BUTCHER'S WORK-Harold Schechter

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orchestrated a murder that stunned jazz age America. While other infamous homicides from the same eras the Lizzie Borden slangs, for example, or the thrill killing committed by Leopold and Loeb, have entered into our cultural mythology, these four equally sensational crimes have largely faded from public memory. A quartette of gripping historical true crime narratives. Butcher's Work restores these once

notorious cases to vimid, dramatic life. The book that we're featuring this evening is Butcher's work, True Crime Tales of American Murder and Madness, with my special guests, retired professor and author Harold Scheckter. Welcome back to the program, and thank you very much for this interview. Harold Scheckter, Well, thank you for inviting me. Always happy to be here. It's always a pleasure to get to talk to you. And congratulations on this recent book, Butcher's Work.

and six of her own children. The third part, which I call Lady Killer, is about this infamous Bluebeard killer of the late nineteenth century. Name well, he had went by various names, but the one that's kind of gone

down in the history books is Johann Hawk. And the last case, which I call the Ragged Stranger for reasons I will go on to explain, is about a World War One hero named Carl Wanderer, who, as you also indicated, orchestrated the murder of his wife and that became this very very sensational case in Chicago in the early nineteen twenties.

Vernon Junior High School in Los Angeles. Tell us what he said to the secretary, what he did was what was he there for.

very well, you know, comparatively speaking. You know, he would when she got bored, he would take her out to drives. He would buy her ice cream. Then, when the father finally agreed to meet his ransom demands, they arranged for a place to meet Hickman, who signed a lot of his letters the Fox. He liked to call himself the Fox. The arranger was that they were going to both drive up separately in cars. Father would hand over the money. Hickman would then let the little girl out of a

car and drive away. So the father showed up handed Hickman the bag of money. The father could see in the back of the car or a passenger seat. I think, actually, you know, it looked, you know, his daughter, her eyes were open, But as soon as he handed the money to Hickman, Hickman lost the little girl out of the car, and it turned out that Marion. He had killed Marion, disemboweled her, cut off her limbs, and sown her eyes open to make it look as if sure alive. You know,

this incredibly unspeakable crime. It's not even possible to imagine how her father would have reacted. Anyway, when Hickman was caught, he sort of boasted that he was going to be remembered even more than Leopold and Loeb, And in many ways his crime was much more horrific than Leopold and Loeb's. I mean, Leopold and Loeb, you know, it was an

awful crime. Yes, they also abducted a young boy and murdered him, but again, I mean, the grotesque nature of what Hickman did really unparalleled in the annals of American crime. So it was not an unreasonable expectation that he would be remembered the way Leopold and lob were. But in fact he's been totally relegated to obscurity, whereas Leopold and Loeb and become part of cultural mythology. Movies, have been made about from Alfred Hitchcock's Rope and a movie called Compulsion,

which was based on a best selling book by Meyer. Eleven. There have been a number of movies made about Leopold and Love. You know, their crime is considered to be

one of the great crimes of the twentieth century. So what this illustrates to me something I've been interested in for a very long time, which is why among really I have to say, the countless numbers of horrific crimes that occur, crimes that very sensational in their own time and place that garner a lot of media attention, why they fade into obscurity, and why this infinitesimal number of other crimes, many of which are less horrific than these

other crimes, become, as they say, these permanent parts of our criminal mythology. My previous book, Maniac, which is about a guy named Andrew Keiho who in nineteen twenty seven blew up the new public school in this small town of Bath, Michigan, killing care I think thirty eight children, a number of teachers. You know, this most horrific school massacre in our history that's been totally forgotten, even people who live in Michigan. Many of them have ever heard

of it. So so that was, you know, my motive for resurrecting these other crimes. You know, all four crimes that I cover in the book, Butcher's work were great media sensations. You know, some were covered by the international press, and yet you know, after a very short while they were relegated to total obscurity. And you know, they're all very compelling stories. So yeah, I decided to write a book about them.

of the time were particularly concerned about. You know, it just seems so weird and anomalous that it didn't really strike a deep chord with the public. There was a

recognition that it was a horrendous crime. I mean, it was covered in the front page of the New York Times, you know, but again, it didn't somehow embody the deepest fears and anxieties of that cultural moment, whereas Leopold and Low, for example, they to my mind, what made them such powerful symbols is that they seem to personify this great anxiety that was rife in the culture at that time.

