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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 them. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK 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. Just before Christmas nineteen oh two, Alfred Knapp strangled his wife in
her sleep. He put her body in a box and sent the box floating down the Great Miami River, telling everyone that had had left him. When the truth came out, Knapp confessed to four other murders. Newspapers across the Midwest sent reporters to interview the handsome strangler. Despite spending most of his adulthood in prison, he had a charming, boyish
manner that made him an instant celebrity serial killer. True crime historian Richard O. Jones examines the Strangler's alleged crimes, the family drama of covering up Knapp's atrocities, and how a brain damage drifter became a media darling. The book they're featuring this evening is the first celebrity serial killer in Southwest Ohio, Confessions of the Strangler Alfred Knapp, with my special guest, true crime historian and author Richard O.
Jones. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for this interview.
Richard O.
Jones.
Thanks for having me, Dan, it's pleasure to talk with you.
Thank you so much. An incredible story. Let's talk about your background in journalist and a little bit about how you came to be the author of the first celebrity serial killer in Southwest Ohio. What brought you to this story.
Well, basically, I spent my first career twenty five years as a reporter for my hometown newspaper, the Hamilton Journal News. And part of my coverage was it pretty broad ranging stuff. I did arts and entertainment mostly, but I also did the cultural institutions in town, the historical societies and things of that sort. And so in doing the job, I kind of developed a interest in local history and I ran across Alfred Knapp as I was well. He was just kind of a common thing in Butler County, Ohio,
because he was our first electric chaircase. I'm getting ahead of myself here, but he was our first electric chaircase in Butler County, and so we're kind of known about him through that little tidbit of information. But about two thousand and eight, a friend of mine who had spent some time in Hollywood as a documentary filmmaker, he approached
me to do a story. He wanted to do a documentary about another murder in Hamilton, the nineteen seventy five Easter massacre, in which a fella, James Urban Rupert, shot eleven members of his family on cold, blustery Sunday after East Easter afternoon. And he wanted to do a documentary about that, And so I started doing a ton of research into that, and just in the periphery of that was all these other murders in Hamilton through the ages. And this one really stuck out to me because of
the I call it Shakespearean. I wrote the book in five chapters because it just strikes me as a kind of a Shakespearean, very odd reaching drama. Not only was there the murders that he confessed to, but because of the nature of the coverage the newspapers from all over the Midwest descended on Hamilton, and they were all buying for, you know, some kind of hook or some kind of exclusive.
So there was a lot of newspaper coverage not only of the crimes, but also of his family, dynamics and other things that were going on in Hamilton at the time. And so as I started launching into this career, the second career of writing true crime, I wanted to do the Rupert book, which I did, but it's not published yet, But this one was a kind of a better sell for me for the publishers I was working with because of the real, truly historical nature of it having taken
place at the turn of the previous century. So that's a long winded way of how I came about it.
Right, Let's talk about eighteen ninety four. As you opened the book and you feature Hannah Goddard and she's twenty one years old and she has two half sisters, and she's going to Cincinnati for work. Tell us what kind of work is she doing, and who she meets when she's in Cincinnati, and what happens after she tell us how she ends up meeting.
Okay, she goes to work in a restaurant as a waitress, and one of the waitresses there was a lady by the name of Mamie King. She was the hostess of the restaurant where she worked, and she took Hannah and a couple of other young girls under her wing, so to speak, gave him a place to live. She was married, her husband had a really good job, and so she was just kind of taking care of these two young girls.
And it was through her association, through hands his association with Mamie King, that she met Maimie's brother, Alfred Napp.
What did she know about Alfred Knapp at that time and who was he?
Basically, well, Alfred Napp was kind of a strange character. His family traveled a whole lot when he was young, and it's not real clear why. His father was pretty much a common laborer. I think the most the biggest job he had was he was a conductor on a what they called it the Incline. It was a street car that went up a hill in Cincinnati. But he grew up in various parts of Indiana and Ohio. He was the oldest of five children, or three daughters and
two sons. Alfred was the oldest of them, and he was kind of an itinerant drifter himself. Once he grew up, he had a penchant for getting in trouble and he did several terms in prison. And when he met Hannah the first time, he was married to a young girl
named Jenny that he had met in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. She was from Connorsville, Indiana, and he had married her, and she stuck by him when he did a couple of prison terms, and she turns up dead in the Cincinnati Canal and it was ruled a suicide, and it would come out that she was pregnant with Alfred's child and
didn't know what to do about it. And he went into the Cincinnati in Choir offices to put an ad in the paper looking for work, and when he came out, she was gone, and a couple of days later they dragged her body out of the canal. And this is at the time that Hannah was living with him sister many in Uh in Cumminsville, a northern suburb of Cincinnati, and Uh he got to know Hannah through that association
and they married, despite May and Mamie's objections. Uh they married about six weeks after Jenny Knapp was found in the canal.
Mm hmm.
So where did he find work and how would you characterize this this marriage?
Well, he uh, Alfred, he had this sort of fantasy that he wanted to be in show business. He worked for the There are a lot of you know, theaters and opera houses in Cincinnati at the time, and he would get work as a supernumerary, which would be, you know, if it's a big battle scene, they've got guys hanging around with in you know, Greek costumes and and carrying spears. You know, they don't have any singing parts, but they have to be part of the background. So he got
a lot of work with that. He also got a lot of work with He worked for a couple of circuses that would come through town. And I guess the circus that they were talking about were like human oddities and things of that sort. And one of them had a beauty pageant as was part of their attraction, and Alfred would get into a lot of trouble creeping on
the girls there. And he also got in a lot of trouble for stealing from people there, and so he did a couple of his He spent one year in the pretty much in the Cincinnati Workhouse as a result of his thievery. But he also did a lot of odd jobs, you know, just common labor things, digging ditches and shoveling gravel. And when he was in Hamilton for a time, he drove a coal wagon that delivered cold to people's houses.
So what did to Maimie and her husband, ed King? They took in took in Hannah. Well, what did they think of Alfred and how much did they interact?
