School of Humans.
So I didn't necessarily want to make American filth a true crime podcast, but we're going to do a hint of true crime today.
Okay, we're going to talk about a murderer.
That's exciting, And shout out to the listener who suggested this guy. His name is Edward Ruloff, and he's really fucked up but also a bit of a nerd. And also I do want to say up top that he is technically he is Canadian, okay, but he lived here in the United States and that's where he did all of his murdering. You know, maybe he came here to live the American dream and instead became an American nightmare.
And let's get a little sense of this guy. So he was finally hanged in eighteen seventy one, what spoiler. And while he was sitting in jail waiting for his execution, here's how another prisoner described him. Rulloff is now fifty one years old, about five feet nine inches in height. He weighs about one seventy to one eighty pounds. He has an extremely large head, small and delicate hands, which
do not show hard labor. His eyes are black, and when he is animated in conversation, they shine like diamonds. He has heavy dark hair and whiskers, but none on his upper lip. They are slightly silvered from his advancing gears. His voice is sweet and musical, and his manners those of a perfect gentleman. As a conversationalist, he has no superior He is fascinating and possesses a power of personal magnetism that quickly draws to him the hearts of all
with whom he comes closely in contact. So I guess he has that riz as the kids say. If you're one of those kids, let me know if I use that word correctly. And the thing is in this description, the prisoner did mention how big his head was, and Ruloff had an enormous head, like a big ass head ahead you'd never seen a bigger head, honestly. In order to pay for his burial expenses, they actually gave his head to science because they're like, we know you want
this head, give us some money for it. And it turned out that his brain was like ten ounces heavier than the average brain, and also it was just thick and juicy as hell.
That's right, a thick ass brain. But the thing is.
While Ruloff could present as a nice, intelligent, interesting man, let's not forget.
That he is a criminal. Hell yeah.
When he finally did hang for his crime, the Ithaca Journal said this about him. Seldom and our civilization has the combination of high gifts with low brutality been found in one person. His mind was misdirected and allowed to grow in the rankest weeds of crime and villainy. Not only did this article say he was an evil man, it also said something that would have offended Ruloff to his core, because some people had dubbed him the Genius Killer, but the article said he was no such profound and
erudite scholar. Wow roasted. So let's learn about some murder. Cue the theme song, This is American Filth. I'm Gabby Watts. Every week I tell you a filthy story from American history. This week's episode at the not so Genius Killer. So Edward Ruloff was born in Canada in eighteen nineteen or eighteen twenty, and his two main passions in his life were philology, which is the study of language through a historical lens, and his other passion was committing crimes and
being in prison. And the thing is, it seemed like he had a pretty normal childhood with normal parents and siblings. He was pretty smart, he was able to read by the age of four. But his nefarious ways came on quick as well, like when he was a young rascal. He worked at a clothing store and while he was employed there, the store burned down twice, and a lot of people got to.
Thinking, I think Edward might be burning it down.
Why maybe he's trying to cover up the fact that he's stealing merchandise, But there was never any evidence for that. After the second time the store burned down, Edward ended up being caught red handed. He was also working as a clerk for a law firm, and he had broken into the house of one of the lawyers.
And then they just saw him.
Struting around town wearing that lawyer's nice ass suit.
They're like, you stole that. He's like me, what, I just found this?
And so he had his first stint in prison. He was sent to a juvenile prison for two years. After his juvenile prison stay, we don't exactly know what was going on, but by eighteen forty two, he had moved to New York State to a town called Dryden in Tompkins County. He was around twenty two or twenty three at the time, and that's when he really started getting up to no good in Dryden. You know, everyone was so impressed by his intelligence, and he started teaching school.
One of his students was seventeen.
Year old Harriet Shoot and whoops, I guess they had feelings for each other because they wanted to get married, but Harriet's family didn't approve, not because Edward was older and also her sipipe he or you're in the classroom, so there was a weird power imbalance.
