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Speaker 1: Diversion audio. A note this episode contains mature content and

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Speaker 1: descriptions of violence that may be disturbing for some listeners.

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Speaker 1: Please take care in listening. Today's episode is the finale

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Speaker 1: of our three part mini series on the first American

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Speaker 1: female serial killer. If you miss the first two parts,

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Speaker 1: I highly recommend that you pause me here, listen to

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Speaker 1: those episodes, and then come back once you're caught up,

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Speaker 1: because that backstory is integral to understanding how Jane's crimes

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Speaker 1: got bigger, faster, and way slow. Beer. The town of

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Speaker 1: catam Massachusetts, didn't really like the Davis family. The davis

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Speaker 1: Is said they started their hospitality business because they enjoyed

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Speaker 1: working with strangers, and they lived on the outskirts of

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Speaker 1: town because they enjoyed it there. That might have been true,

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Speaker 1: but it wasn't the whole truth. At first, the town

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Speaker 1: was reluctant to get close to Alden Davis because it

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Speaker 1: was the eighteen seventies in Massachusetts and Alden Davis had

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Speaker 1: fought for the Confederacy. There's enough of an aversion already.

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Speaker 1: But then there was the religious sect that Alden Davis

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Speaker 1: was a part of. The Second Advent Church was run

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Speaker 1: by Charles Freeman. And not only was it a fundamentalist

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Speaker 1: Christian sect, the kind of which we still have to

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Speaker 1: be wary, but it was, as they so often are,

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Speaker 1: next level fundamentalist and not at all christ like. Charles

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Speaker 1: Freeman lived near Katomic with his wife and two young daughters,

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Speaker 1: four and six years old. His congregation admired him for

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Speaker 1: his fervent convictions, and he was always preaching about the

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Speaker 1: need to prove yourself through sacrifice. In April of eighteen

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Speaker 1: seventy nine, he told his wife that what they needed

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Speaker 1: to sacrifice was their four year old daughter. At two

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Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning of May first, eighteen seventy nine,

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Speaker 1: Freeman woke up and told his wife he was doing it.

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Speaker 1: He had been called and he would complete the sacrifice.

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Speaker 1: She said, if it is the Lord's will, then I

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Speaker 1: am ready for it, as if someone had released a

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Speaker 1: huge weight. Charles went out to the shed and got

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Speaker 1: a sharp sheath knife. He came back inside to his

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Speaker 1: daughter's room. His eldest daughter woke up, and he sent

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Speaker 1: her into the other room with his wife. Charles knelt

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Speaker 1: to pray by the crib of the older child. He

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Speaker 1: prayed that God would steal his will like he had Abrahams,

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Speaker 1: even though Abraham did not actually kill his child. Charles

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Speaker 1: prayed that she didn't wake up, but she did. She

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Speaker 1: woke up just as he drove the knife down into

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Speaker 1: her side. The next day, he invited the congregation over

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Speaker 1: for a long, unhinged sermon before he took them into

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Speaker 1: his daughter's bedroom to see her body. He claimed that

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Speaker 1: she would rise again in three days. The community was

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Speaker 1: gutted and appalled, and Charles Freeman was ultimately sent to

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Speaker 1: an asylum for the criminally insane. But at least one

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Speaker 1: of his neighbors stood by him. Alden Davis showed up

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Speaker 1: to the four year old's funeral and declared there never

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Speaker 1: lived a purer man than Charles Freeman. So everyone in

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Speaker 1: the town took a big self preservationist step back from

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Speaker 1: the Davis family. That's awful, you might think, But what

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Speaker 1: does this atrocity have to do with Jane Toppin? Like

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Speaker 1: I said, the town of Katama didn't really care for

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Speaker 1: the Davises. They kept them at arm's length, which I

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Speaker 1: think is pretty understandable. So when the Davises started dying,

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Speaker 1: one right after the other, and I do mean one

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Speaker 1: right after the other. The town kind of thought, well,

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Speaker 1: whatever happens to that family, happens to that family. It

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Speaker 1: was easy to see the demise of the Davises as

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Speaker 1: the hand of God delivering punishment, rather than see it

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Speaker 1: for what it actually was the work of an increasingly

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Speaker 1: reckless and sloppy serial killer. Jane toppin Welcome to the

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Speaker 1: Greatest True Crime Stories Ever told. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer.

