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Lad 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 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. Beekman Place, once one of the most exclusive addresses in Manhattan, had a curious way of making it into the tabloids in the nineteen thirties. Skyscraper slayer be slain in bathtub read the headlines on Easter Sunday. In nineteen thirty seven, the discovery of a grisly triple homicide at Beekman Place would rock the neighborhood yet again and
enthrall the nation. The young man who had committed the murders would come to be known in the annals of the American crime as the mad Sculptor, the charismatic Perpetrator. Robert Erwin was a brilliant young sculptor who had studied with some of the masters of the era, but with his genius also came a deeply disturbed psyche. Erwin was obsessed with sexual self mutilation and was frequently overcome by
outbursts of violent rage. Erwin's primary victim, Veronica Gideon, was a figure from the world of pulp fantasy, a stunning photographer's model whose scandalous seminude pin ups would titillate the
public for weeks after her death. Erwin's defense attorney, sat Will Leebowitz, was a courtroom celebrity with an unmatched record of acquittals and clients ranging from Al Capone to the Scottsboro Boys, and doctor Frederick Wordham, psychiatrist and forensic scientists befriended Irwin years before the murders and had predicted them
in a public lecture months before the crime. Based on extensive research and archival records, The Mad Sculptor recounts the chilling story of the Easter Sunday murders, a case that sparked a nationwide manhunt and endures as one of the most engrossing American crime dramas of the twentieth century. The book evokes the fated glory of post depression New York and the singular madness of a brilliant mind turned against itself.
The book they were featuring this evening is The Mad Sculptor, the Maniac, the Model, and the Murder that Shook the Nation with my special guest, journalist and author and professor Harold Scheckter. Welcome back to a program, and thank you for a green in this interview. Harold. Check there. Good evening, Harold, Good evening, Harold, welcome to the program. Hello, good evening, Harold. Welcome to the program.
Dan, I'm very glad to be here.
Thank you very much. We just had a little difficulty, technical difficulty connecting with you. Yes, I can thank you. Good.
Well, my pleasure to be here. I appreciate your inviting me back.
Well, it's my great pleasure, and I'm sure the audience is great pleasure. You've out tun yourself again with another great, great, fascinating and incredible story. So let's get right to this. This is you harken back to nineteen thirty seven in New York, and we go back to the time nineteen thirty five. We alluded to it in the synopsis of
the book itself. The description of the book tell us about Manhattan at that time and Beakman Place, And you give us a background to describe the time, the post depression era. So take us back to that time and describe for us what it was really like.
Well, I, you know, initially became very very interested again in the Robert Irwin case, which happened in nineteen thirty seven. But when I began my research, I discovered that several other very very sensational murders had occurred in that particular
neighborhood within a two year span. Beakman Place, which now is a very very exclusive, expensive address on the East side of Manhattan, had back in the late nineteenth early twentieth century descended into a kind of poverty, and because it's located on the water, starting in the late nineteen twenties, all these very wealthy people began to colonize the area, and by the mid nineteen thirties, Beakman Place was this kind of odd combination of extremely luxurious residences and some
still slummy areas. And there was a famous place that was written at the time called dead End, which was made into a Humphrey Bogart movie, and that introduced the dead End Kids, who later became the Bali Boys and the movie had to do with this odd juxtaposition of extreme wealth and poverty that that neighborhood represented back then.
So but starting in nineteen thirty five, there was a series of extremely sensational murders that occurred in the neighborhood, and the tabloids, which at that time were at their height, you know, exploited these murders to the fullest. So I ended up writing, and you know, the book, I ended
up writing about three murders. I mean, the main one I focus on is the Mad Sculptor murders, but there were these two earlier murders that I begin by talking about the book, right, And the first of them was a woman named Vera Stretz who shot and killed her well what the tabloids called her Nazi lover boy, who was a very very prominent German businessman who was actually in line to become the German ambassador to the United States. His name was Fritz Kebhart. Vera had gotten involved with
him on a Mediterranean cruise and become his mistress. And then at some point when he apparently announced, after having promised that he was going to leave his wife and marry her, that he renegged on that promise, she shot him in the Beakman Hotel, which was a very very luxurious residential hotel at that time. Became this hugely sensational story. And then one year later, another very very grizzly murder
happened in Beakman Place. A young woman named Nancy Titterton, who was an up and coming novelist and whose husband was an executive at NBC Radio at that time, was raped and murdered in her home on Beakman Place. So there were these two again previous very sensational murders that happened, and you know, at that time was already being considered to be this enclave of privilege and safety and so on and so forth.
So in nineteen thirty five, very much like our own time and in our not so or just our recent past, there was certainly the elements that made for the media frenzy and made for good tabloid press.
Yeah.
And also when you say that you also include these stories, do you also include these stories? Because you can talk about the defense attorneys at that time, and you can also talk about the media. And it almost seemed like they were doing a dress rehearsal for this Easter Sunday, nineteen thirty seven.