Oh no, that was fine.
They disapproved because yuck, he was a teacher, ergo, not a suitable husband of means and status. Disgusting, But despite her family wishes, Harriet and Edward did get married, and then they moved to a nearby town called Lansing, and their rule off began working as a doctor, despite not having any doctor experience. That's right, kids, don't go to
med school. Just start doctoring, You're fine. The couple had a baby that they named Priscilla, and then it was the summer of eighteen forty five when everything got pretty suss because on the night of June twenty second, eighteen forty five, a neighbor, Miss Robertson, saw Harriet and Priscilla walking around outside, but then after that no one ever saw them ever again, Dad dud da, was I a good true crime read?
I don't know?
Okay? So yes, basically what happened June twenty second, Miss Robertson sees them, But then the next day, June twenty third, Edward rule Off goes over to the Robertsons and asks Tom Robertson if he can borrow their horse and wagon.
He's like, I got a bunch of stuff in.
This crate that I need to take over to a relative, so please give me your horse and buggy, and Tom was like, yeah, no problem, Yeah, for sure borrow it.
Then Tom saw.
Edward struggling with a large wooden box, presumably filled with tools and supplies, and Tom was like, hey, you want a little bit of help.
With that, and Edward was like yeah, thanks.
So then with this crate slash wooden box, Edward drove off. But then the next day Edward came back and he pulled that same box off of the wagon, but it looked pretty light, so everyone was like it must be empty now. But meanwhile the neighbors and the people in the town, they're like, where's your wife And Edward was like, oh, yeah, she just went on vacation at the lakes with her family and the baby. And yet we're actually moving to Ohio and so that's where we're gonna be. So like,
don't worry if no one is home ever. Again, I'm just saying, guys, if anyone ever says I'm moving to Ohio, you know something suspicious is going on, because.
No one would do that by choice. Anyway.
A day or two later, Edward left, but then weirdly he came back. But by that time people were already thinking that he had done something to Harriet and Priscilla, maybe even murdered them. Apparently he was also just laughing at people being like you murdered your wife and child. He was just like, gffa, gufaw, that's so silly. I would never But then Harriet's brother, Ephrium, was like, you better show me where they are, and Edward was like, Okay, come with me to Ohio. I'll show you where my
wife and child are. You silly goose, You're freaking out for no reason. So Ephriam was like, yeah, I'm gonna go with you. But then when they got to Buffalo to catch a boat to Cleveland. After Ephriam boarded the boat, Edward ran away and disappeared into the crowd sus But again he did a weird thing.
Edward.
Instead of going rogue, what he did was he took the next boat to Cleveland, where Ephriam was waiting for him, being like, my sister and my niece aren't here you sicko. And then Ephriam got him arrested and brought him back to New York. But the problem was no one could find a body, not of the wife, not of the baby. Everyone in Tompkins County had been searching for them. They even searched the bottom of the nearby lakes. So technically the only thing that they could the rest Edward for
was for the abduction of his wife. There was a trial, and he was convicted, and he was sentenced to ten years at a state prison in Auburn, New York. But the thing with this, it didn't seem like prison was that much of a punishment, because Edward seemed to be having a pretty good time. He had a lot of time to study the classics, which he loved, and then there were these Sunday lectures that guest professors and clergymen would give, and Edward would just dazzle his fellow inmates
with his mastery of Greek and Latin. And at one point an inmate was like, Wow, do you have a Latin dictionary? You're so good at it, and Edward was like, no, I don't need one. I am a Latin dictionary.
Ten years later, Edward was released.
But the thing is, everyone in Tompkins County still hated his but so he was immediately arrested for the murder of his wife once he came out of prison. But then he was like, you can't arrest me because of that, remember the double jeopardy rule. You can't charge me with two crimes related to my wife. And the district attorney was like, actually, Edward, rule off is right on this account. How about instead, let's indict him for the murder of
his child. Haha, God is ass But again, so many people in the county felt passionately about this case that they couldn't find an unbiased jury, so then they had to move the trial to a different county. Edward's lawyer Joshua Spencer was like, Hey, you can't convict him.
