that it's neither here nor there with Mr. Roma Santa. But life is tough. Life is tough is the point. Yeah. Now, his wife died, as you can imagine, that's a big change in his life. He actually stopped being a tailor and became a street vendor, essentially.

I don't know what kind of goods he sold, but he would sell goods from town to town. It could have been a variety of things. It doesn't have to be like one specific thing, but he's he's selling goods and he's traveling. And what this allows him to do is to actually really get a lay of the land for a sort of western Spain and also parts of Portugal where he would go to do business. He learned all the roads, the routes.

He got comfortable living and camping in the woods, knowing his way around how to communicate with people, how to hide out, got really comfortable with that lifestyle. And it took about ten years. Before we get to his first known victim. It was 1844, near a town of Ponte Ferrata and the autonomous community of Castillo Leone. And this is more like centrally Spain and the story. The story goes that he owed somebody money for goods.

We don't know what, but he obviously had to do some sort of business arrangement and he had some credit. Credit came due and depending on the story, either a sheriff or a bailiff or a constable. Honestly, for the sake of our story tonight, it doesn't matter. It's just an authority. And an authority figure showed up to be like, Hey, I'm here to collect that debt. Give me the money. This guy's name was Vincent Fernandez.

And very quickly, right after he went to meet Mr. Rome, Santa, he was found killed. So suspicion immediately lands on Roma Santa because they know that this guy was going to collect a debt and Roma Santa flees town. And what's really interesting about this, that shows some cunning, some education, some some street smarts is Roma. Santa faked a passport and he went by the name of what was his name? I think it was Antonio Gomez, I think is his name. Yeah, Antonio Gomez.

And he just hightailed it out of town. Now, in Spain, I don't know if the law is still like this, but they still have a trial even without him. And if you don't show up for your trial, you're immediately found guilty. And the the timing or whatever, they're they're sort of sentencing length was at that time was ten years, which seems really tiny for a murder. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he sent to the address and that's where you kind of got away your object.

Like, how much do I not like this person of ten years worth of not liking him? I maybe. Maybe, maybe so. He's he's sentenced to ten years, but again, he's not there. They don't know where he is. He's he's just hightailed it out of town. But he is sentenced and convicted for the murder of Vincent Fernandez. So he actually moved back to Galicia, to the autonomous region of Galicia and Spain, and he lived in hiding.

And reports get really weird around this time because people don't know exactly where he is. But I was able to track it more specifically than what you typically read, which is rubber ducky. So again, pronunciation is a terrible rubber ducky, which is near ironies in Galicia. And this is actually where the nickname one of his nicknames is The Werewolf of Aries. That's where it comes from, because he was near the town of Iris and he knows this area because he's from Dilithium.

So I imagine he feels comfortable. He knows the roadways and byways and routes through the mountains and all that kind of stuff, especially after being a traveling salesman. Now I pulled up images and maps of this town. It is amazing. It is right out of a 1970s Universal Horror movie. It is a small town, a little river running through. It's like a valley in between mountains. And the whole town is all the homes and everything are super close together.

They're all made out of stone and brick and there's like wonderful little brick alleyways and, you know, everything built in this time period. And it still looks like it's from the 1850s. It's incredible. Can't covered in fog. Honestly, I think every image I said was very foggy or at least kind of dark and monotone. And yeah, it is. It really is. And so he lived there and people described him as being effeminate, and that is because he worked again. He was a tailor.

Like that was part of his his past work resume. So he has that skill. So I think he ended up doing various odd jobs in town, including knitting and sewing and mending clothes and stuff. So the other guys called him effeminate. And he, however, was able. Yes, sorry, go ahead. At this point, he's still going by Antonio Gomez, right? I think he went by if if it was actually really hard to kind of specify that.