Well, Alfred was apparently a frequent visitor to their house. He was living in Cincinnati between between his jail stints. He would often come to Cincinnati to live. His parents also lived there for a time, and his other sister, Sadie, operated a candy shop there for a time, So he was a frequent visitor to the King home. Ed King was not a big fan of Alfred. He just thought
he was kind of a weird fella. And you know, one of the things about Alfred that would come out later is that he took a couple of blows to the head when he was very young. I think one time he fell off of a porch and was unconscious for a few days, and another time he was kicked kicked in the head by a horse, and in fact, just getting a little ahead of ourselves here. His lawyer had him cut his hair really short when he went to trial so that they could see the hoof mark
that was embedded in the side of his head. So he wasn't he wasn't a very bright fellow, but he seemed to have, you know, like these savant tendencies in that he had a really good memory about things, and he would act out these stories and he would write plays. Of course, he never got anything produced professionally, but this was just kind of the way his fantasy mind worked.
Another thing about him that I thought was kind of interesting is when he was staying in Cincinnati, his companions were the children in the neighborhood, and he would would hang out with them until he got into a little bit of trouble for doing things like throwing rocks at the women who worked in the factory when they came out from doing their job, you know, very childish things like that. So I think, you know, my opinion of it is that that Alfred was kind of a you know,
a man boy. That he was, you know, kind of kind of bright in some ways, but generally kind of a stupid fella, and it kind of clumsy and and childish, I think is the way that he comes across to me.
You write about August eighth, eighteen ninety four, and there's a guy fishing and he finds a body of a woman. Tell us what happens with this inquiry into who this woman that was found?
That woman you're talking about, his first wife, Jenny Knapp. Well, they they fished her out of the body out of the canal, and she had a lot of cuts and her brasions and her head, you know, injuries to her head. Most of that they attributed to, you know, being run over by the canal boats or or the glass that was embedded that was laying at the bottom of the canal and things of that sort. So when they they didn't really do an autopsy, but the post mortem examinations
they didn't see any real reason for a murder. In fact, Mamie King and his soon to be wife, Hannah Knapp, both testified at the coroner's inquest to Jenny's despondency, the fact that she was pregnant with Alfred's child and really didn't want to have a baby with him for obvious reasons. He couldn't hold a job. He was in jail, in and out of jail all of the life, so it was ruled a suicide.
Now you talk about that they were married, and this is only five weeks after what you had mentioned, five weeks after Jenny's death. So the couple winds up in West Indianapolis, Indiana, in the summer of eighteen ninety five. And then you introduced thirteen year old Bessie Draper and she had come to West Indianapolis from Tara Hot to live with her aunt. She wanted to get a job
to send money back home. So tell us about August twenty ninth and what happens with Bessie Draper and who does she meet.
Well, on August twenty ninth, Bessie Draper met a fella who was struggling to move a dresser in a wheelbarrow, and she helped him out and he followed her around, or he kind of took her around through uh through a lot of back alleys and in West Indianapolis, and the further they went, the more scared she got. And eventually he led her down into a dead end alley that had a stable, and she really got frightened then
and took off running and and escaped him. But she knew where he lived because she'd helped him deliver this dresser. And so she went to the police and told them of what happened. And so with one of the police matrons, they arranged a little sting and that she went to the house and she was going to signal to the matron if the man who came out was Alfred Nap
and then they would arrest him. And so that's what they did, and they arrested him there, and he did another prison term for assault there for attempted to assault with her.
Now you talk about this, he's forty years old and he gets convicted and he's thrown in prison. He serves seven years. Most of his adult life was spent in prison for petty larcenies and assaults on women and girls. What happens when he gets out of prison Hannah.
He was married to Hannah at the time. And the last prison sentence he did was for assaulting a teacher in Burnett Woods and Cincinnati. And the story goes that he was just had this wagon that he was making some deliveries and he just stopped and got out and started chasing this woman who was a school teacher, and he ended up going to the Ohio Penn Tentary for that, and Hannah, to her credit, God lover, she's stuck by him.
And she was living again with Mamie and Ed King in Cumminsville when he was due to get out of prison. But the Kings didn't want Alfred to come and live with them, so Hannah moved back to Hamilton, Ohio, my hometown to live with her uncle Charlie, and she was setting up house there. She had two half sisters who lived there and so it was kind of her home.
So she moved back in with Uncle Charlie. So when Alfred got out of prison from assaulting this teacher and they took a house on They lived with Charlie for a little while, and then they took the upper floor of a house on South Fourth Street in Hamilton, which happened to be next door to Hamilton Mayor Charles Bosh. Charlie Bosh, and Charlie Boss thought that he was kind
of a sweet but odd fella. He noted later on that when Alfred was driving his coal truck, as he would come down the street, he would ring the bell or, you know, and if Hannah didn't come out to give him a little kiss, he would park his horse in front of the house and run in, and he'd be in there for ten or fifteen minutes, and then he'd
come back out all turpy and happy. And so they were living seemingly a really good life, you know, for who they were and for the time they lived in there on south Forth Street.
Pause for a moment for this commercial. He talked about everything seemed to be normal in this household with Hannah and Alfred Knapp and.
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He's got the mayor of this wash guy, I think, and he's not such a bad guy. What happens next with Alfred Knapp.
Well, he's never really clear about why he did it, but one morning, just before Christmas, he says he woke up in the middle of the night and strangled Hannah in her sleep. Now, if we kind of go back to his childishness, his childlike nature, I think he or someone else referred to it as he did it with giving no more thought than a boy pulling the wings off of a fly to see what would happen. And you know, I don't know. He was never very clear
about it, but that's what he did. He strangled her in her sleep, and then early that morning he went around town. He rented a spring wagon, you know, just like a flatbed wagon, and a horse. He went to a shoe store and got They kept calling her the shoe box, but I'm guessing it was a crate that they shipped boxes of shoes in, right, and took it back to their house on South fourth Street. And he got the box upstairs, but uh, and he put Hannah's body and some other things in it, and it was
too heavy for him to get it downstairs. She was she was a petite girl, but still he had her all folded up in this box with some other stuff, and he couldn't get it down. So he even went so far as to hire a young man who was passing by, and gave him a nickel to help him carry this box downstairs. And so the young man did, and then they saw him driving off in the spring wagon toward the river. He said he was going to deliver some stuff to Sim's Corner, which was like a
little village about four miles to Hamilton. He said he was going there, but he wasn't gone long enough to do that. And so when he came back and brought the horse and the buggy, the horse and the spring wagon back to the stable, they accused him of running the horse really hard, and he said, no, I did. I just you know, I just got there fast, you know.