There's no body.
There's not even a little portion of a body, not even an inch. You can't say the baby's dead just because of circumstantial evidence. Find me a dead baby, and maybe you have a case. But instead of being convicted, Edward decided to skidaddle. It seemed like he was in cahoots with one of the guys who worked at the jail. His name is Albert Jarvis. And Albert Jarvis he unlocked edward cell door. Then a carriage driven by several black horses rode up to the jail and Edward jumped inside
and was taken away. Once the carriage and horses reached the hills, Edward and the driver jumped out and ran away. Edward made it to Pennsylvania, and there under a pseudonym, he got a teaching job by impressing the faculty.
Of a college.
They're like, Wow, you know so much about classical literature and words.
That's so cool.
Why don't you just be a professor here at Southern State.
You're so smart.
Not a criminal, for sure, But while he was there, Edward, unfortunately, he did not have any money really, you know, he had been too busy murdering his wife and child and being in prison that he didn't really have anything saved up. And one day he got a letter from Albert Jarvis, remember the jailer who let him out, And Albert was like, hey, me and my mom don't have any money, so if you don't find us some, we're gonna tell on you. So what did Edward decide to do? Get a job,
work hard? No, he robbed a jewelry store. He got all the jewels, put them in a satchel, and as he was skirt skirting away from the robbery, he saw a man with some horses and he was like, hey, can I ride one of your horses?
And the guy was like, hell, yeah, for sure, hop on.
But then when they got to their destination, the guy with the horses got arrested because apparently this guy was actually a horse thief and they were riding on stolen horses. So Edward got arrested again, and the cops were like, what's up with this jewelry?
And He's like, I don't know, it was already here. I have nothing to do with it.
These aren't my horses, I swear to God and they were like, okay, fine, we believe you, and he was released on bail that someone at the college paid for. Some time later, Edward went back to Ohio, but unfortunately for him, a man who had been in prison with Edward in Auburn saw him and was like, Wow, there's that guy with a huge head. The reward for him is really high. I'm going to go tell on him
and get him arrested. So alas for Edward, he was caught again and brought back to Ithaca to restart the trial. So Edward Rolloff was back in jail waiting for his trial, and unfortunately for him, his lawyer, John Spencer, had died, so he was looking for a new one. But then there's his other lawyer who went to his jail cell just to get some background info on him, And this guy wrote, I expected to see a monster in human form. In fact, I was a little timid about going at all.
It was a long time before I could be convinced that this gentle manly and mild mannered man that I saw in the cell was rule Off the murderer. One thing impressed me. It was the way in which he carried his head, A little to one side and not a KOI but a gentle, winning and winsome manner, while his voice was gentleness itself. Wow, sounds like someone's trying to fuck Rule off. Anyway, that guy didn't end up being Edward's next lawyer. Instead, this younger man named F. M.
Finch took over the duties. Finch took a different approach in the courtroom. He was like, yeah, I don't actually think you need a dead body to prove that someone's dead. Like, I think you can definitely use the circumstantial evidence. Everyone in the courtroom was shook by this argument because it was the opposite of what Spencer had argued. But then Finch was basically like, yeah, but I also don't think
you have enough circumstantial evidence. He said, quote, I assert that the circumstance of mere absence in and of itself is not sufficient in a criminal case to establish death en quote. In this argument, apparently it was good enough to get Edward Ruloff off on all charges. They're like, I mean, I guess we can't charge him with anything because we can't find any evidence at all, and also it's been fifteen years since all of that happened.
Alas, so, I.
Guess we have to let him go. The public, though, was really pissed off about this decision. They're like, Edward Ruloff is a fucking murderer, and now you're just letting him go about in Blick. Some folks distributed a pamphlet that said, shall this monster be turned loose to glut his tiger appetite for revenge and blood?
