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You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about him Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host, journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Good evening from veteran true crime master Harold Scheckter comes a unique look into the history of crime gold through the dark objects left behind. The false teeth of a female serial killer from nineteen oh eight, the cotton paste confession of the Black Dahly, the newly cracked cipher of the Zodiac killer, the shotgun used in the Clutter Family murders, which were made famous by Truman Capoti's true crime classic in Cold Blood. These are more than simple artifacts that
once belong to notorious murderers. They are objects of fascination to the legion of true crime obsessives around the world, and not merely for fleeting dark thrills, but because they represent a way to better understand those we typically label monsters in lieu of learning how they actually became one.
In murder Abelia, veteran true crime writer Harold Scheckter presents one hundred murder related artifacts spanning two centuries eighteen oh eight to twenty fourteen, with accompanying stories of various links a visual and literary journey, It presents a history unlike any previously told in the true crime genre, one that speaks to the dark fascination of true crime fans, while also presenting a larger historical timeline of how and why
we continue to be captivated by the most sensational crimes and killers among us. The book that we're featuring this evening is Murderabilia, A History of Crime in one hundred Objects, with my special guest, American crime historian and author Harold Scheckter. Welcome to the program, Harold Scheckter.
Very pleased to be here. Good to talk to you again. Dan.
It's always a great pleasure. Harold, thank you so much for coming on the program and talking about your latest book, murder Abelia.
Well, thank you. Very proud of the book. The murder Abelia subtitle A History of Crime and one hundred Objects, And I've been very interested in the phenomenon of murder abelia for quite a while. I've kind of mentioned it in other books I've written. Yes, this is the first time I've devoted a whole book to it.
Now, you right, you're a historian American crime. You have long been intrigued by this phenomenon, but some people have decried it as a symptom of modern culture of degeneracy.
You defend this well, first of all, to define the term for listeners who potentially might not know what it means. Murder abelia refers to collectible items, mementoes, souvenirs related to very sensational murder cases. And the term was actually coined by a guy named Andy Kahan who works He's in Houston and he's kind of a victim's advocate who works with a police department. And years ago John Walsh, you know John Walsh, Yes, very well known for the program
of America's Most Wanted. You know, he got involved with all this crime stuff after suffering this horrendous tragedy where his son Adam was abducted from a shopping mall and ended up being murd by one of the countries most loathsome serial killers. It's honest, tool companion of Henry ly Lucas.
But for a while John Walsh had a afternoon talk show and I was invited to be on it with a few people, including Andy Kahan and Andy when I talked about seeing murder abilia is a symptom of the degeneracy of contemporary culture, you know, that's kind of the way Andy Cahn's right, was very antagonistic, and of course, you know, from his point of view and from the point of view of the victims of these crimes, you know,
there is something obviously kind of reprehensible about this. But I was there to point out that it wasn't really in any way just a contemporary phenomenon that if you look back, there have always been. There's always been this appetite among people who own suvars that are connected to these very sensational murders. You know, some of the examples
I gave, I had given the introduction. There was a very very famous British murder called the Red Barn Murder, in which this young woman named Maria Martin was seduced and impregnated by a guy who promised to marry her. This is kind of a common, all too common kind of crime. Yeah, and we did somewhere and he killed her and he buried her in this barn. I was known locally as the Red Barn. And part of what made the story so sensation was that Maria's mother had
a dream that her daughter had been killed. You know, she just disappeared Maria, Yes, and supposedly, you know, the guy who murdered her told everybody that you know, he had taken it off and made an honest woman of her and married her, and she was living somewhere else. After a while, when Marie's mother didn't hear anything from her, her daughter became suspicious and then she had a dream that the Maria had been killed and was buried in this barn, and they when some people went to look,
and sure enough, they dug up her body. And you know, as is often the case, I mean it remains the case, huge crowds to send it on the side of the murder and you know, started breaking apart pieces of the barn and taking back as souvenirs. And then when they finally hung the murderer, guy named Quarter. One of the perks of being a hangman of those days was you got to keep the rope and you know, these executions would cut the ropes into little pieces and sell them
to spectators as souvenirs. And also quarter was dissected, which was one of the punishments those executed murders. And some of his skin was flaid off his body and it was tent and made into tobacco pouch. You know. Stuff like that happened. There's another famous case, these two William Burke and William Hare. Burke and Hair the sort of known as grave robbers, but they didn't they actually rob graves.