And so he came back. Now, then he went to visit the Kings in Cumminsville and he gets down there and they see him coming up the walk and he's gone. And Alfred goes to says to the Kings, well where's Hannah. And they said, well, well, Alfred, she's not here. And he thinks, well that's odd, or he says, well that's odd. I was going to meet her here. And so he stayed in town and celebrated Christmas with them, and there was a general presumption that Hannah had had enough and
just left and didn't want wanting the Finder anymore. So that was kind of the presumption that they had. After Christmas, Alfred goes back to Hamilton and settles up his affairs there. He sells some of Hannah's clothes to pay off the rent, and then he just kind of disappears for a while with no sign of Hannah and the King's being very suspicious, especially ed He was very suspicious about what might have happened to Hannah.
What does he? What does he tell? What does he tell her? In terms? What does he tell Edward to try to convince Edward that he's innocent? What did he? What did he? What was the indication that you said that Edward was suspicious? And so he does confront him and says to Nap, where where where's Hannah? Why isn't she you know, hasn't she been here? Why why isn't she here? And so he explains about a note? So what is
this note that he explains? And how convinced is Edward of his innocence or his guilt after this?
Well, he's not convinced. He's not convinced of his of that. I'm trying to find the note here in my book. I'm sorry, but everybody.
You Righte that he played along with NAP's story and asked him to stay for supper, So he wanted to again question him in as much as he could. He was convinced that Nap was guilty, but he wanted to not I guess alert Nap to the idea that he was totally suspecting him of this murder.
King King's father was also staying with them at the time, and so he put Alfred in and the father in law and in the same dad and and told his father in law to listen in case he talks in his sleep, see if he says anything about Hannah. And they said that he did not spend He was a very restless sleeper, but he never got anything concrete to tell him what had happened to Hannah. So so that was kind of a you know, didn't really go anywhere.
For you write that Knapp calls Hannah's half sister, Linda Sterrett and asks her have you heard the latest, and told her that Hannah had disappeared. And he said that he got this information from a telegraph coming saying that Mammy was sick in Cincinnati and and Hannah had left to go there. Hence the idea that when he got to the Mammy and Edwards, is Hannah here. So he was at least consistent with that story in terms of trying to cover his tracks.
Right, Yeah, but he made he made a fatal air though, and trying to convince people that Hannah had left him, and that was he went off to Indianapolis, where his parents lived, and without getting a divorce and with no body turning up, Alfred got married again. Yeah, and that kind of set off, you know, major major alarms in the King family, especially.
Now as well you talked about this marriage. Who is this person that he marries and what does she know about his background?
Well, he married a young lady by the name of Anime Gamble, and she was an acquaintance with his parents. They lived in the same block in Indianapolis. And she was also, uh, you know, very childish woman. She was very petite, which seemed to be Alfred's type, probably because he could overpower him. He wasn't a terribly big fellow himself. But he married this this young lady who just she just adored him. She she was gonna stick by him
no matter what happened. So, uh, she married this young this young lady, and they moved into a basement apartment in Indianapolis that used to be a paint store, they said, and it was very dingy and dark. Uh. They lived there with with her foster father, who was a Civil War veteran, and they lived there and uh, and that's where they caught up with Alfred. How they caught up with him was ed King Was. He was so suspicious that he enlisted a friend of him Is who was
a railroad detective. Ed was, I guess a ventilation guy for the railroad, And so he knew this detective. And it's really funny they talked. One of the papers told the story of him putting on this hideous disguise. You know, nobody in Hamilton knew him anyway, but he put on this wig and mustache. And I guess their method of investigating this report was to go to the various bars
around town and ask around. And so they ended up getting quite drunk, and they went into a bar that was owned by a brother of a captain of detectives. And when the bar owner got wind of what they were there for what was going on, he sent for his brother. His name was Lenahan, Thomas Lenahan, the captain of police, and he heard their story and he understood his suspicions that something bad might have happen them to Hannah.
But the only thing that they really had on him at this point was big of me, because he had not gotten a divorce from from from Hannah, and here he was married to anime gamble. And so Lenahan took the ten point thirty train from Hamilton to Indianapolis and he roused Alfred out of his bed at four o'clock in the morning with the help of Indianapolis police and they and they brought him back to Hamilton on the on the morning train.
Now, in this questioning when they finally get him to question him, there are not just the only Lenihan an instrumental person. Is this Mayor Charles Bosch, isn't it?
Yeah, Charles Boss was in on it. The uh, the chief of police, I think the sheriff was there. There's a really famous picture that they didn't reproduce in my book. I wish they had, but it's on my website. And so forth posed with these detectives, the safety director, the chief of police, the sheriff, Captain Lenahan, and Mayor bosh all gathered around Alfred while he's signing this confession. So yeah,
there were there were a lot of people involved in that. Now, they brought him in for bigamy with the suspicion that he might have because they didn't want to mess with with trying to get an extradition or anything. And I guess he was simple minded enough that when they said we want to talk to you about Hannah, he got
on the train and came back with him. Well, the newspapers got wind of this, and before they got back on the morning train from Indianapolis, the Hamilton Son, which was kind of the most tabloid of the three papers in Hamilton at the time, they had a big headline, you know, Nap arrested for murder and all this stuff. Arrested for wife murder. Startling affair brought to light, and this came out before the train from Indianapolis got to town. So there was a crowd of about three or four
hundred people waiting for him at the station. And bear in mind that Alfred always had this fantasy of being in show business, and although he was just kind of a hand for the circuses he worked for, he told everybody that he was a trapees artist, and so he kind of had this idea of wanting this kind of fame and adulation. And so when he came into Hamilton on the train and all these people were there, you know he was for him, that made quite an impression
on him. And so they took him into the police station and these five very high powered officials started started grilling and started giving him the sweat they called it, started giving him the sweat, and uh, and he was he was coy, you know, he wouldn't tell he wasn't telling them anything, but they would tell him something. And and so one of the policemen would leave the room
and to go check it out. And then and that happened a few times, and it came down to it was just him and Charlie Bosh sitting in his office in Charlie's the Mayor's office together in Hamilton. The city building contained, you know, everything, It was just one building. So that's why the mayor and the chief of police and everybody was in the same building. And so, having known Alfred before from when he lived next door to him, Alfred,
I know you've got something on your mind. And Alfred said, well, I can't tell you what it is, but I'll write it down for you. And so that the mayor gave him a pencil and a piece of paper and he wrote down a confession that said, not only did he kill Hannah Nap. Now the first day he just said that he had killed Hannah Nap and that he was very coy about it and kind of hinted that he
had other things on his mind. And so after he made the confession, they took him out in a police buggy with all the press falling along, and took him down to the river. So he showed him where the bot where he put the box in the river. It was a fishing hole that everybody liked to go to. He took him down there, and he was being very coy the whole way there and all the way back. You know, it's like, I got something else on my mind,
but I don't want to tell you about it. And so the next day they decided to put into the sweat again because they suspect that he had also killed his wife Jenny, even though it was a rule of suicide officially by the coroner. They had the inquest and everything, so they thought that maybe he'd killed his wife Jenny too, And so the next day they gave him the sweat and kind of the same thing happened all over again.
