Speaker 1: You're listening to American Shadows, a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. In the
Speaker 1: early eighteen hundreds, the port city of Baltimore had a problem.
Speaker 1: Early American industrialization, along with its prominent place on the
Speaker 1: Atlantic Ocean, had helped the city swell to a population
Speaker 1: of over forty thou Along with the overcrowding and lack
Speaker 1: of public sewers came serious health issues. Yellow fever, dysentery, typhus, smallpox, tuberculosis,
Speaker 1: and cholera outbreaks, just to name a few. A third
Speaker 1: of all newborn's never made it to childhood. Healthcare wasn't
Speaker 1: widely affordable or even available, and while there were a
Speaker 1: few doctors who had studied in prestigious overseas schools, the
Speaker 1: city's growing population needed not just more doctors, they did
Speaker 1: better trained ones. At the time, America had only four
Speaker 1: medical colleges, and none of them were in Baltimore. Recognizing
Speaker 1: this need, a small handful of doctors held classes in
Speaker 1: their homes. Becoming a doctor in the early eighteen hundreds
Speaker 1: also meant to learning how to be a surgeon, but
Speaker 1: students couldn't get a grasp on anatomy from drawings alone.
Speaker 1: That would be like learning to paint masterpieces from visiting
Speaker 1: a museum. It's a dark topic. But to become surgeons,
Speaker 1: students needed to practice, hopefully prior to operating on a
Speaker 1: live individual, and that meant working on cadavers. As you
Speaker 1: might imagine, doctors were a bit reluctant to keep decaying
Speaker 1: bodies in their homes. Dissolve this. Doctor John Beale Davidge
Speaker 1: had a small anatomical theater erected behind his house, which
Speaker 1: he paid for with his own money. Inside, students learned
Speaker 1: about human anatomy and practiced their budding surgical skill on
Speaker 1: the dead. Not all of their cadavers came from donations
Speaker 1: or John does, though, and while it was legal to
Speaker 1: use bodies of executed prisoners, there simply weren't enough to
Speaker 1: go around. As you might also imagine, executions didn't always
Speaker 1: happen when schools needed a new corpse. Adding to that,
Speaker 1: or talking about the early eighteen hundreds, they didn't have
Speaker 1: a way to keep bodies cold enough to last through semesters.
Speaker 1: The only viable solution was to raid graveyards. Naturally, neither
Speaker 1: surviving relatives nor the public at large were exactly fond
Speaker 1: of having the dead unearthed and dissected. Cutting up bodies
Speaker 1: was viewed by many as a desecration, which is another
Speaker 1: reason why most schools used executed prisoners. Even then, the
Speaker 1: public still cried out for decency, so after a trip
Speaker 1: to the gallows, the executed were given a proper burial
Speaker 1: in a potter's field, where body snatchers and medical students
Speaker 1: alike rated the graves under the cover of darkness. Everyone
Speaker 1: understood this and looked the other way, but schools still
Speaker 1: didn't have enough bodies to teach students. Something had to give.
Speaker 1: The poorest of graveyards were monitored for new study material.
