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Speaker 1: Ali Wentworth, host of Go Ask Galley. My listeners want more,
Speaker 1: so we are digging in. It's real. It's honest, open
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Speaker 1: Ask Ally on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcast. Hi, it's Laverne Cox and on
Speaker 1: my podcast, The Laverne Cox Show. We're ripping the band
Speaker 1: aid off. Trauma, resilience dating, diet culture dating, white supremacy dating. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna get explicit, but just because you're cute,
Speaker 1: like I'm not going you're gonna say yes, girl and honey.
Speaker 1: We have a lot of fun along the way. You
Speaker 1: have a lot of lesbian fans who love your femininity
Speaker 1: and glamour and they just really really want I want
Speaker 1: us to talk openly about the difficult things we all
Speaker 1: face as humans and as humans in America. Racist white
Speaker 1: people in the United States will sign their own death certificates.
Speaker 1: They will vote for policies that crush them, no safety nets,
Speaker 1: no healthcare because they feel too much like entitlements. And
Speaker 1: those are folks of color, right. Listen to The Laverne
Speaker 1: Cox Show and the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcast, make sure you subscribe and share. Hi.
Speaker 1: This is Ali Wentworth, host of Go ask Alli Season two.
Speaker 1: We'll be back soon with more new episodes. As always,
Speaker 1: Go ask Alli is there for binging and catching up,
Speaker 1: purpose and meaning in life or how you figure out
Speaker 1: what life is all about, and that requires unhappiness. So
Speaker 1: here's the great paradox. To be happy, you also have
Speaker 1: to be unhappy. Don't miss a single episode. Listen to
Speaker 1: Go ask Alli on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. Make sure you subscribe and share. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Criminalia, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. Hello,
Speaker 1: and Welcome to Criminalia. I'm Maria trom Marquis and I'm
Speaker 1: Holly Fry. We know that humans have always managed to
Speaker 1: commit crimes, almost certainly before there was even recorded history,
Speaker 1: so we decided that we would start looking at those
Speaker 1: crimes and get our hands dirty. We wanted to dig
Speaker 1: in and look at some of history's crimes criminals to
Speaker 1: understand them better, and in doing so, we're curious if
Speaker 1: we can find commonality with our modern world and our
Speaker 1: modern problems, and whether these crimes look different a little
Speaker 1: bit of distance on the timeline, and whether any of
Speaker 1: these perpetrators emerge as more sympathetic characters. This first season
Speaker 1: is going to be all about poisoners, specifically women poisoners.
Speaker 1: Poison is often called a woman's weapon, despite the fact
Speaker 1: that roughly two thirds of the poisonings committed throughout time
Speaker 1: have been the work of men. So let's start looking
Speaker 1: at these women and their motivations and see if any
Speaker 1: patterns develop. This week, we're looking into the life and
Speaker 1: crimes of Tilly Clinic, a Polish immigrant who killed at
Speaker 1: least one and possibly as many as twenty people and
Speaker 1: at least one dog between the years nineteen fourteen and
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty two. I will confess that when you were
Speaker 1: telling me about the research you were doing initially on
Speaker 1: this and you mentioned the dog, I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I hate her. Not that it wasn't terrible, it should
Speaker 1: killed people, just you know, that was for me the
Speaker 1: worst thing that she could have done as well. She
Speaker 1: was born Tiafila Burick to Michaelina and Michael Burick on
Speaker 1: October twenty second, eighteen seventy seven, and Tilly was probably
Speaker 1: right around four years old when her family immigrated to
Speaker 1: the United States. They moved from Poland to the Little
Speaker 1: Poland neighborhood of Chicago, and of the seven children in
Speaker 1: the family, oh Tilly, as she was called, was the eldest.
Speaker 1: Chicago has a long history of Polish immigration, and Polish
Speaker 1: Americans have lived in the area for well over a century.
Speaker 1: In eighteen ninety, around the time Tilly was born, there
Speaker 1: was a wave of immigration to the United States. At
Speaker 1: that time, the number of Polish immigrants in the city
Speaker 1: blossomed to more than twenty five thousand. By nineteen thirty,
Speaker 1: a few years before she died, that number had grown
Speaker 1: to one hundred and sixty five thousand. Most they lived
Speaker 1: below the poverty line. Is the tale of immigration in
Speaker 1: so many ways. So let's set the scene of the
Speaker 1: actual situation we're talking about today. So this is Chicago
Speaker 1: in the early twentieth century. You couldn't necessarily count on
Speaker 1: your food and drinks to be clean. Upton Sinclair started
Speaker 1: publishing the serialized version of his groundbreaking expose of the
Speaker 1: meat industry in the US, The Jungle, in nineteen oh five,
Speaker 1: and while that led to the creation of the Meat
Speaker 1: Inspection Act in nineteen oh six, food safety legislation was
Speaker 1: still in its infancy. But if you were at a
Speaker 1: restaurant or a club or a hotel around the city,
Speaker 1: there were other dangers when it came to what you
Speaker 1: consumed at the table. In particular, wait staff were known
Speaker 1: to target patrons who didn't tip well. Not like the
Speaker 1: content of the chatter in fight club, although honestly maybe
Speaker 1: a little of that. They usually poisons and various other
Speaker 1: things you really don't want to be in your food,
Speaker 1: so remember always tip well. But moreover, it turns out
Speaker 1: that you couldn't really count on food safety at home either,
Speaker 1: at least if you lived with a Tilly Climic. During
Speaker 1: the time that Chicago's most visible criminal element was organized crime,
Speaker 1: Tilly was quietly becoming the city's most prolific female serial killer.
