Please note the following episode contains graphic and disturbing murder scenes involving children. Parental discretion as advised. It was July third, nineteen twenty nine, and shaping up to be another hot one in the US city of Detroit, Michigan, when Vincent
Elias arrived at thirty five eighty seven Saint Auban Street. Vincent, a real estate dealer, had arranged to meet Benny evangelist, who lived at the property with his wife and four children, for a ten thirty business meeting to discuss a farm he was looking to buy from Benny. Vincent knocked on the door and stepped back onto the porch, checking his
watch just to make sure he wasn't too early. Looking about the street, he couldn't help but notice how quiet it was for the usually bustling neighborhood, comprised largely of Italian and Polish immigrants lured to the New World on the promise of the American dream. Vincent checked his watch again and knocked for a second time, turning his ear to the door to listen out for any sign of
movement from inside, but heard nothing. It was certainly a little odd, he thought, since though the kids would be at school, the youngest, and Benny's wife, Santina, would be home, even if Benny had forgotten their appointment. Growing impatient, Vincent pulled open the front door and stepped inside. Taking his hat in his hands, he called through apologetically as he looked about the entrance hall, expecting Benny or Santina to appear any moment, but the house remained completely still. Moving
further inside, Vincent spied Benny sitting at his desk, albeit strangely. Still. Didn't you hear me knocking? He asked, but Benny didn't reply. Benny, he said, stepping closer, the word barely audible as it caught in his throat. For a moment, it looked as though he was leaning so far forward his head was being obscured by his back. But as Vincent drew nearer, he realized with a thumping horror his head wasn't visible because it wasn't on his shoulders. Then Vincent looked down
to the floor. There, lying in a thick pool of blood was Benny's head, his eyes staring lifelessly up to the ceiling. Seconds later, Vincent was back in the street, heaving and gasping for air. Having flagged down two police officers, Patrol and Lawrence, and Costage, Vincent returned with them to the property, more than happy to be asked to wait
for them outside. As they conducted a search of the house, they found Benny, just as Vincent had described, dressed in a dark suit, with his body leant forward against the desk with his hands pressed together in front of him as though conducting a silent prayer. The head seemed to have been taken off in one clean swoop, but there
were some other things that Vincent hadn't noticed. Three photos that seemed to have been deliberately placed around the head, each showing the image of a young boy lying dead in a coffin. Then the officers noticed the set of bloody footprints leading away from the head and out of the room. Patrol and Lawrence stepped into the front hall and asked Vincent again who else lived at the property. As he eyed the bloody prints that trailed off towards the back of the house, his wife and four children,
replied Vincent, with a concerned look toward his partner. Lawrence unclipped his gun and pressed on, cautiously, tracking the prince through the kitchen to the stairs. They took note of the pile of dishes, presumably from the night before, that had been washed but not yet put away. Pulling out their revolvers, the officers crept slowly up the stairs, the creak of each step echoing loudly as they made their way to the second floor and on into the master bedroom.
Dear God, muttered Lawrence under his breath. The blood soaked body of a woman lay strewn across the bed, cradling a dead baby in her arms. The woman's head, which had been all but severed, was hanging limply over the side by a single sinuous thread. The baby's head, too, had been almost completely obliterated. The wall and bedsheets were splattered with blood, with the rest pulling out onto the floor.
A huge gash on the woman's upper arm seemed to suggest the killer had tried to sever that too, and still the bloody footsteps continued through the bedroom and beyond into another smaller bedroom. Officer Lawrence turned away at the sight of a small child sprawled out on the floor, their skull cleaved right through the middle and lying one in each of the two beds. Two more young children, both killed in the exact same way. One child's arm
had also been severed at the shoulder. It was a horror beyond comprehension, and it was about to get even stranger. You're listening to unexplained, and I am Richard mc lane Smith. Having secured the main house, Lawrence and Costage continued their search of the property, heading first into the attic. All about the room bunches of herbs had been left out
to dry in a way that seemed almost ritualistic. Then, amid the boxes of surplus household items, they found a large collection of underwear, which they judged to have belonged to various women, with a different name tag tied to each item. But even more peculiar was what they found
in the basement. Heading down into the darkness, Patrom and Lawrence stopped suddenly at the sight of what appeared to be bodies dangling from the ceiling, scrambling hastily for the lights, which the officer flicked it on to reveal nine or ten life sized papier mache figurines strung up to the ceiling with wire. Each figure, carefully crafted and deck rated, was different from the next, with strange and in some cases,
grotesque features. One had a pair of wings, another an unusually long nose, and one was holding a baby covered in hair. The walls had been draped with green cloth, and in the middle of it all, a gigantic eye, lit up from the inside, had been positioned to shine down on everything. All in all, it was fair to say the officers had never seen anything like it. In a side room, they also found a stash of wine and kegs of beer, a not unusual find during the
era of prohibition. After reporting their strange and horrific find back to police headquarters, the patrolman was soon joined by a swathe of colleagues intrigue to see it all for themselves. In total, more than twenty detectives representing almost every department arrived to take a look, from representatives of homicide to the bomb squat while outside. As word began to spread around the neighborhood, soon as many as two hundred people had descended on the property, keen to see it all too.
