Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: Let's see if you can figure this out.
Speaker 1: Section three. I told you it's cold, baby. Okay, so
Speaker 1: section three, Lot five forty three.
Speaker 2: Wait where are we? We're over here right there. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we're in the dragway.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna go all the way down one path
Speaker 1: and then two paths and.
Speaker 2: On the site. It's got to be over here.
Speaker 1: My twelve year old daughter and I are searching for
Speaker 1: Eugene Bird's gravesite in Austin. It's very, very old, but
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be pretty big. Let me look across here.
Speaker 2: This is older.
Speaker 1: See if I can find any markers here.
Speaker 3: How's the dad house?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it says there again. Oh babe, there's markers. Be't
Speaker 1: mare look that.
Speaker 2: Hard the spot.
Speaker 1: The markers are worn from age and weather, so it's
Speaker 1: almost impossible to read many of them. But we keep
Speaker 1: trying because oftentimes visiting the gravesites makes me feel the
Speaker 1: most connected to the people in my stories. Okay, now
Speaker 1: you start looking for the uh yeah, that's regular headstone.
Speaker 1: It's around in here somewhere. We'll keep looking. In November
Speaker 1: of eighteen ninety six, everyone in Austin knew where to
Speaker 1: find William Eugene Burt. He was downtown in the city's
Speaker 1: district courthouse, and he was going on trial for murdering
Speaker 1: his wife and their two little girls. The prosecutor accused
Speaker 1: Eugene of killing them because he was facing financial ruin
Speaker 1: and a prison sentence, His defense attorney announced that they
Speaker 1: would claim that he was insane at the time of
Speaker 1: the killings. The trial was sensationalized in the press. Local
Speaker 1: historian Monica Ballard says that the courthouse was packed with
Speaker 1: people who hoped for just a glimpse of the monster
Speaker 1: who murdered his family.
Speaker 4: Hundreds of people packed the courtroom in order to see
Speaker 4: what's going on. He would be marched into the courtroom handcuffed,
Speaker 4: and his hat would be removed for him.
Speaker 1: Gawkers stared at Eugene. One woman approached him at the
Speaker 1: defendant's table and surveyed his face very closely. Eugene seemed
Speaker 1: to either not be aware that she was there or
Speaker 1: he just ignored her. Either way, he offered no reaction,
Speaker 1: and then things got even stranger.
Speaker 4: After everybody files in and everyone takes a seat, he
Speaker 4: would flutter his eyelids closed, and he would remain in
Speaker 4: that state until everything was done and court was dismissed.
Speaker 4: He just closed his eyes the whole time, and there
Speaker 4: would be no indication that he was I don't know
Speaker 4: under self hypnosis, if he was cognizant of anything that
Speaker 4: was going on. No one was entirely sure. He seemed
Speaker 4: to have absolutely no There was nothing going on.
Speaker 1: What was happening with Eugene Burt. When family and friends
Speaker 1: took the stand, many described Eugene's marriage as seemingly happy.
Speaker 1: He was a wonderful father, but others called him selfish, unreliable,
Speaker 1: and unstable. Then his brothers testified for the defense, even
Speaker 1: though they had accused him of stealing their money.
Speaker 4: Roscoe and Mond, he did the best they could, and
Speaker 4: even Mini took the stand and testified, you know that
Speaker 4: she saw no evidence of any reason why he would
Speaker 4: do this deed. Yeah, there were character witnesses who who
Speaker 4: came forth and said, no, he was a loving father
Speaker 4: and husband, was always giving any expensive presence. And then
Speaker 4: his brothers would have to, you know, under cross examination, admit, yeah,
Speaker 4: well a lot of times he stole the money for
Speaker 4: those presents.
Speaker 1: A parade of people from his life walked through that courtroom,
Speaker 1: all testifying to why a husband and a father would
Speaker 1: have done this, and throughout it all, Eugene Burt registered
Speaker 1: not one reaction, even during one dramatic, unplanned incident in
Speaker 1: the courthouse.
Speaker 4: There was one time when testimony was being given about
Speaker 4: drawing the bodies from out of the cistern and the
Speaker 4: state of the condition of the children, in particular about
Speaker 4: how their hands and feet were bound with wire. The
Speaker 4: three year old was wearing a nightgown and the toddler
Speaker 4: was in just a diaper, and someone had brought in
Speaker 4: a baby into the courtroom. And as this testimony is
Speaker 4: being given, everyone in the courtroom is being affected, not
Speaker 4: only by the testimony, but by hearing this baby in
Speaker 4: the back of the courtroom bah da da dah ba
Speaker 4: and babbling on. And their hearts are being wrenched because
Speaker 4: of this. And they turn and they look at Bert
Speaker 4: to see what his reaction is. Nothing. There's just nothing
Speaker 4: going on there. And the newspaper says, whose heart could
Speaker 4: not be moved? His heart.
Speaker 1: Monica says that Eugene's lack of emotion was interpreted in
Speaker 1: different ways in the media.