Speaker 1: She'd allegedly killed between six and twenty people. Like we said,
Speaker 1: but that was all through arsenic poisoning. So we're going
Speaker 1: to talk first just about what arsenic actually is. It
Speaker 1: is a naturally occurring element in the Earth's crust and
Speaker 1: in its raw state. As much as it has this
Speaker 1: instant conjuring of poison, it's not actually harmful the way
Speaker 1: it naturally exists. Arsenic only really becomes poisonous when it's
Speaker 1: converted into arsenic trioxide, which is better known as white arsenic.
Speaker 1: White arsenic not only is odorless, but it's tasteless, and
Speaker 1: it's white or transparent informs, so it's easily confused with
Speaker 1: sugar or flour. But it's highly toxic when it's inhaled
Speaker 1: into your lungs or when you ingest it, and it
Speaker 1: might surprise you that even white arsenic is actually fairly
Speaker 1: benign in relatively small amounts, because it is very lethal
Speaker 1: at higher doses. In fact, doctors have actually prescribed white
Speaker 1: arsenic through the years in its low dosage as a
Speaker 1: treatment for things like asthma, typhus, malaria, even menstrual cramps,
Speaker 1: and it continues to be administered intravenously as a chemotherapy
Speaker 1: for a specific type of leukemia. When arsenic is ingested, initially,
Speaker 1: it causes symptoms such as abdominal pain, diarrhea that's often
Speaker 1: being accompanied by bleeding and vomiting. It's terrible. As the
Speaker 1: dose gets more and more lethal in the body, though,
Speaker 1: the symptoms also begin to include convulsions, cardiovascular problems, hair loss,
Speaker 1: liver and kidney problems, and even organ damage. So not
Speaker 1: a peaceful way to go. Definitely not sugar no, and
Speaker 1: despite its potency, it has been used in the production
Speaker 1: of semiconductors. It's been used as wood preservative, and it's
Speaker 1: also sometimes found in pesticides. Manufacturers in the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: started using it for its green pigment in products like
Speaker 1: paint and wallpaper, fabrics, beauty products, and as food coloring.
Speaker 1: The list goes on because green is very beautiful color,
Speaker 1: so sometimes those products would actually make people sick, but
Speaker 1: at the time, no one was suspecting that the arsenic
Speaker 1: in them was the problem that was causing their ailments.
Speaker 1: In the early twentieth century, when Tilly was busy murdering
Speaker 1: people in her community, the average Americans medicine cabinet was
Speaker 1: stocked with all sorts of toxic things like radioactive radium
Speaker 1: for acne, and mercury as a topical antiseptic for cuts
Speaker 1: and scrapes and burns. Morphine showed up in everyday products
Speaker 1: and everything from teething medications to cures for heroin addiction.
Speaker 1: From roughly the late eighteenth into the early twentieth century
Speaker 1: is considered to be the golden age of poisoners, and
Speaker 1: during that time, arsenic specifically caught the nickname the inheritance powder.
Speaker 1: And you can probably imagine why the police really didn't
Speaker 1: have any of the tools to test the corpse for poison.
Speaker 1: Arsenic wasn't only easy to acquire, it was hard to
Speaker 1: detect as a cause of death, which was win win
Speaker 1: for the golden age of poisoners. It was common practice
Speaker 1: for doctors to treat suspected poisoning with leeches bleeded out,
Speaker 1: or try to identify the poison involved by sniffing the
Speaker 1: contents of the person's stomach. Remember how we said arsenic
Speaker 1: was odorless though, Yeah, so you just sniff those contents
Speaker 1: for nothing. But it was also just unusual for a
Speaker 1: doctor or a coroner to suspect arsenic as a cause
Speaker 1: of death, mainly because the symptoms of arsenic poisoning that
Speaker 1: Maria just talked about, diarrhea and vomiting and abdominal pain
Speaker 1: are so similar to a lot of other disorders. It's
Speaker 1: also really hard to place a poisoner at the scene
Speaker 1: of the murder. Dying can typically take hours or longer
Speaker 1: if you administered the poison gradually, such as with someone's meals,
Speaker 1: so the perpetrator could easily have a seemingly airtight alibi
Speaker 1: for their whereabouts because the window of time had such
Speaker 1: fuzzy edges when it actually wouldn't be until the late
Speaker 1: nineteenth century that a chemist named James marsh would come
Speaker 1: up with a reliable chemical test for arsenic poisoning. Today,
Speaker 1: arsenic poisoning is treated with chelatition therapy, which uses special
Speaker 1: drugs that bind to metal ions in your blood. So
Speaker 1: rough On Rats was the product that became popular in
Speaker 1: the late eighteen hundreds. It was composed mainly of arsenic
Speaker 1: and a little black coal for masking the poison, and
Speaker 1: while i was advertised for use in killing rats, mice, bedbugs, flies, roaches,
Speaker 1: it occasionally was used for the very off label purpose
Speaker 1: of killing husbands. Believe it or not, the marketing slogan
Speaker 1: for this poison rough On Rats was don't die in
Speaker 1: the house, thinking, of course, being that the creature you
Speaker 1: had poisoned would scurry away to die. It was also
Speaker 1: really easily available at the local store, and Tillie actually
Speaker 1: got her first bottle of rough On Rats from her
Speaker 1: cousin Nellie Kulik, and Nellie, it would turn out, was
Speaker 1: also a fellow poisoner murder and husbands. According to accounts
Speaker 1: from her neighbors, Tillie was sent to have precognitive dreams,
Speaker 1: meaning that she could predict the future in real life
Speaker 1: through sort of a sixth sensish kind of way. She
Speaker 1: began to predict the deaths of neighborhood dogs, and she
Speaker 1: was surprisingly accurate, but it turns out she was just
Speaker 1: scheduling their deaths. We're getting a little ahead of ourselves though,
Speaker 1: in the progression of Tillie's activities with rough on rats.