Shall the end of justice be defeated? We trust not, we hope not.
We implore you, citizens of Tompkins County, Let it not go out to the world that there can be no justice had in our midst. In the name of humanity, in the name of the relatives of the murdered wife, whose heartstrings have been lacerated by this fiend in human shape, in the name of the murdered wife and child, whose pale ghosts calls you from the silent tomb to do your duty, we ask you. Shall the murderer go unpunished?
Shall we let this convicted felon escape? Will you allow Edward H. Wool Off to breathe the same pure air of freedom we enjoy? Will you allow this man who bears the mark of Cain upon his brow to go forth in this community and add fresh victims to the grave.
No, you will not, you cannot. Wow. The people were so pissed off.
In fact, they were so pissed off that they were constructing their own gallows because they were planning on having a public lynching of Edward rule off. The sheriff in Tompkins County was like, damn, this is annoying.
I might have to.
Hire some more deputies to protect this guy from this mob. So what the sheriff did instead, he was like, I gotta get Edward back to Auburn so everyone will simmer down. And so he was like, hey, Edward, I'm gonna take you somewhere else. But Edward was like, I don't want to go somewhere else. I'm safer in the jail. They're gonna get me if I step one foot outside of this jail cell. But the sheriff was like, bitch, I'm gonna take you to Auburn or I'm just gonna let you get lynched.
Okay, do what I say.
So a couple of days before the lynching of Edward, what the sheriff did is he got in a coach and drove away and at the time. There were a lot of citizens guarding the jail just to keep their eyes on Edward, and once they saw the sheriff leaving, they're like, oh, it's probably a good time to take a lunch break. But then right as they left, the coach came back and Edward was thrown into the carriage.
As well, and they drove away.
The sheriff then took him to a steamboat landing, and Edward got on the boat and made it to Auburn. The mob was super mad at the sheriff. They were like, I wanted to have a lunching, But the thing is Edward is still going to die by hanging, so let's see what happened to get him there after these soothing advertisements. So I remember that lawyer who visited Edward rule Off
in jail and sounded really horny for him. Well, that guy wrote a whole story about Rulof's case, and he made this amazing roast that really doesn't have that much to do with the story, but it is hilarious to me. So he said, I believe that criminals, like poets, are born, not made. No amount of punishment could prevent rule Off from continuing his criminal life, and I sometimes think that no amount of punishment will prevent some people from writing
poetry lol boo poetry anyway. Based on that quote, though, I don't know if that guy was really into restorative justice of being like, oh, if you're a criminal, you're always a criminal, But it did seem that that was true for Edward rule Off, because you would think, after all the stuff he went through in Tompkins County, he might stop doing crimes, but no. After he left Auburn, he moved to New York City with Albert Jarvis, his jailer buddy, and while he was there, Edward did another
burglary and was sentenced to two more years in prison at sing Singh. After he served that, he was in Connecticut and was caught with some stolen goods, so he was sentenced to another year of imprisonment, but somehow he was able to get a pardon from the governor of Connecticut,
so he only served about two months of that. Then he was in New Hampshire and he went to this one college and was like, Hey, I'm a graduate from Oxford and a retired episcopal minister, and the people at the college were like, oh my god, that's awesome, You're so talented. Why don't you be a serious scholar at our college?
And he was like, wow, I thought you would never ask.
But then when he was at that college posing as a serious scholar, he was actually working with a little gang on a bank robbery. And now, while Edward might have not participated in that robbery, he did get caught with stolen goods from the bank. So again he was convicted and was sentenced to another ten years in prison. But Edward rule off, He's pretty prison savvy at this point, and three months into his sentence he escaped, most likely because the jailers were bribed by the gang that he
was working with, so he in this game. They did some other robberies, some other crimes. But let's take a little pause for a second, because, of course, while he was doing all these robberies, committing crimes, etc. He was still very much invested in Latin and Greek and the languages. He wanted to be a serious philological expert so bad.
