Speaker 1: You're listening to American Shadows, a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Grimm and Mild from Air and Manky.
Speaker 2: The letters continued to show up, just as they always had.
Speaker 2: They arrived in all sizes and colors, perfumed and sealed
Speaker 2: with kisses. The male had always managed to follow Ted
Speaker 2: from place to place. The envelopes were a welcome window
Speaker 2: into another world, a vehicle for escapism for the amount
Speaker 2: of time it took his eyes to scan the pages.
Speaker 2: They were made up of gentle missives and sweet nothings,
Speaker 2: words of adoration and declarations of love, marriage proposals. They
Speaker 2: were one of the most meaningful parts of his long days.
Speaker 2: He felt good reading them powerful. Even those who saw
Speaker 2: him every day shook their head at this guy, they
Speaker 2: thought were they envious? Perhaps to them all of his adoration.
Speaker 2: This reverence was a horrifying idea, indeed, but Ted loved
Speaker 2: the attention. He had always been good at getting it.
Speaker 2: People were drawn to him by all accounts. He was
Speaker 2: a catch, a charismatic law school graduate, and a family
Speaker 2: man to boot. And Ted's face greased the paper's front
Speaker 2: pages and just about every magazine cover at the checkout line,
Speaker 2: even from the page, His eyes were arresting, his face handsome,
Speaker 2: But it was this same veneer of normalcy that chilled
Speaker 2: the American public. He inspired obsession, yes, but also fear
Speaker 2: he was a killer. Two hundred and fifty reporters showed
Speaker 2: out to broadcast the first televised American murder trial, his
Speaker 2: murder trial. But alongside these reporters were thrown of women
Speaker 2: clamoring for his attention. And after Ted Bundy was sentenced
Speaker 2: to die, his jailhouse confessions only made him more popular.
Speaker 2: The stream of letters turned into a cascade. The terror
Speaker 2: that Ted wrought across the nineteen seventies had been replaced
Speaker 2: with a different emotion, desire. He was inarguably one of
Speaker 2: the most popular inmates bound for the electric chair, but
Speaker 2: he wasn't alone in stirring passions. This wasn't a new phenomenon,
Speaker 2: but it was certainly noteworthy. For as long as people
Speaker 2: have been incarcerated, they've had fans on the outside. But why.
Speaker 2: Psychologists have long been fascinated by this question, and what
Speaker 2: is it about these prisoners, men and women alike that
Speaker 2: turned them from nightmare into fantasy? There are few hypotheses.
Speaker 2: They have to do with brain chemistry and the stories
Speaker 2: that we tell ourselves about love. Romantic love is made
Speaker 2: up of chemicals. It's a potent cocktail of oxytocin and
Speaker 2: dopamine that hijacks our nervous system and throws our reality
Speaker 2: into tumil effectively, when we fall in love, we're under
Speaker 2: the influence of drugs. Scientists have watched it light up
Speaker 2: brain scans of the newly in love and broken hearted alike.
Speaker 2: Some have even gone so far as to categorize love
Speaker 2: as a kind of mental illness. Plato famously called out
Speaker 2: all those years ago that love is madness. When we're
Speaker 2: falling in love, we're overcome with potential, with the idea
Speaker 2: of who someone is, or who we think they are,
Speaker 2: and who we might be with them. In the case
Speaker 2: of jail house romances, especially one that will end in
Speaker 2: the electric chair, there's little opportunity to move the relationship
Speaker 2: beyond the courtship phase. It can be drawn out, installed
Speaker 2: in this space for a very long time, longer than
Speaker 2: a general would be on the outside. The senses are heightened,
Speaker 2: Every exchange is loaded with meaning. Because this connection isn't
Speaker 2: rooted in a collection of shared experiences. The participants engage
Speaker 2: in elaborate world building. The relationship, then, is really a
Speaker 2: fiction of the participant's design. It's a complicated approach to
Speaker 2: finding love, but there are countless people every year who
Speaker 2: choose this avenue through any number of dating services catering
Speaker 2: to exactly this. And as history tells us, pining for
Speaker 2: forbidden love is the raw material from which some of
Speaker 2: history's greatest works have been born. But romantic love is
Speaker 2: fleeting in any lasting relationship. It's the shortest lived phase.
Speaker 2: The heat eventually cools as the mechanics of life set in.