You know, this is the jazz age, you know, when this this great social revolution was going on, and there was this widespread among Middle America well among a lot of adults about what they call the flaming youth, you know, the out of control young people who are living these

degenerate lives. And Leopold and Lobe seemed to be the nightmarish realization of that anxiety, you know, the same way that Charles Manson the sixties seemed like every parent's worst nightmare of sex and the blood crazed hippies come to life. So I think it has a lot to do with that's what I meant by the shadow side of the culture, you know, these dark, underlying fears, and then suddenly some crime is committed that seems to be the confirmation, you know,

of all these nightmares. Yes, that becomes very significant part of the history of the moment.

for some regiment. So that's what happened with Probes. He immediately, you know, became a soldier in the Union Army during the Civil War. But he also became what was called a bounty jumper. There were these young men who would sign up for one regiment, collect this bounty and then dessert, and then go and sign up with another regiment, collect the bounty, dessert, et cetera, et cetera. Some of them, you know, manage to make a lot of money doing that. So you know, that seems to be the case with

Propes too. We don't know a whole lot about his background in Germany, but certainly from all the evidence of his life in America, he was just all he cared about was satisfying his own appetites, mostly for liquor and prostitutes.

He lasted what was the reason for that and what did he do afterwards?

and she was just kind of uncomfortable having him around. Obviously, her instincts turned out to be correct, although too late. So yeah, so he was let go, and then, you know, then he bummed around for a while, but again hard to entirely trace his movements, you know. But again, Probes was the kind of person who would work at a job, blow all his money, gambling and drinking and whirring, and

then go look somewhere else for another job. They were at some point he ended up back of the Deering farm, and Deering, out of what turned out to be a very misguided charity, re hired him, though at a slightly lower salary.

and his wife. Well, anyway, the wife was left back at the farm when he picked up his relative at the boat, and then they returned to the farm. What did they realize?

young branchand who knew Probes very well. In fact, in a way that was not uncommon at the time, they shared a bed in the Deering house. Anyway, the way right the book, I then cut to the discovery shortly thereafter. I don't know if it's the next day or two days later. Some neighbors became a little suspicious, because you know, they hadn't seen any members of the family for a while.

Went over to the Deering farm and they discovered Christopher Dearing, his relative, his wife, and the four children, including the infant, all slaughtered. They'd all been slaughtered with an axe, except for the infant. I think the infant had her head bashed in, although maybe that was also a the axe. But anyway, you know, this pile of mangled, slaughtered bodies, yes,

that had been putting the hate in the barn. Cornelius, the young Cornelius was missing, and it became you know, and the only one who was not around was Anton Probes Cornelius would subsequently be Cornelius's body. He had also been axe murdered, was subsequently found in a haystack some distance from the house. So again this is this horrific mass murder of the complete extermination of this entire family except for the one kid who was lucky enough to

be away visiting his grandfather. Plus this adolescent I think Cornelius was still in his change as our member or in any case, you know, very very young, maybe his early twenties. So this horrific mass slaughter, and you know, in Probes and Probes was gone, and of course immediately

led to the search for Probes. He had again, this is a number of days later, he had enough of a head start the police and the citizens of Philadelphia, you know, figured he'd really put a lot of distance between himself and this horrific crime even returned to Germany, you know, but Probes being this dull minded individual again who was unable, you know, to think beyond his next drink and his next night with a prostitute, had just gone back to Philadelphia and was living in a boarding

house and lived in a tavern for a while, and he was recognized and arrested in short order, you right.

killing a number of husbands for the insurance money. She was living alone in this farm, and she would place classified advertisements in these Scandinavian language newspapers and lure these men, lonely men bachelor to her farm with the promise of marrying them and having them become part owners of the farm. And then she would murder them and rob them and cut up their bodies and bury them in her yard.

And when her crimes were discovered and they dug up all these dismembered body parts, they stuck for a while, you know, they stuck the body parts in an outbuilding for a while. And the Sunday, the weekend after these cars were discovered, thousands of people showed up at her farm. They're actually postcards you can buy on eBay showing these long lines of people, men, women, children standing outside this outbuilding, you know, waiting to file in and get a look

at these horrible remains. It looks like they're online for a Disneyland ride or something.

the wrong person in their pursuit for this suspect. But within a few days the police believed that there really isn't any accomplice. They realize this guy's a congenital liars, you right, and they are just set to indict him and take him to trial. And what you write is that once he realizes the mobs that are there for him, again very much like a psychopathic mindset, he is enjoying himself and joined the limelight.

you know, tried, very sensational trial. There are all these you know, we tend to think of true crime as a kind of recent phenomenon, but crime publications really go back almost to the invention of the printing press, and back in Probe's time. You know, they would churn out these hack writers, you know, would churn out these crime pamphlets, many of them actually, I mean I own one on Probes, which is very useful to me in my writing. You know,

sometimes there are complete transcripts of the trials. So Probes has tried, convicted, and finally when he was in prison and awaiting execution, you know, he decided to confess. And you know, his confession wasn't incredibly shocking. I mean, what he said was that he decided to rob Deering, but then you didn't want to leave any witnesses. Basically what he did was when Deering was off, first he killed

