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Speaker 1: podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Laverne
Speaker 1: Cox and on my podcast, The Laverne Cox Show, we're
Speaker 1: ripping the band aid off. Trauma, resilience, dating, diet culture dating,
Speaker 1: white supremacy dating. Okay, I'm not gonna get explicit, but
Speaker 1: just because you're cute, like I'm not going you're gonna
Speaker 1: say yes, girl, and honey. We have a lot of
Speaker 1: fun along the way. You have a lot of lesbian
Speaker 1: fans who love your femininity and glamour and they just
Speaker 1: really really want you. 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: on 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 Gali. Season two
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Speaker 1: Go Ask Ally on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you
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Speaker 1: to Criminalia, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to Criminalia. I'm Mariach from 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 and criminals
Speaker 1: to understand them better, and in doing so, we're curious
Speaker 1: if we can find commonality with our modern world and
Speaker 1: our modern problems, and whether these crimes look different a
Speaker 1: little bit of distance on the timeline, and whether any
Speaker 1: of these perpetrators emerge as more sympathetic characters. This first
Speaker 1: season 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 she
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 Michelina 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, at 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 X baz of
Speaker 1: the meat industry in the US, The Jungle, in nineteen
Speaker 1: oh five, and while that led to the creation of
Speaker 1: the Meat Inspection Act in nineteen oh six, food safety
Speaker 1: legislation was still in its infancy. But if you were
Speaker 1: at a restaurant or a club or a hotel around
Speaker 1: the city, there were other dangers when it came to
Speaker 1: what you consumed at the table. In particular, wait staff
Speaker 1: were known to target patrons who didn't tip well. Not
Speaker 1: like the content of the chatter in Fight Club, although
Speaker 1: honestly maybe a little of that. They usually chose poisons
Speaker 1: and various other things you really don't want to be
Speaker 1: in your food, So remember always tip well. But moreover,
Speaker 1: it turns out that you couldn't really count on food
Speaker 1: safety at home either, at least if you lived with
Speaker 1: a Tilly Clinic. During the time that Chicago's most visible
Speaker 1: criminal element was organized crime, Tilly was quietly becoming the
Speaker 1: city's most prolific female serial killer. She'd allegedly killed between
Speaker 1: six and twenty people. Like we said, but that was
Speaker 1: all through arsenic poisoning. So we're gonna talk first just
Speaker 1: about what arsenic actually is. It is a naturally occurring
Speaker 1: element in the Earth's crust and in its raw state.
Speaker 1: As much as it has this instant conjuring of poison,
Speaker 1: it's not actually harmful the way it naturally exists. Arsenic
Speaker 1: only really becomes poisonous when it's converted into arsenic trioxide,
Speaker 1: which is better known as white arsenic. White arsenic not
Speaker 1: only is odorless, but it's tasteless, and it's white or
Speaker 1: transparent in form, so it's easily confused with sugar or flour.
Speaker 1: But it's highly toxic when it's inhaled into your lungs
Speaker 1: or when you ingest it. And it might surprise you
Speaker 1: that even white arsenic is actually fairly benign in relatively
Speaker 1: small amounts, because it is very lethal at higher doses.
Speaker 1: In fact, doctors have actually prescribed white arsenic through the
Speaker 1: years in its low dosage as a treatment for things
Speaker 1: like asthma, typhus, malaria, even menstrual cramps, and it continues
Speaker 1: to be administered intravenously as a chemotherapy for a specific
Speaker 1: type of leukemia. When arsenic is ingested, initially it causes
Speaker 1: symptoms such as abdominal pain, diarrhea that's often being accompanied
Speaker 1: by bleeding and vomiting. It's terrible. As the dose gets
Speaker 1: more and more lethal in the body, though, the symptoms
Speaker 1: also begin to include convulsions, cardiovascular problems, hair loss, liver
Speaker 1: and kidney problems, and even organ damage. So not a
Speaker 1: peaceful way to go. Definitely not sugar. No, and despite
Speaker 1: its potency, it has been used in the production of semiconductors.