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pregnant or nursing. Consult with a physician before use. If you have a serious medical condition, or use prescription medications, a doctor's advice should be sought before using this and any supplemental dietary product. With Detective Lieutenant John Whitman and detectives Charles Searle and Earl Switzer leading the investigation, the police set about trying to disentangle just what an earth
was going on. With the help of neighbors and Vincent Elias who had been detained at the scene, they ascertained the victims to be thirty six year old Santeen evangelist and her husband, the forty three year old Benny, along with their daughters eight year old Angelina and six year old Jenny, and their sons five year old Matthew and Mario, who was only eighteen months old. Business cards found on Benny's desk declared him to be a real estate developer
and building contractor. But more pertinent to the officers were the other set of business cards they found scattered about the attic, on which was written mister Benny Evangelist, divine prophet, author and private history writer. As police continue to search
the evangelist's house, things only got more bizarre. A wig and fake beard was found alongside what appeared to be two ceremonial sorts, all of which clashed somewhat with the various crucifixes dotted about the walls and the large painting of the Last Supper in Benny's study. There was a little more to Penny Evangelist than met the eye. As for clues to who the killer might be, police found only the bloody footprints, as well as a bloody finger
and a thumb print on the front door latch. Unluckily for Vincent, since he was the last known person to enter the house and his feet were a similar size to the bloody prints, he was promptly taken in for questioning. However, an alibi was quickly established and he was soon released from custody. Then, detectives received word of a man seen brandishing a bloody knife only six blocks from the scene of the crime in the early hours of the previous morning.
It seemed they might have their killer. Later in the afternoon, not long after, the victim's bodies were removed from the house as the crowd of hundreds watched on, detectives arrived at twenty eight thirty Pierce Street, located roughly five minutes walk from the evangelist's residence, there police discovered a razor edged banana knife, a short handle axe, and a freshly washed pair of shoes, all said to belong to thirty four year old Angelo Dapoli, who was lodging at the property.
On closer inspection, the axe appeared to be covered in blood stains, and as detectives soon found out, it just so happened that Dapoli, along with his fellow lodger, forty two year old and Berto Pecchio, had visited the evangelists property the night before the murders, making them the last known people to see the family alive. With the axe being sent off for testing, the men were immediately brought in for questioning, and though Dapoli claimed to struggle to
understand them, he denied all knowledge of the potentially incriminating objects. Tecchio, on the other hand, was a little more fourth coming. As it transpired, it was to Poli who had in fact accompanied him to the evangelist's property, having gone there to make a final payment on a property he was buying from Benny. As Techio explained, the pair arrived at the house around eight pm, then, after swiftly making the payment, headed on to a speakeasy where they spent the next
few hours drinking together. They both returned to the boarding house around eleven PM and promptly went to bed, a fact that was attested to by a number of their fellow boarders. With the murders said to have occurred some time after midnight, this put Techio and to Poli away from the scene of the crime at the crucial time.