Cornelius and shoved his corpse in a haystaff. Then he went back to the house and he would call each member of the family one by one into the barn under some pretext, and as soon as they entered, he would bring them with an axe by the body.

you know, he did this repeatedly. Then when Deering and his his cousin came back ropes Learnd deering into the barn and killed him, and then he killed the cousin. It was just this incredibly, incredibly horrific, methodical slaughter of this family, one at a time. So his account of the murders, which he delivered this completely unemotional, matter of fact way, that apparently made it even more chilling to

hear by prrogators. When I researched and wrote the book, I came to believe that it was arguably the most monstrous mass murder of the American nineteenth century.

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exclusive web address to try ZipRecruiter for free. ZipRecruiter dot com slash murder Again, that's ZipRecruiter dot com slash murder. ZipRecruiter the smartest way to hire we need to talk about. In December eighteen seventy four, the Detroit Free Press reported on the string of strange medical cases that had recently appeared in different parts of the state illnesses and afflictions.

The physicians were called in to examine these patients, and they all had offered different diagnoses, including spinal fever and rheumatism of the heart. The cause, the true cause, you write was the sickness was the wallpaper and the pigment used to produce the color contained a large amount of arsenic. And you write about arsenic being a common ingredient and amazing array of articles. He was even bizarrely popular as a Victorian beauty product and gained a reputation as a

cosmetic wonder drug. But it was also used to kill rats. And for a penny, you write that you could kill buy enough poison arsenic poison to kill fifty people. Let's talk about Lydia Sherman born Lydia Danberry and her experiences with arsenic.

such thing as a woman serial killer. Aileen Warnos, you know, supposedly was the first female serial killer, although in many ways she didn't even really fit in my mind, the profile of what a serial killer is. But anyway, what I came to discover is, you know that there were many, many women serial killers. It's just that they don't commit their crimes in the same way that male serial killers do. This kind of a gender difference.

There have been many female serial killers. Again, back in the nineteenth century, you know, their preferred method was to poison their victims. And what I argued my book is that one could argue that these female poisoners were even more sadistic than somebody like Jack the Ripper. Yes, because Jack the Ripper killed his victims very swiftly. All of the atrocities he perpetrated on their bodies were done post mortem, you know, so you know, he was obviously doing these

appalling things, but he was giving them to corpses. He wasn't belonging their deaths, whereas with these female poisoners, you know, they will sometimes subject subject their victims to days or even weeks, you know, the slow, agonizing death before they put them to death. And the other thing about female serial killers, which again makes them arguably even scarier than men, is that their victims tend to be very close family members. You know, They're not into killing strangers the way male

serial killers tend to be. Right, they murder husbands, they murder siblings, they murder children. So yeah, so Jane Topp, And so there were a number of these very sensational cases back in the late nineteenth century of what the press would call these American borges, referring back to you know, the legendary Renaissance poison Lucretia Borger. You know, so Lydia Sherman was typical of her breed. She was a woman who the course of her adult life, you know, at

first she was married. She was married at first at a young age. Who guy named Edward Struck who was and became a New York City policeman, but then was fired in disgrace and sank into you know, this very very deep clinical depression, you know, to a point where he was just completely bedridden really, and she decided, if you want to take care of him anymore, So he became her first victim. Every time Lydia seemed to face some sort of you know, when things became too hard

for her. You know, she was left with all these kids. I think there were six children, maybe remember well whatever I mean, she ended up killing all her kids, yes, you know, because it was just too hard for her to take care of her kids, absolutely, you know, one by one. You know, as long as some of the older ones were capable of working and bringing some money,

you know, they were safe. But as soon as anything happened, if one of them fell ill, you know, one of them stopped being able to pull his own fight or her financial weight, or if one of the little ones you know, became ill and needed too much attention, she would start feeding the marsnick and again they would all suffer these agonizing death I mean One of the things that I learned from writing these books is that we're very lucky, all of us, to be alive now in

terms of medicines, because medicine was in such a primitive state then a all of these toxins you know, or I mean arsenic was just sold openly. You know again if you want to, I mean, a lot of these poisoners, as you said, these field coises, you know, just go to the pharmacy and you know, say they need a bunch of arsenic to kill their raths or something. But it wasn't just that. It was that, you know, medications, you know, would contain these poisonous substances. Strict nine was

an ingredient some medications. You read these early medical manuals and medical manuals from back then. You know, it's like if your kid has a whipping cough, just give them a tea spoon of form aldhyde, you know, stuff like that. And also, you know, the doctors just constantly misdiagnosed these things. You know, some young woman would suddenly be stricken and die and they would diagnose it is nearthritis or you know, malaria or whatever. So these women could get away with

committing these murders for a very long time. As Jane, you know, she then got married to another guy, an older man named Herlbert. She ended up murdering him when he became a little incapacitated. She murdered her third husband, whose name was Sherman, and a couple of his kids. So I can't remember her her total number. Maybe you'd.