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Speaker 1: I'm a writer of true crime, which means I live

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Speaker 1: inside the research wormhole. But I'm not necessarily interested in

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Speaker 1: the attention grabbing elements, the blood and the gore all that.

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Speaker 1: I'm more interested in the people behind these stories and

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Speaker 1: what we can learn about society by looking at their experiences.

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Speaker 1: That's what I explore here every week when I dig

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Speaker 1: into crimes where a woman is not just a victim.

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Speaker 1: She might be the detective, the lawyer, the witness, the coroner,

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Speaker 1: the criminal, or a combination of those roles. As you

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Speaker 1: probably already know, women can do anything. Today is the

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Speaker 1: last episode of our three part miniseries on the first

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Speaker 1: American female serial killer. It's a nineteenth century American tale

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Speaker 1: about how an orphan turned indentured servant bootstrapped herself into

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Speaker 1: a mad scientist murderer. Her story is the one I

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Speaker 1: spent years researching for my book America's First Female serial Killer,

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Speaker 1: Jane Toppin and the Making of a Monster, so I'm

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Speaker 1: excited to share it with you. In the finale of

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Speaker 1: this miniseries, Jane's crimes reached new levels of depravity and

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Speaker 1: recklessness before the law finally catches on. I also have

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Speaker 1: a conversation with Harold Scheckter, who wrote his own excellent

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Speaker 1: book on Jane Tappin, so stay tuned for that all

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Speaker 1: after the break. So this is our third of three

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Speaker 1: episodes about Jane Tappin. We did a deep dive into

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Speaker 1: her early years and now we're moving into her most

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Speaker 1: criminal period, right, Yeah, it gets more criminal. And the

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Speaker 1: interesting thing here that I want to point out is

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Speaker 1: that when I've told this story before at parties or whatever,

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Speaker 1: there's a point where people get her. I don't know

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Speaker 1: if I'm just telling the story in a way that

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Speaker 1: makes her a sympathetic character or what, but right around

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Speaker 1: the point where her favorite patients leave the hospital without

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Speaker 1: saying goodbye, that's when most people are like, yeah, I

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Speaker 1: could see how she would kill someone. They're not excusing

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Speaker 1: it by any stretch, but they get it, if that

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Speaker 1: makes sense. The typical refrain goes something like, if all

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Speaker 1: that shit happened to me, I'd kill someone too, except

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Speaker 1: for they didn't hurt people. May hurt people, but plenty

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Speaker 1: of folks had an upbringing as bad as or worse

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Speaker 1: than Jane, and they didn't murder thirty people. So what

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Speaker 1: I don't know that really is the question is it

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Speaker 1: situational or was it in her all along ye old

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Speaker 1: nature versus nurture debate, The answer is both, of course

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Speaker 1: and neither, And there's no one right answer, because really

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Speaker 1: there's no answer at all. But because it's the question,

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Speaker 1: we can't stop trying to answer it. Last episode, we

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Speaker 1: found Jane at the bedside of Elizabeth Brigham, her foster sister.

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Speaker 1: Jane spent the summers recuperating from her round the clock

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Speaker 1: freelance work as a private nurse, and she had invited

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Speaker 1: Elizabeth out to the seaside where she slipped her in

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Speaker 1: overdose of morphia mixed into mineral water, sent her into

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Speaker 1: a coma, and killed her. After that, Jane kept killing

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Speaker 1: her private nursing patients until June of nineteen oh one,

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Speaker 1: when Mattie Davis, wife of Alden Davis, arrived in Boston

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Speaker 1: to collect Jane debt. Jane tortured her for seven days

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Speaker 1: before finally administering the fatal dose of morphine that killed Mattie.

