Speaker 1: Hey, listeners, I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, host of tenfold More
Speaker 1: Wicked and Buried Bones. Let me tell you about my
Speaker 1: new project. It's an audiobook original called The Ghost Club.
Speaker 1: The Ghost Club is about an exclusive dinner club started
Speaker 1: in the late eighteen hundreds. Some of the world's most
Speaker 1: important people gathered to tell real life ghost stories. We're
Speaker 1: talking about Charles Dickens, William Yates, Arthur Conan Doyle, and
Speaker 1: Harry Houdini. They investigated spiritual encounters, life after death, and
Speaker 1: fraudulent mediums. The chairman of the Ghost Club was Harry Price,
Speaker 1: the world's most successful ghost hunter. His most well known
Speaker 1: case was the Harrowing year he spent living in England's
Speaker 1: Borly Rectory. Did Harry Price uncover real ghosts or did
Speaker 1: he fake evidence of spirits or both? Listen as I
Speaker 1: tell you about the legends of the Ghost Club and
Speaker 1: the Borly Rectory, as well as my own experiences as
Speaker 1: a kid. The Ghost Club is available now wherever you
Speaker 1: get your audio books. This story contains adult content and language.
Speaker 1: Listener discretion is advised. Despite my better judgment, my twelve
Speaker 1: year old daughter joined me on this trip to New Orleans.
Speaker 1: I say that because she's not as interested in crime
Speaker 1: history as I am. She scares really easily. She doesn't
Speaker 1: like creepy things, and like my other kid, New Orleans
Speaker 1: might not be the place for her, but we'll see.
Speaker 1: We're on one of New orleans famous streetcars, writing the
Speaker 1: Saint Charles streetcar line. It's just a few blocks from
Speaker 1: Annie Crawford's former home on Chestnut Street. She rode the
Speaker 1: streetcar back and forth to work in nineteen ten. This
Speaker 1: seems like a fantastic way to travel, even if it's
Speaker 1: a little slow moving. But historian Terrence Fitzmorris says that
Speaker 1: when Annie Crawford wrote this line, streetcars were even more
Speaker 1: inefficient and very troublesome.
Speaker 2: Streetcars are iconic in New Orleans today, but in nineteen ten,
Speaker 2: they were real pain. They weren't as pretty, they weren't
Speaker 2: as well connected, and there were too many of them.
Speaker 2: There is gas and electricity and telephone to have been
Speaker 2: around for a long time in New Orleans. The average
Speaker 2: citizen is seeing a good deal of progress, and they've
Speaker 2: been introduced to a novelty that's coming in shortly and
Speaker 2: to further make New Orleans more congested, and that is
Speaker 2: the automobile. The streets are always congested. They were never
Speaker 2: made for automobiles, and it's a serious concern for the
Speaker 2: citizens of New Orleans.
Speaker 1: It sounds like walking was the most efficient way to
Speaker 1: travel throughout New Orleans in the early nineteen hundreds. The
Speaker 1: Crawfords used some form of transportation to get to work,
Speaker 1: the various methods available, but their church was just a
Speaker 1: few blocks away, so they walked and Sunday Mass was
Speaker 1: a highlight of their week. Saint Stephen's Catholic Church is incredible.
Speaker 1: It was designed in a German Gothic style, complete with
Speaker 1: imported stained glass. It's the second largest Catholic church in
Speaker 1: the city. Its six sided spire is more than two
Speaker 1: hundred feet high, and you could spot it from miles away.
Speaker 1: Saint Stephen's is on Napoleon Avenue, less than two blocks
Speaker 1: from Chestnut Street, where the Crawfords were, and for the family,
Speaker 1: there were few things more important than mass. I asked
Speaker 1: Terrence Fitzmorris about the Irish population in New Orleans at
Speaker 1: the turn of the century. I wanted to get a
Speaker 1: sense of the Crawford's community. How many Irish people are
Speaker 1: we talking about in nineteen ten nineteen eleven in New Orleans.
Speaker 2: Oh well, the number of Irish actually from Ireland is
Speaker 2: roughly about seventy five hundred, down from thirty thousand in
Speaker 2: eighteen sixty, but their descendants Irish Americans are numerous. Of course,
Speaker 2: the United States Census doesn't categorize you as an Irish American, right,
Speaker 2: just that if you're Irish, or you're German or Italian
Speaker 2: or Polish or Danish.
Speaker 1: Women in Irish American families were encouraged to marry early.
Speaker 1: If they weren't married, they remained with their parents, like
Speaker 1: Annie Crawford and her sisters did. Some might marry into
Speaker 1: their late teens or early twenties, but once a woman
Speaker 1: passed her late twenties, the families might fear that she
Speaker 1: would never find a husband. It would have been normal
Speaker 1: in an Irish American family if the girls had been unmarried,
Speaker 1: like Annie Crawford, to stay living in the house.
Speaker 2: I assume yes, indeed it would have.