Yeah, well, you know, I mean, one of the things that always interests me as a true crime writer, and I guess, you know a student of a subject is the way in which you know human beings, going back for as long as certainly there's been anything like a news media, you know, the way the public has always been fascinated by certain kinds of crimes, you know, and again they're you know, very obviously crimes that involved a certain amount of sexual scandal and a certain kind of
gruesome violence. You know, obviously when they involve somehow, when they involve people of a kind of a higher or more privileged social class, you know, they tend to stimulate public interest more, you know. So, you know, there's always been this fascination with lurid, sensationalistic crime stories that the tabloid press has been very, very eager to exploit. And again in the night, you know, the nineteen thirties was
the heyday of tabloid journalism in America. So you have these papers in New York, like the New York Daily News and the New York Daily Mirror, which are always on the lookout, you know for some particularly juicy kind of sex and violent story that they could exploit to sell papers. So, you know, in the case of these Beakman Place massacres, you had this combination of you know, again presumably very safe and upper class and secure kind of enclave in New York City that had suddenly been
visited by these very very lurid sex crimes. And again there was this trio of crimes that happened really with it an eighteen month span, and that in itself added to the fascination of it.
Now, before we get into some of the principal characters here, and they are a fascinating collection of characters, certainly right out of fictional novels. But let's get to Samuel Leibowitz and a little bit of his career because it's he's a very important character, and so tell us some of the kind of clients that he had, and what type of lawyer attorney he really was, and what was the really famous.
Well, you know, one of the things that attracts me to the particular stories that I write about, you know, or you know, the cast of characters. And I feel that what makes a great crime story is not just the particular crime per se, but the kind of characters who are involved in the story, and Leebowitz was a very very larger than life figure. He was considered to be the most famous and celebrated defense attorney of his time. He was known for his very very colorful and theatrical
courtroom performances. In one case, very famous case for example, which was known as his Eskimo Pie defense, he was defending a gangster, well it was mad Dog Call. Actually, mad Dog Call had been arrested and accused for having killed in an innocent bystander in this kind of drive by shooting. And one of the people who came to testify against him was sort of this paid, you know, paid stooge who claimed that he had been out on the street selling Eskimo pies. You know Eskimo pies were
these Well they still sell them. I don't know if you're that had been on the street on this summer day selling Eskimo pies, and he had he had seen mad Dog Call in this car, machine gun in hand, spring bullets out the window, and uh and and killing. And Leebutz had this guy in the stand and he asked his assistant to go out and buy a dozen Eskimo pies. And they Leebwitz handed out these Eskimo pies to the jury and judge, and while they were eating them,
he began to question this witness about Eskimo pies. And the guy knew nothing about Eskimo pies. You know, he had no idea what the labor looked like, he had no idea how you would actually go about selling them on a hot summer day in the middle of the city. And so he exposed this guy as like a total fraud. So that was the kind of thing he did. I mean, he was known for these very very theatrical performances, and he had this unmatched record of winning at either acquittals.
I can't remember the exact number, but you know, by the time he was defending their a stretch, he had something like he had defended something like seventy eight clients who were accused of murder and he had won seventy seven acquittals and one hung jury. So and he figures in all of these different cases that I write about in my book. And he began, you know, by representing very small time criminals and then worked his way up
to defending people like al Capone. You know, all these very very very celebrity gangsters of the nineteen twenties, and ultimately he became most famous for his defense of the scottspur Boys, you know, in one of the signature civil rights case of the twentieth century.
Yes, yes, so all the players are are in a certain position. We'll say, for all of this to happen. Now, tell us about Robert So go ahead.
No, no, I'm just saying. You know, again, one of the things that was very fascinating to me about the Robert Irwin case was a number of extremely prominent figures who were somehow connected to it. Again, there was Samuel Leebowitz,
who ended up being Irwin's defender. They were these very very famous sculptors of the time, like Laredo Taft, who was one of America's most eminent sculptors, who you know, became the mentor of Robert r. When there was Frederick Wortham, who later became a very very notorious figure for leading
a crusade against comic books during the nineteen fifties. You know, who is the primary psychiatrist who was treating Robert der when so again, I mean, you know, one of the one of the elements that's very important to me when I start looking for a case to write about. He has to do with a kind of not only the story that's involved, but the kind of characters who are part of that story.
Right well, keeping with that, why don't you uh introduce our audience to doctor Wortham, because his his background before he gets to this point, before he encounters even before he starts treating uh Robert or when tell us about what what noted or what w what could note his career and tell us a little bit more about doctor Wortham.
Well Worhythm's a you know, a very interesting figure. I mean, I yer have known about Worthm you know, from many, many, many years, and my er m my earliest impression of Worthm uh as is true of certainly many people of my baby boomer age. I I you know, I always sort of wore them as a kind of boogeyman because in the nineteen fifties worth Them wrote a best selling book called Seduction of the Innocent, which argued that comic
books with the primary cause of juvenile delinquency. You know, back in the nineteen fifties, juve no delinquency was this you know, great you know, considered to be this you know great national scourge, and and you know, and were them again spearheaded this crusade against comic books that almost succeeded in driving the entire comic book industry at a business.
You know, it did put all these great classic ec horror comics like The Vault of Horror and Tells from the Crypt out of business, and it led to this congressional investigation of the comic book industry and ultimately to the creation of this Comics Code. But it turns out Wrethm was, you know not. My impression of Worthm for many years was that he was kind of this McCarthy era witch hunter and cultural watch dog, you know, sort of like the people now who are constantly leading these
crusades against violent video games and so on. But it turns out he was actually quite a liberal individual who you know, had very very prominent training in psychoanalysis and Germany, you know, had known briefly Sigmund Freud, came over to the United States and was a very very very prominent figure in Johns Hopkins Medical School, opened the first psychiatric clinic in Harlem, offering very very very low price. Well
I think they charged twenty five cents per session. You know, therapeutic treatment.