Speaker 2: The shine tarnishes, the sparkle dulls. The prolonged exposure between
Speaker 2: people breeds famili filiarity. This familiarity breeds comfort, but it
Speaker 2: can also breed something else, contempt. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: disappointment in our quests for love. When the story that
Speaker 2: lays out in front of you is different than the
Speaker 2: one you had imagined, the one you had wished for,
Speaker 2: the results can be devastating or even deadly. I'm Lauren Vogelbaum.
Speaker 2: Welcome to American Shadows. Nanny was nursing another headache. She
Speaker 2: stood at her kitchen counter, rubbed her temples and folded
Speaker 2: her cake batter together. They had come to her ever
Speaker 2: since her childhood accident. They had been with her for
Speaker 2: decades now, plaguing her during her days and well into
Speaker 2: her nights. She didn't sleep well. Even still, she really
Speaker 2: tried hard to be a good mother, a good wife.
Speaker 2: But sometimes and it still perplexed her as to why
Speaker 2: it just wasn't enough. Maybe she thought she wasn't enough.
Speaker 2: Her ideas about romance had been engineered early on her blueprint.
Speaker 2: The way she had come to understand what real love
Speaker 2: was was through romance. Literature, novels, and magazine columns were
Speaker 2: her drugs of choice. For years, she had been studying
Speaker 2: these stories, searching for some real proximity to the love
Speaker 2: she dreamed of, the love that she hoped would someday
Speaker 2: be hers. It certainly wasn't modeled well by her parents,
Speaker 2: and Nanny's father was a fearsome man, quick to anger
Speaker 2: and didn't hesitate to show it. He was cruel to
Speaker 2: his wife and children and kept the reins on his
Speaker 2: family tight. It was surprising then that he allowed Nanny
Speaker 2: to marry Charlie Bragg's, a local Alabama boy, when she
Speaker 2: was fifteen. Her romance novels had set her expectations high
Speaker 2: for what this love would be, what shape it would take,
Speaker 2: what it would feel like, and who she would become,
Speaker 2: But the practicalities of loving someone weren't something Nanny had
Speaker 2: ever considered. The teenage couple started off happy, as most do,
Speaker 2: and in time started a family, But as the sparks
Speaker 2: began to fizzle out and the mundanities of everyday life
Speaker 2: began to set in, Nanny became agitated. Charlie's wandering eye
Speaker 2: had started to get the best of him, but Nanny
Speaker 2: was certainly no angel herself. Even with four children. She
Speaker 2: began to wander off for periods of time. She was
Speaker 2: searching for that state of limerence, that new relationship electricity
Speaker 2: that would make her feel special. The love that she
Speaker 2: had always yearned for never seemed to be an impossibility,
Speaker 2: if only she continued to make her own opportunities. Charley's mother,
Speaker 2: Peggy Jane, who lived with them for some time, loathed
Speaker 2: her daughter in law. Nanny had never met her high
Speaker 2: standards of care for her son, and less so when
Speaker 2: she began seeing other men. Peggy Jane saw how Nanny
Speaker 2: and Charley fought, but was still reluctant to admit her
Speaker 2: son's complicity in his wife's unhappiness. Things only got worse
Speaker 2: when two of their children died. Charlie would later say
Speaker 2: that they were sleeping only to suddenly be dead. No
Speaker 2: one could wake them. He claimed that their little bodies
Speaker 2: had both turned black by the time the undertaker came
Speaker 2: to get them. This horrified the household and shocked the community.
Speaker 2: What could have happened to two perfectly healthy children. Their
Speaker 2: health insurance policies covered some, but not much, of the
Speaker 2: expenses for the funerals and the upkeep of the rest
Speaker 2: of the young family. Charley didn't believe in such policies himself,
Speaker 2: but it seemed that Nanny did. At the funerals, Nanny
Speaker 2: cut a stunning figure in her mourning attire, a vision
Speaker 2: in black. She had always been beautiful, but in this
Speaker 2: moment of grief, standing calm surrounded by family, she was
Speaker 2: almost admirable. But Peggy Jane, who had long been privy
Speaker 2: to Nanny in her moods, wasn't buying any of it.
Speaker 2: She warned Charlie that something was amiss. This woman, who
Speaker 2: had played an iron fisted role in Nanny and Charlie's
Speaker 2: marriage began to shrink. Peggy Jane began to fear her
Speaker 2: own daughter in law and warned her son to be careful.