Speaker 1: Yes, it would have been expected expected. Author Alan Gotro
Speaker 1: says that Annie didn't seem preoccupied with marrying, even though
Speaker 1: she had been labeled a certain derogatory term at age
Speaker 1: twenty eight spinster. I hate that word, and I hate
Speaker 1: old maid too. They were labels meant to shame women
Speaker 1: who chose not to marry or chose not to settle.
Speaker 1: It was also a sort of veiled threat. No man
Speaker 1: wanted a middle aged woman, they would say. Many Irish
Speaker 1: American families pressured their teenage daughters to find husbands, but
Speaker 1: the Crawfords didn't seem to do that, at least not
Speaker 1: with Annie.
Speaker 3: She did not have any gentleman callers, but I don't
Speaker 3: think she was concerned with that.
Speaker 1: And yet Annie's sisters complained that she criticized their suitors
Speaker 1: when they came knocking on the door. Maybe it was
Speaker 1: out of jealousy because she had none of her own,
Speaker 1: but I doubt it. I've been working to understand the
Speaker 1: arc of her life for this story by examining her
Speaker 1: actions throughout her whole life. I think she simply craved control,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't easy to control three young women and
Speaker 1: two parents. This push and pull created a lot of
Speaker 1: tension in the family. Annie wanted to regulate everyone.
Speaker 2: She determined what her sisters and her aunt and everyone
Speaker 2: else should do, and whether her sister should date or whatever.
Speaker 2: So it was a very dysfunctional family.
Speaker 1: Annie's niece in law, Cecil Leo, agrees. Even fifty years later,
Speaker 1: Annie Crawford was still trying to manage everyone in her family.
Speaker 1: When she lived with Cecil and Patrick, Annie focused only
Speaker 1: on her nephew, not his sisters, and certainly not his wife.
Speaker 4: She never looked at me, but she'd stare at Pat.
Speaker 4: Didn't take her eyes off of him. And it was
Speaker 4: like Mary and Kitty weren't even there either. It was
Speaker 4: just like Pat was the only one there, and she
Speaker 4: just stared at Pat. He certainly wasn't comfortable.
Speaker 1: Annie Crawford always seemed to be in her own world,
Speaker 1: and it made many people uncomfortable. Cecil simply tolerated her.
Speaker 4: I don't think I was avoiding her, but I just
Speaker 4: felt more comfortable, I think just being with Pat, and
Speaker 4: she didn't. She didn't seem to mind being by herself
Speaker 4: and everything. I remember one time I did ask her.
Speaker 4: I said, Nanny, I said, do you ever get lonesome
Speaker 4: being here all by yourself, you know, all day long,
Speaker 4: because I'd go meet Pat and everything. And she said no,
Speaker 4: that was all. She didn't get lonesome, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: never went anywhere.
Speaker 1: And Annie's defense. She was in her eighties by the
Speaker 1: time she lived with Cecil and Patrick. It might have
Speaker 1: been difficult for her to go places, But if Cecil
Speaker 1: had known what Annie Crawford was accused of, she might
Speaker 1: have been more wary and much more careful. It was
Speaker 1: June twenty fifth of nineteen ten, and Chestnut Street in
Speaker 1: Uptown New Orleans was quiet in the waning sunset. The
Speaker 1: street lamps glowed as the city's iconic live oaks created
Speaker 1: creepy shadows on the siding of the old Victorian houses.
Speaker 1: Lights flickered in the windows of the neighbors houses. Inside
Speaker 1: the Crawford home, a soft light from a nearby electric
Speaker 1: lamp hummed while Mary Agnes Crawford slept. The Crawfords had
Speaker 1: stored their gas lamps several years ago. As the daylight
Speaker 1: disappeared and the night crept in the family, physician doctor H. B.
Speaker 1: Gessner squinted at Mary Agnes in the light. Despite the
Speaker 1: lamp's radiance, it still wasn't easy to see anything in detail.
Speaker 1: Doctor Gessner had reviewed the thirty year old symptoms earlier
Speaker 1: in the day. She had come plained of a sensitivity
Speaker 1: to the light, her head ached, she was running a fever,
Speaker 1: She felt sick to her stomach, her neck was stiff
Speaker 1: and sore, and all of this came on very quickly.
Speaker 1: Mary Agnes had been fine yesterday at her job with
Speaker 1: the railway. It was Saturday, and Mary Agnes wasn't expected
Speaker 1: at work. Even though many people did go to their
Speaker 1: jobs on Saturdays, most folks in New Orleans had Sundays
Speaker 1: off to attend church services, but at the turn of
Speaker 1: the century, Saturdays were still considered part of the work week.