But I think he went by Antonio Gomez the whole time he lived in this town, because he had again, he had been convicted for ten years. So I think for the next ten years, he's kind of going by Antonio Gomez. I could be wrong because maybe he trusted his small town information as a travel fast. I'll just be Roma Center like everybody knows me. So I could be wrong about that. But I think he's hiding out. So I think he's gone missing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now he became trusted.

Even though people thought he was a little weird. He became a trusted person. A trusted member of the community. Again, it's a small towns. Everybody knows everybody. You can't not kind of get to know everybody very well in a town like this. And a woman came to him named Manuela Garcia, a blanco, which is interesting to note, because Manuela Blanco was the first part of his name when he was thought to be a girl anymore. So I think it's just a coincidence.

And Manuela had a six year old daughter and this is I think this is in 1846. So he had been in town a couple of years now. And she wanted to she wanted to get out. She wanted to follow her dreams. She wanted to go somewhere and not be stuck in this town her whole life. And she knows that Roma sent, even if he was going by a different name. I'm sure people he had talked about things he had done for a living. So she knows that he had been a traveling street vendor.

He knew the roads, he knew how to get around. He knew where she would go. So she asked him for help getting out of town and he agreed and he took her out of town. She went home, said said her goodbyes to her family, took her her child, and left with Roma Santa. Some time later, Roma Santa returns to town, tells everybody she's fine. She's having a wonderful time. She's staying with a priest right now and, you know, good for her moving on with her life.

So other women are suddenly like, wait a second, I want I want to leave town. It sucks here. There's no Internet. There's no Starbucks. I don't know, whatever anybody complained about in 1850, they all want to leave. So next up is actually Manuel, his sister Benita, and she had a young son who also was going to travel with her and she asked for Roma Santos help. So they travel out of town with Roma Santa and they never come back by 1850. So 1846 is when he takes the first girl is now 1850 Roma.

Santa had helped a number of people, most of them with small children journey out of town and there's suspicion is starting to grow. It's not like hardcore, but it's starting to grow. And because Roma, Santa had some leeway, 1850 again, slow communication. I don't think they even have like a wire service yet. Like there's very slow communication, small town. And any of these people can even write is the thing. Probably very few like very, very few.

But as you mentioned, writing Roma Santa does something that actually gives him a little bit of help, but actually turns against him later with some of his later potential victims. He returned to town with letters, and the letters are like, Hey, we're doing great. We love it, don't worry about us, we'll write soon or whatever. And spoiler alert, he he wrote those letters. They didn't he was it was planned in that. Yeah. What a twist. What a twist.

And then Roma Santa made a mistake, as killers often do. And this one, for someone that showed a lot of cunning, is really stupid. He kept the clothing of his victims and he sold it to a vendor in town. So you have a small town where everybody knows everybody, and so everybody's going to recognize the clothing. It's not like today we're like, Oh, that's just a gap shirt. A million people could own that. It's like clothing back then was very unique.

You're you're handcrafting it you're repairing it yourself so there's identifying marks and and style and everything like that. So yeah. So he's reselling his victim's clothes in town, and this is where people start to go. Wait a second. Roma. I think Roma Saint is killing these people. And a rumor spreads that he's now killed these people, including the children. And turned their fat into soap, which is one of his other nicknames is like this soap maker. Oh, my God.

There's a there's a nickname to it. Yeah. I do not know if that is true at all. That may just be like a local rumor that started when people are like, Wait, what the fuck is going on? Roman Saint is going to come back. Yeah. Well, hearing that close is not like that crazy for a serial killer. Most serial killers keep, you know, little trinkets cheap, something savvy. Selling it back like is a very ballsy move.

You know, somebody in that town probably sewed that out of, like, spent hours on it that they see it. Like, that's crazy. The soap is disgusting, but I wonder if it worked. Well, you know? But yeah, it's it's disgusting. It's terrifying as well. And what's interesting here is that Roma Santa, because of the rumors now authorities are like, well, get to arrest the guy. And here's where, again, some of the details of the murder victims are just out of out of reach of my research.