In fact, he had written.
A whole book about his theory on the origin of languages, but unfortunately, even with his robbing, he never made enough money to publish it. So in eighteen sixty nine, he went to a philological conference and submitted his manuscript to a panel and they were all like, wow, this is actually pretty good. But also this this guy is really freaking weird. So they went back to him and we're like, oop, sorry,
we can't publish it. We don't have any money. Also, I want to say, during this time, most people who knew Edward rule Off, they thought he was just a normal guy. You know, he lived in a little house in a respectable neighborhood. He paid his rent on time, he didn't do anything crazy like drinking and having sex yuck. He didn't have that many visitors. And his landlady was like, yeah, he's a nice dude. He's definitely not someone who would
burgle anyone. But you know, Edward Rulloff. He was still doing plenty of crimes, robberies, but his luck ran out when he did a robbery in Binghampton, New York. So Binghampton at the time was a bustling little town getting bigger and more.
Commercial by the day.
And what happened was in the wee hours of August seventeenth, eighteen seventy, between one and two in the morning, three burglars broke into a dry goods store called Halbert bros. Edward was one of the burglars, another was his frequent accomplice,
William Dexter, and the other guy was Albert Jarvis. Edward and his cronies collected three bags of silks, and they were about to collect some more when suddenly the two clerks who were sleeping in the store, Frederick Merrick and Gilbert Burrows, woke up and confronted them.
Holy mackerel did they say that back then? I don't know.
Anyway, they all started fighting. The burglars were not expecting such a matchup. The two clerks were strong and ready to kick some ass. Edward and his boys were getting beat So what Edward did is he ran up the stairs and shot his gun at Burrows. Unfortunately for him, though, the bullet ran into the banister of the stairs, which
caused all these splinters to fly in Burrow's face. Burrows thought he was shot, so he let go of Jarvis and retreated, but Marek continued beating the hell out of Dexter. So Edward pulled the trigger a second time and shot.
Marek in the head.
But the boys they had to skidaddle because Burrows had run outside and was shouting for help. Roll off, Dexter and Jarvis exited out the back and ran to the river. At this point, the whole town was alerted to the burglary and murder, and all the citizens took it upon themselves to find the criminals. They searched every part of the city, every nook and cranny. They searched all night
and all of the next day. Trains weren't allowed to leave the town and every stranger was pulled aside and interviewed. At midnight the next night, two men were standing on guard and they saw a suspicious gentleman carrying an umbrella in a satchel. The two men were like, hey, guys, slow down, we got questions for you. But then the guy with the umbrella and satchel he ran across the train tracks just as a train was going by, so he was able to escape with renewed fervor. The search continued.
Everyone was looking for the stranger, and huzzah, they found him. But then when the townspeople talked to him, they were like, huh, he doesn't actually seem that suspicious.
He's got a pretty good story.
And then Almost simultaneously, two bodies bobbed to the surface of the river. It was Jarvis and Dexter. It seemed that they had drowned in the river when they were trying to escape. The townspeople asked the stranger if he recognized these men, and he was like, no, I don't know them.
Who are those people? That's crazy.
Then a judge came to town to examine the bodies and assess the situation going on in Binghampton, and this judge was Judge Finch. Yeah, he was the same guy who was Edward Ruloff's lawyer all those years ago. Judge Finch saw the stranger and was like, oh my god, guys, that's frickin' Edward Rulloff. Remember he was the guy that everyone accused of killing his wife and child. Then the townspeople were super suspicious.
And then Edward was like, yeah, it's true, it's me.
I was accused of all those things, but I just happened to be in this town at this point. I have nothing to do with this situation with those two dead guys and the dead clerk at the store. I don't know anything about this. I'm just an innocent little guy. And the district attorney was like, oh, yeah, I guess you can leave now. So Edward Rulloff went on his merry way. But one of the townspeople piped up and
he knew a lot of stories about Edward Ruloff. He said, apparently, one of those times that Edward escaped from jail, one of his toes got frost bite, so he had to have the big toe on his left foot amputated. And here's a bit of a coincidence. One of the burglars left behind a pair of shoes at the scene of the crime, so they went to go look at the shoes and they saw in the left one the soul didn't have an endent where.