This was in Scotland and Edinburgh and it was a big center of medical schools, and again there was a shortage of cadavers for anatomy classes and a lot of these physicians would pay grave robbers to provide them with corpses. So Burke and Hair, you know, discovered that it was easy just to murder people and pass them off is the corpses of the newly dead, and get paid for them. And when they were finally captured and Burke was executed,
the same thing happened with Burkey. Somebody flayed off some of his skin, tanned it and made it into a pocketbook. Not a pocketbook in the sense of a purse, but a pocketbook and the sense of little notebook that people carried in their doctors carried in their pockets. There's actually a photograph of the Burk notebook in my book. So anyway, point being, you know, this is a phenomenon that, as
far as you know, has always existed. And in the introduction of my book, you know, I kind of speculate a little bit about what the attraction of owning this kind of macabre artifact might be, and you know, I kind of see it in some way as being related to saints relics, sort of the flip side what a youngion would call the shadow side of a Saints relic, And just as a Saint relic, you know, contains this
resonates with this holy power. The murder Abelia resonates with this unholy power which exerts its own kind of dark attraction. So you know, sure there are other other factors involved, but yeah, I mean, that's that's what I that's what I try to establish in the introduction, that the phenomenon has always existed. Now it days, of course, you could go online. There are these sites where you can buy a sock puppet made by Charles s billins in order
you can buy all this stuff. You know, that's really the only difference between now and then is the easy accessibility of this stuff. But the desire to own these kinds of artifacts goes way way, way way back, and again the impulse that leads somebody to want to own it. And I think it's complicated, but I think for these deep, most superstitious reasons that people want to own these things.
Right.
You say too that before crime scenes were contained by police, people just carted off valuable evidence and also what they might consider souvenirs.
Oh yeah, absolutely, As I said with the Red Barn, also with the case of the Vendor family in Kansas and the late nineteen hundreds also covered in my book. You know, this family that around this little kind of roadside tavern in Kansas. When travelers would stop off there, they would end up getting murdered and robbed and their
bodies buried in the apple orchard. But when the bender atrocities were discovered again, the crowds descended on the place and basically tore down the whole house, you know, taking away pieces of wood as souvenirs. So that happened a lot in the old days you talk about.
Another dramatic example is Anton Probes in eighteen sixty six. The barn in which the slaughter took place was overrun with sightseers who made off with again the wooden splinters from the blood spattered floorboards.
Well, they made off with, you know, the bodies of that case. Probes was this very very very notorious mass murderer who methodically slaughtered of the seven members of the family that he worked for. Farm family treated them very very well, you know, to hid their corpses, bloody corpses in the barn and cover them with hey. Yeah, and again with those crimes were discovered and boards of people
descended on the crime seed. You know, there are people making away with little pieces of hay that had bloodstains on them. Yeah, you know, again, anything they could get their hands on. That was a MacB souvenir of this atrocity.
So yeah, and prost himself. When he was hanged again, his body was dissected and somehow, slowly unclear how, but his preserved arm and hand ended up in a New York dime museum, you know, dime museums or these kind of sleazy exhibitions which Lord patrons, you know, by exhibiting just all kinds of bizarre things, you know, freaks, there were remains of different kinds of freaks and medical oddities.
There was a pornographic peep show element to it because they would have wax models showing female genitalia and so on and so forth. But in this one museum of the New York Anatomical Museum, the owner, some of the propriety somehow got hold of Anton Probes arm and at newspaper advertisements touting, you know, this amazing artifact which people could come see for twenty five cent admission.
You mentioned these you call them CD dime museums proliferating in the first half of the nineteenth century. But you also had this, and you mentioned Anton Probe was part of that twenty thousand Objects of Wonder advertised by one of these establishments. And you say even the Venerable P. T. Barnum got in the act.
Well, I mean Barnam was always Barnum was very, very very well aware of the to which you know, these crime things could attract customers. You know, there was a guy named Albert Hicks. It was a very sensational crime of the early eighteen hundreds who shipped aboard because I remember was like an oyster boat. Anyway, he ended up killing the entire crew. And when he was hanged Barnum, before Probes went to his death, Barnum made a deal with him and persuaded Probes to leave him the clothing
that he was going to be hanged in. And then Barnum made a kind of wax replica of Anton Probes and dressed him in those clothes. And again true enormous cross. Of course, Madame Tussau, you know, was doing the same thing, and originally in France and then in England in her wax museums, you know what they call the Chamber of Horrors, which were sections of her museums that contained relics and wax recreations of notorious urners, you know, always attractive the greatest number of paying customers.