Speaker 4: Their opinion vacillated between Oh, he's certainly holding up well
Speaker 4: under the strain, and how can he be so cold
Speaker 4: and heartless as to not hold any reaction to the
Speaker 4: testimony that's being given about him? What a cold blooded
Speaker 4: killer he must be. There were both ends of the
Speaker 4: spectrum there.
Speaker 1: We know that a defendant's demeanor and court can really
Speaker 1: sway a jury. If the suspect doesn't take the stand,
Speaker 1: jurors might slyly observe them at the defense table, talking
Speaker 1: with attorneys or a visiting with family members on breaks.
Speaker 1: That image can affect how a jury votes. So Eugene Bert,
Speaker 1: who was handsome and young, did himself no favors by
Speaker 1: appearing so disconnected from the trial. He even seemed to
Speaker 1: doze every once in a while. But why, Descendant Patricia
Speaker 1: Charles has a theory could Eugene.
Speaker 5: Have been drugged in any way during these proceedings? Like
Speaker 5: how could he not have reacted when the little child,
Speaker 5: you know, was crying or fell or something. And I'm thinking, well,
Speaker 5: if somebody's given you morphia, maybe it just doesn't matter anymore.
Speaker 1: Patricia brings up a quote from a newspaper article from
Speaker 1: one of the physicians who examined Eugene a man named
Speaker 1: doctor Wallace. Doctor Wallace got on the stand during the
Speaker 1: trial and said, you know, Judge, I haven't been feeling well,
Speaker 1: so I took a bit of morphine this morning, so
Speaker 1: hopefully I'm lucid enough to testify. The judge said, sure,
Speaker 1: no problem at all. I asked forensic psychiatrist doctor Christine
Speaker 1: Montrose about Eugene Bird's odd reaction in court, his lack
Speaker 1: of emotion.
Speaker 6: Is there a whole range of reasons that someone could
Speaker 6: be falling asleep in the courtroom? Sure, morphine could be one,
Speaker 6: and you know, psychiatric symptoms could be another, and disinterest
Speaker 6: and lack of remorse could be another. You know, all
Speaker 6: of those possibilities are probably true.
Speaker 1: So Eugene's apathy and court might have been drug induced,
Speaker 1: not a lack of remorse, And in the late eighteen
Speaker 1: hundreds his sedation might have been court ordered. It made
Speaker 1: me one about modern day defendants. Can they ever be
Speaker 1: forcibly drugged? Retired law school professor Linda Frost says no,
Speaker 1: but with some caveats.
Speaker 7: Today, you wouldn't sedate a criminal defendant so that they
Speaker 7: could get through the trial. That said, there is a
Speaker 7: lot of law around whether you can force medication so
Speaker 7: that somebody is competent to stand trial. So it doesn't
Speaker 7: mean that somebody won't be medicated by the arm of the.
Speaker 4: State in order to go to trial.
Speaker 7: And of course people take medications for all sorts of reasons.
Speaker 7: People may be medicated, but for the state to force
Speaker 7: medication there has to be more of a legal justification
Speaker 7: other than well, he's going to be very stressed out
Speaker 7: and this will calm him down.
Speaker 1: It could be to control symptoms for mental health conditions.
Speaker 7: It also could be that they are psychotic, and schizophrenia
Speaker 7: can have active symptoms that were more familiar with the
Speaker 7: kind of word salad, the acting out. But it also
Speaker 7: could be a lack of engagement and a lack of emotion,
Speaker 7: a turning inward. So we don't really know why he
Speaker 7: would have been that way, whether it was medical, whether
Speaker 7: it was psychological, or whether it was malintent and a
Speaker 7: lack of feeling.
Speaker 1: The stakes for this trial were very high for Eugene Burt.
Speaker 1: If he were found guilty by reason of insanity, his
Speaker 1: life would be spared and he would be institutionalized if
Speaker 1: he were found guilty, but saying he would die at
Speaker 1: the gallows. Eugene's defense team admitted that he had killed
Speaker 1: Annie and Eleanor and Lucille. Monica Ballard says that his
Speaker 1: attorneys never tried to accuse anyone else.
Speaker 4: The evidence was so circumstantial that it was him, that
Speaker 4: it could be no one else.
Speaker 1: That was never brought up, that it could be ever
Speaker 1: anyone else, no.
Speaker 4: Other suspects, No, and he was never brought up to testify.
Speaker 4: They thought they could do it without him testifying.
Speaker 1: Because he's probably going to dig himself a bigger hole.
Speaker 1: So they were smart.
Speaker 4: So their defense was he was insane. He had to
Speaker 4: have been insane to have done this. If he was
Speaker 4: indeed a loving father, an adoting husband, he must have
Speaker 4: suffered from temporary insanity in order to do this, that
Speaker 4: those were moments of temporary insanity.
Speaker 1: But here's the problem. During Eugene Burt's murder trial, his
Speaker 1: attorneys never provided any evidence that he was legally insane.