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Minorities in Harlem and so on and so forth. He was actually quite an admirable figure. And he he became quite interested in basically the social roots of violence and became he really became convinced that crime, and particularly murder, you know, could could ultimately be eliminated through this kind
of enlightened social psychological treatment. Anyway, he became he was appointed the senior psychiatrist of Bellevue Hospital, and in that capacity, you know, was frequently called upon to testify at criminal trials about the mental capacity of people accused of various crimes. And so he became early on a very very important forensic psychiatrist. And it was that capacity that he got to know the subject of my book, Robert Irwin.
Right, well, let's segue into Robert Irwin. Now he is an interesting background with his father and his mother and his upbringing. So tell us about the upbringing of Robert Irwin.
In his background, Well, Irwin was, as it turned out, I mean, he was a child of two Well you'd have to say they were religious fanatics. His father, Benjamin Irwin, was actually the founder of a evangelical church called the Fire Baptist Church Holiness Church. His mother, who was also very very involved in the Pentecostal movement and various evangelical
Christian movements. I mean, they were both people who really completely, completely well their lives were both consumed by this religious zelotry. Irwin's father, Benjamin was almost a kind of stereotypical kind of character, a very very charismatic preacher who would spend his Sundays railing against the evils of the modern world, which included everything from wearing neckties, which apparently was considered in his particular sect to be some kind of terrible,
sinful symptom of modernity. He said he'd rather wear a rattlesnake around his neck than a necktie, to drinking coca cola.
So he would go around, as I say, every Sunday giving these very healthfire and brimstone sermons against sin and corruption and so on and so forth, and then use all the money that he had collected, uh to go spend his time in whorehouses, and was ultimately you know, excommunicated from his own church in disgrace, and the mother again was again totally totally absorbed in her particular religious activities.
So this was a sort of background that uh Erwin, whose actual name was not Robert Erwin but Fenelon Arroyo Seco Erwin, Fenelon being a reference to Uh, a very famous French Protestant preacher, and Arroyo Seco being a reference to the particular park in California where er Erwin was born during a tent meeting that his mother was attending. So again that was a it was an ex dream fanatical religious background that he sprang from.
What the relationship with he and his father wasn't good obviously, But when did his father band in the family.
Well, I mean his father band in the family when Erwin is a very very young boy. I mean he had very few connections to him. I mean one of his few memories of his father was his father coming to visit him when he was a young kid, and his father taking him off and they're going to some house where there were these as Erwin remembered it, you know, nice women and you know, and Erwin basically sitting and waiting in the parlor while his father disappeared into the
bedroom with a couple of these women. So you know, that was you know, one of the few memories he had of his father. So basically, Irwin and his two brothers, all of whom ended up, you know, being career criminals. Well, the two brothers ended up being career criminals, were raised quote unquote by their mother. All of their mother was primarily spending most of her time, you know, pursuing her religious activities.
Now, in terms of this often happens, and like you say that the father was a zealot and preached against things like neckties and uh, coca cola, What was the mother's attitude towards sex and religion and what did she have to say to the boys, especially or Robert included.
Well, apparently she had read some kind of book, according to Irwin's later recollections, which advised parents and mothers, you know, to be fairly open about sexual matters with their children. But somehow she interpreted that as walking around nude, or at least letting the kids seeing her nude. I mean, Irwin's you know, had very very very vivid memories of seeing his mother bathing naked in front of him and
his kids. So you know, I mean there's a there's a whole rich and I think largely unexplored area having to do with the connection between certain kinds of religious zelodry, zealotry, and sensational crime that you know hasn't been fully explored. So but but you know, Irwin is one of a fair number of American killers, you know, who have some relationship maybe too extreme religious upbringings and backgrounds.
So now, at this time, I know it's early. I know it's you know, it's early in terms of America and recognizing mental health or even even having a term for some of the mental illness I guess, or recognizing it in anyone or symptoms. So was there anything odd or peculiar in his behavior other than what might be dismissed as a sort of truancy or you know, bad behavior. Was there anything unusual or out of the ordinary that might be later looked at in retrospect as some psychological problems? Oh?
Yeah, I mean Irwin was a very very bizarre I mean, Erwin was a very very fascinating figure because he was very very he was a voracious reader. He at his best moments, you know, had a very very winning personality. And uh, you know, had this ability to uh win over all kinds of people. You know, he was just again a very very personable and charismatic individual, but at the same time, you know, he was seriously uh psychologically unstable,
probably even psychotic. From a very early age, he developed this obsession with this process he called visualization. Again, he was a he was a gifted sculptor and and and displayed this aptitude from a very very earth early age.