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Speaker 1: By then, Jane had decided to kill the whole Davis

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Speaker 1: family and burn their house to the ground. It wasn't

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Speaker 1: long after Mattie's funeral that her daughters, Genevieve Gordon and

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Speaker 1: Minnie Gibbs, invited Jane to move into the Jakin house

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Speaker 1: to help care for their father, who was always in

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Speaker 1: erratic personality, and keep the house. Jane was so fun

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Speaker 1: to be around that they thought she was sure to

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Speaker 1: lift their spirits. Genevieve hadn't seen her mother in a year,

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Speaker 1: so her mother's collapse and fairly sudden death afterward struck

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Speaker 1: her especially hard. That sadness was what Jane said made

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Speaker 1: her think Genevieve was better off dead. She would be

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Speaker 1: first on the list. But before that, Jane had to

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Speaker 1: start a few fires. It was a new experiment for her,

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Speaker 1: and you probably remember how she liked to experiment. They'd

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Speaker 1: only been settled in the house for a few days before,

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Speaker 1: the father, Alden, who'd suffered insomnia since his wife's death,

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Speaker 1: smelled smoke in the middle of the night. He yelled

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Speaker 1: for Jane to help him extinguish the flames, and she

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Speaker 1: came running from her room, looking as if she just

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Speaker 1: woke up. Together, they successfully put out the fire, and

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Speaker 1: then it happened twice more with the same results. It

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Speaker 1: seems like people should have grown suspicious, but the only

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Speaker 1: people who would have thought to do that, the Davis family,

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Speaker 1: were suffering with grief far too much to question Jane

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Speaker 1: when she claimed to have seen a stranger skulking about

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Speaker 1: the property and that stranger was probably the firebug trying

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Speaker 1: to burn the house down, everyone just went with it,

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Speaker 1: and then they started dying. Jane pulled one of the daughters, Minnie,

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Speaker 1: aside one afternoon and told her that the other day

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Speaker 1: she saw Minnie's sister, Genevieve in the garden shed eyeing

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Speaker 1: a box of Paris green rat poison. Jane intimated that

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Speaker 1: they should probably keep a close watch on Genevieve given

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Speaker 1: her recent depression. Within a few days, on July twenty sixth,

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Speaker 1: nineteen oh one, Genevieve started to vomit violently after dinner.

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Speaker 1: She threw up until her throat was raw, and when

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Speaker 1: she came out of the bathroom Jane was waiting for

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Speaker 1: her with a glass of mineral water. Genevieve was dead

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Speaker 1: by morning. The physician listed her cause of death as

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Speaker 1: heart failure. The neighbors said Genevieve died of grief. Jane

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Speaker 1: told Genevieve's surviving sister and father that she died by suicide.

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Speaker 1: She said that she'd found the syringe that she'd used

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Speaker 1: to inject herself with rat poison, but to spare their feelings,

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Speaker 1: she threw it in the outhouse. Genevieve was interred next

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Speaker 1: to her mother. Only a few weeks later, it was

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Speaker 1: Alden Davis's turn. During a heat wave of nineteen oh one,

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Speaker 1: he came home from a trip to Boston and all

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Speaker 1: but collapsed on the sofa from exhaustion. Jane fussed over

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Speaker 1: him for a few minutes, and then she came back

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Speaker 1: with a glass of Hunati mineral water. The next morning,

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Speaker 1: Minnie Gibbs, the surviving elder daughter of Mattie and Alden,

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Speaker 1: came over to see her parents with her two young children.

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Speaker 1: They lived in walking distance of Alden's house, which was

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Speaker 1: nice when Minnie's husband, Irving, a sea captain, was away

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Speaker 1: for months at a time. Harry Gordon, Genevieve's widower, was

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Speaker 1: also there with their daughter. The family gathered around the

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Speaker 1: breakfast table with Jane, but Davis didn't come down to

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Speaker 1: join them. Harry sent his little girl upstairs to wake

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Speaker 1: up her grandpa, but when she scampered back downstairs a

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Speaker 1: few minutes later, she said Alden wouldn't wake up. The

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Speaker 1: family called the doctor. The doctor took one look at

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Speaker 1: Alden and knew he was looking at a corpse. He

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Speaker 1: thought maybe his heart had given out, but after further examination,

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Speaker 1: he listed the cause of death as a cerebral hemorrhage.