Speaker 1: Annie thought about her old job at the sanitarium. Her
Speaker 1: sisters had wondered if she would look for a similar
Speaker 1: position at another hospital. That job had been a lot
Speaker 1: of responsibility. It would have been trying for anyone, but
Speaker 1: it didn't seem to bother Annie. From the time she
Speaker 1: started five years earlier, she had been praised for her
Speaker 1: work ethic, but when she was caught stealing narcotics, she
Speaker 1: was fired. Immediately Before the sanitarium, Annie had briefly been
Speaker 1: a telephone operator for the city for twelve dollars a month,
Speaker 1: but when she earned her job at the hospital as
Speaker 1: a clerk, she rose there quickly, earning fifty dollars a
Speaker 1: month before she was fired. Annie was reliable, something the
Speaker 1: hospital demanded of its employees, because the patients there really
Speaker 1: required patients. Her supervisor once called her one of his
Speaker 1: most trusted employees and a young woman committed to her
Speaker 1: work at the sanitarium. Some sanitariums were health spas for
Speaker 1: the rich who needed a mental break. Annie's place of
Speaker 1: work was a sanitarium and a teaching hospital that treated
Speaker 1: long term physical illnesses, so the patients were likely treated
Speaker 1: with care. But I've always associated sanitariums with draconian mental
Speaker 1: health facilities in the early nineteen hundreds. Those facilities often
Speaker 1: used archaic methods to treat patients, water torture, deadly procedures.
Speaker 1: They sounded like insaneess on Terence Fitzmorris talks about the
Speaker 1: types of women who were admitted or taken involuntarily. Many
Speaker 1: of them were no different from Annie. They would have
Speaker 1: come from a similar socioeconomic background.
Speaker 2: So for women like Annie, her grandparents were born in Ireland.
Speaker 2: Her mother and father were both born in New Walleans.
Speaker 2: Her mother of French descent her father of Irish descent.
Speaker 2: There would have been little access for her to seek
Speaker 2: out mental health issues. She would really have to have
Speaker 2: been truly insane. Someone close to you would have to
Speaker 2: say that you were so incompetent you could unhandle your
Speaker 2: own personal duties and responsibilities to yourself.
Speaker 1: And you'd have to go through a court proceeding.
Speaker 2: And the judge would determine whether you were capable of
Speaker 2: handling your own problems, and if you were not, then
Speaker 2: he would sign you to an insane asylum where you
Speaker 2: would supposedly be treated.
Speaker 1: I know that a lot of the justifications used were
Speaker 1: actually excuses.
Speaker 2: There are advertisements in the newspapers about, you know, women
Speaker 2: being overly emotional and that they needed serious care. The
Speaker 2: advertisements that I've seen in the paper deal primarily with women,
Speaker 2: whether it's change of life, or it's childbirth, or any
Speaker 2: of these afflictions that women were prone to. The newspapers
Speaker 2: are complete with that. The men are considered, you know,
Speaker 2: if they are not manly enough, then their treatments that
Speaker 2: they can give you to make you more manly, you know,
Speaker 2: serums and massages and electrical shocks.
Speaker 1: And there was the belief that women were more prone
Speaker 1: to mental illness than men were.
Speaker 2: The sane asylum records that the city of New Orleans
Speaker 2: has points to a lot of women in those insane asylums.
Speaker 2: They were considered with the Freudian notion of being hysterical
Speaker 2: and thus the hysterectomy right and to end the hysterical
Speaker 2: female per personality. Women considered more emotional, less rational, given
Speaker 2: to fits of melancholy and depression.
Speaker 1: I know what asylums were like in eighteen hundreds. They
Speaker 1: gave patients bad treatments that many times killed those patients.
Speaker 1: Were there any improvements in the nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 2: Well, there was a this is the phrase that was used.
Speaker 2: It was the actual words that were used, a lunatic asylum,
Speaker 2: and people who had mental illness as opposed to depression
Speaker 2: and the light were treated in the same fashion as
Speaker 2: they had been treated before. They was considered a moral affliction,
Speaker 2: and so is more like a prison system for mental illness.
Speaker 1: What would happen to a woman with mental health issues
Speaker 1: in nineteen ten?
Speaker 2: So if she had gone into an asylum, she would
Speaker 2: have been treated just as an alcoholic was treated. Alcoholism
Speaker 2: was considered a psychological moral affliction, and that's what she
Speaker 2: would have been treated with.
Speaker 1: But you had said that the same starium where Annie
Speaker 1: worked was different than an asylum right well.
Speaker 2: The sanitarium that she worked for was more akin to
Speaker 2: a hospital, more like charity hospital than it was insane asylum.
Speaker 1: Until recently, Annie Crawford had what appeared to be a
Speaker 1: good life. She had a prestigious job at a respected hospital,
Speaker 1: and she came from a large family who all lived
Speaker 1: together in a relatively safe, working class area. Annie wasn't married,
Speaker 1: with children, or even dating, but she didn't seem to mind.
Speaker 1: She didn't have friends, but she didn't seem to mind
Speaker 1: that either. She was close to Emma, her older sister,
Speaker 1: so it seemed like she was capable of being close
Speaker 1: to people. But Annie kept to herself, and she kept
Speaker 1: a secret from her family. She never revealed why she
Speaker 1: was no longer at the sanitarium. She told them that
Speaker 1: she had resigned. She refused to admit that she had
Speaker 1: been stealing drugs. The sanitarium was always busy, so no
Speaker 1: one seemed to notice when it happened a few months ago.