Speaker 1: They had character witnesses detailing what a good man he was,
Speaker 1: how he was never violent. They admitted that he was
Speaker 1: a murderer, but they never clearly stated why he was
Speaker 1: legally insane. And I think it's because they knew that
Speaker 1: Eugene Bert wasn't legally insane. Legal insanity was set at
Speaker 1: a high bar even in the eighteen hundreds. The defendant
Speaker 1: had to be unable to understand their actions were wrong.
Speaker 1: According to most legal experts, people who are legally insane
Speaker 1: don't cover up their crimes because they don't understand that
Speaker 1: what they've done is a crime on the witness stand.
Speaker 1: Doctors fumbled around with the term moral insanity in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. Psychiatrists who were called alienists were trying to
Speaker 1: sort out how someone could be physically sound and mentally
Speaker 1: sound but they would still do evil things like murder
Speaker 1: their family. Moral insanity was about as close a label
Speaker 1: to psychopathy as they could get. But that's different from
Speaker 1: mental illness. Mental illness can manifest itself in many ways,
Speaker 1: extreme mood changes, withdrawal, excessive fears or worries. Psychopathy is
Speaker 1: an antisocial personality disorder. Psychopathy manifestations are much narrower. A
Speaker 1: lack of ability to love to establish per relationships, as
Speaker 1: well as extreme egotism. Eugene Burt didn't seem to exhibit
Speaker 1: any of those characteristics. I asked doctor Christine Montrose to
Speaker 1: explain a little more about psychopathy. She says, to begin with,
Speaker 1: let's avoid using the term psychopath.
Speaker 6: We've shifted away from using nouns to describe people. So
Speaker 6: a person is not a schizophrenic, they're not a sociopath.
Speaker 6: It's a person who has schizophrenia, you know. It's a person.
Speaker 6: Just like a person with diabetes. We're not describing any
Speaker 6: longer as a diabetic. We're describing them as a person
Speaker 6: with diabetes. So I think sociopath and psychopath are these
Speaker 6: labels that tend to me to have more of a
Speaker 6: of an antiquated historical flair.
Speaker 1: Who are we describing?
Speaker 6: These are people who I think the lay person would
Speaker 6: describe as kind of lacking the moral compass that the
Speaker 6: rest of us have, not really an awareness of right
Speaker 6: or wrong, Difficulty feeling concern or empathy toward other people,
Speaker 6: Frequent kind of self serving behavior, risk taking behavior.
Speaker 1: They don't care about other people.
Speaker 6: I think when someone is not just demonstrating antisocial traits
Speaker 6: that mean that they're lying and stealing and conning, but
Speaker 6: instead they're really engaging in kind of sadistic behavior and
Speaker 6: taking pleasure from someone else's pain.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that was Eugene Bird's behavior. He planned
Speaker 1: the murder of his family and then covered it up.
Speaker 1: It doesn't sound like he took pleasure in it, but
Speaker 1: who knows. He seemed disconnected during his trial and even after,
Speaker 1: but he might have been resigned to dying on the gallows.
Speaker 1: Descendant Jeremy Charles says that the eighteen hundreds must have
Speaker 1: been a very confusing time for psychiatry and psychology.
Speaker 8: I think a psychologist today would have a field day
Speaker 8: looking over these trial notes from the physicians of the
Speaker 8: time and trying to make heads or tails of what
Speaker 8: Eugene Bird actually was and had he participated in other
Speaker 8: illicit activities prior to these murders.
Speaker 1: Linda Frost says that many doctors in the eighteen hundreds
Speaker 1: weren't qualified to determine someone's sanity, and many doctors now
Speaker 1: aren't either.
Speaker 7: It's also important to think of the role of doctors back.
Speaker 4: In the day.
Speaker 7: They did all sorts of different things, right, Having a
Speaker 7: medical degree doesn't automatically qualify you to do a forensic assessment.
Speaker 7: Most doctors today should not be doing forensic assessments now.
Speaker 7: Under the Texas Code, my gynecologist could do a forensic assessment.
Speaker 7: Is my gynecologist skilled and qualified to do that? No,
Speaker 7: but under the code, doctors can do that.
Speaker 1: On December first, eighteen ninety six, after a murder trial
Speaker 1: that lasted less than two weeks, both sides rested. The
Speaker 1: all male jury deliberated that night over dinner, women wouldn't
Speaker 1: be allowed on juries in Texas until nineteen fifty five.
Speaker 1: The jury discussed the case the next morning over breakfast
Speaker 1: before casting their ballots. Judge R. E. Brooks read the
Speaker 1: jury's verdict. They were unanimous.
Speaker 4: He is found guilty and sentenced to hang.
Speaker 1: That might not have been much of a surprise, after all,
Speaker 1: the defense never offered the jury any alternative suspects, and
Speaker 1: they seemed to offer little proof of Eugene Burt's insanity.