Speaker 1: So we're going to back up to eighteen ninety five. Hi,
Speaker 1: It's Laverne Cox and on my podcast Verne Cox Show,
Speaker 1: we're ripping the band aid off. Trauma, resilience dating, diet
Speaker 1: culture dating, white supremacy dating. Okay, I'm not gonna get explicit,
Speaker 1: but just because you're cute, like I'm not going you're
Speaker 1: gonna say yes, girl, and honey. We have a lot
Speaker 1: of fun along the way. You have a lot of
Speaker 1: lesbian fans who love your femininity and glamour and they
Speaker 1: just really really want I want us to talk openly
Speaker 1: about the difficult things we all face as humans and
Speaker 1: as humans in America. Racist white people in the United
Speaker 1: States will sign their own death certificates. They will vote
Speaker 1: for policies that crush them, no safety nets, no healthcare
Speaker 1: because they feel too much like entitlements. And those are
Speaker 1: folks of color, right. Listen to The Laverne Cox Show
Speaker 1: and the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcast make sure you subscribe and share. Hi. This
Speaker 1: is Ali Wentworth, host of Go Ask Alli Season two.
Speaker 1: We'll be back soon with more new episodes, but what
Speaker 1: you can do is binge the first half of season
Speaker 1: two or revisit our first spectacular season. Everyone has to
Speaker 1: deal with money, and technically like people don't talk about it.
Speaker 1: It's like this quiet thing that everyone wants to avoid.
Speaker 1: But then everyone wants to live this life and doesn't
Speaker 1: matter what how you define that life, but you need
Speaker 1: money for it. Just a few of our fabulous guests
Speaker 1: the season are former editor of People magazine Jess Cagel,
Speaker 1: New York Times bestselling author Isabel Gillies, and writer and
Speaker 1: Oprah's favorite life coach Martha Beck. And people come to
Speaker 1: me now and they will say negative things, and I think,
Speaker 1: I respectfully do not give a crap what you think,
Speaker 1: because I'm a crazy old bat now and you can't
Speaker 1: stop me. That's great. Our guests have so much to say.
Speaker 1: One liston isn't enough. Listen to Go ask Ali on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Make
Speaker 1: sure you subscribe and share Hey, I'm Gabrielle Collins, period
Speaker 1: drama nerd and you're behind the scenes guide to Bridgerton.
Speaker 1: On Bridgerton the Official Podcast, we're learning how this fantasy
Speaker 1: world dipped in history came to life. Daphanie, her costume
Speaker 1: design really is about the elegance of simplicity. It's just
Speaker 1: color and shape. We went old school and we got
Speaker 1: two scene cartists in who painted the backings for us
Speaker 1: by hand. These dukes are all like in their late
Speaker 1: twenties early thirties. Almost all of them are unmarried, really
Speaker 1: good looking, and none of them have syphilis. Can you
Speaker 1: imagine when he looks into your eyes and then he
Speaker 1: dips you. We just heard this sort of ripping sound. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this has been a wardrobe malfunction. Listen to
Speaker 1: Bridgerton the Official Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or anywhere you get your favorite shows. Welcome back to Criminalia.
Speaker 1: By eighteen ninety five, Tillie was married to John mckawitz.
Speaker 1: His name may have been Joseph not John. Records aren't
Speaker 1: entirely consistent, but we're gonna go with John because that's
Speaker 1: what the majority of records from the time referred to
Speaker 1: him as that is one of the delights word I'm
Speaker 1: using ironically of doing historical research, particularly when you are
Speaker 1: talking about immigrants, because there was not a vested interest
Speaker 1: always in the government in keeping accurate records about them,
Speaker 1: So you often have these these people's stories that get
Speaker 1: really muddy because their names do shift around in the
Speaker 1: historical record. Anyway, by all accounts this couple, Tilly and John,
Speaker 1: were well liked in their community, and their marriage appeared
Speaker 1: by all accounts to be happy. Tilly made her life
Speaker 1: as a housekeeper, but it was also during this time
Speaker 1: that Tilly started telling neighbors about some visions that she
Speaker 1: was having. She was, as we mentioned before the break,
Speaker 1: an alleged psychic who was skilled specifically at predicting deaths.