But he also became convinced that he could acquire the ability, through very rigorous discipline and practice, to somehow mentally visualize a particular image and then by sheer force of will power transform this mental image into a physical object, so that all he would have to do, for example, was imagine, let's say, a portrait of Napoleon, who is one of his heroes, and if he concentrated hard enough, he would somehow be able to produce a material, three dimensional sculptural
representation of Napoleon sheerly by again thinking of it. And again he called that that theory he called a theory visualization. And from a very early age he devoted himself to somehow cultivating this power, and this became you know, the obsessive pursuit of his life developing this power of visualization, and ultimately it sort of expanded into this whole notion that you know, not only would he be able to produce this great art sheerly by willpower, but somehow he
would be able to conquer space and time. He would be able to travel through time, he would be able to project himself through space. So again he developed this very very very elaborate delusional system over the years. And again what was interesting with Irwin was that there were time, I mean much of the time again he appeared to people to be very very lucid and very very rational, but again, at the same time, you know, he was
very obsessed with this very of visualization. The other thing about Irwin was he had a hair trigger temper and was constantly that there was this recurrent pattern in which he would find himself in a certain situation and having made friends and being a success professionally and so on and so forth, and then inevitably something would happen that would trigger some really kind of homicidal outburst in him, and he would lash out at a friend or a benefactor
or whatever and end up uh, you know, and ended up being fired from a job or or or whatever. So so there was you know, again he was he was a very very very psychologically volatile personality.
Let me ask this question, uh Harold, of the the visualization that he wanted to be able to render images in three dimensions and be able to again like you say, uh, basically transmit Uh yeah, I guess very very star star trek like matter and and and and time travel and those sort of sorts of things. But in this delusion, what did the self mutilation and his idea that he had a certain energy and what did his sex organs and his penis have to do with any of that in his delusion?
Well, I mean he again, I say said. Erwin was sort of a promiscuous reader in the sense that, you know, he was not a systematic reader of any particular kind of philosophy or whatever, you know, whatever came to hand, he would read and become fascinated by, and at one point he read what was at that time, back in the nineteen thirties' best selling book on the history of philosophy by a guy named will Well, a couple named Will and Ariel Durant, and in that book, the Durans
talk about Schopenhauer, and you know, in Schopenhauer's whole theory of this universal will which is the source of all energy in the universe. And you know, Irwin got it into his head that if he could somehow channel or sublimate all his sexual energy into this effort to visualize, you know, this would enable him, you know, to achieve this power. You know, he began to feel that his libido,
his sexual energy, was somehow dissipating this power. So he decided that the best way to redirect his sexual energy towards this project of visualization was to casture it himself, basically,
to cut off his penis. And he at one point decided to go ahead and do that, and you know, he tied some rubber bands around his penis and wrote around the New York City subway system until you know, he felt he had anesthetized his penis, and you know, then went back to the boarding house he was staying in and took a gilt raizor blade and started to saw off his penis at its base. And that's how we ended up in Bellevue Hospital and under the care of Frederick Wortham.
So sure now What we did skip over, and this is quite important, is how he came to have this, to know and others know that he had this affinity for sculpture, and how he met Laredo Taff, which was he was the man in terms of the artist that was most I guess known at that time for sculpture at that time, and how that relationship developed between Irwin and Taff. So tell us tell us about that.
Well. At some point Irwin left home, left his mother,
started kind of bumming around America. He first went to Los Angeles and was working for a guy named Carlos Romanelli, who was a well known sculptor and who actually had done a lot of work for the movies, including creating the statues of the Amphitheater for the Silent movie version of Ben Her And then again, inevitably, Irwin had some explosive episode with one of Romanelli's other assistants and he ended up being fired, And then he made his way
to Chicago and ended up being taken under the wing of Laredo Taft, who was one of the country's most eminent sculptors who had worked on the eighteen ninety three Chicago World's Fair and created many of the civic statues that still stand throughout Chicago. And you know, again Taft was very very impressed with Irwin's skill, really kind of treated him as a surrogate son, and Irwin worked in Taft's workshop for really a fairly extended period of time
for him. But then again, you know, his own psychosis ended up undermining him and he ended up again having some very very explosive fights with other of Taft's assistants, and you know, that ended that aspect of his career, and he made his way to New York City. At
this point, the depression was well underway. Erwin worked for a while for a famous taxidermist, and then you know, found himself basically unemployed and having to who you know, really reduced to these extremely menial jobs as a dishwasher
and an elevator boy. And at some point he ended up living with a boarding with a family called the Geddeons, who consisted of a mother, father, and two grown daughters, one of whom Veronica Gedeon, was this very very beautiful quote unquote artists model who made her money by posing nude for these amateur camera clubs, you know, where guys would pay five dollars an hour to snap photographs of beautiful naked women, and she would also pose for one of the many, many, well several of the many many
pulp detective magazines that flood of the news stands at the time. And Veronica had a sister named Ethel, who was an tractive woman who worked as an editor for Vanity Fair, and Bob became very infatuated actually with Ethel because he felt partly because of her intelligence and sensitivity, she was a kind of woman who would relate to his artistic aspirations and also somehow maybe a system in his efforts to achieve this visualization that he was always striving after.
Was there any kind of reciprocation from her? Was there any kind of interest? Did she have any even initially have any interest in Robert Irwin at all?
Well, I mean Ethel, I think she was kind of fascinated by Erwin. Again. Irwin could be you know, was a very very articulate and well read young.
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Webs retails man and often did have the ability to you know. And again he was also very good looking young man, and he had a very charismatic personality. So yeah, I mean she Ethel was certainly sympathetic towards him, but I don't believe she was ever really romantically attracted to him. Again, Bob got it into his head, you know, that Ethel was perfect woman for him, and began to indulge in all kinds of fantasies about their leading this perfect life together.