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Speaker 1: Alden was the third body to be interred in the

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Speaker 1: family plot in two months, but Jane wasn't finished. Just

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Speaker 1: four days after Alden's funeral, on August twelfth, the remaining

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Speaker 1: family members all went on a joy ride around town.

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Speaker 1: Before they left, Jane urged Minnie to have a little

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Speaker 1: cocoa wine to soothe her nerves. It sounds gross, and

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Speaker 1: I can only imagine it tasted worse. After Jane dissolved

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Speaker 1: a tablet of morphia in it. Minnie didn't drink alcohol,

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Speaker 1: but she gave in to the nurse. Jane was, after all,

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Speaker 1: their professional, and she started feeling bad immediately. By the

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Speaker 1: time they got home that afternoon, she couldn't get up

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Speaker 1: the stairs. Jane brought her a glass of mineral water

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Speaker 1: into which she had already, of course, dissolved, a tablet

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Speaker 1: of morphine and a tablet of atropine. Around midnight, Jane

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Speaker 1: injected Minnie with another dose of morphine, which rendered her

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Speaker 1: completely still except for a twist leg. Normally, Jane would

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Speaker 1: pull back the covers and slide into bed alongside her victim,

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Speaker 1: but this time she did something that was arguably worse.

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Speaker 1: Jane had been feeding many lethal medications over the course

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Speaker 1: of the day, but this time, instead of getting in

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Speaker 1: her victim's deathbed to experience the pain the way she enjoyed, Instead,

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Speaker 1: Jane brought Minnie's ten year old son, Jesse, into her bed,

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Speaker 1: and she cuddled him while his mother died downstairs. Jane

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Speaker 1: had never seemed very concerned about getting caught for her crimes.

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Speaker 1: The atropine helped mask her use of morphine, but that's

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Speaker 1: about the only precaution She took to hide her behavior. Still,

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Speaker 1: murdering four members of the same family in less than

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Speaker 1: three months was absurdly blatant, even for her. The local

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Speaker 1: newspaper covered the events with the dramatic headline entire family

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Speaker 1: wiped out. Oddly, the paper never once mentioned foul play,

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Speaker 1: but the hackles of the Davis clan were finally starting

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Speaker 1: to rise. Captain Paul Gibbs, Minnie Gibbs father in law,

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Speaker 1: remembered Jane administering some drug to many while she rested.

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Speaker 1: He told his son Irving about it when Irving arrived

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Speaker 1: home from SA Maybe that's why Irving declined when Jane

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Speaker 1: offered to move in and take care of him. Jane

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Speaker 1: just turned her attentions elsewhere. She was done with the

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Speaker 1: Davis clan for now, but her time enacting this intimate

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Speaker 1: familial revenge may have inspired her. Because she actually went

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Speaker 1: back to Lowell, back to the house where she'd grown

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Speaker 1: up and where Oramel Brigham still lived. She wasn't there

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Speaker 1: to kill for once. She was there to betray in

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Speaker 1: another way, to marry her foster sister's husband. You might

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Speaker 1: remember Oramel as the faithful, beloved widower of Jane's foster sister, Elizabeth,

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Speaker 1: and while he seems to have been a totally devoted

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Speaker 1: husband to Elizabeth, he wasn't you'd call a romantic figure.

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Speaker 1: Harold Scheckter says in his book Fatal that Romel was

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Speaker 1: a portly gentleman of advanced middle age, with a double chin,

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Speaker 1: bald dome, and bushy gray mutton chop whiskers. It didn't

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Speaker 1: matter what he looked like. When she arrived at his

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Speaker 1: house on August twenty fourth, nineteen oh one, Jane thought

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Speaker 1: she'd have Ormel all to herself because back in January,

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Speaker 1: the winter before she killed the Davises, Jane had actually

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Speaker 1: poisoned Ormel's longtime housekeeper. She thought the housekeeper was her

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Speaker 1: competition for his affection. Instead of being met by a

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Speaker 1: new housekeeper, Jane was met at the door by Ormel's

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Speaker 1: elder sister, who had come to visit on her way

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Speaker 1: to the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo. Jane poisoned and

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Speaker 1: killed her four days after arriving. She didn't want eyes

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Speaker 1: on her while she tried to the widower of her

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Speaker 1: foster sister that she'd murdered. She did have eyes on her, though,

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Speaker 1: Right after many Davis was buried after the entire nuclear

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Speaker 1: Davis family had died in close succession. It wasn't just

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Speaker 1: the Davis's relatives that started to view Jane with suspicion.