Speaker 1: This included predicting the death of her own husband, John,
Speaker 1: who had left her a thousand dollars When he died
Speaker 1: in nineteen fourteen. The coroner's report listed his death as
Speaker 1: a result of heart trouble, nothing suspicious. There was no
Speaker 1: reason at the time to suspect that John had been
Speaker 1: poisoned by his wife. The nickname black widow, which is
Speaker 1: often given to women who kill their lovers in order
Speaker 1: to inherit. Their wealth would eventually be bestowed upon Tilly,
Speaker 1: but not just yet. Here's a little more in detail
Speaker 1: on John's sudden end. Okay. In the beginning of nineteen fourteen,
Speaker 1: Tilly began telling friends and those in the community that
Speaker 1: she dreamed that John was ill. She expected he would
Speaker 1: be on his deathbed in just a few weeks, and
Speaker 1: when he died in January thirteenth that year, the cause
Speaker 1: of death was listed as heart trouble, and Tilly collected
Speaker 1: a thousand dollars in life insurance. I guess after nineteen years,
Speaker 1: she just didn't want to gun it to twenty. She's
Speaker 1: like enough. After receiving that payout on John's life insurance policy,
Speaker 1: Tilly actually remarried pretty quickly. See, now, that's the thing.
Speaker 1: She remarried quickly often, And I have to I always
Speaker 1: sort of wonder, like if she would follow in love
Speaker 1: with someone new and be like, oh, I'll kill my
Speaker 1: husband and we'll start out fresh with like this new
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. It's just my own personal theory. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think there's merit to it. But her new husband, Joseph Raskowski,
Speaker 1: died just three months after they got married. And he
Speaker 1: happened to leave his widow twelve hundred dollars in cash
Speaker 1: and seven hundred twenty two dollars in insurance money. Not
Speaker 1: only did Tilly predict Joseph's death, she went on to
Speaker 1: predict the deaths of her third husband, although they may
Speaker 1: or may not have been married, it's a little sketchy.
Speaker 1: And her fourth husband, as well as children, she cared
Speaker 1: for a few neighbors and possibly some other family members.
Speaker 1: And not only did she joke with neighbors that her
Speaker 1: fourth husband, Frank, had quote two inches to live, which
Speaker 1: is a really interesting, fascinating turn of phrase, she allegedly
Speaker 1: taunted him on his deathbed and said things like it
Speaker 1: won't be long now and you'll be dying soon, which
Speaker 1: is hard in my own home. You got two inches
Speaker 1: to live? I don't know, right, It's like callous on
Speaker 1: a level that's hard to comprehend, right right. She also,
Speaker 1: in an act of both cruel and creative, knitted herself
Speaker 1: a morning hat as she sat by his bedside while
Speaker 1: he was dying. She even so far as to purchase
Speaker 1: a thirty dollars bargain coffin to keep in the basement
Speaker 1: of her house. Waiting for his death. That storage areament
Speaker 1: was a little unsettling request made of her landlord, who
Speaker 1: began to be a little suspicious of Tilly after that
Speaker 1: came in. Frank did die on April twentieth, nineteen twenty one,
Speaker 1: and it is said that when it happened, Tillie played
Speaker 1: dance music in the room. The coroner listed Frank's cause
Speaker 1: of death as bronchial pneumonia. Tilly's poisonous predilections unnoticed. She
Speaker 1: once again collected on his life insurance, this time in
Speaker 1: the amount of six hundred seventy five dollars, nearly as
Speaker 1: much as the last two. I know she's downgrading the
Speaker 1: insurance situation with each one. They're going faster now, you know.
Speaker 1: It's just not enough time to like build up to
Speaker 1: the thousand. That's another theory I have. It's interesting and
Speaker 1: grimly fun to note that frank An Tillie's home at
Speaker 1: nine twenty four Winchester It's a house in East Dillige
Speaker 1: in Chicago shows up on the Old Fourth Square social
Speaker 1: networking site as Old Lady Tilly Clinics Haunted House. Even today,
Speaker 1: Tilly was still not arrested, though that didn't happen until
Speaker 1: after she botched an attempt at poisoning husband number five,
Speaker 1: that was Joseph Clemack. She and Joseph had gotten married
Speaker 1: in July of nineteen twenty one, again not long after
Speaker 1: Frank's demise, and Clemack is said to have been a
Speaker 1: relatively wealthy man, but Tilly did not like that. He
Speaker 1: also apparently had a wandering eye, and by October of
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty two, he was in the hospital experiencing arm numbness,
Speaker 1: leg paralysis, and other symptoms consistent with severe arsenic poisoning.