Speaker 2: Though Nanny was an excellent cook, maybe he should be
Speaker 2: careful about eating what she fed him. Charlie wouldn't have
Speaker 2: to be careful for long, though, as they soon divorced.
Speaker 2: Nanny had started going off further and for longer, and
Speaker 2: after eight years, they decided to permanently part ways. This
Speaker 2: was a choice Charlie later said that probably saved his life.
Speaker 2: Nanny reached for a baking dish and dusted it with
Speaker 2: flour into it, she poured the batter for one of
Speaker 2: her signature cakes, slices of which won her many hearts.
Speaker 2: In recent times, she had gotten into the habit of
Speaker 2: romancing with sweets. A way to a man's heart is
Speaker 2: through his stomach, they say, and she liked to include
Speaker 2: pretty paper wrapped baked goods in her correspondence. The mailman
Speaker 2: had recently begun delivering fat stacks of letters again now
Speaker 2: that she was back on the market. The Lonely Heart's
Speaker 2: personal ads and the men who she found there were
Speaker 2: never in short supply, and Nanny figured all she needed
Speaker 2: to do was keep looking for her soulmate. He was
Speaker 2: out there, and she would find him, no matter the cost.
Speaker 2: In nineteen twenty nine, Nanny received a letter signed by
Speaker 2: a man named Frank Harrelson. It said that he sent
Speaker 2: her a poem and a photo of himself, and she
Speaker 2: sent a photo back in kind. He replied by showing
Speaker 2: up at her doorstep. And what he found, it's believed,
Speaker 2: was better than he could have imagined. There was beautiful Nanny,
Speaker 2: a cherubic face with dimples on her cheeks, and she
Speaker 2: was sweet and gentle, a young, responsible mother looking for
Speaker 2: her match. He began sending chocolate and flowers, sweet notes,
Speaker 2: and big promises. Within two months, she and her girls
Speaker 2: had moved with him to a plot of land in Alabama,
Speaker 2: where Nanny intended to begin anew Nanny was utterly besotted.
Speaker 2: Here was the gentleman, a real prince charming. It seemed
Speaker 2: that she had always deserved. She had finally found him.
Speaker 2: If Charlie was a trial run, he had indeed prepared
Speaker 2: her for Frank. Frank's old habits didn't take long to
Speaker 2: catch up to him. It had had a lifelong affinity
Speaker 2: for the bottle a habit that came back full force
Speaker 2: after the two had become legally bound. His heavy drinking
Speaker 2: soon began to tarnish the luster of Nanny's perfect vision
Speaker 2: for herself. For her entire life, she had felt like
Speaker 2: an afterthought, prone to the company of neglectful and often
Speaker 2: abusive men. He would arrive home breath hot with whiskey
Speaker 2: and make slurring demands of her. He was hansy. He
Speaker 2: would prowl at all hours and not come home for days.
Speaker 2: She was living with a jekyline hide right in her
Speaker 2: own bed. So Nannie did what she knew. She threw
Speaker 2: herself into parenting her remaining children under her in Frank's roof.
Speaker 2: She was especially close to her daughter, Melvina, who was
Speaker 2: her first born. Nanny had big dreams for the girl,
Speaker 2: a life better than the one she had had, far
Speaker 2: beyond the limits of their small Alabama town, But it
Speaker 2: soon became clear that the apple didn't fall far from
Speaker 2: the tree, and Melvina began repeating her own mother's same mistakes.
Speaker 2: Melvina would eventually grow up to welcome not one, but
Speaker 2: two children. Her marriage didn't work out, so they came
Speaker 2: back to live with her mother. Nanny felt that she
Speaker 2: was flighty and disobedient, and careless with her life, and
Speaker 2: flagrantly dismissive of the love Nanny gave her. Nanny felt
Speaker 2: once again powerless. It's here that Nanny could have been
Speaker 2: the savior in her own story, had both of the
Speaker 2: children not died. The baby girl was the first to go,
Speaker 2: passing in the hospital shortly after her birth. The older child, Robert,
Speaker 2: died some months later. In her post birth haze, Melvina
Speaker 2: would later remember something so shocking she wouldn't dare say
Speaker 2: it out loud. It had all felt like one strange,
Speaker 2: bad dream, But in the fog of her memory, she
Speaker 2: recalled seeing her mother take a hat pin and push
Speaker 2: it through her newborn baby's skull. And after two year
Speaker 2: old Robert died suddenly some months later, Melvina's father, Frank,
Speaker 2: and his brother Ernest went to visit the child's grave.