Speaker 1: They were less likely to have night watchmen, and the
Speaker 1: pine boxes used by the poor were much easier to
Speaker 1: break into than the caskets at The wealthy had their
Speaker 1: loved ones interurred in, often unable to afford burial in
Speaker 1: certain graveyards, the Irish, Native Americans and free Black populations
Speaker 1: suffered the most robberies. While doctors and professors teaching at
Speaker 1: medical schools didn't always partake in or encourage such activities,
Speaker 1: like everyone from the top level lawmakers down to the
Speaker 1: funeral directors, they didn't ask too many questions, but necessary
Speaker 1: for medical students are not. The poor didn't take to
Speaker 1: Dr Davidge's methods of teaching, and on November twenty one,
Speaker 1: eighteen o seven, an angry mob burned the theater to
Speaker 1: the ground. Davage and other doctors took the matter up
Speaker 1: with the state and before long they want approval for
Speaker 1: a more secure and formal training facility. The University of
Speaker 1: Maryland School of Medicine was built and Davage became the
Speaker 1: school's first dean. Soon the school was one of the
Speaker 1: best in the country and boasted that their students had
Speaker 1: ample study material. While they didn't come right out and
Speaker 1: say it, everyone in the field understood exactly what that
Speaker 1: material was. As for body snatching, the soil conditions were
Speaker 1: better in Baltimore than the Midwest or the North, even
Speaker 1: in winter. Disease and death rates were high, and with
Speaker 1: the B and O Railroad, moving bodies to other cities
Speaker 1: was easy. Through the years, Baltimore has had several nicknames
Speaker 1: like Charms City and Crabtown, and the eighteen hundreds, though
Speaker 1: it had a darker name, Resurrection City. I'm Lauren Vogelbaum.
Speaker 1: Welcome to American shadows. He didn't have a fancy address.
Speaker 1: It was hardly an address at all. Frank, whose last
Speaker 1: name never made it into the history books, lived in
Speaker 1: an uncomfortably small room beneath the seats at the University
Speaker 1: of Maryland School of Medicine's lecture hall. Being a janitor
Speaker 1: wasn't what landed Frank and said history books though no.
Speaker 1: Aside from his custodial duties, Frank supplied the school with cadavers,
Speaker 1: and he was really good at this part of his job.
Speaker 1: Unlike a lot of body snatchers, he had a method.
Speaker 1: Frank paid close attention to funerals. He followed the procession
Speaker 1: and watched the services and internment. He noted the placement
Speaker 1: of everything, the casket, the height of the mound, even
Speaker 1: the flowers the mourners left behind. Then he'd leave and
Speaker 1: return after dark. He wasted little time getting the job done,
Speaker 1: digging a hole just large enough to smash open the
Speaker 1: head of the casket. After securing a rope to a
Speaker 1: butcher's meat hook, had run the hook through the jaw
Speaker 1: of the deceased, then haul the corpse from the casket
Speaker 1: as casually as if he had been fishing on a
Speaker 1: Saturday afternoon. Carefully, Frank would put everything back exactly as
Speaker 1: it had been before, stuffed the body into a sack,
Speaker 1: and stealthily returned to the school. Once inside, he had
Speaker 1: carked the cadaver through secret passageways to a holding area.
Speaker 1: Frank's methods worked so well that he went undetected even
Speaker 1: had he been caught. Maryland merely imposed fines for body snatching.
Speaker 1: Other states had stricter laws, including imprisonment. Still, most judges
Speaker 1: tended to look the other way, and the public knew it.
Speaker 1: Seventeen riots erupted over body snatching in America in the
Speaker 1: seventy years between seventeen eighty five and eighteen fifty five,
Speaker 1: and that's not even counting smaller incidents. Increasingly, states tried
Speaker 1: to appease the public by imposing more laws against stealing bodies,
Speaker 1: but with such a need for properly trained doctors, body
Speaker 1: snatching continued to rise. A conflict was brewing. A growing
Speaker 1: population continued to demand more and better trained doctors, but
Speaker 1: with fewer cadavers, competition among schools became fierce and prices
Speaker 1: of available cadavers rose. Not many students had the funds
Speaker 1: and the schools turned out fewer qualified doctors. It was
Speaker 1: a vicious circle, so body snatchers, the better ones like Frank,
Speaker 1: had to be careful. Between Baltimore's high death rate and
Speaker 1: Frank's methods, the university found they had a different issue
Speaker 1: than most schools. The city had a surplus of cadavers
Speaker 1: and began selling the access to other medical schools, shipping
Speaker 1: via the B and O Railroad. Not in coffins, though,
Speaker 1: because body snatching was illegal, so they're shipping methods were
Speaker 1: a bit unusual. Bodies were stuffed into barrels of cheap whiskey.