So what happened to Jane and you know, ended up happening to a lot of these female poisons at the time. You know, they just they can't stop doing it, you know, to some extent. There's often a mercenary component, you know, because they're collecting on insurance policies. But some of these women and Lydia included, I mean, you know, they reach a point after a while where they really don't need

the money. You know, they've just become addicted to murder and are obviously deriving, you know, some other satisfaction from not only killing their closest relatives, but from watching them suffer. So that that sadistic component is what they share with

male serial killers. And again, I mean there's some of the crimes they commit are worse than somebody like Jack the Ripper, you know, because again you're sitting at the bedside, you know, of one of your children, you know, watching them undergo these agonies for days, you know, before before you find administer a lethal dose and put them out of their misery. Anyway, So yeah, so that was Lydia Sherman.

She ended up try to arrest and she actually managed to escape at one point, but was promptly rearrested and spent the rest of her life incarcerated.

very convincing mask. But again, you know, that's exactly what enables serial murderers to get away with their crimes for so long, because they seem so normal that nobody can detect the malevolence. You know, that's really underneath all that.

many cases you know, the perpetrator's confessions. Plus some of them are illustrated interesting ways. But again, yeah, these those are the instant true crime books of the time, you know, equivalent to the kinds of paperback true crime books that at least going back to the beginning of paperback book publishing I guess in the forties and fifties you know, have always been rushed out on the heels of sensational current.

a concerted efforts you write to locate the man. He was also known as Johann Hawk, and they termed him the new HH Holmes. So tell us a little bit about Johann Hawk and his behavior.

he says he has to go in a trip. He leaves them with a key ring, says they could go to anywhere in the castle they want to, except for this one forbidden room. And naturally, you know, the women go into the room and what they discover there are the dismembered corpses of all his previous wives. And then when he returns and discovers they disobeyed him, you know, they meet the same fate. So the term bluebeard has

come to be applied. Well, blue beard is, you know, is the male equivalent of a killer like Lydia Sherman right, bluebeard killers. The blue beard serial murder refers to a man who murders a succession of wives, marries a succession of wives, and murderism often for a mercenary game. There's been a number of very very sensational Bluebeard killers. There was at one in France name Henri land Drew. You know,

there've been others in America. Ach was an especially prolific specimen who would He was a German immigrant, went by various aliases, and he spent his career really going around the country He was not a particularly good looking man, but he talked a good line. He would prey on primarily these German widows, who he would determine before marrying them had a certain amount of money in the bank, and he would wed them and within you know, very short time the wedding, managed to get hold of their

money by various means. You know, many of them he just he would just rob and disappear. But in a number of cases, and it's not exactly known how many he would, he would actually murder the women again by administering poison to them, and you know, when they fell ill, he would like lydia sharan, you know, minister to them lovingly and make sure they always took their medicine, which he also made sure nobody else ever gave them but him,

because there was always spiked with poison. And again, he committed these crimes all over the country under all kinds of different names. So he got away with it for a long time until he was finally tracked down. There was a reverend in I guess it was West Virginia who became very suspicious of him after one of his parishioners who had just gotten married to Hawk and it had been this healthy woman excuse me. He suddenly fell

fellow and died. And it was largely through his efforts, unrelenting efforts, that Hawk was finally identified and caught and tried for his crimes, you know, and he also very much enjoyed the limelight that he achieved. But yeah, he's one of the most infamous Bluebeard killers in our history. By the way, what you again by talking about where Holmes blamed this accomplice name Hatch again very much the

way Probes blamed this imaginary accomplice. But there were some theories that Hawk was Hatch because Hawk was in Chicago at the time that Holmes was operating there, and of course Holmes himself was something of a Bluebeard killer. But there's no evidence. I mean, well, you know, Hatch didn't even exist. He was just an imaginary scapegoat for Home.

That he received all of these valentines and handkerchief waiving women in Belleville, Ohio when he was on the train, so very much highly anticipated. He became a celebrity at that time.

as serial murderers to get all these marriage proposals. Yes, it's incredible. Sometimes do get married. So yeah, I mean there's nothing unusual about that. We will leave it up to the psychiatrist to decide what that's all about, but have my own theories. But anyways, so yeah, that's very very typical.

so much for this interview, Harold Scheckter. You have a great evening.