Of course, in his particularly you know, bizarre worldview of perfect life meant that they would spend their time together practicing visualization until he had perfected it. Anyway, he did actually propose marriage to her, which she very sanely turned down.
So now at the time, she soon dating someone else, and what is Robert's reaction.
Well, I mean Ethel, and when he proposed to her, Ethel informed him that she was actually engaged to another person a name Joe Kudner who is a lawyer, and Irwin was really plunged into this incredible suicidal depression. You know, Irwin, from the time he first attempted to emasculate himself was
in and out of various mental health facilities. You know, that became a very big issue later on when he committed this triple murder and it became public knowledge that he had been again committed to various mental health facilities prior to the murder and then been released.
And we're talking about tell our audience how long U stay? We're talking about very surprising the stays in these mental hospitals. What kind of duration we talking about?
Well, I mean altogether, you know, from the time that he first took the razor blade to his period to his penis until he committed the murders, you know, was probably I can't remember the precise amount of time, but it was four or five years anyway, Yes.
Very long, or like a year at a time. Two years.
Yeah, absolutely incredible.
Now, what I wanted to try to get you to explain to the audience because this is just seems at first when I'm reading a very very odd contrast that he's this society guy and of course he's a noted artist and he is articulate, he's good looking, athletic, you know, he's he's a he's a catch. But he does have this idea of visualization. So how crazy and how if at all dangerous do people like Ethel look at Robert at that time?
Well, I mean, Ethel I don't think ever really saw him as dangerous. In the fact, you know, after her sister and mother were murdered and the police identified Irwin as the prime suspect of the case, you know, it took her a very long time to acknowledge, you know, that Bob actually might have been the perpetrator. She really, for a very long time, never saw him as terrible
of that kind of violence. Of course, there are other people who had been the victims of some of Irwin's very very extreme violent outbursts, you know, who had seen that part of him. When when Bob was living in Chicago and lodging at the home of Laredo Taff's mother, you know, Taft had taken such a shine to Bob that he arranged to have him live with his Laredo
Taft's mother. There was another boarder there, a young man that Bob just suddenly one day got offended at some fairly innocuous remark that this guy made, you know, and Bob almost killed this guy in one of his very very very violent outbursts, you know. So there were certain people who had definitely seen that side of Bob, but Ethel and but the Gedeons had never had never seen it.
So yeah, it came as a very very big shock to Ethel when the police identified Bob again as the person who had strangled her sister and mother.
Before we get that, get to that, let's go back to Robert Irwin ending up in Bellevue trying to castrate himself and his first counter and subsequent encounters with doctor Wortham and his assessment of Robert in the beginning and further on. So tell us a little bit about that meeting and the subsequent treatment by Dr Wortham.
Well, I mean, it was fascinating about you know. Wortham's papers were donated to the Library of Congress following his death years and years ago, and they only recently, well a couple of years ago, became accessible to scholars. I guess there was like a twenty five year spend where there were kept private. And one of the interesting things to me when I looked at that material viber of congress. We're just seeing, you know the amount of correspondence that
went back and forth between Bob and Irwin. You know where I mean, between Bob and Worre them. You know where them recognized from the start that in many ways, Bob Irwin was a very very exceptional human being, a person of again unusual intelligence and sensitivity and great artistic talent. Worth Of himself was married to a well known sculptor, so he was particularly appreciative of Bob's talent in that regard.
And again, you know, Bob had this gift, you know, for eliciting this kind of fatherly feeling among these older guys who would take him under his wing. You know, to some extent, Worthom was one of those people. And and and wor them had developed a kind of theory at that time called the cataphimic crisis.
It was his.
Belief the phimic crisis was Wortham's theory of the source of a certain kind of homicidal violence. And uh and and and Bob Irwin seemed to epitomize to him this particular kind of syndrome, which he felt was curable. You know, where them had this very very great, I think, probably naive and now kind of outmoded faith in the ability of psychoanalysis ultimately to rid the world of violent crime.
And you know, and and he saw, you know, I think he saw Bob Irwin as a kind of perfect test case, you know, somebody who you know, again was very intelligent and very talented, you know, but owing to certain kinds of circumstances in his upbringing and his relationship with his mother, you know, is prone to these outbursts of homicidal violence, but could ultimately be cured of them.
And so you know, he establish this very very close relationship with Irwin, you know, which lasted really until Erwin's death.
Now, as we alluded to in the in the book description, the synopsis is that months before the murders itself, he makes that prediction in public. Now after Ethel rebuffs him and he gets is there is there a real dramatic and notable spiral. Tell us what what doctor Wareham noted at that time, and tell us what happens that he goes.
Where them gave you know where them was invited to give a talk at Johns Hopkins University on the particular anniversary of what was called the fifths Clinic, which was a psychiatric clinic at Johns Hopkins where they had worked that for many years. And he used the occasion, you know, to introduce the world to his theory of the Catafine
mccli crisis. And although he didn't mention Irwin by name, you know, he used Irwin as an example in the speech of a patient who had reached a particular stage in this again, you know, were them believe that with a certain amount of treatment, individuals who are suffering from this syndrome could ultimately be cured of their homicidal impulses. But again, they had to go through the entire process.
And in his view, Irwin had reached a particular stage in the process, but hadn't quite gotten to the point where all of these conflicts were resolved. And so in this particular talk, he used Erwin, again without mentioning him by name, you know, his example of someone who had arrived at a particular stage but had not reached the point of resolution, and so it was very very likely in the future to harm either himself or someone else.