So you talk about all P. T. Barnum's Broadway Museum, but you also say that there was a Museum of London exhibit in twenty and sixteen. They displayed scores of objects from Scotland Yards legendary collection properly known as the Black Museum.
Yeah. The London police, you know, they have all these amazing objects connected with very very sensational British crimes. I can't remember all of them. Maybe there have been books published on the subject, kind of weird art books. They did do an exhibition of that in London, of you know, you're talking about artifacts from Jack the Ripper, you know, artifacts from that. There's several of these things. I covered my book. There was a British murderer of the brides
of the bathtub murder. You know. This guy was like a Bluebeard killer who would marry one woman after another and then drown them in the bathtubs and somehow persuade the police that they had died by accident and so forth. You know, So they would have his They might have one of his bathtubs in the show anyway, that's kind of stuff. They would have what's called the Black Museum.
You right, that the ominous significance of some of the objects in this volume, Lizzie Borden's hatchet, for example, and the luger used by mass murderer Howard Unra is obvious. But you say that other items like the ladder used in the Limberg baby kidnapping and Augusta Guynes gains crucifix are everyday objects that acquired sinister meaning through the association with notorious homicides.
Well, I'm not sure Lindbergh's the ladder that was used in the Lindberg's kidnapping would qualify. Ordinary object is every day? I mean, everybody knows Lizzie Borden, you know, delivered supposedly forty wax forty one, or mother or maybe vice versa, you know. Again, So Howard Underrow, who's considered to be America's first modern mass murderer, went on a shooting spree.
I'm going to say nineteen forty eight, forty seven, I can't remember the execu day, and in his New Jersey hometown, shot and killed thirteen of his neighbors very methodically with a World War two luger he had brought back from the war. Yeah, I mean, it's obvious, you know, it's obvious that that's a weapon that was used by this killer. But yes, there are some other objects. For example, there's
a pair of eyeglasses. And if you just look at this pair of eyeglasses, you know, you wouldn't think there was anything particularly special about them, but they turned out to be the pair of eyeglasses that were worn and owned by Richard Nathan Leopold, of Leopold and Lobe, and they were the glasses that led to their arrest, because after Leopold and Lobe abducted and murdered this young boy, they brought him out to this kind of wilderness area and stashed his corpse in a culvert, and in the
course of that body disposed, So somehow Leopold lost his eyeglasses which had been in the breast pocket of his jacket, and those were in the you know, that ultimately led to their arrest. They thought they'd committed the perfect crime. So yes, there are a number of objects that in and of themselves don't seem to be particularly extraordinary, but fact, you know, do have this important connection to the crimes.
You know the book. What I do is I have one hundred different objects, each one of which I use is kind of a springboard to talk about the crime that it's related to.
You write also that some of this some of these items also include what you write is the oldest form of true crime literature is the one folklore is called murder ballads.
So murder ballads, you know, which go back before Shakespeare's time, and let's say in sixteenth century England, when a sensational murder happened, there would be I won't quite dignify them with the name of poets, but they were sort of would be poets, you know. It would turn these crimes into ballads, and these things were sometimes set to music, sometimes not, but that's how information about these crimes would
be transmitted, would be through these ballads. And then later on after the invention of printing press, well, I mean printing press had already been invented. I mean, initially these are murder ballads would have been just transmitted orally, and of course all of those would have been lost to time. But once the printing press was invented, these printers would print up these ballads on what we're called broadsides, which are sheets of paper of a certain size, and sell them.
And yeah, that became the earliest form of true crime literature, and murder ballad continued to exist really well into the twentieth century. In fact, you know, or there are seventy eight records, one of which at least one of which I have, of a book recording a contemporary ballad. And you know, once in you're way too youngtermember, this is my time. Let in the oak song boom of the
late nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties. You know a lot of these old murder ballads, you know, were sung and recorded by all these folk groups or people like Bob Dylan. So yeah, so the murder ballad is a very very very centuries old form of true crime narrative.
Yeah, you write that. You say it was called little onmi and was based on the actual crime. You say they took some considerable liberties with the truth, but was concerning Naomi Wise and that Bob Dylan and also Elvis Costello among other people.