After analysis, the marks on the axe were found to be simply rushed, and since neither Techio or Dapol's prince matched those found on the door, the pair were released the following day, Suddenly left without their anticipated suspect, The police began to dig a little further into Benny's life. After speaking to Benny's brother Antonio, things began steadily to
become a little clearer. Benjamino of Angelista was born in Napoli, Italy, in eighteen eighty five, and in nineteen oh three emigrated to the USA at the age of seventeen to join his brother, who'd moved there two years earlier, living together while picking up odd jobs in construction and on the
ever expanding railroads. Though the pair had once been close, things had become strained between them when one morning Benny claimed he'd started receiving visions from God at midnight for three hours every night since February the second, nineteen o six. He explained he'd been falling into a trance during which he was given visions of the true history of the world and how it had been created, dating back fifteen four hundred years to the time before Adam, all the
way to the birth of Christ. Benny had also begun recording each and every vision he'd experienced for inclusion in a book he was planning to write. In response, Antonio, who like Benny, had been brought up a strict Roman Catholic, tried at first to ignore his brother's strange and growing obsession,
until eventually he couldn't bear it any longer. By nineteen oh eight, he'd become so unsettled by it he disowned Benny and sent him away to the town of York in Pennsylvania, where he was able to find more work in railroad construction. Antonio knew little about his brother's time spent in York, but by nineteen twenty the pair had been reconciled, with Benny joining Antonio in Detroit, where he'd
since moved with his family. Like thousands of others, Antonio had been drawn to the city by the extraordinary boom of the automobile industry, led by the Ford Motor Company and General Motors. Benny, however, had other ideas. Benny's time in York had done nothing to dampen his apparent fascination with mysticism, and by the time he moved to Detroit, he'd even established himself as something of a prophet and faith healer, and soon rumors of his unusual talent began
to spread around the neighborhood. Working as a carpenter by day, at night, Benny moonlighted as a healer and prophet for higher, offering spells and healing rituals for up to ten dollars a pop. Though some might come for the novelty of a fortune read or the purchase of a love potion, ten dollars or one hundred and forty dollars in today's money wasn't cheap, and while others derided him as nothing but a circus fraud, many sincerely believed that what Benny
was offering would cure them of their ills. It was during one such appointment that Benny met his wife, Santina, and before long, the pair had moved in together and were expecting their first child. Over time, Benny made so much money he was able to do away with the carpentry altogether and instead turned his attention to real estate while continuing to moonlight as a faith healer. And as the real estate business grew, so too did Benny's commitment
to his more unusual profession. After moving into the large, four bedroom house at thirty five eighty seven Saint Auban Street, he immediately set about converting the basement into an altar that would become the center point of his healing rituals. The strange folk models he'd had constructed and hung up in their were depictions of various celestial planets, which he would then use to help read the signs that he
claimed to receive from God. And on February second, nineteen twenty six, twenty years after he started, he finally finished his book, which was published that year under the title The Oldest History of the World Discovered by a Cult Science, many copies of which were found by police piled up in his home. In it, Benny laid out the history of the world as it had apparently been dictated to him by God, in effect constituting a new Earth, which
he named the Great Union Federation of America. In spite of this all, however, Benny continued to attend the local Catholic church, San Francesco's, which had become a haven for much of the local Italian population. Located on Brewster Street, only a few blocks from Saint Auban's, it was presided
over by Father Francis Beccarini. Each of Any and Santina's four children were baptized there, leading Father Beccherini to suspect as he later told the police that Benny's interest in the occult was purely for financial gain, as opposed to any genuine spiritual interest. And yet, even at the time of his death, every night from midnight to three am, Benny continued to sit at his desk in his office and wait for the visions from God. Are you a
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Just go to kittipooclub dot com and enter promo code unexplained to get twenty percent off when you set up autoship. That's k I T T y p ooclub dot com and enter promo code unexplained. A checkout at a loss to establish a motive, the police began to wonder if Benny and his family had been murdered by a disgruntled customer who he'd been unable to heal, or perhaps the partner of one of the women whose underwear he'd been
keeping in the attic. Another theory was that, if Benny had been working to build up a cult following for his new religion, perhaps one of the followers, in a fit of religious mania, had been driven mad by the grotesque figurines during one of his rituals and had later
returned to the house to murder the family. Things weren't helped by the fact that many in the local neighborhood, some because of how they'd been treated in the past and others due to their not entirely legal status, had grown suspicious of the police, and so they were reluctant