Speaker 1: His team immediately pledged to appeal. Everyone in the courthouse
Speaker 1: turned to Eugene Burt. Reporters noted that he didn't even
Speaker 1: bat an eye. No reaction, only silence. As Eugene walked
Speaker 1: back to his jail cell, a reporter asked him about
Speaker 1: the verdict. Eugene replied, I have nothing to say until
Speaker 1: the Court of Appeals passes on the appeal that would
Speaker 1: be made the prisoners in his jail bloc all asked
Speaker 1: about the verdict, he replied very matter of factly guilty.
Speaker 1: Eugene seemed lucid, even composed, and he seemed resigned that
Speaker 1: he would die. If I had seen Eugene Bird's strange
Speaker 1: courtroom behavior, I'm not sure what I would have thought.
Speaker 1: But regardless of whether he was sane or not, his
Speaker 1: lawyers hadn't proven it, so execution was on the table.
Speaker 1: The debate over whether to execute someone who is mentally
Speaker 1: ill is centuries old. We know that there are often
Speaker 1: circumstances where the suspect is predisposed to mental illness, I
Speaker 1: asked forensic psychiatrist doctor Christine Montrose about that.
Speaker 6: We know that there are mental illnesses that run in family,
Speaker 6: and we know also that there are, you know, mental
Speaker 6: illnesses that spontaneously arise for people who have no history
Speaker 6: of mental illness in their families. And then there are
Speaker 6: people whose families are riddles with psychiatric disease who emerge
Speaker 6: psychologically intact.
Speaker 1: What does all that mean?
Speaker 6: Certainly, if your family on both sides has people who
Speaker 6: suffer from bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or some of the psychiatric
Speaker 6: illnesses that we know to be more heritable. Would you
Speaker 6: be at elevated risk compared to someone who didn't have
Speaker 6: any of that in their family.
Speaker 9: Yes?
Speaker 6: Does that sentence you to the certitude that you are
Speaker 6: going to also suffer that same fate? No, it really doesn't.
Speaker 1: But Bird's descendant, Julie Norton says that if Birds had
Speaker 1: been mentally ill, that she's conflicted over his fate.
Speaker 9: When I look at a criminal, I am offended by
Speaker 9: that person, but I also feel like there is some cause.
Speaker 9: It had to be something that wasn't just his mother
Speaker 9: and father, because his two brothers didn't kill anybody. Something
Speaker 9: caused it. I don't think that's how that kind of
Speaker 9: thing happens. I don't think that's inherited in families.
Speaker 1: So mental illness isn't enough of a defense for you.
Speaker 9: It is a horrific story. I don't think it's understandable.
Speaker 9: It's clearly not logical. No logical person would do that.
Speaker 8: So it seems pretty cut and dry, and they have
Speaker 8: all the evidence that they need. However, the judge that
Speaker 8: oversees the trial says, wait a second. He kind of
Speaker 8: puts the brakes on things, and he wants to investigate
Speaker 8: Eugene Bird's mental capacity.
Speaker 1: By January, Judge Brooks had not yet set an execution date,
Speaker 1: and then came word that the Governor of Texas was
Speaker 1: stepping in. Judge Brooks thought that the jury's verdict was just,
Speaker 1: but he had to respect an order from the governor,
Speaker 1: and it was an order made after an influential and
Speaker 1: respected businessman intervened. Eugene's older brother.
Speaker 4: Brother Roscoe, rides to the rescue again. God love him.
Speaker 4: I mean, after the rabbit, I think I would have
Speaker 4: written off my relatives.
Speaker 1: I have found that families are much more committed in
Speaker 1: some ways. In the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 4: Brother Roscoe put to a request for a stay of
Speaker 4: execution and it is signed by Governor Culbertson that you
Speaker 4: can't execute William Eugene Bert because he is now insane.
Speaker 4: The trial drove him insane, and it would be heartless
Speaker 4: to execute an insane person. He belongs in an institution.
Speaker 1: What was all the evidence from the end of the
Speaker 1: trial until they were making this admission.
Speaker 4: It was the fact that during his trial he showed
Speaker 4: no emotion, and that he was constantly observed in his
Speaker 4: cell even after his sentencing to show no cognizance that
Speaker 4: his life was about to end. There was no sense
Speaker 4: of desperation or anything like that. They just didn't understand
Speaker 4: how anybody could be facing this and not have it
Speaker 4: drive them mad.
Speaker 1: Okay, so what happens.
Speaker 4: He's given another trial in January of eighteen ninety seven.
Speaker 1: But all of this was because of Roscoe, not Eugene.
Speaker 4: Eugene didn't want this second trial. He wanted to hang,
Speaker 4: and so when Roscoe came through and said, oh no, no, no,
Speaker 4: he's insane, you can't kill him. They reported on his reaction,
Speaker 4: the newspaper said, over in a cell, Bert displayed little
Speaker 4: or no excitement.