Speaker 1: The going price was fifty dollars for the bodies and
Speaker 1: thirty five cents a gallon for the whiskey. The alcohol
Speaker 1: not only helped well pickle the cadavers, but it also
Speaker 1: supplied seedy bars and other lesser establishments with liquor bearing
Speaker 1: an appropriate name, rot Gut. Frank the Janitor was effective
Speaker 1: and prolific, but he was hardly the city's best. That title,
Speaker 1: the Resurrection King of Baltimore, went to William Jansen. Unlike
Speaker 1: many of his colleagues across the country, Jansen seemed constantly intoxicated.
Speaker 1: Though Jansen used many aliases. Everyone knew who he was
Speaker 1: when he rolled into town, and not because of his
Speaker 1: drinking problem. It wasn't even his rather robust build on
Speaker 1: his five ft eight frame, nor the shock of black
Speaker 1: hair and the leather dark skin that everyone knew upon sight.
Speaker 1: It was his attire. See, he dressed the part as
Speaker 1: the most ghoulish of body snatchers, in a duster lank
Speaker 1: rubber coat, rubber boots, and thick gloves, all speckled with
Speaker 1: cemetery clay. But knowing who he was didn't mean he
Speaker 1: was arrested on site. There was still a need for
Speaker 1: cadavers in medical schools throughout the East Coast, after all,
Speaker 1: and there was also the matter of catching Jansen in
Speaker 1: the act. While he didn't exactly look the part of
Speaker 1: a king in stature or attire, the press found him
Speaker 1: to be just as interesting as Royalty, often writing about
Speaker 1: his exploits. Jansen was said to have raw instincts for
Speaker 1: his line of work and was happiest in the company
Speaker 1: of corpses. During one newspaper interview, he boldly told the
Speaker 1: reporter of his plans to snatch a body on Christmas
Speaker 1: Eve and deposit the corpse on the chief of Police's doorstep,
Speaker 1: all in the name of professional courtesy. William Jansen was
Speaker 1: a braggart, but he also proved an unreliable narrator, telling
Speaker 1: the press had been a medical student, did in Berlin
Speaker 1: or maybe it was Denmark. The facts always seemed a
Speaker 1: bit fluid. A little more was known about where he
Speaker 1: came from, though he did claim had immigrated from Denmark
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy seven. Liar and body snatcher aside, the
Speaker 1: press remained enamored. They often presented him as calculating and ghoulish,
Speaker 1: but also rather likable. He appeared calm and cool even
Speaker 1: under the riskiest and most difficult of circumstances, often cheerful.
Speaker 1: Jansen was the ghastly villain that the press and the
Speaker 1: public loved to hate. Frank the Janitor and William Jansen
Speaker 1: had similar methods. Did just the right sized hole, bash
Speaker 1: open the casket, and fish the cadaver out with a
Speaker 1: meat hook. Just like Frank, Jansen was very careful about
Speaker 1: scoping out the intended target and always made sure to
Speaker 1: clean up the area behind him. So what made Jansen
Speaker 1: the body snatching king in Resurrection City? The difference between
Speaker 1: the two was that Jansen didn't bother with Potter's fields
Speaker 1: or lower status cemeteries. By his own admission, he preferred
Speaker 1: what he called the high octane cemeteries of the wealthy.