I don't know if they found any dead bodies before they tried to arrest it. They may have just been like, we can't find these people. We've got to bring them in. So, again, a study of stranger danger that com if anybody knows if they found any of them, I don't think they found all of them, but they may have found a few and I just can't confirm that. So they tried to arrest him.

But given his history with running away from authority, he kind of knew what to already do and he had hightailed it out of town. I think this 1852, when they go after him and they actually this time they're able to track them down pretty quickly. And they find him at a town called where is this? They arrested him, a town called Bella Toledo. And that again, I think it's more central of Spain.

So they get on the bring him back and he goes on trial in which I've already said there's hundreds of pages of court documents about his his trial. And that's because his trial lasted nearly a year, like he was on trial a long time. Whoa. And part of that is because of his defense, which we'll get into very shortly. But, yeah, he goes on trial and I think he goes on trial for killing nine people. So it's nine potential victims during his trial.

And those victims are Manuela Garcia Blanco and her daughter, Petra Benita Garcia Blanco, and her son Antonio Land and Antonia Land and her daughter and Josefa Garcia and her son and a maria Dolores, who was 12. So there's two, three, four, five, six kids. Oh. Yeah. And yeah, it's absolutely horrendous and terrifying.

And in the trial, this is kind of what made him not just a legend because he's the first notated, documented serial killer of Spain, but how he tries to either defend himself or what kind of plea he takes, however you want to describe it, is what makes this so fascinating. And this is where our first scene comes in. RJ So, you know, if you don't mind pulling up that document or do you have it in front of you. Got it right here. Okay, So do you want to be why don't you be Roma?

Santa, you're the guest. Be the it be the star of the show? Sure, sure. Let's do it. Yeah. So this is my great grandfather's from Spain. Or I'll channel him. Do it. Do it. So this is just the first page is our first scene. And this is in the courthouse during Roma Santas trial. All right, here we go. Inside a classic but tiny courtroom. Manuel Blanco, Roma Santa sits at a table with his attorney opposite a prosecutor, a gaggle of public looky loos gather at the back of the room.

It's standing room. Only a judge is at the head of the room. And how do you plead? Roma sent his lawyer, nudges him in the arm and gestures from the stand at the stand. Guilty or not, Mr. Roma. Santa Werewolf. Dad. Excuse me. I plead Werewolf judge. The crowd gasps. What do you mean, werewolf? Well, I've been suffering from lycanthropy, Your Honor. I was out of my control. That's why I killed 13 people. You were on trial for nine murders. Oh, well, regardless, I'm aware. What a defense.

What a defense. I mean, that's the way I doubt he stood up and was like, I plead werewolf, Your Honor, but that's the way I like to imagine him doing this. And yeah, because that that's the that's the essence of the story of of Roma Santa is that he told the court that he was a werewolf and he was afflicted with lycanthropy. He had been cursed and was killing people. It was out of his control because obviously he's a werewolf.

And what's I love, at least in everything I've read, he claims to kill 13 people, but he's only on trial for nine. And I just it's. It's so bonkers and bizarre and part of me is like, is he playing an 1850s version of the insanity plea where he just wants to sound as crazy as possible. So even though it's nine people and it's 13, I'm a werewolf. Yeah. Like, is that what he's going for? I don't know. That is for us to debate and think. About an insanity plea that. I don't know. I don't.

Know. Yeah, because I feel like they would be more willing to believe at that point that he's a werewolf rather than he's insane. You know, like, culturally, they probably were like, I don't know if this guy is insane, but it sounds like he could be a werewolf for sure. Yeah. So let's get into we're going to jump right into our second scene right away here. And the second scene is later on in the trial. And I actually for the first part of it, you're going to be Roman Santa again.