Speaker 1: So while he was in the hospital, Tilly's husband recalled
Speaker 1: that his food had tasted strangely lately, and here's one
Speaker 1: big red flag. He remembered the dog dying after eating
Speaker 1: scraps of food till he had cooked. Her husband also
Speaker 1: stated he'd planned to press charges against her and till
Speaker 1: he kissed him. Such a strange dynamic at play, But
Speaker 1: it was not poisoning Joseph that she went on trial for.
Speaker 1: While Tilly was arrested initially for the attempted murder of
Speaker 1: Joseph Klemick, who would survive her poison his hand. After
Speaker 1: an investigation into the deaths of her previous husbands. The
Speaker 1: crime Tilly was eventually tried for was the murder of Frank,
Speaker 1: her third husband, but even as she was taken in,
Speaker 1: she appeared completely indifferent to the whole situation. It is
Speaker 1: said that she told the arresting officer, who was Lieutenant
Speaker 1: William Malone, the next one I want to cook dinner
Speaker 1: for is you? You made all my trouble. After eighteen
Speaker 1: hours of interrogation, Tilly confessed to her crimes, admitting to
Speaker 1: mixing rat poison into her victim's food and drink note plural.
Speaker 1: It's interesting, right, Like eighteen hours of interrogation is considered extreme,
Speaker 1: it is, and she just gives it all up. Then
Speaker 1: there's that whole thing of like is this a coerced
Speaker 1: confession at that point? But her later behavior makes it
Speaker 1: seem like she's pretty down with this information being one
Speaker 1: true and part of public records. Yeah, she's a badass.
Speaker 1: Just two grains of arsenic is enough to kill almost anyone,
Speaker 1: and as much as eight grains were found in Frank's organs,
Speaker 1: so enough to kill four people. Authorities decided to exhume
Speaker 1: Tillie's other husbands and found their stomachs each contained lethal
Speaker 1: doses of arsenic, and although evidence existed to convict her
Speaker 1: of as many as twenty murders by arsenic, only one
Speaker 1: charge resulted in a conviction. Although she was not the
Speaker 1: only woman and wife in her community to be arrested
Speaker 1: for suspicion of poisoning, she was the only one of
Speaker 1: them who was sentenced. Yeah. Remember how we mentioned her
Speaker 1: cousin earlier. Yeah. Authorities went on to investigate a possible
Speaker 1: poison ring in the Little Poland neighborhood, arresting other local
Speaker 1: women in what the assistant state attorney at the time
Speaker 1: that was, a man named William McLaughlin called quote the
Speaker 1: most astonishing wholesale poisoning plot uncovered. He wanted the death
Speaker 1: penalty for Tilly, but without better evidence, the other women
Speaker 1: who had been rounded up just had to be released.
Speaker 1: As Tillie's story unfurls, it becomes apparent that it wasn't
Speaker 1: just husbands that she poisoned. She played fast and loose
Speaker 1: with rough on rats, poisoning people who irritated her and
Speaker 1: dogs who barked too much. In the neighborhood. Life was
Speaker 1: especially risky if you were one of Tillie's cousins. In
Speaker 1: nineteen twelve, Tillie's cousin Stanley Zaczuski died at the age
Speaker 1: of sixteen. Tillie, who was in her mid thirties at
Speaker 1: the time, tended on him while he was ill. Another cousin,
Speaker 1: Stanley's sister, Stell, died in nineteen thirteen. She was twenty
Speaker 1: three at the time, and again Tillie played the role
Speaker 1: of caregiver. After her husband Frank's death, Tillie started seeing
Speaker 1: a man named Joseph Grantkowski, like lovers before him. Joseph
Speaker 1: died in nineteen fourteen after jilting her and back to cousins.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifteen, Tillie's cousin Helen died at age fifteen.
Speaker 1: Another cousin, Nick Micko, became sick from arsenic poisoning, but
Speaker 1: he was lucky enough to actually recover. In nineteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: Tillie's cousin Rose died after attending Tillie and Frank's wedding party.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighteen, Tillie may have been involved in the
Speaker 1: poisoning of Woejecks Drummer, who was the husband of her
Speaker 1: cousin Nellie the same Nellie from she procured her rat poison.
Speaker 1: It turns out that Tillie wasn't only cooking arsenic into meals,
Speaker 1: she was also a confectioner. Twizzlers may make mouse happy,
Speaker 1: but you definitely want to skip Tillie's streets. So Stella Guskowski,
Speaker 1: sister of Tillie's former boyfriend Joseph, got sick after she
Speaker 1: ate a candy that was given to her by Tillie
Speaker 1: after the two women had an argument. Joseph died from
Speaker 1: tainted candy as well. Rose Split had also stayed and
Speaker 1: Tillie gave her arsenic confused candies after Joseph Klink talked
Speaker 1: to her. So jealous, Tillie was willing to go after
Speaker 1: innocent women who her husband even dared to converse with.