Speaker 1: Perhaps Roscoe felt badly. Roscoe and Monty were the ones
Speaker 1: who accused Eugene of stealing from them. He was going
Speaker 1: to be arrested and likely convicted. That might have been
Speaker 1: a trigger for the murders. Or maybe Roscoe really did
Speaker 1: believe that his brother suffered from insanity. Eugene Burt was
Speaker 1: now back in an Austin, Texas courtroom, and he didn't
Speaker 1: really want to be there. He wanted to be done
Speaker 1: with all of this. He was ready to be hanged.
Speaker 1: Unlike his first trial, this time the courtroom discussion was
Speaker 1: focused squarely on Eugene's mental condition.
Speaker 4: There were a parade of physicians, psychologists as they were
Speaker 4: during the day, people who worked for the mental institution,
Speaker 4: who had the most exposure to knowing what an insane
Speaker 4: person looks like.
Speaker 1: Only the trial ended, the jury retired behind closed doors.
Speaker 4: Everybody testified and everybody had their say, and at the
Speaker 4: end of it there was a hung jury.
Speaker 1: The jury couldn't reach a verdict. No one could seem
Speaker 1: to determine if Eugene had been truly insane, and the
Speaker 1: state wouldn't execute an insane man. So there was a stalemate.
Speaker 1: What would happen to Eugene Bert Eugene reacted like he
Speaker 1: always had. He had no reaction, Monica reads a newspaper
Speaker 1: article from eighteen ninety seven.
Speaker 4: If he was uneasy about the coming of today or
Speaker 4: the uncertainty of his existence, he did not manifest it
Speaker 4: in the least. He talked to Jaylor Hughes quite freely
Speaker 4: yesterday and evidenced no apparent interest in the outcome of
Speaker 4: the fight to save his life. So the second trial
Speaker 4: did not have the whole historyonics or alex attainment that
Speaker 4: the first trial did.
Speaker 1: And now there was a third trial, and this one
Speaker 1: was much more interesting than the last. The defense brought
Speaker 1: up Eugene's traumatic birth. Remember, his father reported that his
Speaker 1: wife Cleo, had some psychotic episodes during her pregnancy and
Speaker 1: she had to be restrained during Eugene's birth. The defense said,
Speaker 1: perhaps that caused his insanity. Doctor Christine Montrose helps me
Speaker 1: wrap my head around that. Can your actions later in
Speaker 1: life be connected to what happens in the womb?
Speaker 6: I don't know that we know the answer to that question, Kate.
Speaker 6: I mean, is it possible that if someone sustained physical
Speaker 6: trauma during birth or neurologic trauma during birth, that that
Speaker 6: could then affect their ability to self regulate? That I
Speaker 6: think we could say with more confidence. But in terms
Speaker 6: of like the psychological experience of having gone through a
Speaker 6: traumatic birth as a neonate, I don't have any idea
Speaker 6: about that. I feel like a stretch of defense.
Speaker 1: To me, it sounds like we can rule out to
Speaker 1: birth trauma as a cause for Eugene's violence later in life.
Speaker 4: And so the third trial came along. One thing that
Speaker 4: was really bugging me about about the trial was that
Speaker 4: the last medical expert to testify was doctor J. W. McLaughlin,
Speaker 4: and he was a Bert's family physician and doctor McLaughlin
Speaker 4: had been listed as a witness for the defense, but
Speaker 4: was absent from the city at the time the defense
Speaker 4: made its case.
Speaker 1: Doctor McLaughlin offered testimony that was confusing to everyone. I
Speaker 1: think even he was confused because he constantly contradicted himself.
Speaker 4: McLaughlin determined that Bert was morally insane, but then on
Speaker 4: cross examination, the state quite simply asked McLaughlin if he
Speaker 4: had ever noticed insanity in Burt, to which McLaughlin replied
Speaker 4: that no, he had never observed that, and then, on
Speaker 4: a redirect the day said his opinion of a man
Speaker 4: who had murdered his wife and children entirely without motive,
Speaker 4: what do you think of that man? And McLaughlin said, well,
Speaker 4: that man would be insane. What So, in other words,
Speaker 4: anytime someone was asked, is this man insane? If they
Speaker 4: knew him, they would say, no, that man is not insane,
Speaker 4: But asked about the situation disconnecting from the person that
Speaker 4: they knew, they would agree, yes, that man is totally insane.
Speaker 4: So it was the familiarity with Burt that made everybody
Speaker 4: just as confused as when it starts.
Speaker 1: So this comes back to the mystery surrounding Eugene Burt.
Speaker 1: He seemed so normal, with the exception of a few
Speaker 1: outbursts here and there over the years, and of course
Speaker 1: the thieving and the fraud, but he was normally composed.
Speaker 1: He seemed like a loving father and husband. How could
Speaker 1: this happen?
Speaker 4: What you saw in the courtroom is what he still
Speaker 4: is often aloof personal times, serene, a little creepy, but sane.
Speaker 4: There was no wild behavior. There were no fits of
Speaker 4: weeping or fear, no pleading for his life.