The first like you'll have a little bit of a monologue here, but this is actually a cloaked this. Yeah. Get your voice ready. This is actually a quote from his trial. It's one of the few quotes that I can find from the documents. So, yeah, let's let's dive into it. Weeks into the trial, Roma Center sits in a witness chair next to the judge. The prosecutor stands before him. The first time I transformed was in the mountains of Kosovo. I came across two ferocious looking wolves.

I suddenly fell to the floor and began to feel convulsions. I rolled over three times and a few seconds later, I myself was a wolf. I was out marauding with the other two for five days until it returned to my own body. The one you see before you today, Your Honor. The other two wolves with me, who I thought were also wolves, changed into human form. They were from Valencia. One was called Antonio and the other Don Carrano. We attacked in a number of people because we were hungry.

Okay, well, this is very interesting. I believe you, by the way. Thank you. But only for the sake of the jury. We'd love to see the transformation. Go ahead and turn into a werewolf for us now, please. Sure. All right. Go on. I It's very dangerous. I don't worry. We have armed guards around the room in case you get feisty. Go. Go ahead. Go ahead. It's. Here's the thing. I can't. Oh, you aren't a werewolf after all. No, no, no, no, no. You misunderstand. I can't believe you don't know this.

I thought it was obvious. I can't change because my affliction is gone. But gone, Of course, lycanthropy only lasts for 13 years. My time with it ended just last week. The prosecution rests. Very seriously, said I. That that lycanthropy can only last for 13. Yes, Yes. So, I mean, obviously, outside of that first like monologue, I'm doing my own interpretation of what potentially happened. But he did tell, I don't know.

And the exact words he used, but he did tell the court that at last, for 13 years, the prosecution was like, go ahead, go, go, go, show us. And he was just like, But no, he last for 13 years. And I love that it was last week. Like that's when he was. Oh, no, it just it was just last week. I mean, have you got me? Oh, man. Could it could he shown could a junior Irishman. Yeah. Yeah. And Oh no. Yeah. It's. Yeah. I thought he was going to say like the full moon but maybe that's not part. Yeah.

No it's not. I think working on a full moon. Are we really. Oh my. Goodness. Look at that. That is. Amazing. Yeah. Werewolf in the air. Indeed. I think just by talking about him, we are now cursed and we will become werewolves tonight. But I'm looking forward to it. Honestly, I think it's going to be just loads loads of laughs. Now, at the trial, the prosecution did. They didn't just go, Hey, turn into a werewolf for us. They actually did various other things to argue.

They brought in a lot of doctors. The best doctor by far. They brought in as a person who studied phrenology, which is the study of bumps in the head. I'm sure you've heard of this, right? Have you heard of this? It's no. It is not a truth. It is a pseudoscience. But there are people, especially at that time, there are people that believe like the shape and the bumps and the things in your head could tell them what kind of personality you have, what kind of temperament you have.

If you're a bad person, a good person, like all that kind of stuff. And what's actually just a little a little tangent here. Did you ever see I think it's called Minute Work. It's a movie with Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez from like the early nineties where they play garbage men and they uncover a murder. It's really. Good. It's when I was a kid, I loved it because it's it's a bit of like a humorous take on Rear Window, the Hitchcock movie. All right. Yeah And it's to their brothers.

So it's real brothers in real life. Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen playing brothers. I think Emilio directed the movie, too. And they play garbage men that like witness a potential murder from across the street. But Charlie Sheen's character, too, in order to get like a date with somebody, I think in the building, they're trying to investigate the murder and he he says that he's like a world famous for knowledge, just like he studies bumps in the head and obviously making it up.

So, anyway, when I think of phrenology, this sounds insane. It's called I think it's called minute where honestly, it is worth checking out. I hope. I hope it aged well because I loved it as a kid. But yeah, it's definitely like a humorous rear window kind of thing. And yeah, I'm pretty sure Emilio Estevez directed it. A pretty I mean, that's did Charlie Sheen. And it is it is like when they were at their best like, yeah, shots, young guns, you know like. It is right then it is right then. Yeah.