to come forward with any pertinent information. Of the few neighbors and friends that did speak, however, despite Benny's own doctor describing him as insane on account of his dealings in the occult, most had only warm things to say about him and his family. Though they thought it ought whenever they saw him in the street, gazing toward the sky and gesticulating wildly, he appeared to be well respected
among the local community. He'd even been granted a life since by the state of Michigan to practice his unusual medicine, and as for his visions of the real Earth history that he hoped to spread through his own Bible, it was no more speculative or unquantifiable as the very book
under which much of the nation labored. For the police investigators, however, it was all a little too peculiar that no money, jewelry, or anything else of monetary value appeared to have been taken in the attack only seemed to strengthen their theory that his dabblings in the occult were to blame. A brief attempt to connect the crime with a similarly horrific and brutal murder of a woman and her two children
in nearby River Rouge was quickly dismissed. Despite offering a thousand dollars or fourteen thousand in today's money for any substantial information, no one came forward. On Saturday j six, as a crowd of three thousand gathered to watch six opal colored caskets were wheeled out of fl Calcatira funeral home by sixteen girls dressed all in white and pushed
across the road to San Francesco's church. Emotions were high amongst the close knit community, shocked by the senseless brutality of it all, as many, including Antonio Evangelista along with his brother Joseph, who'd made the long and arduous journey from Italy to be there, wept openly inside. With the church having been filled up long before the service began. The mourners stood as the six caskets were wheeled inside and placed in single file, running all the way down
to the transept. As Father Beccarini led the solemn requiem mass, many had to be helped from the building, having become so overwhelmed with grief. Meanwhile, throughout the out a number of plainclothed police officers kept a watchful eye on the proceedings for any hint that the murderer might be among them. One man immediately caught their attention, who was seen arriving alone at the church by bike, wearing a battered hat and a well worn suit. After deciding the man, John Ryan,
had been acting strangely, officers took him in for questioning. However, the man, who was later judged to have been suffering from psychiatric problems and who weighed barely ninety pounds, was quickly released. Later that afternoon, the six bodies of the evangelist family were taken to Mount Olivet Cemetery and laid to rest. After the funeral, Detroit Police held a press conference to appeal for witnesses, in particular anyone who might have been walking by the house at the time of
the murders to and forward. With no further tangible clues aside from the bloody Prince, the police began the arduous task of pouring through the family's possessions in search of a lead, having also at first been looking for an axe as the murder weapon. Doctor Paul Clever, the Wayne County coroner, who examined the bodies, concluded it was in fact a sharp knife and not an axe, that they
should be looking for. Self styled human engineer and astrologer Clark Robson, having consulted his astrological charts, gave his opinion to the press, stating that the police needn't worry too much, since, with mercury and uranus being fifty degrees apart, the killer, who he judged to be a man of less than medium height with a dark complexion, was also a show off and would shortly confess to the crime to gain notoriety.
Robson also suggested that Benny, evangelist, who he claimed on looking at his horoscope, was large driven by his desire for money, had known his death was coming, and that despite what the police had said, it was in fact a dispute over money that led to his and his
family's murder. It was some point around the time of the funeral, with investigators trawling through Benny's personal letters, that they uncovered something unusual, a series of letters sent to Benny demanding money, and though no threat was explicitly made, it was more than implicit, not least because the letters had been signed simply the Black Hand. Though not much was known about the exact nature of the Black Hand at the time, the organization is thought to have originated
in Napoli sometime in the eighteenth century. In nineteen oh seven, a black Hand training camp was discovered in Hillsville, Pennsylvania. While many proponents of the organization appeared to be active in most Italian communities of major cities on both sides of the country, many police departments within the corresponding cities had even established special Blackhand units to combat them, and so it seemed finally the police had the lead they've
been looking for. Surely, now solving the murders would only be a matter of time. You're listening to Unexplained, Season five, Episode twelve, Profit and Loss, Part one of two. Part two will be released next Friday, March nineteenth. If you enjoy Unexplained and would like to help supporters, you can
now do so via Patreon. To receive access to add three episodes, just go to patron dot com, forward slash Unexplained pod to sign up, or if you'd like to make a one time donation, you can go to Unexplained Podcast forward Slash Support. All donations, no matter how large or small, are greatly appreciated. Unexplained, the book and audiobook, featuring ten stories that have never before been covered on
the show, is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Waterstones, among other bookstores. All elements of Unexplained, including the show's music, are produced by me Richard McClane smith. Please subscribe and rate the show wherever you listen to podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own you'd like to share