The big toe would be.
So they're like, oh my god, whoever wore this shoe doesn't have a big toe, and Edward doesn't have a big toe. Ergo, these are his frickin' shoes. So the town was all excited again and they went searching for Edward Ruloff, and one group finally found him walking on the railroad line and they're like, hey.
Dog, you're arrested.
Sorry, and Edward was like, wait why, and they're like, pull off your boot and he was like, okay, fine, and he started pulling off the right one, but they were like, no, the left one, and so he pulled it off and they're like, oh my god, yes he doesn't have a doe. So rule Off was put on trial again, this time for the murder of Frederick Merrick. We'll be right back after these soothing advertisements.
The trial was a huge spectacle.
Everybody wanted to see Edward rule Off, and there was one funny moment because officials had done a search of his house and they found his philological book and they brought it as evidence into the courtroom. When Edward saw it, he was like, oh my god, my book. Give it to me, and then he hugged it like he was in love with it. He held the book in his hand and was like, here's a book which no five
hundred men can reproduce in ten years. This is the evidence that I am not prowling around the country robbing stores, but that my life in New York City is one.
Of labor and close study.
But unfortunately his fill logical studies didn't make him any more sympathetic. He was convicted of murder, and when he was in jail, he continued to study his philological stuff. He also had this idea that maybe people would be so interested in his theory on the origin of languages that people would start petitioning the governor to give him a lesser sentence, but unfortunately for him, no one gave a shit.
Edward Ruloff was finally executed.
In being Humped in New York on May eighteenth, eighteen seventy one. You might be wondering that Edward ever confessed to the murder of his wife and daughter. Not really, but there are some people who are like, yeah, he confessed to me, but it's impossible to corroborate their stories. Like one person claimed that Edward Ruloff had told him that he had chloroformed his wife, opened an artery, and then removed a floorboard and stuck.
Her in the ground.
But the thing is they had searched the house and they were like, no, there's no evidence of that. And then there was a journalist at the Daily Leader who was like, yeah, Edward confessed to me. But it seemed that this confession was also not true. What the journalist
said was that Edward and his wife were fighting. Edward said he was going to leave her, and was going to take the child with him, And when he tried to take the child by force, there was a struggle, and then in a fit of anger, he seized an iron pestle and struck her in the head, which crushed her skull. But it was like this also seemed unlikely because if he had crushed her skull, there would have been blood on the ground. But again they had searched the house and there was no blood to be seen.
So legally, Edward Ruloff was convicted of one death, but he could have killed three people. In fact, he might have actually killed five. Like remember how Jarvis and Dexter were found dead in the river. Some people think that they didn't drown, but that Edward killed them too. What an amazing Canadian give it up for Edward rule Off. Wow, As always we learn a lesson from American filth, and I think the lesson for this episode is check yourself on.
The links that you will go to do your hobbies.
Because Edward rule Off fucking love philology, and maybe he loved it a bit too much because he was always trying to get that money so he could study. I'm just saying, maybe give up on your dreams if you start murdering your family. That's all I'm saying. Anyway, this has been American Filth. Cue the credits. American Filth is a production of School of Humans and iHeart podcast is uppisode was written, hosted, and sound designed by me Gabby Wants.
Our theme song is by me and Jesse Niswanger.
Our executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Elsie Crowley, and Brandon Barr. You can follow along with the show on Instagram at American Filth pod and as always.
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Please give me some stars, give me one star. Tell us how we're doing. I'm not going to change anything about the show, but I might as well just hear your thoughts. Thanks so much for listening. Talk at you next week.
Bye Yah. School of Humans