Check it out, everybody, please. And then producers of Men at work, please. I will take just 1% of any future sales from here on out. That would be fantastic. You get it. You deserve it. Absolutely. Thank you. So. So, Roma. Santa, To get back to phrenology here, he was studied and examined by some phrenology analysis that claimed Nope, not a werewolf. I can tell by the shape of his head. And again, some other doctors came in and studied him and they all were like, He's not a werewolf.

Everybody chill. And at the end of the trial, I kind of give credit to the court system and to the jury and everybody else in this, because, again, there are strong beliefs for werewolves and curses and all that kind of stuff in this area. And they didn't fall for it. They were just like, now you're not a werewolf. You're just an evil person who killed a lot of people. And so he was charged with killing not all nine victims. He was acquitted of four. So he was charged with killing four people.

And here is the most amazing twist that isn't even mentioned in most of what you read about Roman Santa. The victims. He was not did not get convicted for killing. He wasn't convicted for killing them because they were found to actually have been killed by a real wolf. So they were torn apart by wolves in the wild and just kind of lumped in because they were the people that he helped get away. They were like, oh, he must have killed them. And yeah, this is this.

Is a weird twin. I'm going to say. Yeah, that is weird. Like, that's a little bit weird. You talk about strange. That is right at the top of the strangeness for this series. And that's again why I want details on these murder victims. So again, people help me out because because I want to know how they were found. And also when they were found because, again, I'm not even sure if they were all found before he was on trial. But here's an interesting thought.

What if he knew they were killed by wolves and that gave him the idea He was. Yeah. Gave him the idea of werewolves. Yeah, I think that's very possible at that same thought. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, but especially because he was claiming more. Yeah. Like, would he have thought that there was a lesser sentence, even if he was accused of being a werewolf? It feels like that's like a burn at the stake. Yeah. Yeah, I'd rather. Yeah. Can't be called a murderer.

Yeah. Yeah. Especially If you're getting ten years a person. Come on. Yeah. Like, yeah, I could wait ten years for killing 13 people. I don't want to be burned at the stake. Burned at the stake or something. Yeah, in that case. Oh, man. Oh, God. Yeah, that is. It's so bizarre. And it's a really weird defense. Yeah, it's. It's. That's why I keep towing around with the idea, and I'm jumping a little bit ahead of my own, like, outline here. But my.

I honestly think he was trying to sound completely crazy. That's what I think. He thought. I can create some time here. The longer it's it's a bit of that like like defense where it's like I just want to create havoc and confusion and time because if I have time, maybe I'll come up with something else. Maybe I can escape. Maybe I can use a fake passport again. Maybe I can do whatever. Maybe will quit me because they're confused.

Maybe they'll just think I'm insane and I go to a not very locked down, what do they call, like mental medical, like security type place? Like I get just thrown in a madhouse is better than being thrown out of prison. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. I don't know. Like, uh I don't imagine the, uh, a madhouse was, like, a great place to live. No, Maybe better than a prison. I don't know. Yeah, Or at least thought of. Or at least, again, my thinking is maybe easier to escape a madhouse than a prison.

Yeah, You know, like. Yeah, So I. That's my own personal theory. Regardless, he was sentenced and he was sentenced to die by grafting. So it's a basically like an electric chair, but instead of a thing connected to your head and electricity, it's a thing that goes around your neck and they strangle you to death. So that's the way they were doing executions in Spain at the time. Yeah. I don't know if I'd prefer that I. Guilty. They were still using the guillotine in France at the time, so maybe.

Maybe I would have preferred that. But yeah, I just. That sounds. Feels quicker. Yeah. And you get to work at your like 44. Yeah. You get that like through. Oh wow. That's what I look like through somebody else is like, wow, that's really pretty. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think I would take the guillotine. I Oh. I definitely, if it was between these two things, getting strangled is not, not the way to go. That is definitely not the way to go.