And you know, very very shortly thereafter, in fact, Irwin did have this very very lethal explosion, you know, and ended up killing these killing these people, you know, so where them always felt you know, very very vindicated in having foreseen, you know, the inevitability of word of uh Irwin having you know, some other homicidal episode.
Now for our audience, tell us what happened that fateful day of the Saturday, the day before Easter Sunday in nineteen thirty seven. Tell us what happened? What did Robert Irwin do and what did he end up doing?
Well, you know, Irwin again was you know, became very very obsessed by Ethel Gedion and in his spiraling madness, he decided that the most appropriate way to express his love and devotion for Ethel was to murder her. And so he came to Manhattan on the day before Easter Sunday, nineteen thirty seven, and you know, decided to show up at the apartment of her mother, where Ethel had formerly lived but actually at the time was no longer living,
and he was going to kill Ethel. And when he showed up, the mother was there, as well as a border named Frank Burns that the mother had taken in. And the mother explained to Bob that Ethel was no longer living there. She had gotten married and was living
in Queen's. Bob refused to accept that fact and kept hanging around and hanging around, And when the mother, whose name was Marian you know, finally lost her temper and demand that he'd leave, Bob went crazy and left at her and wrapped his very very powerful hands around her throat and strangled her to death, which by his later account took a full twenty minutes, And then he took her corpse and shoved it under the bed in the main bedroom, and then decided that he would wait around
for Ethel to show up, and he stayed around for hours, and finally, at about three o'clock in the morning, the door opened and in walk not Ethel, who again was living in Queen's with her husband, but Ethel's for a beautiful younger sister, Ronnie, who had just gotten back from a date. And Ronnie disappeared into the bathroom for a long time and then finally emerged, and once she did, Bob attacked her and ended up ultimately strangling her to death.
And then through all this, by the way through the double murder, the border Frank Burns remained completely asleep and Irwin stabbed him to death with an ice peck, punctured his skull about a dozen times with an ice peck that he had brought along, and then very very calmly
returned to his border house. And the next day, Easter Sunday, Mary Geddyon's a strange husband, Joseph, who had been invited for Sunday dinner, showed up, as did Ethel and her husband who arrived from Queen's and they discovered that, you know, they went up to the apartment expecting to have Easter Sunday dinner, and they discovered this apartment with three corpses in it. Mary Geddyon shoved under the bed Ethelgedy i mean Ronnie Getty and naked and lying on top of
the bed which her mother's corpse was shoved beneath. And then in the other bedroom Frank Frank Burns with his
skull punctured a dozen times. And this became known, you know again as a Deakman player massacre, you know, very very very horrific triple murder, and largely because well, no sooner had the crime occurred than all of these guys who had taken naked pictures of Ronnie Geteon at these amateur camera clubs, crawled out of the woodwork, offering these photographs for sale to the tabloids who are only too
happy to purchase them. And you know, within hours, really, I mean the Daily News, the Daily Mirror, the Evening Graphic, and these other tabloids running constant photo. You know, they had all these naked photographs of Ronnie geddyon which they would airbrush, covering up her breasts and other areas with these airbrushed veils, and you know, just became this incredible sex and murder scandal.
Now now we know who the perpetrator is, but police are not initially aware. Tell us why initially they I mean today it seems to be routine. But why did they initially think it was possibly the ex husband? And how did police proceed initially?
Well, I mean, you know, they well they found Ronnie's little black book. I mean, Ronnie had been leading, you know, a fairly promiscuous life, so it seemed very likely at first that she had been the victim of one of her many lovers past or present. Should also, as you say, been married at a very young age, should run off with a guy named Robert Flower, and when she was only sixteen years old, and that marriage, you know, had
quickly been annulled. So you know, you always look first, you know, to the husband or ex husband or boyfriends. So you know, there's certainly no lack of potential suspects, although the primary person, you know, who the police focused on for quite a while was Ronnie's own father, Joseph, you know, who was portraying the tabloids, you know, as a sexual degenerate, largely because he had cheesecake photographs into the walls of his apartment. So yeah, I mean, you know,
there's no lack of suspects. You know, the Gedeons had various male boarders who fell into suspicion. So yeah, it took a while before the police finally pinpointed the actual perpetrator.
Did they find anything at the crime scene that would later point to Robert Orwin at all? Is there anything that they could conclude from that crime scene when they looked at it in detail or anyone reviewed it. Was there anything at all?
Well, there are a few things. I mean, one thing, you know, they found Ronnie Gedeon's diary and there are various references to well, there are various references to a Bob, and of course she had been married to a guy named Bob, which is one of the reasons that her former husband fell into you know. Eventually, as the police began to study the diary more closely, they came across these various references to a Bob who had been obsessed with Ronnie's sister and you know, who had been making
a kind of nuisance of himself. It gradually dawned on them that there were two Bobs that Ronnie was referring to, her former husband, Bob Flower and the person that they ultimately identified as Robert Irwin. And when they began to look into Robert Irwin's background, you know, they realized that they were dealing with, you know, a very very unstable person.
You know, they began to dig up his psychiatric records, you know, his having tried to emasculate himself for years, he had spent in a psychiatric institution and so on. And there were other clues. Erwin, for example, had left a glove at the crime scene which they were later able to trace directly to him.