Speaker 1: The jurors returned and another hung jury. Once again, a
Speaker 1: panel of men couldn't decide if Eugene Burt should die
Speaker 1: because he was cold hearted, or if he should live
Speaker 1: in an institution because he was legally insane. Jeremy Charles
Speaker 1: says Eugene might not have been legally insane, but he
Speaker 1: does think that Eugene was mentally ill.
Speaker 8: One of the things that sticks out to me is
Speaker 8: that at the trial in eighteen ninety eight, to determine
Speaker 8: his moral sanity, he writes a letter. I don't think
Speaker 8: it's in his own defense. It's so bizarre. He's almost
Speaker 8: speaking about himself in the third person. This, I think
Speaker 8: goes to his mental state at the time.
Speaker 1: In one of those letters, eugene Bert wrote, Great God
Speaker 1: be thanked the hellish brute that took me the sweets
Speaker 1: of my life, that snapped the human chords of my heart,
Speaker 1: that took from me and sent to heaven, my loved ones.
Speaker 1: We'll never see the fulfillment of the ends of lawful justice.
Speaker 1: How happy to lay and dream to hear the howls
Speaker 1: and shrieks and screams of his tortured soul. The jury
Speaker 1: read copies of the letters. Did eugene Bert's writing convince
Speaker 1: jurors that he was legally insane? There was yet another trial,
Speaker 1: and this time the jurors finally agreed on a verdict.
Speaker 1: Eugene Bert was deemed sane. It was finally over, and
Speaker 1: eugene seemed pleased. He was sentenced to hang on May
Speaker 1: twenty seventh, eighteen ninety eight, almost two years after he
Speaker 1: killed his family. But his brothers appealed to the courts
Speaker 1: one last time.
Speaker 4: And on May twenty third, another appeal was made, but
Speaker 4: the governor was like, no, no, no, this man wants
Speaker 4: to die, so let him.
Speaker 1: The appeal was rejected, he would die on May twenty seventh.
Speaker 1: There was no saving him.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Former federal investigator Fred Burton believes that Eugene Bert was
Speaker 1: rightly convicted. He doesn't believe that someone who is legally
Speaker 1: insane can methodically premeditate a crime like Eugene clearly did.
Speaker 1: Whether he would be rightly executed is another story for
Speaker 1: a different season.
Speaker 10: At what point did they quote unquote snap, how do
Speaker 10: they go about and functioning in a very complex kind
Speaker 10: of murder? I would argue that they don't. Now, you
Speaker 10: could say that that person is not functioning in a
Speaker 10: normal kind of space like the average person is. But
Speaker 10: that person was very methodical and very detail and certainly
Speaker 10: knows right from wrong by the efforts to cover up
Speaker 10: that crime.
Speaker 1: Regardless, Eugene Bert had always maintained his innocence.
Speaker 4: The night before his execution, Bert spent all night writing,
Speaker 4: and he apparently disliked what he wrote because he tore
Speaker 4: a lot of it up. And then he dozed in
Speaker 4: a chair with his feet up on a table, which
Speaker 4: apparently was his habit rather than lying in a bed,
Speaker 4: And then after a hearty breakfast, he said he was
Speaker 4: really hungry. He wrote his last public statement in which
Speaker 4: he claimed to have killed those who murdered his family. Yeah,
Speaker 4: he said, the man who killed my family, I took
Speaker 4: care of him a long time ago.
Speaker 1: Why do you think he did that? Do you think
Speaker 1: that's real or do you think that was just a front?
Speaker 4: I think in his mind it was real. If he
Speaker 4: had some sort of dissociative condition, he made that disconnect,
Speaker 4: maybe even on the train, maybe when he saw missus
Speaker 4: driscoll and decided in his mind he killed off that
Speaker 4: part of him who did that deed. As for what
Speaker 4: awaited him, he wrote, I'm prepared to accept the situation
Speaker 4: with as little complaining as possible, face the new foe,
Speaker 4: and have my banner of satisfaction unfurled to the breeze
Speaker 4: until it and I sink into everlasting oblivion. Had some
Speaker 4: Victorian writing right there, flowery, flowery language.
Speaker 2: One.
Speaker 8: I think he's in a way admitting to his body
Speaker 8: committing the crimes. But it wasn't his soul or his
Speaker 8: mentality that was committing the crimes. And that part of
Speaker 8: him has already been punished by some supernatural force, God
Speaker 8: or whatever you want to think about it. And so
Speaker 8: that's an interesting admission on his part to speak of
Speaker 8: it in that way, basically admitting guilt, but at the
Speaker 8: same time not by claiming that it wasn't something else
Speaker 8: was in control of his body at the time of
Speaker 8: the murders, basically.
Speaker 1: I interviewed doctor Anne Wohlbert Burgess for my other show,
Speaker 1: Wicked Words. She's the criminal psychologist who helped shape the
Speaker 1: FBI's behavioral science unit in the nineteen seventies. She told
Speaker 1: me that she's asked serial killers to draw their crime scenes,
Speaker 1: and often they draw from the point of view of
Speaker 1: someone floating above the bodies, totally disconnected from the crimes.