And the end of the story here is that he actually didn't get killed by the sentencing. He didn't get strangled to death on this guy's rotting chair thing because after he was sentenced, a doctor known as Philips from France wrote in the the authorities, the government, whatever office, you send a letter to like this and asked the court to delay execution because he claimed that Roman Santa is possibly suffering from lycanthropy.

The psychological version not actually turning into a werewolf, but this rare delusional belief that you are a werewolf or you can turn into an animal. It's a it's a disorder of the mind or something like that is what he called it. And he wanted to study Roman Santa. He thought it was very important to study him from a psychology standpoint and did not want him to die. So they had time to study him. He was not associated with Rome, a standard.

This isn't like an old friend that was like, Oh, let me help this guy out or something. He was just a doctor that wanted to study him. And stories are that the doctor wrote the queen and she immediately, like, commuted his sentence to life. Instead, however, I was able to realize that or find out that he actually went through the very normal correct channels. He didn't just write the Queen. It was like, Dear Queen, please stop it.

He actually like wrote the appropriate authorities, and the letter eventually made its way all the way up to where it needed to go. And she agreed with some of the other authorities that like, okay, let's commute his sentence so that we can study him. So he ended up getting life in prison instead, it is believed, however, that he died just a few months later in prison. We don't know why some stories claim that a guard killed him because he was saying turn into a werewolf.

I want to see you turn into a werewolf. If you don't, I'll kill you. And of course he couldn't. So he was killed. That, I think, is just pure local or not even local. But that's just pure legend. I don't believe that. For an instance, I can't find any any confirming evidence of that at all. I did read that he died of stomach cancer and one of the accounts I found and also the date of when he died, he was sentenced in 1854. And a lot of these stories say he died a few months later.

But some of the stories say he died in 1863 because of health reasons like stomach cancer. So it actually I think he did it. I do think he did live till 1863. That's my own sort of conclusion after going through everything I've read. But again, it's a weird time where they don't keep records very well. So we don't know. We just know he died in prison. That's what it seems very, very evident.

Well, I guess at that time, too, if you if you just like if you're saying this person's living their entire life in prison, I'm like, why even. Yeah. Track. Yeah. Oh, of course. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Again, I've tried to look up, you know, police reports and court reports from things in our lifetime and people are like, Man, I don't know where that went. So I can imagine there are things going back then. I have it's all the time There was a. Little concerning, but that's it. Yeah. Right.

Oh, absolutely. That's always very concerning. Now, there was a documentary made in Europe just I think within the last ten years that said they found evidence that he lived in a prison until the end of his life around 1863. And they found like this specific prison he was at and all that kind of stuff. I, however, cannot find a copy of that documentary. So I got to keep I got to keep looking for it because I guarantee you it's somewhere to see.

Was it like a full documentary or was it like a I. Think it was like a TV. I think it was a TV program. I think it was like. Yeah. It might have been actually. Yeah. Quattro Millennium. It was like a very popular, like a tabloidy kind of. Yeah. Almost their version of like Alex Jones, but more like conspiracy theory. Yeah. I know that they've covered this.

At least I'm pretty sure they have, because they do have other bits and pieces of this story that I found on YouTube That was them, at least I think that was So they may have done it if it wasn't them of someone else like that. Or it could have even been like a Discovery Channel. Yeah, that. Kind of thing. So I am looking, I'm sure I'll find that somewhere. I just haven't been able to yet.

And yeah, outside of all that, there's not a lot of other details I can have until I can find information about how the bodies were found, how they were attacked like that. Those to me are the most important pieces of this. It's like, when were the bodies found? How were they found? How were they killed? Did he kill them? I definitely think so. I don't think he would have gone down this unless he really did believe he was a werewolf, which is another potential theory.