Speaker 1: So let's keep going because we're only about halfway through
Speaker 1: the body count. There was also a woman named Bessie
Speaker 1: Kopzick's sister in law of Tilly's husband Frank, who fell
Speaker 1: sick after eating Tillie's cooking, but Bessie recovered. Children, primarily relatives,
Speaker 1: were also on Tillie's hit list. At least four children
Speaker 1: in Tillie's sphere were poisoned between nineteen seventeen nineteen eighteen,
Speaker 1: Dorothy Spara died at age two. Twins Sophie and Ben's
Speaker 1: Strummer also died. John Strummer was the only one to recover.
Speaker 1: Lillian's drummer, who was in her early teens, lived at
Speaker 1: Tillie's home for a year when she became deathly ill
Speaker 1: from the food and suffered heart trouble. So skip ahead
Speaker 1: just a few years to March nineteen twenty three and
Speaker 1: a man named Myers goes missing. Suspicious. Maybe he might
Speaker 1: have been one of Tillie's husband's, but he was more
Speaker 1: likely just a boyfriend. Records from this time, as we've mentioned,
Speaker 1: not always robust, and a lot of times people would
Speaker 1: just claim to be spouses without going through the paperwork,
Speaker 1: kind of like common law, but more like they were
Speaker 1: just like, well, we lived together, and we live as
Speaker 1: a married couple. Either way, the risk of dying was
Speaker 1: obviously considerably high for any of Tilly's paramours, legally wed
Speaker 1: or not. I don't think she cared about the paperwork,
Speaker 1: just the life insurance. At her trial, Tillie wore the
Speaker 1: black hat that she had made when her third husband,
Speaker 1: Frank had been on his deathbed. She had also warned
Speaker 1: it to his funeral as she had planned. Historically, in
Speaker 1: Chicago in the early twentieth century, women who were brought
Speaker 1: to trial for murder, which was usually murder of their husbands,
Speaker 1: were almost always acquitted. If a woman was unlucky enough
Speaker 1: to be convicted, she was generally going to be given
Speaker 1: an amazingly light sentence in comparison to men who had
Speaker 1: stood trial for murder, and it really helped your case.
Speaker 1: If you were very feminine, weeping a bit and flirting
Speaker 1: would always help. In the year's leading up to Tillie's trial,
Speaker 1: twenty eight women had been charged with murder in Cook County,
Speaker 1: where Chicago is located. Twenty four were acquitted. It is
Speaker 1: probably no coincidence that all twenty four of those women
Speaker 1: were considered conventionally attractive. Up to twenty eight, only four
Speaker 1: were found guilty, Hilda Axeland, who was not considered a meaty,
Speaker 1: Via Trepagnier, who was middle aged, Emma Simpson who was
Speaker 1: determined to be insane, and Dora Waterman, who also was
Speaker 1: not known for her looks. On the other hand, the
Speaker 1: well dressed, well groomed Cora or Fuen, who shot her
Speaker 1: boyfriend over his cheating, walked free. Tilly, though, did not
Speaker 1: have these advantages. She was nothing like skylish Belva Gartner
Speaker 1: and beautiful Beulah Annam, the killers who inspired the play Chicago.
Speaker 1: According to Genevieve Forbes, a crime reporter who covered the
Speaker 1: trial for the Chicago Tribune, Tilly was neither beautiful nor charming.
Speaker 1: She was described as a middle aged woman forty five
Speaker 1: who was squat quote unquoth, with a greasy complexion and
Speaker 1: a lumpy figure. Her dull brown hair was pulled back
Speaker 1: into a nod at the back of her head. Despite
Speaker 1: having lived in Chicago since she was just a little kid,
Speaker 1: she spoke only broken English, and it was reported that
Speaker 1: she growled, I shudder to think what Genevieve for During
Speaker 1: the proceedings, prosecutors read a list of twenty alleged victims
Speaker 1: of Tilly, pausing after each name to ask her did
Speaker 1: you kill this person? And each time she would reportedly shrug,
Speaker 1: responding to each of the simple yeah, I wish I
Speaker 1: could have bet. At this trial, the trial Jedge asked
Speaker 1: for something called a psychopathic lab report. According to the
Speaker 1: examining doctor, Tilly was a quote subnormal mentality with an
Speaker 1: intellect and I quote again no higher than that of
Speaker 1: an eleven year old child. As we just mentioned, she
Speaker 1: didn't really speak English especially well, so let's take these
Speaker 1: results with a grain of salt. And it was reported
Speaker 1: she was afflicted with dementia precox, a diagnosis today that
Speaker 1: would be schizophrenia. She was also described as a rattlesnake,
Speaker 1: as a heartless woman and to do to the murders
Speaker 1: around her. She got the nickname we mentioned earlier, Black Widow. Hi.
Speaker 1: It's Ali Wentworth, a middle aged woman with a lot
Speaker 1: of questions and a lot of answers I have pulled
Speaker 1: out of my tush as host of Go Ask Alli,
Speaker 1: my listeners want more, so we are digging in. It's real.