Speaker 1: Annie would open the medicine cabinet at the dispensary and
Speaker 1: she would palm some small white pills in a bottle,
Speaker 1: very powerful small white pills, morphine it's an narcotic that
Speaker 1: can be a godsend for someone in agony, or a
Speaker 1: source of addiction for someone in pain, or for a
Speaker 1: murderer a weapon. How would Annie Crawford use her supply
Speaker 1: of morphine? I didn't know much about morphine until two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine when I got a morphine epidural injection
Speaker 1: when I was giving birth to my twin girls. I
Speaker 1: asked author Alan Gotrow about how morphine had been used
Speaker 1: in medicine throughout history.
Speaker 3: Morphine is named after Morpheus, god of sleep, and well,
Speaker 3: it is highly addictive. We see it in other synthetic
Speaker 3: forms like demarol, and after the Civil War there was
Speaker 3: a high at rate.
Speaker 1: We talked about those soldiers earlier Civil War veterans who
Speaker 1: suffered from painful wounds for the rest of their lives
Speaker 1: after they returned home, and how they became addicted to
Speaker 1: morphine because it made them feel better for a little while.
Speaker 1: Doctor Neil Bradbury talks a little bit more about that addiction.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so morphine is a depressant. Chemically, it depresses the
Speaker 5: brain activity. It causes sleepiness in reasonable levels, but in
Speaker 5: high levels it depresses the ability of the person to breathe.
Speaker 1: Someone who uses morphine will likely experience a feeling of euphoria,
Speaker 1: a warmth throughout their body that is unmatched and very
Speaker 1: dangerous if you don't understand the dosage, and if you
Speaker 1: measure incorrectly, the results can be deadly. Too much morphine
Speaker 1: can lead to a quiet death, like dozing off and
Speaker 1: never waking up.
Speaker 5: And so person who is given a morphine overdose will
Speaker 5: eventually slowly fall asleep and then stop breathing. It is
Speaker 5: one of the more or should I say it's one
Speaker 5: of the less dramatic ways of dying.
Speaker 1: The Civil War gave rise to hypodermic needles in America
Speaker 1: after physicians began using them on injured soldiers, but needles
Speaker 1: helped create the opioid epidemic in the late eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: Injecting the drug directly into your bloodstream brought on that
Speaker 1: euphoric feeling much faster than ingesting a pill, quicker results.
Speaker 1: Author and poison expert Deborah Blum says that morphine is
Speaker 1: so powerful that an injection can kill anyone very easily.
Speaker 1: But the morphine pills that Annie Crawford was stealing took
Speaker 1: longer to work than morphine injected with a hypodermic needle.
Speaker 6: It's most effectively injected, right. It's like rhysin is most
Speaker 6: effective if you inject it, if you swallow it or
Speaker 6: in halo, it's not a poisonous but you can swallow it, right.
Speaker 6: But medically you tend to inject it, and it's you know,
Speaker 6: a depress and a nervous system depressant basically, so you
Speaker 6: feel less pain, but it can also entirely shut down
Speaker 6: your nervous system.
Speaker 1: And kill you. That's not to say that morphine pills
Speaker 1: weren't deadly. They were. They just took longer to work.
Speaker 1: But it would be difficult for a poisoner to secretly
Speaker 1: inject someone with morphine, so for most of them, pills
Speaker 1: would have to do. And if those pills were given
Speaker 1: secretly to a victim, they might feel just a little
Speaker 1: bit sleepy at first. Then they might have light sensitivity
Speaker 1: or nausea, or a cracking headache or a sore neck.
Speaker 1: Sound familiar. These were all symptoms that Mary Agnes Crawford
Speaker 1: was experiencing. But these symptoms are associated with spinal meningitis too.
Speaker 1: That's what she was diagnosed with. If she didn't have
Speaker 1: spinal meningitis? Was Mary Agnes being poisoned, and if so why?
Speaker 1: We know that Annie Crawford had access to morphine at
Speaker 1: the sanitarium where she worked, and she had been fired
Speaker 1: the month before for stealing morphine pills, though no one
Speaker 1: in her family knew that. We also know that Annie
Speaker 1: was sneaky and cold and probably untrustworthy. But as Mary
Speaker 1: Agnes drifted toward a coma, no one suspected Annie of
Speaker 1: doing anything wrong, not even her suspicious aunt Mary, who
Speaker 1: lived nearby. Annie seemed just as concerned as everyone else
Speaker 1: about her sister's sudden illness. As she hovered around Mary
Speaker 1: Agnes's bedside. Doctor Gessner zipped his medicine bag and asked
Speaker 1: the family to keep him informed. There was little to
Speaker 1: be done now. If this had been spinal meningitis, then
Speaker 1: it could have come about in several different ways. It
Speaker 1: was likely bacterial, which was life threatening without emergency antibiotic treatment,
Speaker 1: but the trouble was that penicillin wasn't available until nineteen ten.