They would somebody would leave the room to go check out something that Alfred was telling them and left him alone eventually with the mayor, and the mayor did the same thing. Charlie Alfred, I know that you got something on your mind. And Alfred said, well, I can't tell
you that. I'll write it down, And so he gave him another pencil and piece of paper, and he wrote out the famous confession that not only did he kill Hannah, but he also killed his previous wife, Jenny, and he also killed two other three other young ladies, two or three other young ladies in Cincinnati and Indianapolis. And so Hamilton was about twenty thousand people then, so it wasn't a real big city. And my take on this is that they really didn't know what to do with me,
you know. And so when the word came out that he had confessed to these these murders, that the press from Cincinnati and Indianapolis, and there was even some reporters from Chicago. I found some reports in the Chicago papers. They all descended on Hamilton, you know, like maybe one hundred newspaper guys or so. And they didn't know what
to do with him, so they gave him. They gave the newspaper men pretty much full access to talk with Alfred and to get the stories of these murders that he says he committed.
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your first three months try it out, satisfaction guaranteed. Go to ritual dot com slash murder to start your ritual today. That's ten percent off during your first three months at ritual dot com slash murder. Now, we're talking about an incredible time in American history of media when the newspapers were the only game in town, and they were a
huge game, to say the least. And you talk about the incredible it's amazing reading this the access that these journalists, these media people had and the kind of stories that they weaved in the headlines that they used in their newspapers. Tell us more about his dalliance with the media and the results in terms of head lines and newspaper articles.
Right. Well, as I said, I don't think they knew what to do with them. And this was before we add hippo laws and all this other stuff, and so they just gave him access. Now, they one of my favorite scenes in the in the book, I think is they take the reporters to his jail cell, and they was they were going to let him talk to him through the bars, but there were so many of them
that they had to retire to the Sheriff's dining room. Now, you know, back in those days, the sheriff typically, and this was everywhere, but especially in Hamilton, the sheriff had the house like right next door to the jail, and a lot of times they were attached to it. So they took him out of the jail cell and took him into the Sheriff's dining room. And some reports even
said that Sheriff Bis Dwarf gave him a cigar. And so they painted this picture of him sitting in this dining room, kicked back with his feet up on the table, regaling these this cadre of reporters with these stories of murder and mayhem, as calmly and as was enthusiastically, as if as if he were talking about, you know, a
sporting event or something of that sort. Uh. And so he just started weaving these tales about these young women that he had assaulted and murdered and uh and would do lengthy interviews with the Cincinnati in Chuir that because the two of the murders had taken place, and since well three of them had taken place in Cincinnati, so they were particularly interested because all these murders had been unsolved and here was Alfred Knapp, this crazy little guy
in Hamilton, Ohio, saying that he killed all these women. So the headlines were, you know, all over Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Chicago, all over the Midwest. They were telling these stories, and it got to the point where they felt like he
was kind of stretching the truth little bit. And in fact, they caught him at at one time after he'd been in there for a while, he started telling him about this time in Missouri when he was being chased by a posse and all this stuff, and one of the one of the reporters said, hey, wait a minute, wasn't that just in this magazine? And Alfred was, okay, well you caught me on that one. And but telling these stories just kind of made the headlines across the Midwest
were just sensational. When I wrote the scene in the book, what I kind of took because some newspapers would highlight, you know, the things that were of interest to their readers, and other newspapers would highlight different things, so you kind of put them all together and got a really good scene of what had happened that afternoon in the in the sheriff's dining room there in Hamilton.
When he first was speaking to to Krueger and the police chief and sheriff. He was talking about it seemed odd for the time, for nineteen oh four. It sounded like present day where he talked about if you can't.
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Kind a body. I thought this was very fascinating. What did he have to say about the prospect of being convicted there was no finding of the body.
He didn't think he would get russ He didn't think he would get convicted.
Is that.
I'm sorry. It's been five years since I wrote this book, so, uh well.
He just thought that, he said. He said to them initially when they were questioning, he said, if you won't be able to convict unless you find that body, And I just again, I just thought that sounds like a modern day thing for a criminal to say, not something that was.
The prosecutor was saying that too, though, that unless they got a body, he didn't know what they could do with it.
Well, of course, right, And the prosecutor.
Was a it was a very well respected man in Hamilton. He would his father, his brother that is, uh well, his father too. They they were newspaper men. They but his brother at the time was the the publisher of the Democratic newspaper in Hamilton and and warrant guard the uh was was the prosecutor on the cage. Yeah, and he also went on to become a judge later and
he also became a congressman later on too. But yeah, it was his contention that unless they had a body, he didn't think that they would be able to convict him of this, partly because his stories were kind of outlandish, and so I guess. Fortunately a few days, a couple of weeks into his incarceration, the body of Hannah turned up in New Albany, Indiana, some one hundred and fifty or one hundred and sixty miles from Hamilton. Was found.
There was a ferry there and as they were crossing the river they found her floating in the Ohio River. At this time she had flowed that far she was no longer in the box. They never did find the box, but they did turn up her body, and so then they had a case against Alfred Knapp for the murder of Hannah Napp.
Something also very interesting there was a case of of two girls that were accosted and they had a man named Roth, Joe Roth I believe in custody. Yeah, And yet Nap had been questioned about this as well. But fortunately one of the girls that identified Wroth. So this is a very interesting, again side story, but very fascinating about the resemblance between Nap and Roth and how they became involved, even at the trial and then later near the end of the book or at the very end
of the book. So let's talk about Joe Roth and these two girls, these two young girls that were accosted and Joe Roth was in custody when they now have in custody this strangler, Alfred Knapp.