Speaker 1: In a lot of ways, stealing corpses from the rich
Speaker 1: was like a jewel heist to him, and that got
Speaker 1: Jansen plenty of press. And so it was one cold
Speaker 1: winter night that Jansen set out with spade and hook
Speaker 1: in hand and a target on his mind. As it
Speaker 1: turned out, though, he wasn't the only one thinking about
Speaker 1: the recently departed Jane Smith, and snow wasn't the only
Speaker 1: thing about to fall. Elizabeth Joyner tossed and turned, unable
Speaker 1: to stop the men in her nightmare from unearthing her
Speaker 1: niece's body and carrying her away. When she awoke, she
Speaker 1: was certain it hadn't been just a dream. The wealthy
Speaker 1: and affluent Federal Hill family had buried her niece, Jane
Speaker 1: Smith that very day. Unable to shake her feeling of unease,
Speaker 1: she dressed and hurried to the prominent Baltimore cemetery at
Speaker 1: the corner of North Avenue and Gay Street. Everything looked
Speaker 1: as it had the day before, the earth still fresh
Speaker 1: atop the grave, site. Relief must have flooded her for
Speaker 1: that brief second before the sun sparkled brightly on something
Speaker 1: in the dirt, catching her eye. She knelt to retrieve
Speaker 1: the item, and the realization that followed had to be overwhelming.
Speaker 1: In her hands, she held her niece's cross, the very
Speaker 1: one that had been fastened around her neck when they
Speaker 1: had laid her to rest. The horror didn't stop there.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth noticed fresh dirt on her sister's grave nearby, and
Speaker 1: that just couldn't be. She had died six months ago.
Speaker 1: It seems the body snatchers had mistaken her sister's grave
Speaker 1: for her nieces and had now taken both mother and daughter. Naturally,
Speaker 1: the well to do family complained and loudly. The medical
Speaker 1: school assured the authorities that, to the best of their knowledge,
Speaker 1: they did not have either of the two women's bodies
Speaker 1: in their possession. Satisfied, the police left it at that
Speaker 1: until a mysterious postcard emerged with information about the crime.
Speaker 1: The note was simple. Two black men had taken Jane's
Speaker 1: body to the University of Maryland's Davage Hall, where she
Speaker 1: had already been dissected. There was more to the story
Speaker 1: than the notes stated, but the last part was true.
Speaker 1: For their dissection class, the students couldn't believe the condition
Speaker 1: of the cadaver who lay naked before them, her hair
Speaker 1: shorn from her scalp. The freckle faced young woman didn't
Speaker 1: resemble any corpse that had come from Potter's Field or
Speaker 1: the poorer class cemeteries. Later, one of the students remarked
Speaker 1: to the local paper that Jane's corpse exuded refinement. Jane's mother,
Speaker 1: who had been too far decayed for dissection, had been
Speaker 1: stripped of her flesh so her skeleton could be used
Speaker 1: for instruction. The thieves had indeed taken her by mistake,
Speaker 1: and after discovering their error, realized that reburying her would
Speaker 1: be too time consuming. The two men the postcard mentioned
Speaker 1: hadn't acted alone, though there had actually been four people involved,
Speaker 1: and one of them had reportedly been a professor. The
Speaker 1: word at the school was that a professor Jensen, said
Speaker 1: to be around forty five years old, had sold corpses
Speaker 1: to schools as far away as Atlanta and Saint Louis,
Speaker 1: often taking advanced orders for the winter. When shipping them,
Speaker 1: he would even label the bodies as pork or other
Speaker 1: food goods to avoid detection. Now, if you're thinking that
Speaker 1: Professor Jensen sounds a lot like the notorious body snatcher Jensen,
Speaker 1: you'd be right. The two men were one and the same,
Speaker 1: although he wasn't a professor at all, a records show
Speaker 1: him enlisted as a mere medical student. Police soon arrested Jansen,
Speaker 1: who oddly or perhaps brazenly hadn't tried to skip town
Speaker 1: or member. In the state of Maryland, body snatching was
Speaker 1: usually only punishable by a fine. That is, until the
Speaker 1: bodies from one of Baltimore's most prominent families had been stolen.
Speaker 1: Jansen and a white janitor named Emil Wrung, along with
Speaker 1: two black dissection room helpers, William Warren and Ezekiel Williams,
Speaker 1: were indicted by a grand jury. The school, though, stood
Speaker 1: by them. The current dean, Dr. L. McClain Tiffany not
Speaker 1: only bailed them out, but the university hired the state's
Speaker 1: best attorney for their defense, a man named John P. Poe.