Speaker 1: It would have been unusual for the meningitis to be
Speaker 1: fungal or parasitic, and so hopefully it was viral, which
Speaker 1: was more common if what Mary Agnes had was viral,
Speaker 1: then she might recover with no treatment. All the Crawfords
Speaker 1: could do was pray and keep an eye on her.
Speaker 1: But then, a few days after the doctor's visit, Annie
Speaker 1: stopped in to check on Mary Agnes. She was cold,
Speaker 1: her eyes were closed, her body was still. Mary Agnes Crawford,
Speaker 1: at age thirty, was dead. Gertrude and Elise and their
Speaker 1: parents seemed to all be in disbelief. One of their
Speaker 1: most beloved family members was gone. Doctor Gesner returned to
Speaker 1: the house and offered his final diagnosis. Yes, it was
Speaker 1: certainly meningitis, slightly bacterial. Up to ninety percent of those
Speaker 1: cases were fatal in the early nineteen hundreds. The Crawfords
Speaker 1: were devastated over the young woman's death. Emma and Walter
Speaker 1: Crawford mourned their daughter. Mary Agnes's sisters, Gertrude, Emma, and
Speaker 1: Elise wept. Alise seemed to take it the hardest. Elise
Speaker 1: was heartbroken over Mary Agnes's death. She sobbed. She had
Speaker 1: always seemed just slightly unstable. Alise had been dating a
Speaker 1: local grocer named Edward Zahn, but he never wanted to
Speaker 1: commit fully She had hoped for an engagement at some point,
Speaker 1: but it didn't seem likely. Other family members were concerned
Speaker 1: about her mental health. They feared at times that she
Speaker 1: might want to take her own life. Elise had kept
Speaker 1: secrets from them, secrets she was ashamed of. As Elise wept,
Speaker 1: Annie seemed emotionless. She watched Elise. They had never gotten along. Ever.
Speaker 1: Was Annie simply a reserved person who had trouble even
Speaker 1: feigning grief, Yes, according to most people who knew her.
Speaker 1: But was she a poisoner? Or did Mary Agnes simply
Speaker 1: die of natural causes. I've always been interested in poisoners,
Speaker 1: especially nineteen century poisoners. There were many cases when women
Speaker 1: bought arsenic over the counter in the form of rat poison.
Speaker 1: It was called rough on rats. They used it to
Speaker 1: murder their husbands, or their lovers, or their romantic rivals.
Speaker 1: The history of crime is littered with stories of women
Speaker 1: using poison to achieve very clear objectives. But their selection
Speaker 1: of weapons was finite because undetectable poisons were limited even
Speaker 1: in the eighteen hundreds. They're even more limited now thanks
Speaker 1: to modern toxicology. Even so, poisoners in the eighteen hundreds
Speaker 1: did have some options. Historically, symptoms of arsenic poisoning had
Speaker 1: been difficult for police to spot because they often mimicked
Speaker 1: other gastro intestinal issues like cramping or vomiting. But by
Speaker 1: the late nineteenth century, pathologists were catching on and investigators
Speaker 1: began watching for signs of arsenic Author Deborah Blum says
Speaker 1: that the twentieth century poisoner had options beyond just arsenic,
Speaker 1: unlike the nineteenth century poisoner, and these were options that
Speaker 1: allowed them to murder with ease.
Speaker 6: So I'm a poisoner and I'm going to plan ahead.
Speaker 6: I'm going to sound really creepy when I'm walking through this,
Speaker 6: I expect. But if you're a poisoner that one of
Speaker 6: your primary objectives is to get away with it, you're
Speaker 6: not making a statement killing, right. There are killings that
Speaker 6: happen because people are sending a message. They're not trying
Speaker 6: to make things hard on themselves. Since so the early
Speaker 6: twentieth century is a time period where a lot of
Speaker 6: really great homicidal poisons are at hand.
Speaker 1: So when you're a poisoner, you're actually trying to slip
Speaker 1: away and to get away with something. You're not trying
Speaker 1: to send a message with this type of murder.
Speaker 6: That's not what you do as a poisoner. You're figuring
Speaker 6: out how to eliminate a problem, a person, a threat,
Speaker 6: obstacle to your wealth, right, your rival. You're a poisoners,
Speaker 6: you know, I have all kinds of grudges that go
Speaker 6: in play when they want to get rid of someone,
Speaker 6: or they're afraid. I've seen some of the poisoners that
Speaker 6: I've looked at called comfort killers. They kill for their
Speaker 6: personal comfort, right, And so you're I want to have
Speaker 6: a cushy life. You have the money, and I don't.