Right. Yeah, the two little girls, I think they were like four and seven years old or something like, very young little girls. And they had last been seen their father owned a butcher shop and they and they had seen them looking at a store window there and then they kind of disappeared until they heard the screens and the two girls came run. One of them was knocked
unconscious and the other one got away. And uh, they brought in bloodhounds from Dayton to come down and and they ran around a part of town that was called Pex's Edition, which was a very poor part of Hamilton. Uh, it was a part of the city that was often flooded from the river. It was a low lying area often flooded, so you know, half half of the years they would lose their crop. But nevertheless, you know, those very poor part of town, they grew melons and corn
down there. And the bloodhounds led them around and it kind of circuld as route around Pex's Edition and finally came upon the house of Joe Roth, and so they arrested him, and the older of the girls actually identified Roth as the man who accosted them, and so he was in jail at the time that they brought Nap in from Indianapolis. And they remarked at the time what a what a strange and curious resemblance the two had together. They were both, you know, smallish men with a swarthy complexion,
and and apparently they looked a whole lot alike. And Alfred had been questioned about this because of his I guess because of his criminal record. But uh, they they he ended up testifying in the trial, and but they could never they could never actually pinted on Alfred. So they went ahead and prosecuted Joe Raw for the attempted deduction of these little girls.
You take us right, sorry, you take us right into the courtroom with this case. And what's interesting is the one girl, I'm not sure it was Hattie or the other girl, but she's, like you say, six years old. She is forced at that trial to go and identify him by walking up to him and putting her hand
on his shoulder. Was incredible And at the same time, you also have the moony where the media believes and maybe even the defense believes or the prosecution believes, that they'll be worthwhile testimony from Napp, but Napp doesn't give them anything conclusive to help Ross's case whatsoever. And that's
what you're write. But I wanted to say is that his behavior though, however, if I thought from reading, was that because he had that demeanor at court, uncoord operative, took the fifth equivalent where he didn't want to answer any questions. In fact, because Roth was quickly determined to be not guilty anditted, I thought that in fact, Alfred's presence, Alfred NAP's presence at that trial actually helped Joe Roth inadvertently.
Yeah, probably did. Yeah, it probably did. But you know, they couldn't actually pinned on him, like you said, he wasn't being very cooperative and so they just kind of let that, kind of let that go. Now.
I wanted to mention too, just for the readers as well, is that what you provide is a lot of source material like letters that Alfred later writes correspondence the confession. But also what I thought was worth noting is the illustration of the murder in nineteen thirty four by the Evening Sun, and you provide a great, great reproduction of that. So I wanted to mention that that's parked in the book as well. This incredible the media, how they act
in nineteen thirty four heart to believe. But anyway, I just wanted to mention that, Yeah.
Well one of the one of the craziest things along that line is that the UH Cincinnati Inquire they published pictures of his hand so that yeah, So that so that Palmers could take a look at that, yeah, and determine whether he was guilty or not. So that's and I think that that goes along with how they were so desperate, you know, to outdo each other, you know, to one up each other, uh, and trying to cover
this case. You know, they not only did they go into his family history in so much detail, but they would do crazy things like that, like printing his palm so that you could read his palm and tell and you know, the hands of a sprangler, I think was the headline. It was great.
Yeah, you also have the the UH I guess you chronicle the phenomena basically of having Alfred Knapp depicted in the media the way he did as well. So, so in terms of what happens with this trial, tell our audience who he eventually is he retains an attorney, and who's representing him in this well.
His attorney is a young fellow by the name of Thomas Darby. And again this is one of the subplots that I thought totally fascinating about it that Thomas Darby, it was a young, up and coming Cincinnati attorney and he worked so hard on this case that he almost literally worked himself to death. And in fact, when they delivered the verdict, he wasn't present because he was so sick.
And he would later go on to become a Hamilton County prosecutor, so he was a This was like his his big foray into uh, you know, big law stuff.
So, so tell us a little bit more about this trial and and what is uh and part of the before this trial, there's always the investigation into the claims that he's made in this confession. He's made various confessions or as spoken to the media several times and said certain things. Were there inconsistencies that were given in the confession as opposed to what he said to the media, and officially, what were the records to support what Napp had said concerning those four murders.
Well, you know, frankly, there there wasn't a lot to actually connect him to these murders. Now one of them, you know, we talked about Jenny Napp and how it had already been ruled a suicide, but then he confessed that he, yeah, he killed her. But another one was the case of a young lady by the name of Mary Eckert in Cincinnati, and she was a dating girl who came to Cincinnati to get work. She had some
connections there, but they weren't real strong ones. So she took a room in a boarding house next to the y m c. A. I think was on Eighth Street in Cincinnati, and was looking for work. And one morning a milkman was coming around, and I got I didn't know they did this, but apparently she just bought a ladle full of milk, and she didn't have a money, and so he just let her have it. But the milkman saw a kind of strange character hanging around the fence at the time, and he took note of it.
But and so later that day when when she turned up dead, you know, this suspicion fell on this unknown stranger who was hanging around the gate. But the milkman went to the Butler County Jail to visit Nap and said that he wasn't the guy. And so this, this mystery stranger remained a mystery. And in the case of I believe it was Emma Littleman. She was found in
a lumberyard. She was a younger girl, she was only like thirteen, and her father had seen her around the lumberyard that day, and he too had seen a stranger, and so he came in to look at her, and he too said, no, I don't know this man. So there wasn't a whole lot to connect him to all these other murders. So when he went to trial, it was it was purely for the murder of his third wife, Hannah Nap.
Yeah, And he talked about they finally found somebody who had helped him carry the box downstairs, so they had that to confirm that he had certainly murdered Hannah, didn't They yes.
For her, and it was pretty clear that, you know, yeah, yeah.
Also, I was going to say, is the phenomena that I was mentioning there that before I lost my train of thought was that it was interesting. It was the reasoning people thought that Alfred Knapp might not want to admit to the Matzer girls being accosted since Joe Roth
has been arrested. I guess around that same time, what was the phenomena that we don't know of today but is interesting to hear that they said was the reason why Alfred Napp might not want to admit that he attacked those Matster girls.
Can you give me a little bit more from that?
It was lynching. It was the phenomena of lynching.
Oh the lindsay okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the people were outside the jail that people were very upset when when the Monster girls were were you know, not abducted, but assaulted. And yeah, he was afraid that that they were going to lynching for that. So that was one of the reasons why he didn't He didn't say anything about that, and and was kind of a contrarian at at at Roth's trial, even though they had him testify against it. And that was you know, that was a
real concern back in those days. You know, I do a lot of stories now about about you know, vigilante justice and people people In fact, the same year that uh that uh. This took place in Oxford, Ohio, which is near Hamilton. There was a case where uh two guys from UH came in during a festival and were shooting the place up and they killed the town constable.