Now, how does so the police are announced or there is a decision to make this arrest, What happens with Robert Irwin? What does he do?
Well? After committing the murder, Irwin returned to his boarding house, which overlooked actually the police precinct, and basically just hold up there for a week. Finally, he absconded from New York and made his way first to Washington, d c. And then to Philadelphia and eventually to Cleveland, where he took a job at a hotel under a pseudonym. In the meantime, the New York City Police had launched what was at that time the largest manhunt since the search
for the kiddemp or the Lindberg Baby. And you know, is as true in all of these very sensational cases. You know, there were false sightings of Irwin all throughout the country. The police, New York City police themselves, you know, seemed convinced that he had still been He was still
in New York, possibly living under disguise. You know, there were all kinds of weird theories that since he was such a skilled sculptor, he had possibly fashioned some kind of mask for himself, you know, is moving around New York City under this mask and so on and so forth. But in fact, you know, he was living in Cleveland under this new identity Bob Murray and working in the Hotel Statler, which was a very well known hotel in downtown Cleveland.
And and someone noticed him.
I mean he had befriended. He had befriended a pantry girl named Henrietta, and Henrietta one evening retired to her room and was perusing a true crime magazine called Inside Detective, which was one of the pulp magazines that Ronnie had post for. And yeah, an Inside Detective, the editor of Inside Detective had offered was offering a one thousand dollars reward to anybody who could aid in the capture of
Robert Irwin. And the magazine published a photograph of Irwin that had by that time been widely disseminated by the police. And Henrietta noticed a very striking resemblance between the photograph of Irwin and her co worker Bob Murray, and the next day when she saw Bob, she asked him if he had ever heard of Robert Irwin, and Bob said no, and then immediately disappeared from the hotel. And Henrietta showed the photograph to other people, and anyway, it soon became
clear that Bob Murray was in fact Bob Irwin. By that time, however, he was long gone from Cleveland and was making his way to Chicago.
Now it's I think one of the most fascinating aspects of this most fascinating story. And what we're going to do, which is unusual, is that we're not going to give the entire story away. We're going to leave something for those people that are going to just have to go get this book and read the rest of it. But what I found incredible, I mean, especially given the time, everybody thinks this stuff happened in this even these or eighties, we're all the real heyday of these incredible killers and
credible cases. But not so he is almost identified, he's almost caught here as almost like America's most wanted. He escapes, but what does he do. He calls one of the newspapers and I don't know if it's a tribune, but he calls one of the newspapers, and what do they do? And then what does he do? Tell us about the phone calls.
Well, he calls a tribune, you know, offering to stew himself in and they just think he's a crackpot. So he calls another Chicago paper and they take him seriously, and you know, they negotiate with him. They agree to pay him five thousand dollars if he will give them an exclusive confession, and they put him up in a hotel room and get this confession from him and then publish it on the front page of the paper. Again.
It's uh, it's it resembles to an uncanny degree, a very very famous play by Ben Hect and Charles MacArthur called The Front Page, which was made into a very very famous movie starring Carrie Grant, in which a a Chicago newspaper reporter hides a wanted criminal and gets an exclusive story from him. You know, this is again this kind of rollicking golden age, you know of tabloid journalism.
You know, these papers are just you know, well performing or committing you know, these sendi legal acts, you know, in order to get these incredible scoops. But anyway, yeah, so the newspaper you know, puts their one up in this hotel suite, you know, and brings in a stenographer and gets this very very long, detailed confession from Irwin that they then trumpet on the front page of their paper.
And you know before and then finally, after they've gotten their scoop, you know, they turn them over to the police.
Yeah. And we won't give any more away from this story because it's just we'll have to let the audience discover the rest on it. I mean, this is just a beginning of another, you know, another chapter of this book that will go on and explain the incredible and really one of the biggest media circuses, like you say, in the twentieth century. So we won't go any further. I just wanted to to ask as well, what has been the reaction this this was published a few months ago.
I gathered what has been the reaction of of of those in the public that have read this book? And uh, and and you chose choosing to cover this story. What is there has been any notable reactions?
Well, you know, the book has gotten you know, very gratifying press. I'll tell you one of the really fascinating things, what are the really fascinating things happened only within the last week, which is I heard from somebody who and I haven't gotten all the details yet, but I have photographs. I heard somebody who had uh, a wooden box that had been carved by Robert Irwin, and it's lid and all each of the four sides had an an image
of Ronnie Getty and naked carved onto it. And this person had and Irwin had done this while he was consigned to a mental institution after having tried to slice off his own penis. I still haven't learned from the owner of the box how she came into possession.
Of it, But.
I'd always wondered what happened to all of these creations, you know, that Bob Berwin had been responsible for, you know, then suddenly out of the blue, you know, I hear from somebody who actually is in possession of one. So that's been kind of fascinating to me. I mean, one of the things that's happened to me repeatedly in doing the books that I've done, you know, is after they've been published, you know, in many cases, I've heard from
people with some kind of connection to the case. And that's always very very interesting to me, you know, partly because it just makes the whole thing seem so real. So yeah, so that's been one of the one of the fascinating things.
What I found really fascinating with this book is that if you didn't really concentrate on the time that it really was and just ignored a few of those things or just didn't focus on them. You would think you were today because of just the same motivations by the same kinds of people under the same kinds of circumstances. It's an incredible again, a true crime story that's timeless, you know, and.