Speaker 6: I want to get rid of you, but I don't
Speaker 6: want to get caught. I want to enjoy the money.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: If you were an investigator in nineteen ten and you
Speaker 1: suspected that Annie Crawford were a poisoner, you would look
Speaker 1: for a motive. Did Annie see Mary Agnes as a
Speaker 1: romantic rival? Did she hate her enough to kill her
Speaker 1: for some reason? Was she working with someone else in
Speaker 1: the family who had a grudge against Mary Agnes? These
Speaker 1: were all logical questions. Let's take each one of them
Speaker 1: one by one. Mary Agnes didn't appear to be dating anyone,
Speaker 1: so the romantic rival query was a dead one. Annie
Speaker 1: might have disliked many people, but she didn't seem to
Speaker 1: hate anyone, including Mary Agnes. And the Copper family might
Speaker 1: have been dysfunctional, but there didn't seem to be any
Speaker 1: animosity except between Annie and her aunt Mary, unless there
Speaker 1: were secrets that we still don't know about, and there are.
Speaker 1: According to the doctor, Mary Agnes died of spinal meningitis,
Speaker 1: and that was certainly possible. The signs of spinal meningitis
Speaker 1: are a headache, a fever, and a stiff neck, all
Speaker 1: symptoms that Mary Agnes had. But these symptoms are also
Speaker 1: the same if she had been poisoned. If we eliminate
Speaker 1: all of the motives we mentioned before, what are we
Speaker 1: left with. This is where the story gets complicated. If
Speaker 1: Annie Crawford had been guilty of intentionally poisoning Mary Agnes,
Speaker 1: there are some other possible motives. Even though these motives
Speaker 1: are unlikely for this case, it's good to at least
Speaker 1: talk about them. In criminology, there's a category of killers
Speaker 1: called Angel of Mercy offenders. Many times these are people
Speaker 1: in the medical field who intentionally hurt or kill patients.
Speaker 1: But the strange thing is that the reasons they do
Speaker 1: it really vary. I asked doctor Neil Bradbury about some
Speaker 1: of those motives.
Speaker 5: I think there's also a part of it that some
Speaker 5: of the individuals are what would we would refer to
Speaker 5: as angels of mercy that see people in pain and
Speaker 5: decide that they should be the ones responsible for getting
Speaker 5: rid of the pain. And the only way you can
Speaker 5: really do that is by killing the individuals.
Speaker 1: But of course the patient's pain might not really exist.
Speaker 1: It could be a illusion created by the angel of mercy.
Speaker 1: Doctor Bradbury says that sometimes these types of killers simply
Speaker 1: have a God complex.
Speaker 5: I think part of it is experimentation. You learn about
Speaker 5: drugs and chemicals in your classes, and there's always a
Speaker 5: question of I wonder what this would really look like
Speaker 5: if it was used on someone. And there are other
Speaker 5: people that just feel that they have the power to
Speaker 5: have life and death in their hands and are able
Speaker 5: to just dispatch of someone a whim.
Speaker 1: Tell me about a case.
Speaker 5: One of the individuals that actually led to legislation was
Speaker 5: Charles Cullen, who was a nurse in New Jersey and
Speaker 5: he went through several hospitals in New Jersey killing people
Speaker 5: with dejoxin.
Speaker 1: What is that?
Speaker 5: Dejoxin is a drug that's used extensively for treating heart conditions.
Speaker 5: It's a very useful drug, but in the wrong amounts
Speaker 5: can lead to heart attack and death.
Speaker 1: How was he getting away with that?
Speaker 5: The interesting thing is that no one knew how he
Speaker 5: was killing people. And that's because when nurses and doctors
Speaker 5: give out drugs in hospitals, there is a machine that
Speaker 5: holds all the drugs. The pharmacists will load up the
Speaker 5: machine and the machine will be taken round the various
Speaker 5: hospital rooms, and then a nurse will type in what
Speaker 5: medication they want. Culin seemed to be giving out a
Speaker 5: lot of thilanol.
Speaker 1: Why would tailand all be interesting?
Speaker 5: Well, the interesting thing is that thilanol is the trade name.
Speaker 5: The chemical name is a sea to minifin, and a
Speaker 5: sea to Minifin was exactly in the same draw a
Speaker 5: to d that also held the jocks in. He was
Speaker 5: typing in, I want to see to minifin, going in
Speaker 5: to the drawer, pulling out de jocks in, injecting it
Speaker 5: into people and killing them.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 5: There were several opportunities to arrest Charles Cullen, but unfortunately
Speaker 5: the hospitals decided that it was better for them just
Speaker 5: to pass him on and allow him to resign and
Speaker 5: move on to different hospitals. No one wanted to take responsibility.
Speaker 5: There was actually a legislation that was called Cullen's Law
Speaker 5: that required hospitals to report to the state agencies if
Speaker 5: they have any suspicions of nurses that may be doing
Speaker 5: harm to their patients.
Speaker 1: Later, we'll meet a former nurse who was addicted to
Speaker 1: drugs and she stole them from her patients. When her
Speaker 1: supervisors began to suspect she was stealing, she wasn't reported.