And so the father of the constable led a crowd down to the jail in Oxford and with sledgehammers they busted them out and they were going to hang them in the public square, but a sheriff, deputy sheriff came along and saved them in the nick of time. So this was probably fresh on Alfred's mind too, you know the case of the Spivey brothers and how they were lynched, attempted to lynch them. So yeah, this was a very very real threat in those days.
Now, what we haven't talked about is that, of course with this trial, the defense tries to pick or has to pick probable defense that might work, that may work with this and so I'll ask you what route did they go in terms of their defense. But also that we skipped the skip this fact was that when he went went to testify for the Joe Ronth's trial and in this trial as well, tell us what his demeanor was. But also, how was he dressed. I'll just say that
he was well dressed. You said that, yeah, he was very well the most he was the best well dressed guy in the courtroom. And he was really uh and he was concerned about that. So he was important to him and he's in the media responded as well, you.
Say, right right, yeah he was. He was seemed to be very well at ease, you know, in the in in the trial, their their defense was basically an insanity defense. As I mentioned earlier, Darby had him cut his hair very close so that they could uh see that the horseshoe shaped scar on his head from where he was kicked in the head by a horse, and they they came out with all these stories about you know him, uh,
you know, costing the young ladies in Uh. I guess he got a chisel or something on a group of people at one point, and so they brought out all these little things that he had done through the years to try and get this insanity defense, but didn't work.
It did come down to getting prestigious doctors at that time. You write that one of them was somebody in the courtroom. He was a prestigious and important author and he couldn't. He wasn't involved with the trial, but he was commenting and making his comments known to the media, so he was like he was reporting. You talk about that they brought everybody in his family, mother, sister, everybody to weave a story to concoct to say that he was normal.
He was had a great disposition, and then he got kicked in the head at a young age, and then he fell off the porch, and then other things that they noticed that his nickname was looney. And then also Pepper threw this whole book is that he tells people stories like I'm a detective and shows him a crappy little badge and tells him he's an acrobat. So he's
not taken seriously by some people with his stories. In this as well, you have the it seems a battle of the psychiatrists and those people trying to save Alfred Knapp's life. But as you say to no Avail, is.
It no, no, it's it's to no Avail, he's he's pretty pretty readily convicted a first degree murder and they send him off to Columbus. He did momentarily get a retrial, but then that decision was overturned, so the retrial never happened. So he did come back to Hamilton at one point, but he felt like he had a he had a way that he was going to beat the electric chair.
He told one reporter that that if he held his arms and just the right man her, that the electricity would just roll right through him and wouldn't kill him. So he was gonna he was gonna beat it that way.
Right all along the media, he cooperated with the media. What was his disposition with the media. Was he brave or fearful? Oh?
He wasn't. He was loving the attention. I think that's why he kept coming up with these these great stories, you know. And and he had a pretty good memory because he got most of the dates and a lot of the details right on all these murders that he said he committed, and so so he had that going
for him. But but everything was so outlandish, and they tied the insanity defense, and they had the family pitted against each other, you know, Mayi, Mamie King and her husband Ed were the ones who you know, got the ball in motion too to to have him arrested for
forgetting read of Hannah. But yet he had another sister, Sadie, who was very much his champion, and she went out of her way to try and you know, tell these stories about him getting hit in the head and about the strange things he did to try and get him that insanity defense. And she was quite a striking character, and I spent quite a bit of time in the book, I think, describing her appearances. She first comes into the story when he's having his preliminary hearing, and the newspapers
were just taken aback by this. She looked lik him, but she was beautiful, you know. But and she was very elegant and just dressed to the nines, and she was she was his champion. She really went to bat for him, and then when they gave him the death penalty, she tried really hard to She wanted to be there for him, she wanted to be in the room, and eventually they just they just wouldn't let her do that.
Let's we're going to pause for a moment for these commercials. You talked about Sadie and her unwavering it seemed support. And we'll talk more about Sadie because she is such an important character in his story. But also Sadie blamed her sister, Mamie and Edward right from the very beginning for turning him in. What was her what was her sense? Why why would she attack her sister for just doing something that was morally right? What was her idea about that?
But it was I think it was mostly just her loyalty to Alfred. She knew that he was, you know, a simple minded fella, and that if he did kill Hannah, he didn't mean to, and if he did these other things, he didn't mean to. You know, that that's just his nature and that he should be given some latitude for that, you know, And so she she tried really hard to to kind of smooth things over for him, very little, Avail.
You're right too. It's interesting is the the trial had huge crowds. Interest in the summation especially had overflowing crowds. Both the attorneys, the defense uh Darby and the prosecutor both did masterful, as you write, masterful summations and closing arguments. Tell us a little bit about just those closing arrogants what basically they had to say on behalf of and against Alfred knapp.
Well guard said that that that they shouldn't be swayed by cinniment to save him from the electric chair. You know, he's his his take was that almighty demands that he'd be put out of the way, and that the electric chair, which was rather new at the time, was a humane
way of doing it. And Thomas Darby is as we mentioned, he he literally worked himself sick and as he was given his final plea in front of the judge and the jury, he pretty much collapsed and and Warren Guard, the prosecutor, kind of caught him and you know and helped him to the judge's chamber where he could recover. And so that was just, you know, one of the many dramatic moments in the trial. There was also a dramatic reconciliation between the two sisters outside the courtroom, so
there was a lot of drama in there too. It was you know, and so the crowds, yeah, they were thick. People were hanging from the windows and all that crazy stuff that they that they were doing back in the day to try and get into the courtroom. And it was very that summer too, so it was a kind of a trying time for everybody.
Let's we haven't mentioned which is important too, And another side part of this story. Very important is his fourth wife, Anime. Initially, What was her, what was she like with the media, what she had to say to the media initially, and then as this trial was going on, where was Anime?
Yeah, yeah, I think she's one of my favorite. She's another one of my there's so many great characters in this book. As we talked earlier, she was kind of a simple minded girl. And the first story where we get introduced to her, an Indianapolis newspaperman goes to their little dingy apartment to ask her if she had ever woken up in the middle of the night with Alfred Knapp's hands around her throat. That was a big question for and she was she was just infuriated with it,
you know. She basically kicked him out, you know. And and they described her her shrill voice rising out of the little basement apartment and and going out into the street, and her her decrepit old uh foster father, Uh, the
Civil War veteran. They were living in this little dingy apartment on his pension, and uh, and and how he how much he loved her, and and they were they both loved Alfred, and she she even went to Hamilton at one point, and and there was a very big show of that she took tooking some clothes and a cock a cock, and they they, uh, they were afraid that that she was going to try slipping in a weapon or a poison or something, so they kind of held back on some of the stuff.