Speaker 1: It's been used as wood preservative, and it's also sometimes
Speaker 1: found in pesticides. Manufacturers in the nineteenth century started using
Speaker 1: it for it's a green pigment in products like paint
Speaker 1: and wallpaper, fabrics, beauty products, and as food coloring. The
Speaker 1: list goes on because green is very beautiful color, so
Speaker 1: sometimes those products would actually make people sick, but at
Speaker 1: the time, no one was suspecting that the arsenic in
Speaker 1: them was the problem that was causing their ailment. In
Speaker 1: the early twentieth century, when Tilly was busy murdering people
Speaker 1: in her community, the average Americans medicine cabinet was stocked
Speaker 1: with all sorts of toxic things like radioactive radium for
Speaker 1: acne and mercury as a topical antiseptic for cuts and
Speaker 1: scrapes and burns. Morphine showed up in everyday products and
Speaker 1: everything from teething medications to cures for heroin addiction. From
Speaker 1: roughly the late eighteenth into the early twentieth century is
Speaker 1: considered to be the golden age of poisoners, and during
Speaker 1: 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 poisons by sniffing the contents
Speaker 1: of the person's stomach. Remember how we said arsenic was
Speaker 1: odorless though, Yeah, so you just sniff those contents for nothing.
Speaker 1: But it was also just unusual for a doctor or
Speaker 1: a coroner to suspect arsenic as a cause of death,
Speaker 1: mainly because the symptoms of arsenic poisoning that Maria just
Speaker 1: talked about diarrhea and vomiting and abdominal pain are so
Speaker 1: similar to a lot of other disorders. It's also really
Speaker 1: hard to place a poisoner at the scene of the murder.
Speaker 1: Dying can typically take hours or longer if you administered
Speaker 1: the poison gradually, such as with someone's meals, so the
Speaker 1: perpetrator could easily have a seemingly airtight alibi for their
Speaker 1: whereabouts because the window of time had such fuzzy edges.
Speaker 1: But it actually wouldn't be until the late nineteenth century
Speaker 1: that a chemist named James marsh would come up with
Speaker 1: a reliable chemical test for arsenic poisoning. Today, arsenic poisoning
Speaker 1: is treated with chelation therapy, which uses special drugs that
Speaker 1: bind to metal ions in your blood. So rough on
Speaker 1: Rats was the product that became popular in the late
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds. It was composed mainly of arsenic and a
Speaker 1: little black coal for masking the poison, and while i
Speaker 1: 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 your
Speaker 1: accounts 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 depths of neighborhood dogs, and she
Speaker 1: was surprisingly accurate, but it turns out she was just
Speaker 1: scheduling their depths. We're getting a little ahead of ourselves though,
Speaker 1: in the progression of Tilly's activities with rough On Rats.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna back up to eighteen ninety five. Hi,
Speaker 1: it's Laverne Cox and on my podcast, The Laverne Cox Show,
Speaker 1: we're ripping the band aid off. Trauma, resilient 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: on 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 Gali. Season two
Speaker 1: will 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 typically 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 listen 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 were 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: dicts you we just heard this sort of ripping sound. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's just 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 mckaywitz.
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 people's stories that get really
Speaker 1: muddy because their names do shift around in the historical record. Anyway,
Speaker 1: by all accounts this couple, Tilly and John were well
Speaker 1: liked in their community, and their marriage appeared by all
Speaker 1: accounts to be happy. Tilly made her life as a housekeeper,
Speaker 1: but it was also during this time that Tilly started
Speaker 1: telling neighbors about some visions that she was having. She was,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned before the break, an alleged psychic who
Speaker 1: was skilled specifically at predicting deaths. This included predicting the
Speaker 1: death of her own husband, John, who had left her
Speaker 1: a thousand dollars When he died in nineteen fourteen. The
Speaker 1: coroner's report listed his death as a result of heart trouble,
Speaker 1: nothing suspicious. There was no reason at the time to
Speaker 1: suspect that John had been poisoned by his wife. The
Speaker 1: nickname black widow, which is often given to women who
Speaker 1: kill their lovers in order to inherit their wealth, would
Speaker 1: eventually be bestowed upon Tilly, but not just yet. Here's
Speaker 1: a little more in detail on John's sudden end. Okay.