Yeah, Tomi Biso very very interesting. Well again Onmi Wise another example of the Maria Martin quarter phenomenon I mentioned before. You know, only another young woman impregnant by some scoundrel and you know, demanded that he marry her, and instead he murdered her. And that that crime got turned into this ballad is all genre of ballads. They're called murdered girl ballads that have all basically all of which have
the same tell the same story. And usually in those ballads, as an Obie Wise, I mean from you know, the little that's known about the historical obi wise. You know, she was a fairly loose living young woman. But typically, as in that case, you know, in the ballad, these victims are turned into virtuous young women who are seduced,
you know, by these diabolical lovers, then murdered. So yeah, yes, that's the first you know, that's that's as far back as my book goes chronologically, is the obi wise.
You talk about too that you use a term, I guess at the time eraser killer.
Well that's the same thing. Yeah, well, somebody who's in my book, but there was a woman who wrote a book called The Race years ago, which talks about help. That whole phenomena, you know, that's still going on, right, you know, you see it. For example, the case of Scott Peterson. You know, his wife's pregnant. You know, it gets involved with his other, you know, hot young woman who doesn't realize he's married, and instead of getting a divorce and having to a alimonium child support, you know,
it gets rid of his pregnant wife. So you know, that's the kind of crime that is all too common.
Yes, we talked about the ballads, but also this it turns into this popular sheet music, and you cited again another dramatic example with the little Charlie Ross who was kidnapped and a very interesting story about the father of buying his whole life to find his son with the Noah Vail. But this becomes a popular popular beat music definitely, and it was called bring Back Our Little Darling. I believe bring Back Our Darling.
Well, think about the Charlie Ross kidnapping. That makes it significant historical is that it was the first kidnapping for ransom in US history. You know, there's been other children who'd been snatched, you know, way before, but this time it was the first time that his abductors, you know, that a child abductor demanded some money, and yeah, again became a very sensational case. There are always you know,
people around were happy to exploit these things. And as you say, yeah, somebody wrote a little song printed a sheet music, so you know people probably went in for the most part, you know, could take it home and play it on the piano in the evening. You know, it's obviously a kind of tear jerking song. But yes, I mean you know whereabouts of Charlie were never were never discovered and remained this person.
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add Symbiotic Plus to your subscription today. Now let's get to some of these items and a little bit of the story, just a little bit of the story behind it. What's interesting is that I cite your number twelve, and that's Harper's Weekly illustration of Alfred Packer's victims. You call the Colorado or they were. He was called the Colorado Cannibal. But it significance this Harper's Weekly. Tell us what was the significance?
Well, I've actually written the whole book about Packer man Eater. So Packer was part of a group of silver miners who headed into the Colorado Rockies. There was a kind of gold rush and silver rush in the area, you know, hoping to strike it rich. And he and his companions became snowbound, and Packer was the only one to emerge, and he claimed that he had gotten frostbit and the other guys. I forget if there were five or six of them had left him, you know, but he had
managed to excuse me somehow survive and emerge. The people were immediately suspicious of his story, partly because he looked unusually well fed for somebody who had Yeah, anyway, what happened was that I can't remember how much time elapsed, but it was some months later in the spring that an illustrator. Harper's Weekly at that time was a very
very popular magazine. And you know, this is obviously free electronic Europe, no TV, no radio, nothing else, you know, where people bought lots of magazines to keep them informed and entertained. And Harper's Weekly was a very very popular
one that featured a lot of illustrations. And an artist for Harper's Weekly was doing a piece on the Colorado Rockies and he came upon this bruesome site which where these decomposed skeletal remains of these miners, and you know, quickly became clear that they had all been murdered, and there was evidence as well that flesh had been stripped from their skeletons and consumed. So Packer was arrested. People sometimes say that he was first person ever tried for
cannibalism in the Unit States. But that's actually an accurate because cannibalism is actually you know, wasn't and me not still of itself remained illegal in the United States. It certainly was, and I mean, you know, mutilating a corpse was illegal, but no laws about cannibalism per se. But you know, he was arrested in charge with murder. He
entered into the folklore of the West. I was I taught for a year at the University of Colorado and the student cafeteria was known as the Alfred Packer Cafe. So he's the guys who did South Park. They did a great movie about Alfred Packer before they became famous and rich from South Park. I think it's called Alfred Packer the Musical total word pretty accurately except for all the musical and common diludes. Yeah, but I reprint that very famous Harper's Weekly illustration as one of the one
of the objects of my book. And it's very the illustration even to modernize, I mean, we're used to all kinds of very very graphic images from slash and still a very very disturbing image and imagine the impact I must have had on people back, you know, back in the when it was published.