Speaker 2: Ernest would recall that Frank pointed to the grave and said,
Speaker 2: I'll be next. He wasn't wrong. Two months later, Frank
Speaker 2: was dead, his body cold and contorted in his backyard.
Speaker 2: The police who came to investigate the scene quickly decided
Speaker 2: that his demise was attributed to some bad moonshine, which
Speaker 2: they could still smell on his body. At the funeral,
Speaker 2: Nanny's children stood far away from her what they suspected
Speaker 2: cast an even darker pall over the day, as Frank
Speaker 2: was lowered into the dirt, their mother, their sweet mother,
Speaker 2: was beginning to look less like a cherub and more
Speaker 2: like an angel of death. They decided that they would
Speaker 2: never again speak to her, out of sheer horror and
Speaker 2: fear that she would have no reason to spare their lives. Nanny,
Speaker 2: for her part, set about recovering from her grief rather quickly,
Speaker 2: a thanks to Frank's smart thinking early in their marriage.
Speaker 2: She now had a sizeable life insurance payout but allowed
Speaker 2: her to move and buy a new little cottage. It
Speaker 2: would be all her own, and for the first time
Speaker 2: in her life, she would be indentured to no one.
Speaker 2: But still something in her recoiled. She so desperately craved
Speaker 2: enmeshment with another person, even when her own history told
Speaker 2: her this was a very dangerous thing. So Nanny took
Speaker 2: to the rails, traveling all over to visit suitors who
Speaker 2: she met in the Lonely Heart's ads, but in all
Speaker 2: of this, Nanny couldn't escape her own darkness. She married
Speaker 2: for a third time in nineteen forty seven to a
Speaker 2: man named Arley, but failed to stay sated for long.
Speaker 2: During their marriage, her sister ended up dying after a
Speaker 2: short visit, as did Nannie's new mother in law. Then
Speaker 2: Arley died in nineteen fifty two. His passing was attributed
Speaker 2: to a coronary condition, but it looked suspiciously like the
Speaker 2: other deaths that Nanny had seen across the decades of
Speaker 2: her life. Not to be deterred, Nanny bought more stamps,
Speaker 2: signed more letters, licked more envelopes, and got back out
Speaker 2: on the road. When Richard Elmorton wrote to the Diamond
Speaker 2: Circle to remove his name from their list, he told
Speaker 2: them that thanks to them, he had met a sweet
Speaker 2: and wonderful woman. It was an exclusive club for romans seekers,
Speaker 2: one which could be opted into by paying top dollar,
Speaker 2: and Nanny thought that maybe this would result in her
Speaker 2: finding a top caliber mate, a high value man who
Speaker 2: would finally appreciate her. He was a tall, tan and
Speaker 2: handsome fellow with enough swagger and reputation around Emporia, Kansas
Speaker 2: to make tongues waggle, but when he found Nanny she
Speaker 2: would be the only one for him, at least for
Speaker 2: a little while. She moved there to be with him,
Speaker 2: reveling in his adoration and avalanche of gifts. But when
Speaker 2: Nanny discovered that she wasn't the only one receiving his
Speaker 2: gifts and his affections, the scales fell from her eyes
Speaker 2: once again. He became sick while working at a billiard's parlor,
Speaker 2: was sent home and died the following day, and their
Speaker 2: family dog got sick and their home burned. Morton's son
Speaker 2: became suspicious of all of this, but police investigations slim
Speaker 2: as they were turned up no evidence. Off to North Carolina,
Speaker 2: Nanny went to care for her mother. During her stay,
Speaker 2: she would correspond with Samuel L. Dass, who became her
Speaker 2: fifth and final husband, and joined him in Tulsa, Oklahoma,
Speaker 2: in the wake of her mother's death. He was a
Speaker 2: widower and a preacher, Having lost his entire family to
Speaker 2: a tornado, He now ministered to his Baptist flock and
Speaker 2: lived out similar principles in his home. He came to
Speaker 2: loathe Nanny's love of romance novels and considered them wicked things.
Speaker 2: Samuel proved himself to be a godly and domineering man.
Speaker 2: Her father simply cut from a different set of genetics.
Speaker 2: It seems that the blueprint of Nanny's childhood was inescapable.