Speaker 1: And Poe wasn't just any lawyer. He was on his
Speaker 1: way to becoming the district attorney. Oh and for anyone
Speaker 1: curious about his last name, it does indeed seem that
Speaker 1: He was a distant cousin to the famous writer Edgar
Speaker 1: Allan Poe. It's not clear what defense Poe used for
Speaker 1: his new clients, but Judge Campbell W. Pinkney soon called
Speaker 1: the men to court without a jury. He declared all
Speaker 1: the men innocent, adding that the only ever against them
Speaker 1: had been a guess, not hard fact, which wasn't enough
Speaker 1: to render a guilty verdict. It seems that even the
Speaker 1: Joiner and Smith families, as well off as they were,
Speaker 1: didn't have pockets deep enough to make a difference with
Speaker 1: top city officials. William Jansen, now a freeman, quickly left Baltimore.
Speaker 1: He would return, though with an even bolder theft than
Speaker 1: the last. As well known as his last body snatching
Speaker 1: heist had been, it paled to his next. William Jansen
Speaker 1: returned to Baltimore in the second week of January three.
Speaker 1: He made no attempt to disguise himself, though so everyone
Speaker 1: knew he had returned. Jansen hadn't been in the city
Speaker 1: a week before the Post alerted the public to his
Speaker 1: latest daring theft. On January twenty, the paper wrote that
Speaker 1: Jansen had been arrested. It started with the body of
Speaker 1: Charles Shaw, a nineteen year old black youth, found guilty
Speaker 1: and hanged for murdering his sister. Like everyone the state executed,
Speaker 1: Shaw was buried in a pine box in a potter's field. Young, healthy,
Speaker 1: and easily accessible, no one was surprised that Shaw's body
Speaker 1: was on everybody snatcher's list. Surprise came, and how fast
Speaker 1: and by whom. The grave diggers had barely thrown the
Speaker 1: last shovel of dirt onto Shaw's grave when Jansen, who
Speaker 1: preferred to call what he did resurrecting, arrived at the
Speaker 1: graveyard with the sun still shining. Jansen cleared a hole
Speaker 1: near the marker, cracked open the coffin, and hauled Shaw's
Speaker 1: body out of the grave in his usual fashion. Less
Speaker 1: than an hour later, Shaw's body lay in a sack
Speaker 1: headed toward the university's doorstep. One Post reporter wrote that
Speaker 1: no other man on earth would have had the nerve
Speaker 1: to steal a body with the sun shining. Of course,
Speaker 1: just as before, Jansen hadn't acted. A own accompanying him
Speaker 1: that day had been a Georgetown University physician, appropriately named
Speaker 1: doctor Krook. Together the two men carted Shaw's body to
Speaker 1: the university, where it was promptly auctioned off to several schools.
Speaker 1: It seems that Shaw was parceled out to a number
Speaker 1: of buyers, which wasn't entirely uncommon. As gruesome as that
Speaker 1: may sound, his head is sold for six dollars, while
Speaker 1: his arms and legs went for three dollars apiece. All told,
Speaker 1: Jansen's fee for services rendered an acquiring Shaw amounted to
Speaker 1: eighteen dollars, which Dr Krook, living up to his surname,
Speaker 1: refused to pay. As you might imagine, Jansen wasn't too
Speaker 1: happy about that. Having tied one on Saturday night, a
Speaker 1: still inebriated William Jansen decided to return to the university
Speaker 1: to claim what he was owed. Having found no one
Speaker 1: there and the building locked. It was Sunday, after all,
Speaker 1: Jansen proceeded to break down the door, cursing loudly all
Speaker 1: the while. A policeman on his beat noticed the commotion
Speaker 1: and arrested Jansen not for attempted robbery but for the profanity.