But I kind of think he was just using it as a as a weird defense. I mean, he has I feel like he has to have killed them because he was confessing to even more murders, which, like, feels at least accurate to me. You would imagine, even maybe before the first confirmed murder that he probably murdered somebody else and got away with it. If he thought that he could murder like an authority figure and just disappear, that feels like not the first person you kill. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, so I feel like he must have murdered others. I do think the fact that some were killed and eaten by wolves is bizarre and a the it's like a weird feedback loop, you know? You know, and you just said something that I think is really interesting. You said killed and eaten by wolves. And it made me think, what if he did kill them and then they were eating by wolves because, well, wolves will do that. They don't have to kill their prey.

They will scavenge through it. So I wonder if that happened. And that just kind of destroys certain evidence about how they were killed. And it's like, okay, we can't get them for these because they were they were completely eaten by wolves. Right. That's that's something to consider. Again, we can't confirm that at all. But that's an interesting thing that I just hadn't about that. It made me think about the way you phrased that. There is something else.

And I'm realizing this now as I get to the end of my notes. I don't think I wrote this in because I don't think I was able to. What try to do when I research is unless I have like an authority figure that's done years of research on a topic I will try to like almost like a journalist where I want to see the same information confirmed through various sources. And if it isn't there, I just won't read necessarily comment on it unless it's an interesting thing. Like I'm about.

Yeah, but I did find one source that said he he actually told the court where to find some of the victims. So I do think I don't think they found everybody before he was tried if that is true that he did tell them where to find some of the bodies and they found him there, which is an interesting thing to think about, too, because why if he's claiming if he was just being like, I'm innocent, he's never going to do that.

But if he's claiming to be a werewolf, he's going to be like, Oh, find the rest of the bodies over this way and they find him. And that to me is a that's an interesting very kind of like a normal serial killer thing where he either either may want. To credit. His he wants to credit. Thank you. He wants the credit. He wants to kind of revel in the glory. But he is taking this spin of werewolf ness. Yeah, I mean, there's an aspect to that.

If he did believe that he was a werewolf, there is a possibility that he felt like and maybe all the persecution throughout the years of his life felt like he did actually want to be punished for these crimes and these things that they did. And maybe he felt as if confessing was a way of like, absolving sin. Two Oh, yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, that is really interesting. And all of this kind of this is all circling a larger topic,

topic about understanding, trusting in psychology because the. The. The science of that was not I mean it was starting around the 1850s but like modern psychological beliefs and studies and all that kind of stuff were still in their infancy. And I think I would imagine, especially in a heavily religious community like this, that there was not a lot of trust in those things. They're going to go to phrenology before they're going to go to a doctor of psychology.

So it is it's there is a psychological that I feel like we may never be able to pinpoint because they weren't looking at him from that respect. There was that Philips guy that wanted to study him for lycanthropy, but I don't think we ever got full studies out of him there. Just doesn't say anything after he goes to prison. But yeah, there's a psychological element that's missing from this as well that we just don't. We only conjecture. Right?

Because especially at that time, if you don't fully understand what's going on with your body and there's confusion with the doctors and your or your whole life has changed and is changing throughout, I can see a world where with the mythology, with the belief systems that are going out on at the time, you could particularly if you're in this traveling roving band where I'm sure you're hearing bits and pieces from other cultures are coming in.

I can see a world where you start to believe that you are a werewolf like no other. You're at least you feel very othered by other people and you try to find an explanation for what that is, you know? Yeah, and that could have been the answer that he landed on. Yeah. I like that. I like. That. It's bizarre. I mean, it's a very interesting, very interesting story and like a very tragic, sad life, really, at the end of the day for everybody involved.

I mean, how many children and the family members had to lose their life because of it? Yeah, it's very sad. It is terribly sad. And it's worth worth looking into in sharing, because I do think I do think there is value in these kind of stories. I if I wouldn't have a podcast like this if I didn't yet. Yes, there is a there's an entertainment value and I do love a mystery that is kind of my my big passion.