Speaker 2: For across her years, she continued to inadvertently fall into
Speaker 2: the old cycles of her childhood. Trauma. History continued to
Speaker 2: repeat itself, and her home would prove to be unsafe
Speaker 2: for everyone involved. So Nanny would do what she had
Speaker 2: always done, dispose of this next person who stood in
Speaker 2: her way of finding what she was owed. She knew
Speaker 2: the recipe well at this point. A little rat poison
Speaker 2: went a long way, especially when administered over a long
Speaker 2: period of time. It had worked for all of her
Speaker 2: other husbands and tangential people in her orbit. So into
Speaker 2: the pot of stewed prunes she stirred the chemical, knowing
Speaker 2: full well that the sticky, earthy fruits would cover any
Speaker 2: traces of bitterness. It was one of his favorite foods
Speaker 2: and he ate them often. In time, Samuel began to
Speaker 2: suffer from nausea. He lost sixteen pounds and was sent
Speaker 2: to the hospital. It took him weeks to recover, but
Speaker 2: he was finally released and allowed to go home. Nanny
Speaker 2: had misjudged her dosage, but she wouldn't this time, and
Speaker 2: when Samuel arrived back home, she made a big show
Speaker 2: of cooking his favorite dinner. She finished the meal with
Speaker 2: strong cups of black coffee, another one of his favorites,
Speaker 2: and smiled. He was dead in two days. She already
Speaker 2: had another plan lined up. She had been corresponding with
Speaker 2: a dairy farmer in North Carolina and had even sent
Speaker 2: him one of her famous cakes. But Nanny Doss's time
Speaker 2: was running out. She had gotten away with literal murder
Speaker 2: for so long and across so many states that a
Speaker 2: cloud of suspicion was coalescing around her. Her big misstep,
Speaker 2: the fatal move if you will, happened when she was
Speaker 2: cornered at Samuel's funeral by his attending doctor. There was
Speaker 2: no way Samuel would have so suddenly died after leaving
Speaker 2: the hospital in such good shape. In this very public setting,
Speaker 2: with crying eyes all around, the good doctor pressured Nanny
Speaker 2: to allow him to perform an autopsy. Whatever it was
Speaker 2: he in sinnea, it might be deadly to the larger community.
Speaker 2: Nanny was trapped. She shifted her weight uncomfortably and looked
Speaker 2: at the faces around her. I want to find out
Speaker 2: what killed my husband, she said, because it might kill
Speaker 2: someone else. It didn't take long for Samuel's body to
Speaker 2: incriminate Nanny. Upon inspection, he had enough arsenic in his
Speaker 2: Organs quote to kill a horse. She was put under surveillance,
Speaker 2: in which time she began working as a living housekeeper
Speaker 2: with a family. In a strange twist, they knew of
Speaker 2: her alleged crimes and kept police abreast of her movements
Speaker 2: each day. The mother assured the papers that even though
Speaker 2: she knew what Nanny was accused of, and that yes,
Speaker 2: they were a bit nervous about eating her cooking, she
Speaker 2: didn't think the grandmotherly woman would harm any of her
Speaker 2: three children. She told the papers. All I can say
Speaker 2: about Nanny was that she was a good woman. In
Speaker 2: that time, more bodies were exhumed, and Nanny was finally
Speaker 2: brought in for questioning. After countless cigarettes, she calmly confessed
Speaker 2: to killing four husbands, but claimed no responsibility for any
Speaker 2: of the other deaths around her. According to one paper quote,
Speaker 2: she actually seemed to be enjoying her interrogation by police.
Speaker 2: Her eyes sparkled merrily. She blamed the impulse on a
Speaker 2: head injury she had received in childhood, and also blamed
Speaker 2: her victims. For Frank husband number two, she claimed to
Speaker 2: have poured rat poison into his whisky. He drank all
Speaker 2: the time and wasn't much of a loss, she said.