Speaker 1: It's honest, open and unexpected and sometimes amusing. Can you
Speaker 1: start with your infamous nineteen thousand dollars haircut? Yes, and
Speaker 1: this is a great story I feel about mothers and
Speaker 1: daughters with a dream and an empty bank account. Just
Speaker 1: a few of our fabulous guests this season are New
Speaker 1: York Times bestselling author Isabel Gillies, writer and Oprah's Favorite
Speaker 1: life coach, Martha Beck and former editor of People Magazine
Speaker 1: Jess Cagel. If we know intimate details about another person,
Speaker 1: then that person is socially important to us. Okay, so
Speaker 1: that's what you like to gossip about. Wait, what do
Speaker 1: you gussip about? All new episodes of Go ask Alli
Speaker 1: release every Thursday. Listen to Go Scalie on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, guys,
Speaker 1: Katie Lowe's here. You might know me as Quinn Perkins
Speaker 1: on Scandal. I am also the host of Katie's Crib.
Speaker 1: It's a podcast about all things parenthood. Katie's Crib is
Speaker 1: back with new episodes every Thursday. We have got an
Speaker 1: amazing lineup of guests. We have got the amazing Katerina Scorsone,
Speaker 1: who you might also know as doctor Amelia Shephard from
Speaker 1: Grey's Anatomy. She is talking about her three children. We've
Speaker 1: also got kat McPhee Foster. She just became a mom
Speaker 1: like two seconds ago. We just have a great hang
Speaker 1: sessh talking about all things new Mama. We are going
Speaker 1: to be covering everything from discipline to mom ring. Tune
Speaker 1: in as I bring on celebrities, experts, and even more
Speaker 1: guests to continue to help you get through parenthood one
Speaker 1: step at a time. Listen to Katie's crib on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. Because
Speaker 1: of the evidence beyond the single murder, investigators obtained permission
Speaker 1: to exoom the corpses of Tillie's dead husbands for arsenic
Speaker 1: toxicity testing. Newspaper headlines covering the trial featured headlines like
Speaker 1: three more bodies to be exhoomed in clemic case, and
Speaker 1: bodies of other relatives will be exhumed. All those cousins,
Speaker 1: all those cousins, all yeah, the children and dogs thing.
Speaker 1: I just obviously killing anybody as bad. But Tillie, though,
Speaker 1: stuck to a story that Frank had died of alcohol
Speaker 1: poisoning and that she had absolutely not killed her spouses.
Speaker 1: She said, quote, I loved them, they loved me. They
Speaker 1: just died, same as other people. She continued, I'm not
Speaker 1: responsible for that. I could not help if they wanted
Speaker 1: to die. Contrary to her statement during the trial, the
Speaker 1: coroner accusingly asserted, quote, there is no question that missus
Speaker 1: clinic poisoned everyone. She wanted to get out of the way.
Speaker 1: After the jury deliberated or just an hour and twenty minutes,
Speaker 1: Tilly was found guilty of the murder of her third husband,
Speaker 1: Frank Kopsick. In nineteen twenty three. Judge Marcus Kavanaugh sentenced
Speaker 1: her to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Speaker 1: That was the harshest sentence ever given to a woman
Speaker 1: in Chicago at that time. Four jurors thought she should
Speaker 1: be given the death penalty. At the time, no woman
Speaker 1: had ever been sentenced to death in the state of Illinois.
Speaker 1: The Chicago Tribune reporter Forbes called her gruesomely cruel and
Speaker 1: went on to say that Tilly is a spectator in
Speaker 1: her own drama. While on all accounts, Tilly is considered
Speaker 1: to have been friendly to the other prisoners, once she
Speaker 1: was incarcerated, she definitely did not want to talk about
Speaker 1: the poisonings. It has said that she would yell, quote,
Speaker 1: I didn't rob nobody, I didn't shoot nobody. I didn't
Speaker 1: poison nobody. I didn't everybody picks on me. Everybody makes
Speaker 1: eyes at me like they're going to eat me. Why
Speaker 1: do they make eyes like that. I tell the truth.
Speaker 1: Anything I did I did to myself, nobody else. She
Speaker 1: was incarcerated at the Illinois State Penitentiary at Juliet, with
Speaker 1: one stipulation. It said that while Tilly enjoyed the few
Speaker 1: food served to her in prison, the judge declared that
Speaker 1: she never be allowed to cook for her fellow inmates.
Speaker 1: After thirteen years of incarceration, she died on November twentieth,
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six. So Tilly clearly does seem to have
Speaker 1: had a certain detachment and a callousness about the crime
Speaker 1: she was found guilty of, and that cannot have helped
Speaker 1: her case. But we also can't disregard another significant influence
Speaker 1: in the outcome of her trial, which we briefly touched on. Now,
Speaker 1: you might hope something like physical appearance wouldn't matter today
Speaker 1: in the courtroom as it clearly did in Tillie's day.