Speaker 1: She was passed around from facility to facility, just like
Speaker 1: Charles Cullen. The supervisor said, just as long as she
Speaker 1: doesn't work at my facil I don't care. An angel
Speaker 1: of mercy might kill patients out of a delusional idea
Speaker 1: that it's a mercy killing. Or they might enjoy experimenting
Speaker 1: with the drugs they use and they want to share
Speaker 1: that feeling with others. Or they might just be sadistic
Speaker 1: and relish murdering just for the sake of murdering. The
Speaker 1: sadistic poisoner is the one that might fit our society's
Speaker 1: traditional definition of a serial killer someone who murders at
Speaker 1: least three people with a cooling off period in between,
Speaker 1: and they do it for some kind of dysfunctional gratification.
Speaker 1: Author Mary Kay McBrayer wrote a book about one of
Speaker 1: those sadistic killers, Jane Tappin. Jolly Jane, as she was nicknamed,
Speaker 1: was a nurse in the late eighteen hundreds and early
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds who murdered at least twelve people using poison,
Speaker 1: and she confessed to killing at least a dozen more.
Speaker 1: She seemed to enjoy torturing them. Mary Jane explains more
Speaker 1: about Jane Tappin's motives for poisoning people and then watching
Speaker 1: them die.
Speaker 7: My thinking is, and this is also corroborated by her confession,
Speaker 7: is that she would dose people with morphine so they'd
Speaker 7: be unconscious. And then I think she overdosed someone on
Speaker 7: accident and tried to cover it up with atropine and
Speaker 7: did it and then was like, oh no, I can
Speaker 7: really do it. And then and we don't have to
Speaker 7: go too far into detail on this, but she got
Speaker 7: in the bed with people and derived sexual gratification from
Speaker 7: doing that to them as they were about to die,
Speaker 7: and then bring them back. I think it is just
Speaker 7: if no one else can recognize how smart I am,
Speaker 7: at least I'm going to prove it to myself like
Speaker 7: I know I can do it. It's a mad scientisty
Speaker 7: type of perversion, I think.
Speaker 1: So, let's suppose that Mary Agnes Crawford was actually poisoned
Speaker 1: and it could be proven. Are we certain that it
Speaker 1: was Annie who did it? Alan Gotrow isn't so sure yet.
Speaker 3: So maybe she thought there wasn't going to be any consequences.
Speaker 3: Maybe she thought nobody was going to find out. You know,
Speaker 3: it falls in line with you know, it's one of
Speaker 3: those strange cases in history where we just don't know
Speaker 3: a lot about the reasons why.
Speaker 1: If Mary Agnes were poisoned, there was no way to
Speaker 1: prove it without physical evidence, which would likely be found
Speaker 1: at an autopsy. And because Mary Agnes's doctor wasn't suspicious,
Speaker 1: he didn't alert the medical examiner, so there wouldn't be
Speaker 1: an autopsy. It sounds like we need more information, and
Speaker 1: perhaps we can learn more by tracking Annie's actions after
Speaker 1: her sister's death because they were suspicious. Mary Agnes died
Speaker 1: on a Saturday at the end of June in nineteen ten.
Speaker 1: The Crawford family all dressed in black, which indicated that
Speaker 1: they were in mourning. Their neighbors comforted Walter and Emma
Speaker 1: Crawford because of the loss of their daughter. Everyone stayed
Speaker 1: home on Monday, except for Annie. First thing that morning,
Speaker 1: Annie Crawford slipped out of her family's home on Chestnut Street.
Speaker 1: She walked to the Saint Charles street car that would
Speaker 1: take her near the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company on South
Speaker 1: Carrollton Avenue, about three miles away. She swung open the
Speaker 1: door of the one story red brick building and summoned
Speaker 1: an agent. As the man took notes, Annie explained her situation.
Speaker 1: Her older sister Mary Agnes had just unexpectedly died. It
Speaker 1: was a tragedy for her family, and they needed money
Speaker 1: to pay the funeral expenses. Funeral expenses in nineteen ten
Speaker 1: varied wildly, just like they do today. Despite having modest incomes,
Speaker 1: Each member of the Crawford family agreed to do something
Speaker 1: very practical. They all had life insurance policies. The funds
Speaker 1: would be used in cases just like this one to
Speaker 1: help make up the lost income from the dead family member.
Speaker 1: Annie Crawford wanted to know about her sister's policy. How
Speaker 1: much was it? She asked the Metropolitan Life insurance agent.
Speaker 1: Mary Agnes had a three hundred dollars life insurance policy.
Speaker 1: Three hundred dollars would be worth about nine thousand dollars today.
Speaker 1: The whole family used a nicola week system, which meant
Speaker 1: that they paid a nicola week, which is why the
Speaker 1: policy was quite small. Was three hundred dollars enough money
Speaker 1: to help make up Mary Agnes's income for the entire
Speaker 1: Crawford family the five people that were left, not for long?
Speaker 1: But would three hundred dollars benefit three people?
Speaker 3: Maybe?
Speaker 1: And it turns out that Annie Crawford and her two
Speaker 1: sisters were the only beneficiaries of Mary Agnes's insurance policy.
Speaker 1: The agent at the insurance company asked Annie for her
Speaker 1: sister's death certificate, and she handed him a piece of
Speaker 1: paper signed by the coroner that morning. Under cause of
Speaker 1: death it read acute meningitis. The agent approved the payout.