Speaker 1: That might have been the case with Eugene Burt.
Speaker 4: So he was led to the scaffold calmly. He looked
Speaker 4: over the crowd of about one hundred spectators and reporters,
Speaker 4: and he commented, there are so many more people here
Speaker 4: than I thought there'd be. It was in the courtyard
Speaker 4: of the county jail, so that's probably probably quite crowded.
Speaker 4: And to the crowd, he announced, except for the disgrace
Speaker 4: attached to the scene, it is the happiest moment of
Speaker 4: my life.
Speaker 1: What you read on that.
Speaker 4: He so wanted to die. Once he killed off whoever
Speaker 4: he thought killed his family, the purpose of his life
Speaker 4: was over.
Speaker 1: His arms and legs were pinioned, and he seemed relaxed.
Speaker 1: A black hood was placed over his head. Eugene was quiet.
Speaker 1: The sheriff pulled the lever, and Eugene dropped. The Bert's
Speaker 1: family doctor stood underneath and watched as Eugene fell. He
Speaker 1: had known Eugene his entire life. Doctor Whoton noted that
Speaker 1: the killer's body seemed to actually relax, not stiffen as
Speaker 1: was usually the case. It seemed as if Eugene Bert
Speaker 1: was finally at peace with his death. After his body
Speaker 1: was loaded onto a cart, doctor Whutten and several physicians
Speaker 1: examined him. The noose had broken his neck, yet he
Speaker 1: lived for almost twelve minutes. Many whispered that it was
Speaker 1: an appropriate ending for a man who had murdered his
Speaker 1: lovely wife and the little girls. Annie's mother and sister
Speaker 1: also seemed at peace finally. They would eventually be buried
Speaker 1: next to Annie and Eleanor and Lucille. Fred Burton says,
Speaker 1: oftentimes family members find themselves conflicted with an execution.
Speaker 10: At the end of the day, when you're looking at
Speaker 10: these horrific crimes of violence like this case. It's very
Speaker 10: easy for people to say, well, isn't that terrible, But
Speaker 10: when it becomes personal and it involves a family member,
Speaker 10: there's a different feeling. You know, it depends on the
Speaker 10: family and the person. But there is this desire for justice.
Speaker 10: I wouldn't say vengeance, but I would say justice. Somebody
Speaker 10: needs to be held accountable for what took place.
Speaker 1: But what if the killer ends up in a mental institution,
Speaker 1: which is what might have happened with Eugene Burt. That
Speaker 1: would not be punitive enough for a lot of families,
Speaker 1: not at all.
Speaker 10: I think most families would say that that's an easy
Speaker 10: cop out, or the system has been gained to the
Speaker 10: point where that person was able to take advantage of this.
Speaker 1: But Eugene Bert was never given that opportunity. Jeremy Charles
Speaker 1: says this story of Eugene Bert and his family will
Speaker 1: forever confuse him.
Speaker 8: In reality, I think most crimes, you know, are typically
Speaker 8: crimes of passion, and I would imagine this probably will
Speaker 8: end up if we ever figure out exactly what happened
Speaker 8: being just that.
Speaker 1: But this doesn't seem premeditated to you.
Speaker 8: It does seem premeditated and in some ways. And that's
Speaker 8: what makes this all so interesting is that it's easy
Speaker 8: to go either way, because there's a lot of things
Speaker 8: that he did after the murderers that seemed like he
Speaker 8: would have had to have those planned in order to
Speaker 8: do it in such a timely manner that by the
Speaker 8: next morning he's having breakfast with his servant.
Speaker 1: He is relatively calm and able to function.
Speaker 8: Yeah, And that's what makes this kind of interesting is
Speaker 8: that you start to lean one way and you're like, oh,
Speaker 8: I can totally see that, But then you start leaning like, oh,
Speaker 8: oh what about this? Like oh, damn it, I forgot
Speaker 8: about that, you know. So this is kind of my
Speaker 8: favorite type of crime that are really really difficult to
Speaker 8: explain because there are so many different explanations that seem
Speaker 8: totally valid.
Speaker 1: I agree, there's no simple explanation for me either. Without
Speaker 1: modern tests, it's just not clear if Eugene Burts struggled
Speaker 1: with mental illness. So much of this has to be conjecture.
Speaker 1: I do a lot of that because I deal with
Speaker 1: very old cases. But I suspect that many suspects in
Speaker 1: history did struggle with mental illness, as we know many
Speaker 1: do today. Doctor Christine Montrose says that the study of
Speaker 1: mental illness is imperative for society.
Speaker 6: My guess is that as we learn more and more
Speaker 6: about mental illness and science continues to move forward, we're
Speaker 6: going to be better able to trace and predict who's
Speaker 6: more likely, under what circumstances to inherit these mental illnesses.
Speaker 6: It's not a sentence for people at all, if they're family,
Speaker 6: if they have a strong family history. It's a concern,
Speaker 6: but not a sure sentence.