Speaker 1: You might surprise to hear that the judge and jury
Speaker 1: can still be swayed by a pretty face. What we
Speaker 1: know from study upon study, is that most people, even
Speaker 1: without being conscious of it, consider physically attractive adults to
Speaker 1: be healthier, more intelligent, and to have better personalities than
Speaker 1: those who we are not considered as esthetically pleasing. In fact,
Speaker 1: in economics, there's a phenomenon known as the beauty premium,
Speaker 1: and on the opposite side of the spectrum there's what's
Speaker 1: called the ugliness penalty. But that's just not limited to economics,
Speaker 1: it's just how humans work with each other. In recent years,
Speaker 1: studies have also found that as humans, we generally consider
Speaker 1: attractive people in our society to just be better people,
Speaker 1: whether that's in the workplace, at school, in relationships, or
Speaker 1: in the courtroom where you would hope and expect to
Speaker 1: find impartiality. Studies in the last few decades have found
Speaker 1: that juries tend to be biased in the favor of
Speaker 1: good looking defendants. This can mean people considered to be
Speaker 1: attractive or not only found guilty less often, but that
Speaker 1: they also receive less severe sentences when they are found guilty.
Speaker 1: Unattractive however you define it, defendants, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: were more likely to be served with longer and harsher
Speaker 1: sentences in average of twenty two months longer in prison,
Speaker 1: and that's even today. So while Tilly we could never
Speaker 1: paint as a good guy in any of this, she
Speaker 1: definitely still was also a victim of this kind of
Speaker 1: weird bias that people won't even acknowledge that they have. Right.
Speaker 1: We feel that we're above it now, but we're not.
Speaker 1: We're clearly not. No. And the thing is, it's one
Speaker 1: of those things that's insidious, right like we all have it.
Speaker 1: We all have these biases. So you can't presume that,
Speaker 1: in recognizing that they exist, that you have overcome your
Speaker 1: own because it's hardwired almost in some ways, it's not
Speaker 1: really hardwired. You can relearn it, but it takes an
Speaker 1: awful lot of conscious effort, absolutely, and a constant conscious
Speaker 1: effort probably for the rest of your life. You're always
Speaker 1: practicing it. Yes, But in less downer talk, Hey, Maria,
Speaker 1: it's my favorite time of the show, cocktail hour. Yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: what's your Poison? Our time where we'd come up with
Speaker 1: a little something, something that will relate to the show
Speaker 1: in a fun way. And since we've been talking about
Speaker 1: Tillie and since she was a Polish immigrant, I wanted
Speaker 1: to do something in honor of her Polish heritage. So
Speaker 1: I squirreled around on the Internet for a while because
Speaker 1: I couldn't come up with anything on my own, and
Speaker 1: I discovered this recipe. It's called a few different things.
Speaker 1: The name that I enjoy is Polish Kiss. And what
Speaker 1: this is is Zubrowka vodka, which is a bison grass vodka.
Speaker 1: Did you say bison grass vodka? I did. That's interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's the grass that bison prefer,
Speaker 1: like fine bison everywhere. I don't swear by this grass.
Speaker 1: It's just I don't know. It has a blade of
Speaker 1: grass in the bottle. I also came across this drink
Speaker 1: called a Frisky Bison aka the Polish Kiss. So clearly
Speaker 1: so the Polish Kiss is The version that I found
Speaker 1: was one point five ounces of this bice and grass
Speaker 1: vodka and then five ounces of apple juice. And the
Speaker 1: way it was touted when I read about it was
Speaker 1: that it tastes just like apple pie. And does it?
Speaker 1: It does not, at least not the version I made. Now,
Speaker 1: let me back up the truck for a minute, because
Speaker 1: I don't want to blame the recipe maker. I but
Speaker 1: it's delicious, it's just not like apple pie. I think
Speaker 1: probably if you are making it with normal apple juice
Speaker 1: from the store, it probably does start to taste like
Speaker 1: apple pie. But I bought organic, unsweetened hippie apple juice
Speaker 1: to go with the vodka. I totally so what happened
Speaker 1: is that it tastes like you have just picked a
Speaker 1: fresh apple off of a tree and taken a bite
Speaker 1: of it. Because that vodka has that grassy flavor that
Speaker 1: makes it feel like a fresh plant based item. And
Speaker 1: it's absolutely beautiful. It's very crisp, sounds delicious. It's like
Speaker 1: it's a summer day cocktail. For sure. It was very delightful.
Speaker 1: I could see that she would probably drink that while
Speaker 1: she was waiting for her husband to die, like while
Speaker 1: she was knitting her hat. She's like, Oh, I just
Speaker 1: something refreshing to drink. While I will say this, I
Speaker 1: will say this, that cocktail vibes to me a little
Speaker 1: too fancy for her. I picture her as like a
Speaker 1: bear drink. It does seem a little fancy. And remember
Speaker 1: Chicago in the twenties, Probably not like I want fancy
Speaker 1: imported vodka. I doubt I would like the imported bison
Speaker 1: grass vodka from my homeland. Okay, probably didn't come up much,
Speaker 1: I guess though, And I guess now that is this
Speaker 1: week's What's Your Poison? And thank you for joining us
Speaker 1: again on Criminalia. If you would like to subscribe to
Speaker 1: the podcast, we would like you to do that. As well,
Speaker 1: and you can do that on the iHeartRadio app, at
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever it is you listen. Criminalia is
Speaker 1: a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, please visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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