Speaker 1: Let's review the evidence. So far, Annie Crawford had access
Speaker 1: to some very powerful narcotics. Before she was fired from
Speaker 1: the hospital, she had been stealing morphine in large amounts.
Speaker 1: Annie collected the equivalent of almost nine thousand dollars from
Speaker 1: her sister's life insurance policy, but she would need to
Speaker 1: split it with her sisters. Would she really kill Mary
Speaker 1: Agnes over a few thousand dollars? But remember each of
Speaker 1: the Crawfords had life insurance policies. Each person who died
Speaker 1: left their savings behind and the funds from their own
Speaker 1: policy that could really add up. In June of nineteen ten,
Speaker 1: Mary Agnes was given a funeral mass at Saint Stephen
Speaker 1: Catholic Church. Maintenance workers at Saint Patrick's Cemetery shoveled mounds
Speaker 1: of dirt for Mary Agnes's grave, which was raised a
Speaker 1: few feet above the ground, so that resulted in a
Speaker 1: lot of dirt. Annie Crawford and her sisters all wore
Speaker 1: black paul bearers carried Mary Agnes's casket across the grass
Speaker 1: of Saint Patrick's yard for a sunny graveside ceremony where
Speaker 1: the priest recited prayers. At the end of the service,
Speaker 1: the mourners recited the Lord's Prayer. Even this modest service
Speaker 1: would have come into price. Mary Agnes died just one
Speaker 1: month before her thirty first birthday. She would be the
Speaker 1: first Crawford buried at the cemetery on City Park Avenue,
Speaker 1: at least the first in their immediate family, but she
Speaker 1: wouldn't be the last Crawford in a very short period
Speaker 1: of time. As we said earlier, it was possible that
Speaker 1: Mary Agnes Crawford did die of spinal meningitis. If Annie
Speaker 1: Crawford were a murderer, it seems obvious to me that
Speaker 1: her motive was to collect the life insurance money. The
Speaker 1: patriarch of the Crawford family, Walter Crawford, had never been
Speaker 1: a wealthy man. He was a carpenter for the railway,
Speaker 1: and his wife Emma ran the home and was there
Speaker 1: to greet him every day after work. Walter seemed pleasant enough,
Speaker 1: a devout Irish Catholic who had been married for decades.
Speaker 1: His daughters often cooked for him, especially Annie. Walter hadn't
Speaker 1: been particularly well off, but he was comfortable and generally
Speaker 1: healthy for a fifty eight year old man in nineteen ten.
Speaker 1: He never had major health concerns, so a few weeks
Speaker 1: after Mary Agnes's death, when Walter Crawford complained of stomach
Speaker 1: cramping and nausea, some of the same symptoms that she
Speaker 1: had complained of, it was understandably troubling. Walter's hips were aching.
Speaker 1: He was in agony. Walter clutched his stomach as his
Speaker 1: wife Emma hovered above him. Annie was nearby too. Walter's
Speaker 1: illness was worrisome. Was this another case of spinal meningitis
Speaker 1: or something even worse? Do you believe in coincidences? I do,
Speaker 1: but maybe not in this story. What did Ian Fleming
Speaker 1: write in his novel Goldfinger once is happenstance twice as coincidence,
Speaker 1: the third time is enemy action. On the next episode
Speaker 1: of tenfold war wicked on exactly right.
Speaker 2: So it was a very dysfunctional family, There's no question
Speaker 2: of that. And I found that the men were without
Speaker 2: really any say so in the matter. They took a
Speaker 2: back seat to everything.
Speaker 8: You know. The received wys was there was no such thing,
Speaker 8: as you know, female serial murder, And in doing research
Speaker 8: on an earlier book, I realized that there have been many,
Speaker 8: many female serial killers. They just tend to commit their
Speaker 8: crimes in different ways from male serial killers.
Speaker 3: Dealing with true crime or historical crime. As I'm sure
Speaker 3: you are you know, because you're experience dating, I would
Speaker 3: have to describe her as sociopathic, psychopathic, addictive, personality and
Speaker 3: someone that thought they saw themselves as somewhat maybe deep
Speaker 3: down inside, as an angel of mercy. But there was
Speaker 3: nothing that she did that was merciful.
Speaker 1: If you love a good, real ghost story, my new
Speaker 1: audiobook Original The Ghost Club is available for pre order
Speaker 1: now wherever audiobooks are sold. I can't wait to tell
Speaker 1: you the real story about the world's most famous ghost hunter,
Speaker 1: who was the head of the world's most famous ghost club,
Speaker 1: and how he investigated England's most famous haunted house. Please
Speaker 1: also check out my new book All That Is Wicked,
Speaker 1: which is based on the first season of Tenfold War Wicked.
Speaker 1: This has been an exactly right tenfold War. Media production
Speaker 1: producers Jason Whaling, Alexis Emirosi and Natalie Wrinn, 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
Speaker 1: on Instagram and Facebook at Tenfold War Wicked and on
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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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