Speaker 1: Jansen spent that night in a jail cell to sleep
Speaker 1: off the alcohol, and was later released. But during his
Speaker 1: time in the cell, he had gotten an idea if
Speaker 1: Georgetown wouldn't pay him, he'd steal the body back and
Speaker 1: sell it to a more appreciative school. And so on
Speaker 1: Monday night, he traveled not to the university, but to
Speaker 1: the Washington Post. There he found two reporters, both of
Speaker 1: whom looked up from their desks when Jansen said, come
Speaker 1: and I'll show you where Shah's body is. The reporters,
Speaker 1: eager for such a newsworthy story, quickly followed Jansen to
Speaker 1: Georgetown's dissection room. This time, Jansen fished a key from
Speaker 1: his pocket and let them all inside. At least that
Speaker 1: was the reporter's account of the events. Without a key,
Speaker 1: they'd be guilty of breaking and entering after all. But
Speaker 1: regardless of how they entered, the three men stepped into
Speaker 1: the room, and there before them, on a table, they
Speaker 1: found Shaw, still intact. Whether it was the act of
Speaker 1: standing in a dissection room in the dead of night
Speaker 1: with a notorious body snatcher or the way Jansen tenderly
Speaker 1: stroked Shaw's arm, both men were driven by fear. Running
Speaker 1: from the room. Now alone, Jansen stole Shaw's body for
Speaker 1: the second time. Though he had walked to the university,
Speaker 1: he couldn't lug Shaw's body all the way to the
Speaker 1: next hospital, so he hailed a carriage for hire. The driver,
Speaker 1: a man named Mac, charged Jansen five dollars and some
Speaker 1: whiskey to take the resurrectionist and his quiet friend to
Speaker 1: freedoman hospital known today as Howard University. Highly intoxicated, though
Speaker 1: Mac stopped at Columbia University instead, so Jansen took the reins.
Speaker 1: The sun was just beginning to rise when they finally
Speaker 1: reached Freedman Hospital. Jansen left Mac with the carriage while
Speaker 1: he searched for someone willing to buy Shaw's cadaver. Things
Speaker 1: couldn't have gone more wrong, though, Mac, now a bit
Speaker 1: more sober, developed cold feet at the thought of carting
Speaker 1: a cadaver around town. Abandoning Jansen, he promptly headed to
Speaker 1: the Second Precinct, where he dropped off Shaw. It was
Speaker 1: one thing to take the body of an executed prisoner
Speaker 1: from Potter's Field, but Jansen's crime was a bit different.
Speaker 1: You see, there was a law against transporting bodies without
Speaker 1: a permit. When the police showed up at Jansen's doorstep,
Speaker 1: he welcomed them in, simply stating, I've been expecting you.
Speaker 1: After a search of the premises, the police found a
Speaker 1: lancet and syringe filled with arsenic, a well known tool
Speaker 1: of the trade for resurrectionists looking to preserve bodies as
Speaker 1: long as possible. But although he was arrested once more,
Speaker 1: Jensen somehow wasn't charged with the initial crime of illegally
Speaker 1: transporting a corpse. No, he was charged with malicious trespass
Speaker 1: for entering the dice section room. After finding him guilty
Speaker 1: three days later, Jansen went to prison, where he served
Speaker 1: a little less than a year for his crime. By
Speaker 1: the mid eighteen eighties, Jansen had moved on to another career,
Speaker 1: stand up comedy. Not finding his corpse routine very funny,
Speaker 1: he sought out other employment, and this time finding work
Speaker 1: is an attendant at an asylum. But although his career
Speaker 1: as the resurrection King was over, the press still loved him.
Speaker 1: On November six of eight seven, they reported on him again,
Speaker 1: The King of Ghouls is dead, the headline for the
Speaker 1: post read, and with all the sincerity of a eulogy.
Speaker 1: They added that Jansen, who had loved his work in
Speaker 1: supplying medical schools with much needed cadavers, had done so
Speaker 1: with an enthusiasm usually reserved for men in more honorable professions.