You have some other examples similar to that. You're number eighteen. You have the front page of the National Police. Is that early example U side of a serial killer groupie? A woman named the sweet Pea Girl.
I'm not sure that was her actual name, but yes, that was from the case of Theodore Theodore Durant. This is San Francisco in the late nineteenth centuries. Durant was a very handsome, intelligent, church going medical student who was also a serial sex killer who lured a couple of his women acquaintances he knew from church to his church and murdered them and raped their bodies after death, and
then stashed their bodies inside the church. She brought one of them up to the belfry and his crimes were discovered. He became known to the press as the Demon of the Belfry. But it was an early example of a phenomenon again that has become very familiar. You know, we now call serial killer groupes. As I'm sure you know, no matter how loathsome and reprehensible a serial killer is seems to attract a number of women romantically some of
who actually end up marrying him. So yeah, So there was a very attractive young woman who every day of Durant's trial would bring him a little bouquet of sweet tea flowers, and she became known, as you say, of the press, as the sweet pea Girl. And I reproduced the front page the National Police Gazette was the sensational tabloid newspaper at the time that reported different notable crimes that were happening throughout the country, include you know, various
graphic illustrations. So yeah, that's another of the objects.
You have everything from Bell Guinness's false teeth, and that might be questionable if they are, but that be Guinness is false teeth.
There's no question. By the way, they're definitely her. They're definitely her cheek. It's actually a piece of bridge work that of the local dentist in Lapoor testified that he had made for Bell and installed in her mouth. So there's no question about the authenticity of the teeth. The question was did Bell remove that bridge work and leave it? You know, when your house burned down, they found for your listeners, I mean Belgunnis, known as the Lady Bluebeard.
Was this woman the Norwegian immigrant who had murdered a couple of husbands for their insurance money and then bought a big farm and the farming community of Laport, Indiana, and started putting matrimonial ads as Scandinavian newspapers, luring lonely Norwegian bachelors who instructed to bring all their money with them to farmhouse, where she would murder them and chop
them up and bury their bodies in her yard. And when the law was closing in on her, her house mysteriously burned down, and investigators found in the remains of the seller her charred corpse, but there was no head. But they brought in a Yukon gold miner to sift through the ashes, and he's ont of discovered that bridge work, which is I say the dentist testified belonged to Bell
But they never found a head. So a lot of people believed, and some continued to believe that in fact the body in the basement and the seller was not in fact Bells, that she had somehow word a woman of her approximate stature to the farm and murdered her and used to as a decoy and left her teeth there to convince people that you know that it was in fact her and she had escaped.
You have a page from Carl pans Rams handwritten confession. You also have number eighty seven Ivan Malatt action figure. This guy's notorious Ossy mass murderer and this is an action figure from Ivan Malatt.
Well, you know, I wanted to include Leasewell. You know, for better or for worse, I have come into possession of a number of such action figures. I have like an Albert Fish action figure and others. Again, there is this I wouldn't call it an indust she maybe a cottage industry. You know. There can go online and find these very very but I'm sure maybe people regard as very inappropriate collectors the You know, there are different action figures,
different serial killer action figures. So I wanted to at least the one in the book, and the Malat one was the one I chose. But yeah, Mallatt was a It's kind of a very good Australian horror movie called Wolf Creek, which some of their listeners may have seen, which was based on Malot. You know, he was he would pick up these hitch hikers in Australia and do horrible things to them and yeah, bird of them.
So you have some other dramatic examples, obviously here Danny Rowling's artwork for Gainsville Ripper, Robert Pickton's chainsaw to take Farmer Killer. Very interesting number ninety Susan Smith's self portrait. Why is this so interesting? This self portrait?
Well, when you look at the self portrait, you think it's done by a five year old, but in fact it was done Susan Smith, you know, as the woman who was dating a guy. She had two kids from a previous marriage. She was dating a guy who didn't want to raise her kids, so she took her kids for a drive and strapped them to the back seat of her to the to the kid's seats in the back of the car, and sent the car into a lake, drowning her children, and then claimed that the car had
been carjacked by some black guy. So yeah, she ended up in jail. And she does these in her correspondence. She'll often include a little self portrait of her looking it's a you know, smiley face stick figure. Again that looked it might have been done by a five year old. And there's something especially when you realize that it was done by this middle aged woman who had cold bloodedly and horribly murdered her own two children. You know, it achieves a special kind of creepiness.