But there is there's always something to learn and like how how we are as humans, how we react to these things, what makes somebody do terrible things. There's always something to learn. I don't always know that is bad, but there's always something. They learn through every mystery, through every story. There's all there. A great story, a great mystery has underlying human pathos to it and seems to pull out.

And I think this is a great version of it, just through the historical aspect of what was going on through that, the trial aspect. I'm a person who has a lot of lawyers in my family. My dad is a lawyer and my sister went to law school and worked for the Innocence Project for a while. Nice. Now I've worked on my true crime shows and yeah, so you bring a trial into a story. I love it. I'm all I'm all so sorry because you get it. It feels more legit, I guess.

Like that there has to be some, like, real basis in it. Absolutely. And that's why I love court transcripts and any story. I love transcripts. I find them fascinating. And it's also I'm one of those people I've only been on a jury once and it was the stupidest chase in the world. But I loved like I was actually super fast and I was annoyed that I got chosen. And then I was also like, Well, I'm going to make the best of this. It was absolutely fascinated, fascinated the whole time.

But yeah, that, I mean, that, that pretty much sums up Mr. Roma Santa until, until we can get more details. And again, I want to give a big a big call to action here for any listeners that may be able to track down more details of anything, not just the victims but any other details, because it is a hard one to research and I would love to to find more.

So please email me a study of strange dot gmail.com if you can come across anything, especially the court all day court document if there's a way to get those translated. Man, I am all over that. And I was honestly kind of shocked because I think in Spain this is a much more like this is a probably a very popular story. There's even been some like movies made about it. Oh, that doesn't surprise me. Oh, yeah, absolutely. There's two there's two trials I could find. Yeah.

Trial the wolf. There you go. There's two that I could find. And they seem very like, you know, Hollywood. It's not Hollywood at all, but it's they've been changed dramatically. So you can't really dream much specifics of the real story out of it. But yeah, it's a famous story over there. So I imagine there's there's more information than we can find and it just hasn't quite made it's made its way into the pop culture over here where it's easy to research.

All right, R.J., do want to plug anything here, any of your true crime shows and I mean, obviously strange phenomena. Where can people find what do you want. Them to do? Yeah, I would say the best place is find this strange phenomenon. If you like this show, I think you'll really dig strange phenomenon. So check that out. At Strange Destiny Amazon dot com or it's on every single podcasting app, whatever you're listening to this on, it's like a strange phenomenon.

You'll find it and you'll get it there. No problem. We're on Instagram and Twitter and all of that at strange underscore phenomena. So find is there Instagram we post about that I think and other than that I do some shows for Watcher check them out. Don't really need much more promotion because they've been blowing up but if you like watcher watching go keeping employed through that Yeah Ghost files and some of their upcoming shows absolutely.

And I feel like we need to start some sort of like podcast the union it's like the strange podcast or just like a group, I don't know, a lobbying group. There we go. Some sort of a lobbying group that's all about strange, strange podcasts or podcasts. That's Strange is the title. Oh, yeah, yeah. We'll get monsters among us in here. Yeah, yeah. It'll be a party. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that'll be amazing. Well, cool. Well, thank you so much, RJ. We will talk very soon and. Yeah, thank you for everything.

Awesome. Thank you, Michael. This is a lot of fun. And that'll do it for the werewolf serial killer. Thank you all for listening. Remember to subscribe, rate and review. Check out R.J. Blake's podcast strange phenomenon. It's awesome. And then check us out on Instagram at a study of Strange sent me an email with comments, notes, things I got wrong. Let me know.

A study of strange at gmail.com and check out our additional and exclusive content through our Patreon, which you can find on our website. A study of strange dotcom next week. I actually don't know what our episode will be next week because I have like three ready to go, but it just depends on the schedule of our guests. We're they're going to do a strange phenomenon or a mystery that doesn't deal with death. You know, you're going to take a break every now and then, so that'll do it.

Thank you and good night.