Speaker 1: In the beginning of nineteen fourteen, Tilly began telling friends
Speaker 1: and those in the community that she dreamed that John
Speaker 1: was ill. She expected he would be on his deathbed
Speaker 1: in just a few weeks, and when he died in
Speaker 1: January thirteenth that year, the cause of death was listed
Speaker 1: as heart trouble, and Tilly collected a thousand dollars in
Speaker 1: life insurance. I guess after nineteen years she just didn't
Speaker 1: want to gun it to twenty. She's like enough. After
Speaker 1: receiving that payout on John's life insurance policy, Tilly actually
Speaker 1: remarried pretty quickly. See now that's the thing. She remarried
Speaker 1: quickly often. And I always sort of wonder like if
Speaker 1: she would follow in love with someone new and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'll kill my husband and we'll start out fresh with
Speaker 1: like this new thousand dollars. It's just my own personal theory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there's merit to it. But her new husband,
Speaker 1: Joseph Raskowski, died just three months after they got married,
Speaker 1: and he happened to leave his widow twelve hundred dollars
Speaker 1: in cash and seven hundred twenty two dollars in insurance money.
Speaker 1: Not only did Tilly predict Joseph's death, she went on
Speaker 1: to predict the deaths of her third husband, although they
Speaker 1: may 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 in my own home. You got two inches to live.
Speaker 1: I don't know, right, it's like callous on a level
Speaker 1: that's hard to comprehend, right right. She also, in an
Speaker 1: act of both cruel and creative, knitted herself a morning
Speaker 1: hat as she sat by his bedside while he was dying.
Speaker 1: She even so far as to purchase a thirty dollars
Speaker 1: bargain coffin to keep in the basement of her house
Speaker 1: waiting for his death. That storage areatment was a little
Speaker 1: unsettling request made of her landlord, who began to be
Speaker 1: a little suspicious of Tilly after that came in. Frank
Speaker 1: did die on April twentieth, nineteen twenty one, and it
Speaker 1: is said that when it happened, Tillie played dance music
Speaker 1: in the room. The coroner listed Frank's cause of death
Speaker 1: as bronchial pneumonia. Tillie's poisonous predilections unnoticed. She once again
Speaker 1: collected on his life insurance, this time in the amount
Speaker 1: of six hundred seventy five dollars nearly as much as
Speaker 1: the last two. I know she's downgrading the insurance situation
Speaker 1: with each one. They're going faster now, you know. There's
Speaker 1: just not enough time to like build up to the thousand.
Speaker 1: That's another theory I have. It's interesting and grimly fun
Speaker 1: to note that Frank An Tillie's home at nine twenty
Speaker 1: four Winchester. It's a house in East Dillige in Chicago,
Speaker 1: shows up on the Old Fourth Square social networking site
Speaker 1: as Old Lady Tilly Climic's Haunted House. Even today, Tilly
Speaker 1: was still not arrested, though that didn't happen until after
Speaker 1: she botched an attempt at poisoning husband number five, that
Speaker 1: was Joseph Clemick. She and Joseph had gotten married in
Speaker 1: July of nineteen twenty one, again not long after Frank's demise,
Speaker 1: just a few and Clemmick is said to have been
Speaker 1: a relatively wealthy man, but Tilly did not like that.
Speaker 1: He also apparently had a wandering eye, and by October
Speaker 1: of nineteen twenty two he was in the hospital experiencing
Speaker 1: arm numbness, leg paralysis, and other symptoms consist with severe
Speaker 1: arsenic poisoning. So while he was in the hospital, Tillie's
Speaker 1: husband recalled that his food had tasted strangely lately, and
Speaker 1: here's one big red flag. He remembered, the dog dying
Speaker 1: after eating scraps of food till he had cooked. Her
Speaker 1: husband also stated he'd planned to press charges against her
Speaker 1: and till he kissed him. Such a strange dynamic at play.
Speaker 1: But it was not poisoning Joseph that she went on
Speaker 1: trial for. While Tilly was arrested initially for the attempted
Speaker 1: murder of Joseph Klemick, who would survive her poison his
Speaker 1: hand after an investigation into the deaths of her previous husbands,
Speaker 1: the crime Tilly was eventually tried for was the murder
Speaker 1: of Frank, her third husband, but even as she was
Speaker 1: taken in, she appeared completely indifferent to the whole situation.