Speaker 1: We've talked a lot about why this happened. How could
Speaker 1: a man kill his wife and his little girls. Eugene's
Speaker 1: mind might have been mired with mental illness, psychopathy, or
Speaker 1: brain damage. Defense attorney David Shepherd has defended killers who
Speaker 1: he says are irredeemable. He says those are all options,
Speaker 1: but there might have also been a simpler explanation.
Speaker 3: You don't have to fit into a dism category or
Speaker 3: axis to be a terrible person and do terrible things.
Speaker 3: They're not schizophrenic, and they're not any of those things.
Speaker 3: They're just goddamn mean people and do bad things.
Speaker 4: William ejen Burt was buried quietly in Oakwood cemetery in
Speaker 4: the family plot, far away from the remains of his
Speaker 4: wife and children, who were buried under her maiden name
Speaker 4: Powers in Mount Calvary Catholic Cemetery. During the brief ceremony
Speaker 4: of heavily veiled woman approached, laid a small bouquet of
Speaker 4: flowers on the casket, and retreated Anonymous, who was thought
Speaker 4: that she was a friend of the families.
Speaker 1: Despite Eugene Bird's crimes, his family was still very respected.
Speaker 1: His victims, Annie, Eleanor and Lucille were featured in newspaper
Speaker 1: articles for years after Eugene Birt was executed, and then
Speaker 1: their story was lost to time, like the stories of
Speaker 1: many victims. Their home on Ninth Street is no longer there.
Speaker 1: It was the scene for three gruesome, tragic murders, killings
Speaker 1: that still seemed to haunt the spot where the house
Speaker 1: was even almost one hundred and thirty years later. Listened
Speaker 1: to this coincidence.
Speaker 8: One of the victims of the Annihilator murders was a
Speaker 8: woman named Susan Hancock, and she was murdered Christmas Eve
Speaker 8: eighteen eighty five.
Speaker 1: This was the murder scene that Eugene Burt visited when
Speaker 1: he was a teenager. Aside from that, there's another connection
Speaker 1: to Sue Hancock.
Speaker 8: The connection is that her daughter ends up marrying a
Speaker 8: man named Serbery. In nineteen hundred. She actually is running
Speaker 8: a boarding house at g S two seven East ninth Street,
Speaker 8: the very same house that the Burt murders took place in.
Speaker 8: So there is an odd connection in that one of
Speaker 8: the victim's daughters ended up living in the same house.
Speaker 1: That property where the Berts built their lives and Eugene
Speaker 1: destroyed their family seems to have bad luck.
Speaker 4: And as for where the home once stood, nothing prospers,
Speaker 4: nothing stays very long. That building is under constant renovation,
Speaker 4: but never occupation. It's as unsettling as this whole story.
Speaker 1: There's another worker can't read it. I don't know, babe.
Speaker 1: We might be going down a dead end here. My
Speaker 1: daughter and I are still wandering through Oakwood Cemetery in Austin.
Speaker 1: We're searching for Eugene Burt with no luck. We were
Speaker 1: so happy to have found any powers and the girls
Speaker 1: back in the Mount Calvary Cemetery. It was clear from
Speaker 1: their family plot that they were valued and loved. Eugene
Speaker 1: Burt does have a headstone somewhere in Oakwood, next to
Speaker 1: his parents and his brother Monty. But it's a very
Speaker 1: cold day and we're tired, so we give up on
Speaker 1: finding William Eugene Burt. Normally we would be very frustrated,
Speaker 1: but this time we're not. Oh, vibe, this might be
Speaker 1: too cold. He's out in here somewhere. It's I actually,
Speaker 1: in some ways like this better. I don't really know
Speaker 1: if I want to find him because he doesn't deserve.
Speaker 2: It, because he was a killer. Yeah, who cares?
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this season of tenfold More Wicked
Speaker 1: on Exactly Right. You can hear the trailer for our
Speaker 1: next season in one week next Monday. If you love
Speaker 1: a good, real ghost story, My new audiobook original The
Speaker 1: Ghost Club is available for pre order now wherever audiobooks
Speaker 1: are sold. I can't wait to tell you the real
Speaker 1: story about the world's most famous ghost hunter, who was
Speaker 1: the head of the world's most famous ghost club, and
Speaker 1: how he investigated England's most famous haunt. Please also check
Speaker 1: out my new book All That Is Wicked. This has
Speaker 1: been an exactly right tenfold War Media production producers Jason Whaling,
Speaker 1: Alexis Mrosi, and Natalie Rinn Editors Jason Whaling, David Fabello
Speaker 1: and Kate Winkler Dawson researcher Kate Winkler Dawson, sound designer
Speaker 1: Eric Friend, composer Curtis Heath. Artwork by Nick Toga. Executive
Speaker 1: producers Georgia Hartstark, Karen Kilgarriff and Daniel Kramer. Follow us
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Speaker 1: historical crime that could use some attention, especially if it
Speaker 1: happened in your family, email us at info at Tenfoldwarwicked
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