Speaker 2: As for Arlie, husband number three, she claimed she was
Speaker 2: jealous of how popular he was with other women and
Speaker 2: angry that he threw a wild party at their home
Speaker 2: while she was away. She was a bit remorseful that
Speaker 2: she had poisoned him because, according to her, he otherwise
Speaker 2: was quote a pretty good husband. When she was accused
Speaker 2: of killing Richard, husband number four, she initially denied having
Speaker 2: even known him, but when police showed her evidence of
Speaker 2: the small life insurance policies she had collected after his death,
Speaker 2: she came clean. I didn't want any one to know
Speaker 2: I had been married to a man that old, she explained,
Speaker 2: And Nanny told police that she hadn't liked him running
Speaker 2: around with other women and that he had even purchased
Speaker 2: an engagement ring for some one else. As for Samuel,
Speaker 2: she said, he was just mean to me. He denied
Speaker 2: her the simplest pleasures of life, and for this he
Speaker 2: had had to go Nanny denied killing any of her
Speaker 2: blood kin. She said, I dealt strictly with men, and
Speaker 2: when the time comes, I can justify every act. But
Speaker 2: this wasn't the case. When the bodies of her mother, sister,
Speaker 2: and grandson were exhumed, they were also found to be
Speaker 2: pumped full of arsenic. Nanny was spared the electric chair
Speaker 2: because the judge deemed her a quote mental defective. Her
Speaker 2: eyes sparkled, but looking closely enough, they seemed hollow. Her
Speaker 2: spontaneous giggling would ring a trifle too long, as she
Speaker 2: explained that she wished everyone could be nice and happy
Speaker 2: and kind. She told the newspapers that all of her
Speaker 2: husbands had failed her in some way, and that those
Speaker 2: failings were often denied by her family and her husband's families.
Speaker 2: In her search for connection, Nanny never felt anything but alone.
Speaker 2: In nineteen fifty four, she was interviewed on television. The
Speaker 2: newscasters suggested she'd take off her glasses and smile. He
Speaker 2: told her teasingly that you might get another husband if
Speaker 2: you look nice. Nanny giggled and replied, ain't that the
Speaker 2: dying truth? There's more to the story. Stick around After
Speaker 2: this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. By
Speaker 2: the light of the moon, Carl and Elena danced. A
Speaker 2: breeze came through the window and carried their two entwined
Speaker 2: bodies across the floor. Together they stepped and spun, with
Speaker 2: Carl leading. Of course, he was a gentleman, and he
Speaker 2: loved a good waltz. It was a peaceful night, a
Speaker 2: carefree one, even with the Florida heat hanging heavy and right.
Speaker 2: So Kata saying, and thunder rumbled across the coastline. The
Speaker 2: beads of sweat appeared on Carl's brow. He felt alive.
Speaker 2: He was in a good mood, as he almost always
Speaker 2: was when he was near his beloved. He adored Elena
Speaker 2: more than anyone he had ever met. After all of
Speaker 2: these years, the singsong cadence of her full name, Maria
Speaker 2: Elena Malagro the Oios still made his stomach flip. He
Speaker 2: had been married once before, but this was different. This
Speaker 2: was a love far bigger than him. He almost couldn't
Speaker 2: stand the magnitude of it, and it was all theirs.
Speaker 2: Carl Panzer had loved Elena for years, so many years.
Speaker 2: She was young when they first met in nineteen thirty,
Speaker 2: much younger than him, but he felt the electricity in
Speaker 2: the space between them. She reanimated his world, infusing it
Speaker 2: with technicolor and a verve in his spirit that had
Speaker 2: long been dormant. And she was beautiful. But she had
Speaker 2: gotten sick. It was tuberculosis, a bad case of it too.
Speaker 2: She tried everything. He tried everything, a blood testing, radiation,
Speaker 2: electroshock therapy. It all took a toll on her. Carl
Speaker 2: remembered those hard days and held her tighter. He could
Speaker 2: barely bring himself to think of them. Those times were
Speaker 2: so dark, so hopeless, so filled with fear. But life
Speaker 2: was different now, and he was grateful for that, and
Speaker 2: there was a levity in the air, and their home
Speaker 2: felt brighter. He kissed the top of her head and
Speaker 2: ran his fingers down her neck. It was rough and cold.
Speaker 2: You see. Elena's skin had started decomposing and falling off
Speaker 2: years ago, so Karl had replaced it with plaster. He
Speaker 2: had also harnessed her joints with piano wires and replaced
Speaker 2: her eyes with glass after her had rotted in their sockets.
Speaker 2: He made her a wig and stuffed her disemboweled body
Speaker 2: with rags Elena was dead and had been for years,
Speaker 2: but Carl had found a way for them to be together.
Speaker 2: Elena and her mother had first met him at a
Speaker 2: Key West hospital where she had gone to seek treatment.