Speaker 1: It was a long and fitting send off, tastefully and
Speaker 1: respectfully written. As it turns out, though Jensen made the
Speaker 1: paper one last time. Today, downtown Baltimore is a busy place.
Speaker 1: It ranks thirty in America for the most populated city.
Speaker 1: Navigating downtown can be challenging with its bustling traffic and
Speaker 1: crowded one way streets. As one would hope with old
Speaker 1: historic cities, the buildings there are mostly older. In fact,
Speaker 1: over a third of them are listed with the National
Speaker 1: Register for Historic Districts, and like in any well storied city,
Speaker 1: it can be easy to overlook any given detail. For example,
Speaker 1: on a tree lined stretch of West Lombard Street, people
Speaker 1: at a bus stop awaiting their connection are probably unaware
Speaker 1: of went on inside three story building behind them, even
Speaker 1: though it's been there since eighteen twelve. Today the sign
Speaker 1: says University of Maryland School of Medicine. But the building
Speaker 1: was a key part of William Jansen's story. It's Davage Hall.
Speaker 1: The small article published on the Valentine's Day following Jansen's
Speaker 1: death was another easy to miss a bit of history.
Speaker 1: It was really nothing more than a blurb published by
Speaker 1: the police department advertising a sale of items that accumulated
Speaker 1: over the years. The advertisement read two spades and a
Speaker 1: hook used by Jansen, the body snatcher. The item sold quickly,
Speaker 1: fetching sixty five cents for the lot, oh and one
Speaker 1: more thing. At the time of his death, Jansen was
Speaker 1: apparently penniless and alone. There's no record of a proper burial,
Speaker 1: and there had been no one to claim his body.
Speaker 1: Since he had been broke. The state had had no
Speaker 1: funds for his burial either. As a pauper. It stands
Speaker 1: to reason that he might have been buried in a
Speaker 1: potter's field. Jansen had once said that if he could
Speaker 1: resurrect his own body for dissection, he would. Of course,
Speaker 1: despite the term resurrectionist, Jansen couldn't rise from his grave
Speaker 1: and find his way to the nearest teaching hospital. But
Speaker 1: in a twist of fate, I can't help but wonder
Speaker 1: if the undisputed resurrection king had found a way to
Speaker 1: do the next best thing. There's more to this story.
Speaker 1: Stick around after this brief sponsor break to hear all
Speaker 1: about it. People passing by the woman begging for change
Speaker 1: would never have known should come from a wealthy and
Speaker 1: respected family in eastern Maryland, While not much is written
Speaker 1: about her parents or the family dynamics, we do know
Speaker 1: that when Emily Brown's sister became a widow, Emily took
Speaker 1: a job as a dressmaker to help support the children. Later,
Speaker 1: after her brother died, Emily found relief from her sorrows
Speaker 1: in whiskey and opium, but it didn't work, and thanks
Speaker 1: to her addictions, she lost her job and resorted to
Speaker 1: begging to keep a roof over her head and food
Speaker 1: in her stomach. Her share of the rent was two
Speaker 1: dollars and fifty cents for a room and a cheap
Speaker 1: boarding house at Number three pig Alley, and sadly, when
Speaker 1: her addiction called, Emily spent her money on the fix
Speaker 1: instead of paying rent. After just six weeks, she owed
Speaker 1: fifteen dollars. Her landlady Mary Blockson, also lived at the
Speaker 1: boarding house, along with Mary's twenty eight year old son
Speaker 1: from a previous marriage, John Thomas Ross, and Mary's fiancee
Speaker 1: Anderson Perry. Perry, who was partially paralyzed, worked as an
Speaker 1: assistant janitor at the University of Maryland's School of Medicine.
Speaker 1: While at work, one day, Perry brought up his fiance's
Speaker 1: delinquent boarder to another janitor, Albert Hawkins. Hawkins offered a solution,
Speaker 1: had earned a bit of extra cash selling cadavers to
Speaker 1: the school, and maybe Emily Brown could help them earn more.