Yes, absolutely. Speaking of creepiness, you have number ninety three, the wooden rail fence, the one that Matthew Shepherd was scrapped upon.
Sure, you know many of your listeners know the story of Matthew Shepherd, this young guy who has taken later two mal acquaintances beat him up, well, you know, beat him mortally and left him tied to this fence to die. Yeah, so there's a picture of that fence. You know, Shepherd has become a kind of Marder Whites movement, you know, very very very horrific poul crime.
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You have some very interesting other exhibits or items here number ninety four the weapons belonging to Eric Harris and Dylan Claybold for the Columbine massacre. We also have Armin mews probably mispronouncing his name, but a shirt swatch.
Yeah, well, I'm sure how to pronounce I think you did it as good a job as I would pronounce it his name. You know that object is the kind of thing again you can buy all these murder of billion websites. Now, I'm not sure how they obtained these kinds of objects, but you know they package on the little cards. Yes, but Mewis was uh interested in eating somebody. You put an ad on some weird website looking for
somebody who wanted it to be eating that body. The guy you know came and stayed with us and allowed himself to be mutilated, uh and devoured apparently, you know, parts of him were eaten while he was still alive, but even partook in some of the meals while ultimately killed. So yeah, you know that people like Mew has become these very very very very dark celebrities and certain kinds of subcultures. Sure.
Sure, you have a number ninety six, very very interesting item, Scott Peterson's boat of all things.
You know, we're just talking about Scott Peterson a little while ago. You know, another example of what the author whose name I forget calls an eraser killer. Yeah, yeah, so sure, that's apparently how he disposed of his wife's pregnant body was taken around of this boat, dumping her in the ocean.
Yeah, ye, incredible. You have on Alan Muhammad's Bushmaster rifle. Very interesting case, of course, the sniper and number ninety eight I fought very very interesting. Was this grim Sleeper billboard being one of the other than the Long Island serial killer. Grim Sleeper was the last known serial killer of any I guess importance tell us about this grim Sleeper billboard again.
Grim Sleeper, the so African American guy who had a very long and unfortunately prolific career as a serial killer, you know, praying on women, many of them sex workers. And you know, when it became clear that there was a serial killer at large, became clear that all these women had gone missing. Los Angeles County put up these billboards. Have you seen these women? If you know anything about these women, you know, please come forward. There is a
reward for information. I think the billboard that I reproduce in the book was one that was put up after the grim Sleep boys finally captured, you know, and now it's segment that you know those disappearances had been solved. I think, Cara Brouchi. What's in the book.
You have items like the Scotland Yard diagram of the Blackwell bathtub, the bride's and the bath murders. We mentioned also number twenty eight, Peter Curtin's mummified head, the Vampire of Dusseldorf, a subject of a Fritz Lang famous movie m You have this Henry Landrell's oven you call the blue Beard blue Beard of Paris, sheet music to Gallows song sung by Carl Wanderer, The Ragged Stranger. You have Nathan Leopolds. You mentioned this, his eyeglasses that fell at
the crime scene. This Reverend Hall's calling card. You have this very interesting number thirty six, Tom Howard's ankle camera, the Double Indemnity murders. Yeah, what was the photo he was able to take very very fascinating item.
This one.
So that's related to There were three very very sensational murder cases in the nineteen twenties. It was Leopold and Lowe. There was one of the ones just mentioned, the Hall Mills murder case, where this episcopalian minister and his choir
girl lover were murdered in New Brunswick, New Jersey. And then there was what is sometimes called the Double Indemnity murder because it was the inspiration for James M. Keine's famous noir novel Doublin Demnity, which was then made into what's often regarded as the first film noir, Billie Wilder's Dublin Dembity. That case involved a queen's housewife named Ruth Snyder, who embarked on an affair with this kind of mousey married little birdle salesman named jud Gray, and they conspired
to murder Ruth's husband. You know, it is a little bit of a brute, and you know Ruth was eager to get away with him anyway. The case became this huge, huge national obsession, partly because Ruth was seen by so many people at the time as representing the free wheeling, sexually liberated nineteen twenties. Flabber Type was a threat to all the traditional standards of domesticity and so on and so forth. And when she was found guilty, the public
really demanded that she be executed. So the New York Daily News brought in this well known photographer named Tom Howard from Chicago newspaper photographer and managed to get him like a front row seat at the execution. And he came in with his little camera strapped to his ankle with a cable running up the pants leg, and there
was a little switch in the pocket. And at the moment that the executioner threw the switch on the electric chair, Tom Howard snapped this photograph, which became Mad's most famous photograph in tabloid history. It appeared on the front page of the next day's Daily News headlined and enormous type is dead above the photograph of Ruth of a moment that the electricity hit her. I believe that. Yeah, that's of the book too, that photograph, Yes it is.