Speaker 1: It is said that she told the arresting officer, who
Speaker 1: was Lieutenant William Malone, the next one I want to
Speaker 1: cook dinner for is you. You made all my trouble.
Speaker 1: After eighteen hours of interrogation, Tilly confessed her crimes, admitting
Speaker 1: to mixing rat poison into her victim's food and drink
Speaker 1: note plural. It's interesting, right, Like eighteen hours of interrogation
Speaker 1: is considered extreme, it is, and she just gives it
Speaker 1: all up. Then there's that whole thing of like is
Speaker 1: this a coerced confession at that point? But her later
Speaker 1: behavior makes it seem like she she's pretty down with
Speaker 1: this information being one true and part of public records. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's a badass. Just two grains of arsenic is enough
Speaker 1: to kill almost anyone, and as much as eight grains
Speaker 1: were found in Frank's organs, so enough to kill four people.
Speaker 1: Authorities decided to exoom Tillie's other husbands and found their
Speaker 1: stomachs each contained lethal doses of arsenic, and although evidence
Speaker 1: existed to convict her of as many as twenty murders
Speaker 1: by arsenic, only one charge resulted in a conviction. Although
Speaker 1: she was not the only woman and wife in her
Speaker 1: community to be arrested for suspicion of poisoning, she was
Speaker 1: the only one of them who was sentenced. Yeah. Remember
Speaker 1: how we mentioned her cousin earlier. Yeah. Authorities went on
Speaker 1: to investigate a possible poison ring in the Little Poland neighborhood,
Speaker 1: arresting other local women. In what the Assistant state Attorney
Speaker 1: at the time. That was A man named William McLaughlin
Speaker 1: called quote the most astonishing wholesale poisoning plot uncovered. He
Speaker 1: wanted the death penalty for Tilly, but without better evidence,
Speaker 1: the other women who had been rounded up just had
Speaker 1: to be released. As Tilly's story unfurls, it becomes apparent
Speaker 1: that it wasn't just husbands that she poisoned. She played
Speaker 1: fast and loose with rough on rats, poisoning people who
Speaker 1: irritated her and dogs who barked too much in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Life was especially risky if you were one of Tillie's cousins.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twelve, Tilly's cousin, Stanley Zaczuski, died at the
Speaker 1: age of sixteen. Tilly, who was in her mid thirties
Speaker 1: at the time, tended on him while he was ill.
Speaker 1: Their cousin, Stanley's sister, Stell, died in nineteen thirteen. She
Speaker 1: was twenty three at the time, and again Tillie played
Speaker 1: the role of caregiver. After her husband Frank's death, Tillie
Speaker 1: started seeing a man named Joseph Grandkowski, like lovers before him.
Speaker 1: Joseph died in nineteen fourteen after jilting her and back
Speaker 1: to cousins. In nineteen fifteen, Tillie's cousin Helen died at
Speaker 1: age fifteen. Another cousin, Nick Micko, became sick from arsenic poisoning,
Speaker 1: but 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 woejek Strummer, 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 in
Speaker 1: two meals, she was also a confectioner. Twizzlers may make
Speaker 1: mouse happy, but you definitely want to skip Tillie's streets.
Speaker 1: So Stella Guskowski, sister of Tillie's former boyfriend Joseph, got
Speaker 1: sick after she ate a candy that was given to
Speaker 1: her by Tillie after the two women had an argument.
Speaker 1: Joseph died from tainted candy as well. Rose, split had
Speaker 1: also stayed un Tillie gave her arsenic confused candies after
Speaker 1: Joseph Klinik talked to her. So a jealous Tillie was
Speaker 1: willing to go after innocent women who her husband even
Speaker 1: dared to converse with. So let's keep going because we're
Speaker 1: only about halfway through the body count. There was also
Speaker 1: a woman named Bessie Kupzick's sister in law of Tilly's
Speaker 1: husband Frank, who fell sick after eating Tillie's cooking, but
Speaker 1: Bessie recovered. Children, primarily relatives, were also on Tillie's hit list.
Speaker 1: At least four children in Tillie's sphere were poisoned between
Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen nineteen eighteen. Dorothy Spara died at age two.