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Speaker 1: She also finally caught the state authority's eyes. This may

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Speaker 1: explain why, despite the blatant natures of the crime, the

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Speaker 1: papers never mentioned the possibility of foul play. Authorities may

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Speaker 1: have asked them to keep those suspicions quiet to avoid

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Speaker 1: alerting Jane that she was under scrutiny. State Detective John S.

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Speaker 1: Patterson was assigned to watch her. He tailed her around

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Speaker 1: Buzzard's Bay. He was on the train with her when

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Speaker 1: she moved back to Lowell, and when Jane arrived to

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Speaker 1: stay with Oramel Brigham, Detective Patterson booked lodging down the street.

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Speaker 1: He didn't move fast enough, though. When Jane realized that

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Speaker 1: Ormel didn't intend to marry her or keep her on

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Speaker 1: in any permanent capacity, she decided to try a few

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Speaker 1: tricks to change his mind. First, she laced his tea

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Speaker 1: with morphia. She thought that the sudden onset of illness

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Speaker 1: might convince him that he needed her. When it didn't work,

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Speaker 1: she told his friends she was pregnant with his child

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Speaker 1: that had the opposite of the en tended effect. Ormel

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Speaker 1: ordered her out of his house that very moment. She

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Speaker 1: didn't go. Instead, she sulked up to her room as

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Speaker 1: if to pack, and she took an overdose of morphine herself.

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Speaker 1: By this time, though Ormel had wised up. He went

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Speaker 1: upstairs to make sure she was packing, and he found

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Speaker 1: her unconscious. He called the doctor right away, who made

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Speaker 1: her vomit and revived her. Ormel didn't have the sympathetic

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Speaker 1: reaction she was trying to induce in him. He assigned

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Speaker 1: her an in home nurse to watch her, but when

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Speaker 1: that nurse went to prepare her lunch, Jane poisoned herself again. Again,

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Speaker 1: her attempt was foiled. The doctor injected applemorphine into Jane

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Speaker 1: and made her vomit again. When she revived again, the

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Speaker 1: doctor asked her why she was doing this. She answered,

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Speaker 1: I'm tired of life. I know people are talking about me.

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Speaker 1: I just want to die. I just have to tell y'all. No,

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Speaker 1: she didn't. She didn't want to die. She wanted pity

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Speaker 1: so she could continue on her rampage. Although to be honest,

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Speaker 1: I'm not even sure that that was a conscious thought

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Speaker 1: by that time. It's hard to trace the leaps and cognition.

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Speaker 1: At first, Jane didn't want her favorite patients to leave,

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Speaker 1: so she made them sicker. Then she started experimenting with

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Speaker 1: counteractive medicines. Then she'd try to push them all the

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Speaker 1: way to the brink of death and see if she

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Speaker 1: could bring them back. I'm thinking this is where the

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00:25:53,160 --> 00:25:57,880
Speaker 1: power complex escalated big time. But that's also when her

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Speaker 1: crimes turned sexual. That's when she would get in bed

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Speaker 1: with her patients while observing the overdos's effects, and then

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Speaker 1: she graduated to killing by poisoning. Her train had so

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00:26:11,880 --> 00:26:15,720
Speaker 1: clearly jumped the tracks that her thought processes here get

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Speaker 1: more and more difficult to follow. Maybe by this time

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Speaker 1: she knew the detectives were onto her, but probably not.