Yeah.
He actually made a mad movie kind of based on Tom Howard called Picture Snatcher, a movie with Jimmy Cagny which is very very very good.
Yeah, it's interesting. The camera is about the size of a GoPro camera strapped to his ankle.
Right, and of course, you know nobody could see it back then. Then we're he logged in baggic, so he just he just pulled up his pants lag and the snapped that picture.
Yeah, incredible. You have number thirty eight. Another item, very very interesting for people that know a little bit about Albert Fish. This pelvic X ray where it shows all of the things he shoved into his body and he didn't swallow them.
So yeah, well, actually saw I was doing some research in the Library of Congress about a year ago in the archives of the psychiatrists who examined Fish before his trial, and they had the actual came across the actual X ray, which is life size. But yeah, I mean, you know, Fish who was, as the psychiatrist said, practiced every known perversion to nobody, along with some that nobody had ever heard of. It was this incredible sadist and massachist. You know,
Fish said he just enjoyed everything that hurt. After his arrest, his guards noticed when he sat on the edge of his cot and his cell, he seemed very uncomfortable, and he said was because he had all these needles shoved up between his legs, and nobody believed him, so they took him to the prison infirmary, took that X ray, which was twenty seven needles, varying sizes, voting around his
bladder region. You know, fish again, one form of his very very very depraved pleasure was to insert these needles into his paraneum and just leave them in his body.
You have a few items that people would recognize as well, very very interesting al capones, rap sheet, Bonnie and Clyde's death car, all bullet ridden. Also have we mentioned Wyneth Ruth's The Trunk Murders, the actual baggage. You have John Dillinger's wooden gun, and also the death mask of the mad Butcher Cleveland Torso Killer.
It's not the death mask of the mad butcher because nobody knows who he was.
It's the victim.
Yeheah, it's one of the victims. Yeah, yes, me, yeah.
You also have number forty eight, the hand car of Wooden Box by Robert Irwin. Another one of your book subjects, the Mad Sculptor.
Well that actually I own. There are a couple of items that I own in the book. But that is what I own. Yes, So Robert Irwin, who committed this very very notorious triple murder in New York City on Easter Sunday nineteen thirty seven, I was a very very talented sculptor. He was also totally crazy, but when he was in and out of mental institutions, he would make a pocket money, you know, to spend a foot concession by selling different art objects to the nurses, to the attendance,
to the doctors. Sometimes he would make sculpted busts of them. After my book came out, I got contacted by this very nice woman from down South who said that she'd read my book and that her husband had been a guard at one of these facilities and had purchased from Irwin this hand card box that he had made, and she sent me pictures of it. It's a beautiful object. Yes, every side of at the top and all four sides.
Irwin had carved this bas relief image of this naked woman, who turns out was this woman named Ronnie Gideon, who was one of the people he ultimately strangled to death. Anyway, she said, oh, you know, I think my husband wou wants her to have this, so you know, I rage to buy it from her. Flubert to New York purchased it from her. So yeah, I have a photograph of it.
Although the photograph doesn't do it fully justice. It's actually quite quite large box, and you know, when you see an actual wood, it's pretty remarkable.
Yes, you have one hundred items. We didn't mention one of the more famous items, John Wayne Gacy's the clown self portraits. But all of these items are discussed in your new book, murder Bilia. You say we still continue to be captivated by the most sensational crimes and killers among us, and that is the subject of your book, murder Billia, A History of Crime in one hundred Objects. I want to thank you very much Harrold for coming on and talking about murder Bilia and for those that
might want to take a look. The kids probably go to Amazon and see your vastory of books that you've written for the last I won't say how many years, forty.
Years, yeah, done right, thirty something.
Anyway, Absolutely, I want to thank you so much for coming on and talking about murder Bilia, A History of Crime in one hundred Objects. Thank you so much Harold Checkter for this interview and you have a great evening.
Well. Thank you, always good talking to you, always great talking tonight.
K