Speaker 1: Twins Sophie and Ben Strummer also died. John Strummer was
Speaker 1: the only one to recover. Lillian's drummer, who was in
Speaker 1: her early teens, lived at Tillie's home for a year
Speaker 1: when she became deathly ill from the food and suffered
Speaker 1: heart trouble. So skip ahead just a few years to
Speaker 1: March nineteen twenty three, and a man named Myers goes missing.
Speaker 1: Suspicious Maybe he might have been one of Tilly's husbands,
Speaker 1: but he was more likely just a boyfriend. Records from
Speaker 1: this time, as we've mentioned, not always robust, and a
Speaker 1: lot of times people would just claim to be spouses
Speaker 1: without going through the paperwork, kind of like common law,
Speaker 1: but more like they were just like, well, we lived
Speaker 1: together and we live as a married couple. Either way,
Speaker 1: the risk of dying was obviously considerably high for any
Speaker 1: of Tilly's paramours, legally wed or not. I don't think
Speaker 1: she cared about the paperwork, just the life insurance. At
Speaker 1: her trial, Tillie wore the black hat that she had
Speaker 1: made when her third husband, Frank, had been on his deathbed.
Speaker 1: She had also warned it to his funeral as she
Speaker 1: had planned. Historically, in Chicago in the early twentieth century,
Speaker 1: women who were brought to trial for murder, which was
Speaker 1: usually murder of their husbands, were almost always acquitted. If
Speaker 1: a woman was unlucky enough to be convicted, she was
Speaker 1: generally going to be given an amazingly light sentence in
Speaker 1: comparison to men who had stood trial for murder, and
Speaker 1: it really helped your case. If you were very feminine,
Speaker 1: Weeping a bit and flirting would always help. In the
Speaker 1: years leading up to Tillie's trial, twenty eight women had
Speaker 1: been charged with murder in Cook County, where Chicago is located.
Speaker 1: Twenty four were acquitted. It is probably no coincidence that
Speaker 1: all twenty four of those women were considered conventionally attractive.
Speaker 1: Up to twenty eight. Only four were found guilty Hilda Axeland,
Speaker 1: who is not considered imady Vera trepagnier who was middle aged,
Speaker 1: Emma Simpson, who was determined to be insane, and Dora Waterman,
Speaker 1: who also was not known for her looks. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, who well dressed, well groomed Cora Orthuin, who
Speaker 1: shot her boyfriend over his cheating walked free. Tillie, though
Speaker 1: did not have these advantages. She was nothing like skylish
Speaker 1: Belva Gartner and beautiful Beulah Annam, the killers who inspired
Speaker 1: the play Chicago. According to Genevieve Forbes, a prime reporter
Speaker 1: who covered the trial for the Chicago Tribune, Tilly was
Speaker 1: neither beautiful nor charming. She was described as a middle
Speaker 1: aged woman forty five who was squat quote unquoted, with
Speaker 1: a greasy complexion and a lumpy figure. Her dull brown
Speaker 1: hair was pulled back into a nod at the back
Speaker 1: of her head. Despite having lived in Chicago since she
Speaker 1: was just a little kid. She spoke only broken English,
Speaker 1: and it was recorded that she growled, I shudder to
Speaker 1: think what genevieve for. During the proceedings, prosecutors read a
Speaker 1: list of twenty alleged victims of Tilly, pausing after each
Speaker 1: name to ask her did you kill this person? And
Speaker 1: each time she would reportedly shrug, responding to each of
Speaker 1: the simple yeah, I wish I could have bet. At
Speaker 1: this trial, the trial judge asked for something called a
Speaker 1: psychopathic lab report. According to the examining doctor, Tillie was
Speaker 1: a quote subnormal mentality with an intellect and I quote
Speaker 1: again no higher than that of an eleven year old child.
Speaker 1: As we just mentioned, she didn't really speak English especially well,
Speaker 1: so let's take these results with a grain of salt.
Speaker 1: It was reported she was afflicted with dementia precox, a
Speaker 1: diagnosis today that would be schizophrenia. She was also described
Speaker 1: as a rattlesnake, as a heartless woman, and due to
Speaker 1: the murders around her, she got the nickname we mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: Black Widow. Hi it's Ali Wentworth, a middle aged woman
Speaker 1: with a lot of questions and a lot of answers
Speaker 1: I pulled out of my tush as host of Go
Speaker 1: ask Ali, my listeners want more, So we are digging in.