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00:26:25,080 --> 00:26:28,600
Speaker 1: She'd gotten away was so much for so long she

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Speaker 1: probably didn't realize that. When she was admitted to the

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Speaker 1: hospital right after her attempts at suicide, the patient just

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Speaker 1: down the hall was Detective John Patterson. When the hospital

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00:27:02,160 --> 00:27:05,520
Speaker 1: discharged Jane, she went to live with a couple of

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Speaker 1: friends in Amherst, New Hampshire, and yes, Detective John Patterson

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00:27:13,240 --> 00:27:19,240
Speaker 1: was still following her. In fact, he was again lodging

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Speaker 1: just down the street when three other police officers showed

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00:27:23,160 --> 00:27:26,960
Speaker 1: up at his door on October twenty ninth, nineteen oh

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00:27:27,080 --> 00:27:32,320
Speaker 1: one with good news. After Minnie Gibbs was buried, one

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Speaker 1: detective approached Minnie's father in law, Captain Paul Gibbs. I

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Speaker 1: just have to tell y'all right quick that in my

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00:27:39,760 --> 00:27:44,000
Speaker 1: narrative nonfiction book about this case, I associated that character

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Speaker 1: with my late grandfather, who suffered no fools. He is

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Speaker 1: by far my favorite person in this story. After getting

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Speaker 1: permission from Minnie's widower, Irving, which I can only imagine

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Speaker 1: that his father Paul urged him to give, officials had

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Speaker 1: exhumed all four of the Davis' bodies, many gives viscera

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00:28:10,200 --> 00:28:16,840
Speaker 1: had turned up lethal traces of poison arsenic. This is

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00:28:16,880 --> 00:28:20,440
Speaker 1: what Detective Patterson needed to move in on his suspect.

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Speaker 1: On October thirtieth, nineteen oh one. Jane's arrest made headlines

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Speaker 1: the following day on Halloween. People everywhere were stunned that

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Speaker 1: someone could brutally murder an entire family. They were even

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Speaker 1: more shocked that she was a nurse and a woman.

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Speaker 1: But the readers who were most surprised of all were

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Speaker 1: the people who knew Jane. They couldn't believe it. They

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00:28:55,920 --> 00:28:59,680
Speaker 1: didn't believe it, and they later wrote to her in

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00:28:59,760 --> 00:29:08,400
Speaker 1: Jai telling her so. Jane, though, wasn't really surprised. She

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00:29:08,560 --> 00:29:12,080
Speaker 1: was too smart not to anticipate that her increasingly blatant

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00:29:12,160 --> 00:29:17,240
Speaker 1: crimes would call attention. She'd just gotten too far down

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00:29:17,280 --> 00:29:21,400
Speaker 1: the path of depravity to stop herself, and now her

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00:29:21,440 --> 00:29:26,080
Speaker 1: most salient emotion was she was irritated that the detective

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00:29:26,160 --> 00:29:32,160
Speaker 1: stood in the room while she packed. At first, she

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00:29:32,360 --> 00:29:35,640
Speaker 1: was only charged with the murder of Many Gibbs. I'm

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00:29:35,680 --> 00:29:38,200
Speaker 1: not sure why, but I'm assuming they only tried her

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00:29:38,320 --> 00:29:41,040
Speaker 1: for the one because they had the most evidence there,

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00:29:41,440 --> 00:29:44,200
Speaker 1: and because if that case failed, they had more crimes

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00:29:44,200 --> 00:29:48,120
Speaker 1: to try her on. Later, at the jailhouse, she learned

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00:29:48,160 --> 00:29:54,640
Speaker 1: that her childhood friend James Murphy would defend her pro bona.

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00:29:55,040 --> 00:29:59,160
Speaker 1: Murphy was especially thrilled when he realized that the poison

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00:29:59,240 --> 00:30:05,160
Speaker 1: found in Mean Gibbs was arsenic. Arsenic, you might recall

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00:30:05,200 --> 00:30:08,560
Speaker 1: from other stories we've covered on this show, was a

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00:30:08,640 --> 00:30:15,959
Speaker 1: key ingredient in embalming fluid in this era. For exactly

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00:30:16,320 --> 00:30:21,880
Speaker 1: that reason, even Captain Paul Gibbs, who believed Jane committed

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00:30:21,880 --> 00:30:26,560
Speaker 1: the crimes, was surprised when he heard the investigators were

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00:30:26,600 --> 00:30:31,200
Speaker 1: relying on the presence of arsenic to pin her. The

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Speaker 1: old Salt said as much in this quote. I suspected

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Speaker 1: they had been poisoned, but I didn't think Jenny Toppin

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Speaker 1: would use anything as easily detected as arsenic. He went

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Speaker 1: on to put the professionals even mortishamee. He thought that

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Speaker 1: Davis's quote had been killed by morphia and a tropia.