Uh.
But she made quite a splash in Hamilton too, and she pretty much uh stood beside him as much as she could. But she didn't not come to the trial, and she kind of disappeared a little bit. I think she got remarried later and but she died very young. But yes, she's quite a character. In fact, one of my presentations that I do with at the libraries and stuff is I take these the sections where we talk about anime gamble nap and kind of make a story out of them just by it by itself. You know.
It's it's very entertaining.
M h. You say that defense attorney Darby and this is unusual. He cried when the verdict was read, didn't he Yeah?
Yeah, well you know again what they called it brain congestion. I really don't know what that means. But he was sick, and so yeah, he was he was very upset. He took it very personally. I think that's what made him a great lawyer and what he went on to to do good things that that he really took this case to heart and he and he worked his butt off for Alfred Nap.
Interesting rate too, that eighty women brought flowers to jail for the strangler.
Yeah, he was popular with the ladies, which kind of you know, I mean, yeah, serial killers are very popular with people. And that's why I caught him the first celebrity serial killer because you know, up to that point, there really wasn't you know, such a thing, you know, the term as serial killer. Now this is after HH Holmes and and and uh uh of course Jack the
Ripper and and some other some other things. But but Alfred Knapp I think was the first one who really caught uh the public eye, you know, and got this adulation and adoration, uh, especially from from the women, you know, uh, from the women in town. And and they would come out, you know, dressed to the nines to come to see the trial, and and uh they would just swoon if he looked in their direction, and and those kinds of things.
And yeah, they brought him flowers and and so he you know, he really made quite an impression on people, in spite of him being a simple you know, and and to my mind, a rather stupid fella. Apparently he had a dynamic, a dynamy, a charisma about him that that really captured people's attention and made people want to talk to him, whether it be the reporters or the women. You know, they they were they were kind of taken with Alfred, you know, they were kind of in love
with him. And uh, yeah, I guess he's not a bad looking fella. I don't know. I look at his picture and he looks very sad to me.
Yeah, you write that the reporters finally tracked down Anna Gamble and at her new house. And meanwhile, with the reporters, there was ten women were there and they were taunting Anna and so, and she vowed and she was real defiant. Right from the very first time she speaks to the media. I thought, geez, wow, feisty. And she vowed to go see her husband.
But she said she would go to Hamilton for the trial, even if she had to walk. Of course she didn't.
But yeah, now he heads off to Columbus, Ohio, and so right away they don't fool around that he's the guy at the county jail. The warden says, we've had enough of this circus for six months, and so he shifts him off to Columbus, Ohio State penitent Ohio State Penitentiary. He's still talking to reporters there, isn't he what's his demeanor by the time he gets there.
Well, he's still you know, he's still the same old, same old jolly Alfred. You know, he he doesn't seem to get upset or depressed about his situation. And in fact, uh, somebody gave him a I guess an accordion, and so he was playing the accordion while he was waiting on death row.
Yeah, crazy.
I think the song was There's a Hot Time in the Old Town tonight was the song that he played over and over again.
Well you you said too that the inmates, the fellow inmates, the prisoners were horrified by his lack of remorse and the jokes he did about his crimes and his upcoming execution.
Yeah, yeah, he he didn't seem to have a bit of conscience about it at all. You know, he never never, never really showed any remorse.
Something that might have upset him greatly. Was happened in September and he finally heard from his fourth wife, who he called Annie or pardon me Anna, and anime what did she say to him? Essentially in that when she finally did get to speak.
To him, she was not she was not happy. I think she finally came around to realize that that, you know, he had done some some bad things. And uh. The letter she wrote was was rife with misspellings. But she said that she uh, she had received his letters and and was glad to hear from him. But but but she was sorry that the way that he talked to her, and she she expressed shame of herself and kind of took the blame herself for for his being unhappy to have to you know, to do the things that he did.
And he he uh, she wasn't going to get a divorce and uh, and she encouraged him to cheer up and uh and uh. But she never did come to see him in the in the jail except for that one time in Hamilton. Never came to see him in Columbus, and and did not attend his his execution.
Now when he said a new execution date finally is Alfred Knapp. WA's his demeanor now and it looks like there's no more there's nothing left in terms of appeals and he's going to die in the electric chair. What's his demeanor then.
Well, he does show a little bit of remorse for something and he wants uh. He specifically asked Mayor Charlie Boss to come to the execution and he gave him a note that he finally confessed to the tempted abduction or the assault on the on the Monster girls and and finally cleared Joe Roth of the suspicion of that. So so he finally he did clear that that that one up. I think that's what you're getting at, right, Yeah, well.
He he also hinted that there was less or more to his confessions and still didn't believe he was going to get the electric chair. He thought that the governor was still going to make sure that he didn't he wasn't killed. But all that was left and this is where Sadie comes in again. Sadie is still trying as hard as she can to save her brother's life and there was only one more option, and that's the State
Board of Pardons. They can send they can commute the sentence to life, and there's no US Supreme Court federal issues. His attorneys agree there's nothing to appeal in terms of there's no issues there to appeal. So this is his only chance as a state board of pardons and they're going to decide fairly quickly.
Yeah. Well, they decided that they would go through at the execution. They even got Charlie Goddard, Hannah's uncle who raised her. They even got him to talk to the Board of Pardons, but nothing came of that, and so they finally set a final execution date in August of that year.
Sadie even approached the former jurors to try to ask them for if they would help, and they declined, didn't they right?
Yeah, she she really did. She really worked. She really went above and beyond to try and get Alfred out of this this pickle that he found himself in, but to no avail, to no avail.
Now it's four days before his execution. What does he what does he try to do with another inmate while he sleeps August fifteenth.
Yeah, they accused him of making an attack on another prisoner that again he in the in the middle of the night comes at him in his sleep trangling, and so they're kind of making a plea that you know, he wasn't you know, in charge of his faculties. This was a part of his insanity again that he would attack a prisoner and pretty much the same manner he attacked his wife.
And and he said too when he was confronted with the idea that he choked this guy said, oh, I never touched the guy. So again, not knowing what he was doing was sort of his last ditch effort to prove that he could strangle someone in the middle of the night. That did come up in the court trial
as well. That's somehow that he didn't know what he was doing, and someone testified to that that they woke up and it wasn't him and his eyes changed, so they they attempted to do that that he was some automan and didn't wasn't aware of his his behavior, right, But you know, as.