Well, I mean that's an interesting point. I mean, I think it's very very you know, it's like one of those things where, like, you know, when you're a certain age, you think like your generation invented sex, and it comes as a shock to discover that, like, you know, people in the Victorian era were actually engaging in the same kind of sexual activities that people are engaged in now, you know. I mean, you know, the fact of the matter is that, you know, horrific crimes and the exact
kinds of horrific crimes. You know that we somehow think of as being symptomatic of the modern age, you know, just a perennial age, old part of you know, human existence. You know that there have always been psychopathic sex killers.
I mean, they weren't necessarily called psychopathic sex killers, but you know, there really is, as the Bible says, nothing new under the sun, you know, in terms of you know, the only thing that might change again is in a way, really the only thing that might change, you know, is the is the technology through which the public learns about these crimes, you know, so that again you know, the Robert Irwindnesdays, you know, it would be through these tabloid newspapers.
You know, now we will get you know, we get them through twenty four seven cable news programs. You know, back in the seventeenth century, you might hear about them through you know, oral murder ballads, you know, but the crimes and selves never change.
So what I thought too was an interesting connection through this that people might not recognize too as the pulp fantasy in terms of at in the day, it was a very popular magazine, you know, type of magazine with a certain subject matter. And again the semi nude photo of the woman on the detective magazines. Even I'm old enough to remember those. So they had those detective magazines,
and Ronnie uh Was was one of those women. When the case made it, you know, the media grabbed it and the frenzy then it was again on a the same type of magazine again, and then when Robert Erwin was on the run, that woman recognized the case and his photo again from the pulp fantasy magazine. So and complete, Uh, that's irony that you can see.
Yeah, very very I'll tell you one of the one of the Again, another really interesting thing to me, you know, was that part of in part of my research, I went on eBay, you know, was looking for and found a number of these the pulp magazines that Ronnie getting and posed for, and that Ronnie's and that after her murder,
you know, published photographs of Ronnie. And one of the things that was what's kind of astonishing to me was that I found in some of these magazines completely nude photographs of Ronnie, including a couple of like full frontal new photographs of Ronnie that had been published on newsstand
magazines in the nineteen thirties. You know. Again, I'm a baby boomer, so you know, when I grew up, you know, Playboy you know was about as racy as you could get, you know, and that was like in the you know, my early sixties and stuff, you know, and again you would basically have you know, they were totally airbrush and so it was kind of astonishing to me to discover that in the nineteen thirties you could purchase a magazine on a newsstand and discover like photographs, you know, of
naked women that were at least as explicit, you know, is what Playboy was publishing in the nineteen sixties. So yeah, that whole that whole area of American you know of sort of sleazy American popular culture back in the thirties. I mean, that was very eye opening to me.
Yeah, it is surprising to me too. I know that they had a like sort of a golden age that lasted quite a couple of decades, two and a half or so, where there was this censorship and clamped down and yeah, yeah, but yeah, I'm surprised too. Then in nineteen thirty seven you could get something at the newsstand like that, and and you know, the media was not shy for exploiting this victim for all at well.
I mean, you know, you read the tabloids back then, you know, you look at the Daily News again, the Daily Mirror. I mean, they were so sensationalistic, you know that they really actually make a lot of you know, contemporary stuff seemed very, very very and mild by intimidate, by comparison. I mean they were. I mean, you know, you know they would have well, you know, I'm sure
you know, like the photograph photographer Ouiji and stuff. You know, they would show crime scene photographs on the front pages of the New York Daily News. You know, there were incredibly shocking and graphic in terms of their violence. You know, nothing like that would be permitted nowadays. You know, again, people have a very very distorted idea. You know, it's a very natural human tendency to romanticize the past, you know, to always imagine that somehow, you know, things were less
gruesome and so on. But it's not true at all. I was just looking at some early editions, for example, the National Inquirer, you know, back in the nineteen fifties, and back then, I mean the National Inquirer was just you know, publishing stories and photographs. You know that no, you know that that no newspaper would touch. So so yeah, I mean I think a lot of people Yeah, go ahead.
Sorry, I was going to I was going to say that too. It was my grandfather. He had a stack of stuff that was previous to the Inquirer, but it was the same people was called the Midnight News. We have these photo where they threw a baby out of you know, they they'd have they'd say, well, here's the photo of the guy that burnt his baby in another and so it had all those kinds of stories, but with either stage doctored or actual photos of the scare the hell out of me.
Yeah. Yeah, when I was a kid, I used to have to avert my eyes when i'd walk past the newstand, you know, because there'd be these horrific front page photographs on the National Enquirer.
It was scary stuff, for sure. I remember that very vividly had a big stack of him, and I would read him and scare the heck out of myself. So, yeah, we haven't come a long way, baby, yep. Well, I want to thank you Harold for coming on and talking about your latest The Mad Sculptor. Congratulations on another incredible and fascinating and thoroughly enjoying, enjoyable books. So I want to thank you very much for coming on and talking about that The Mad Sculptor.
Well, thank you, Dre. And it's for my pleasure and I really appreciate, yeah, really appreciate your appreciation of my book.
Well, thank you very much. It's tailor made for this program and we always get great responses from the audience once you've appeared, and I'm sure we will have that again. So I want to thank you very much and hope to hear from you again soon. And thanks, thank you, good night.