Speaker 1: Parry went home and ran the idea past Ross, and
Speaker 1: on December tenth, just five days before the wedding, the
Speaker 1: three men put the plan into action. Hawkins stood outside,
Speaker 1: acting as a lookout for Mary. She had been soft
Speaker 1: hearted enough continuing to let Emily stay without paying that
Speaker 1: they felt it best to keep her in the dark.
Speaker 1: It was a Friday night and Emily had been out
Speaker 1: begging that day. She arrived home and, suspecting nothing, went
Speaker 1: inside there Perry struck her in the head with a
Speaker 1: large brick. He left her bleeding on the floor and
Speaker 1: went outside to stand watch while Hawkins went in to
Speaker 1: finish the job. After stabbing Emily to ensure she was dead,
Speaker 1: the two men dragged her body into the backyard and
Speaker 1: tossed a mattress over it to conceal it. They waited
Speaker 1: until dark, then stuffed Emily's body into a bag. Hawkins
Speaker 1: went back to the university, telling the night janitor. Then
Speaker 1: a man outside wanted to borrow a wheelbarrow. When the
Speaker 1: request was refused, the men borrowed one from a place
Speaker 1: selling coal nearby. Raw returned to the university wheeling in
Speaker 1: Emily's body. When asked how he had come across the body,
Speaker 1: Ross claimed he had gotten it from a potter's field. Now,
Speaker 1: the night shift janitor, who had taken part in a
Speaker 1: few graveyard excursions of his own, may not have had
Speaker 1: a problem with the profession, but he was picky about
Speaker 1: how those bodies were acquired. Obviously, a fully clothed body
Speaker 1: that was still warm and more than a little bloody
Speaker 1: raised a few flags. Suspecting foul play, he notified Hiram Woods,
Speaker 1: the assistant anatomy professor, who in turn called upon doctor
Speaker 1: Herbert Harlan to examine the body. Confirming that the woman
Speaker 1: had indeed been murdered, Doctor Harlan contacted the police. When
Speaker 1: the authorities showed up at the boarding house, Perry confessed
Speaker 1: to the plan, but implicated Ross as the murderer. Ross, though,
Speaker 1: told the police that Perry and Hawkins had killed Emily
Speaker 1: Brown and that his only involvement had been to sell
Speaker 1: her corpse for fifteen dollars. The corner determined that not
Speaker 1: only had her skull been crushed, but that she had
Speaker 1: been repeatedly stabbed, and that her ribs had been broken.
Speaker 1: With the coroner's evidence and the testimony of the suspects,
Speaker 1: the jury took less than twenty minutes to find all
Speaker 1: three men guilty, although university employees Hawkins and Perry were
Speaker 1: set free. While awaiting his death sentence, the following September,
Speaker 1: Ross sent a poem had written to the Baltimore Sun.
Speaker 1: In it, he readily admitted to his part in the
Speaker 1: plot to kill Emily Brown and sell her corpse, but
Speaker 1: questioned the court and its verdict. Ross contended that in
Speaker 1: the land of liberty, how was it just that he
Speaker 1: alone paid the price for such a crime while the
Speaker 1: real killers walked free, As was so often the case,
Speaker 1: the university employees were not held accountable. And that night
Speaker 1: shift Janitor you might recognize his name from earlier in
Speaker 1: our story. He too had stood trial and was also
Speaker 1: found innocent, and he had been one of the men
Speaker 1: there that night with William Jansen during the theft of
Speaker 1: James Smith and her mother's bodies, none other than Email Wrong.
Speaker 1: American Shadows is hosted by Lauren Vogelbaum This episode was
Speaker 1: written by Michelle Muto with researcher Robin Miniter, and produced
Speaker 1: by Miranda Hawkins and Trevor Young, with executive producers Aaron Minky,
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. To learn more about the show,
Speaker 1: visit grim and mild dot com. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.