Speaker 1: It's real, it's honest, open and unexpected and sometimes amusing.
Speaker 1: Can you start with your infamous nineteen thousand dollars haircut? Yes,
Speaker 1: and this is a great story I feel about mothers
Speaker 1: and daughters with a dream and an empty bank account.
Speaker 1: Just a few of our fabulous guests this season are
Speaker 1: New York Times bestselling author Isabel Gillies, writer and Oprah's
Speaker 1: Favorite Life coach Martha Beck, and former editor of People
Speaker 1: magazine 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 ask Ally on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, 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 exzoom 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 exoomed in clinic case and
Speaker 1: bodies of other relatives will be exhoomed. All those cousins,
Speaker 1: all those cousins, all the children, Yeah, the children and
Speaker 1: dogs thing. I just obviously, killing anybody is 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: Klak poisoned everyone she wanted to get out of the way.
Speaker 1: After the jury deliberated for 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 regard 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 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 received less severe sentences when they are found
Speaker 1: guilty unattractive, however you define it. Defendants, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: we're more likely to be served with longer and harsher sentences,
Speaker 1: an average of twenty two months longer in prison, and
Speaker 1: that's even today. So while Tilly we could never paint
Speaker 1: as a good guy in any of this, she definitely
Speaker 1: still was also a victim of this kind of weird
Speaker 1: 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 exists, 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 Tilly,
Speaker 1: and since she was a Polish immigrant, I wanted to
Speaker 1: do something in honor of her Polish heritage. So I
Speaker 1: squirreled around on the internet for a while because I
Speaker 1: couldn't come up with anything on my own, and I
Speaker 1: discovered this recipe. It's called a few different things. The
Speaker 1: name that I enjoy is Polish and what this is
Speaker 1: is Zubrowka vodka, which is a bison grass vodka. Did
Speaker 1: 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 five bison everywhere. I don't swear by this grass.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It has a blade of grass in
Speaker 1: the bottle. I also came across this drink called a
Speaker 1: Frisky Bison aka the Polish Kiss. So clearly so the
Speaker 1: Polish Kiss is the version that I found was one
Speaker 1: point five ounces of this bison grass vodka and then
Speaker 1: five ounces of apple juice. And the way it was
Speaker 1: touted when I read about it was that it tastes
Speaker 1: just like apple pie, and does it It does not,
Speaker 1: at least not the version I made. Now, let me
Speaker 1: back up the truck for a minute, because I don't
Speaker 1: want to blame the recipe maker. I but it's delicious.
Speaker 1: It's just not like apple pie. I think probably if
Speaker 1: you are making it with normal apple juice from the store,
Speaker 1: it probably does start to taste like apple pie. But
Speaker 1: I bought organic, unsweetened hippie apple juice to go with
Speaker 1: the legs. So what happened is that it tastes like
Speaker 1: you have just picked a fresh apple off of a
Speaker 1: tree and taken a bite of it. Because that vodka
Speaker 1: has that grassy flavor that makes it feel like a
Speaker 1: fresh plant based item. And it's absolutely beautiful. It's very crisp,
Speaker 1: sounds delicious. It's like it's a summer day cocktail. For sure.
Speaker 1: It was very delightful. I could see that she would
Speaker 1: probably drink that while she was waiting for her husband
Speaker 1: to die, Like while she was knitting her hat. She's like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I just something refreshing to drink. While I will say this,
Speaker 1: I will say this that cocktail vibes to me a
Speaker 1: little too fancy for her. I picture her as like
Speaker 1: a bear drink. It does seem a little fancy. And
Speaker 1: remember Chicago in the twenties. Probably not like I want
Speaker 1: fancy imported vodka. I doubt I would like the imported
Speaker 1: bison grass vodka from my homeland. Okay, probably didn't come
Speaker 1: up much. I guess noo, and I guess now. But
Speaker 1: that is this week's What's Your Poison? And thank you
Speaker 1: for joining us again on Criminalia. If you would like
Speaker 1: to subscribe to the podcast, we would like you to
Speaker 1: do that as well, and you can do that on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, at Apple Podcasts, or wherever it is
Speaker 1: you listen. Criminalia is a production of Shondaland Audio in
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