It turns out, there was another case in Hamilton about the same time of a fellow who had slid his wife's throat in the middle of the night, and he had the sleepwalker defense, you know, which is what Altitible's right is. But I think, uh, but I think the other guy kind of spoiled that for him, so that didn't quite fly. You know, that he was sleepwalking and not in control of himself. So yeah, that's that came up again.
It's fascinating to when you're reading you forget the times, you know, when you read about the media's behavior. It's been dispelled people thinking that the media are now so sensationalistic. No, it's not new. But also just the idea that, yeah, just just that that idea that he could that the same things would would would be prevalent in today's society, and that being that in nineteen oh four they had the same kinds of ideas for novel defenses like sleepwalking defense.
You would think that that would have been something in the seventies, eighties, nineties, No, nineteen oh four.
Yeah, no, Now, you know one of the things that stark You know, we talk about the twenty four hour news cycle here, but I think you know how how I begin the book with him coming off of the train and meeting that that crowd at the Hamilton station, because you know, it had only been you know, his brother King and the detective. It was just the day before that they were in town, and enough people got wind of it then that they had it out by the next morning, and all that crowd showed up. And
that's kind of what you know. I think inspired Alfred to confess to all these murders was just the celebrity, the instant, the instant notoriety that he got and people were taken with him, and he I think he loved that. I think he just enjoyed the attention. That he would kick back and tell him these stories, and he had a good memory for him and apparently it was a really good storyteller.
Yeah, but it's always what is the actual truth? And so near the end of the book, at the very end of the book, his sister Sadie comes to visit and she he says, tell me the truth, Alfred, was your confession true? And then I thought this was incredibly poetic. And in the shadow of the gallows, will you tell me the truth? And what does he say in terms of was it truth?
He tells her that the only murder that he committed was that of Hannah.
And what does she say? What? She almost she almost collapses when she hears that. When he says, I am only guilty of Hannah.
Right, Yeah, he was still thinking that he wasn't going to go to the chair though, But yeah, she showed up and and and she was I think she was quite relieved actually that he didn't do all those things. But even as if going Hannah wasn't bad enough, right.
Yeah, yeah, but she had such she had such faith in him that if he did do it, he was insane. She just didn't want to believe that he was capable of this. There is you call it. One last confession person named Jabi Simms regarding Joe Roth. They discussed Joe Roth and the guilt of Joe Roth. What did Alfred Knapp say about that and what he did he offer to do?
Well? He confessed that he said that in his note that he wrote to Boss. He wrote it to Boss, but Boss never never showed up, so he gave it to mister Simms, and he said that Joe Roth is innocent of the attack on the two Motster girls. He says, I'd done that myself, but there was no intention of committing rape on them. I'm doing this to clear Joe Roth's name, as I assaulted children myself. It was the gist of his note.
There, right, incredible. That's the day before so that Bosh mayor Bosh shows up at the execution August nineteenth, nineteen oh four, as you write, tell us just a little bit about I guess how well that execution went off.
Well, the papers called it the most successful in the history of electrocutions. They it was the warden. It was his last execution there at the penitentiary, and there were physicians who knew him, who he had invited to be those that declared him dead. You know, they gave him the full jolt and he I don't know if he tried to hold his body in that peculiar way to let the electricity roll off of him or not. But
but but it didn't work. It didn't work. And uh, you know, of course they didn't let Sadie in, but she was in Columbus, and uh she helped take care of the body. And uh, actually it was quite a quite a big funeral. It said that three thousand people showed up for his services. But but but then when they went to the funeral, it was, uh, it was just Sadie and uh, I think it says one other unnamed companion and uh so the family, you know, Uh,
glad to say that the family reconciled. Mayor Bosh returned to Hamilton and and shared the confession with the monsters about the monster girls. And uh he he told him that he thought it was true. And uh so Alfred's kind of career, as you know, the greatest greatest criminals of the current era was over. And uh and they buried him and they're in Columbus, in the prison jail, in the prison graveyard.
Yeah, you had one thing as well, just people had contended that Animee and Alfred Knapp had conceived a child.
There were rumors of that. Yeah, there were rumors of that, but apparently it wasn't true. I mean, you know, things go that they The Indianapolis News reported that she had to give up the child to the to the Children's Guardians because the board being of the opinion that she
wasn't a fit person to care for the child. But I think when you sit down and look at you know, when the child is born, he would have been safely ensconced in the Hamilton jail time the baby would have to have been conceived, so it was not possible for him to have to have fathered a child. So she did remarry later on, but she died became a widow again, and actually she married another time and then she died while she was in her thirties.
Yeah, I want to thank you so much for coming on and talking about the first celebrity serial killer in Southwest Ohio, Confessions of the Strangler, Alfred Knapp. Thank you, Richard O. Jones. Is there a website that people might take a look at this book or tell us about how they might contact you or find out more about your work?
Okay, Well, I also do a podcast myself. It's called True Crime Historian, and basically what I do is I pick cases. You know, I think the sweet spot is from about eighteen seventy to about nineteen thirty because as I was researching these the story and others, I really fell in love with the way that they reported on things back then. You know, they would they would write in ways that I always wanted to when I was
a reporter but could never get away with. That is being very descriptive and being very narrative in their approach in their writing. And today it's all you know, it's the inverted pyramid, and you know, chunks of facts and not so much storytelling. So I fell in love with all of that, and so I started doing a podcast
called True Crime Historian. When I go through the old newspapers and put pull out sections of the case, you know, when they find the body, and when they make the arrest, and when they interview the girl next door, and you know, all these other things, and pull together a sixty to ninety minute narrative that would that reads almost like a short story most of the time, when when I'm really good at when I'm really successful with it, it'll read like a short story. But it's based on all this
wonderful newspaper reporting that they did back then. And so I do have a website, true Crime Hisstorian dot com, or you can find a podcast on you know, whatever podcast player you listen to, and and so I have other tales of murder and mayhem through the ages. It's kind of a wonderful thing to do. I really love enjoy doing that, And so I do a story every week, a new story every week.
That sounds fantastic, and I'm sure with people the listeners will tune in as I will as well. Thank you so much. The first celebrity serial killer in Southwest Ohio Confessions of the Strangler, Alfred Napp, Richard O. Jones, thank you so much for this. It's been an absolute pleasure. You have a great evening.
Thanks for having me Dan, It's great to be on your show, and I look forward to chatting with you again, maybe sometime about some of my other books.
Absolutely, good night, good night,