Speaker 2: He wasn't a doctor, just a radiologist, but he insisted
Speaker 2: that he could help cure her. All the same, Elena
Speaker 2: and her family were struck by an overwhelming sense of unease.
Speaker 2: The sky was weird, but they were desperate, and Elena
Speaker 2: didn't want to die. The other thing Elena didn't want
Speaker 2: were Carl's romantic advances. She didn't want to date him,
Speaker 2: let alone marry him. She wanted nothing to do with
Speaker 2: him socially. At twenty years old, she was young enough
Speaker 2: to be his granddaughter, but he kept showering her with
Speaker 2: gifts and proposals, none of which Elena accepted. But when
Speaker 2: she grew weak, Carl saw an opportunity. He was adamant
Speaker 2: about being allowed to move into Elena's home to care
Speaker 2: for her. She resisted, but her family put their foot down.
Speaker 2: It was all just too much, and she was tired.
Speaker 2: Her body couldn't take it any more. After she died,
Speaker 2: Karl was pitched into mourning. He paid for her burial plot,
Speaker 2: and her headstone, he conveniently left off her last name,
Speaker 2: her husband's name, and put his own. Karl made sure
Speaker 2: to visit her grave each night, and it was there
Speaker 2: he'd say that he heard her singing to him and
Speaker 2: begging him to take her home. So two years after
Speaker 2: she was buried, on a night just like that, warm
Speaker 2: and bright one, he disintered her body, put her in
Speaker 2: a little wagon, and wheeled her away. And then he
Speaker 2: lived with her body for seven years, and turning her
Speaker 2: into a taxidermid doll, keeping her fresh with disinfectants and deodorizers.
Speaker 2: He brought her to the breakfast table, and he brought
Speaker 2: her to bed with him. But seven years after her death,
Speaker 2: Elena's sister Florinda, just couldn't take the rumors any longer.
Speaker 2: There were whispers around town about Karl, dreadful, ghoulish whispers,
Speaker 2: and about her sister. People insinuated things that chilled even
Speaker 2: in the light of the tropical sun. When Florinda confronted
Speaker 2: Karl at his home, she discovered that these tales weren't fiction,
Speaker 2: they were facts. And there she found her sister costumed
Speaker 2: in a wedding dress. She had been made to play
Speaker 2: the part of a bride, though she had been veheminently
Speaker 2: non consenting to this wall alive, but in her silence
Speaker 2: Karl had stopped taking no for an answer. He was
Speaker 2: promptly arrested. His denial of her death and Frankensteinian methods
Speaker 2: of trying to work around it, and all soon became clear.
Speaker 2: He told a newspaper, life is dormant in a person
Speaker 2: who has died. The ears can hear, but the eyes
Speaker 2: cannot see because they are in darkness. He tried to
Speaker 2: engineer a homespun resurrection, bathing Elena's body in tubs of
Speaker 2: chemical solutions in the hope that her cells would saturate
Speaker 2: and awaken from their suspended animation. But Karl was lucky.
Speaker 2: By the time his case went to court, the statue
Speaker 2: of limitations for his charges of desecrating a grave was up.
Speaker 2: Elena was given a second funeral. She would finally be
Speaker 2: allowed to rest. Karl lived out the rest of his
Speaker 2: days with an effigy of Elena, a doll with her
Speaker 2: death mask glued to its face. His obituary reported that
Speaker 2: he died alone, with some rumors saying that he died
Speaker 2: in the arms of his fake Elena. It was reported
Speaker 2: that he collapsed near the organ that he loved to
Speaker 2: play for her. He had once told a newspaper that
Speaker 2: he knew she was there with her latent spirit lying dormant,
Speaker 2: and hoped that she could hear him at a faint distance.
Speaker 2: He believed this act of tenderness of his love would
Speaker 2: be beneficial to her in the hopes that it would
Speaker 2: keep her mind and spirit at peace.
Speaker 3: American Shadows as hosted by Lauren Vogelbaum. This episode was
Speaker 3: written by Robin Minatter, researched by Robin Minitter and Cassandra
Speaker 3: di Alba, and produced by Miranda Hawkins and Trevor Young,
Speaker 3: with executive producers Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.
Speaker 3: To learn more about the show, visit Grimminmile dot com.
Speaker 3: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 3: or wherever you get your podcasts. Six