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Speaker 1: A tropia expanded the pupils of the eyes, whereas more

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00:31:00,320 --> 00:31:03,200
Speaker 1: contracted them, so that if a person had been killed

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Speaker 1: by those poisons, the pupils of their eyes would practically

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00:31:06,360 --> 00:31:09,280
Speaker 1: be in their normal state, and to detect the traces

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00:31:09,320 --> 00:31:15,320
Speaker 1: of the poison would be very difficult. Officials thought that

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00:31:15,520 --> 00:31:19,000
Speaker 1: was a good idea, so they tested the bodies for

354
00:31:19,080 --> 00:31:25,160
Speaker 1: those and their findings were positive. No one ever found

355
00:31:25,200 --> 00:31:30,280
Speaker 1: out how Captain Paul Gibbs, the retired fishing boat captain,

356
00:31:30,840 --> 00:31:37,560
Speaker 1: worked it out, but he did. Still, Jane received letters

357
00:31:37,560 --> 00:31:41,280
Speaker 1: of support and gifts from her friends and former patients

358
00:31:41,280 --> 00:31:46,040
Speaker 1: at the jailhouse, where she had what she called a

359
00:31:46,120 --> 00:31:53,200
Speaker 1: nice rest, and at first she pled not guilty until

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00:31:53,600 --> 00:32:16,040
Speaker 1: abruptly she about faced and confessed. I couldn't find a

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00:32:16,080 --> 00:32:20,320
Speaker 1: clear reason behind this shift. That's one reason why I

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00:32:20,360 --> 00:32:24,200
Speaker 1: have a hard time fully accepting the confession that William

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00:32:24,280 --> 00:32:29,440
Speaker 1: Randolph Hurst published in one of his newspapers. I'm just

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00:32:29,480 --> 00:32:32,640
Speaker 1: not sure how it came to be, if you paid her,

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00:32:33,120 --> 00:32:36,200
Speaker 1: if she even wrote it. So I just don't really

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00:32:36,200 --> 00:32:41,360
Speaker 1: trust it. But rest assured that whole confession question is

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00:32:41,440 --> 00:32:45,080
Speaker 1: definitely something I'll get Harold Scheckter's take on when I

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00:32:45,120 --> 00:32:50,520
Speaker 1: interview him. Regardless of the details behind that Hurst confession, though,

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00:32:51,400 --> 00:32:55,920
Speaker 1: Jane definitely did change her plea to guilty, and she

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00:32:56,040 --> 00:33:03,560
Speaker 1: started talking from what she said. By this point, Jane

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00:33:03,680 --> 00:33:09,760
Speaker 1: had lost count of her victims. She recounted it all

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00:33:10,000 --> 00:33:14,920
Speaker 1: with full calm and composure to Henry R. Steadman at

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Speaker 1: the American Medico Psychological Association. The article is long, but

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Speaker 1: I think it's important to read to you, at least

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00:33:25,320 --> 00:33:41,000
Speaker 1: this part of it. When I try to picture it,

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00:33:41,480 --> 00:33:46,000
Speaker 1: I say to myself, I have poisoned Manny Gibbs, my

377
00:33:46,120 --> 00:33:51,200
Speaker 1: dear friend. I have poisoned mister Davis and missus Davis.

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00:33:52,040 --> 00:33:56,360
Speaker 1: This does not convey anything to me and when I

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00:33:56,360 --> 00:34:00,239
Speaker 1: try to sense the condition of the children and all

380
00:34:00,240 --> 00:34:06,000
Speaker 1: the consequences, I cannot realize what an awful thing it is.

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00:34:08,000 --> 00:34:12,680
Speaker 1: Why don't I feel sorry and grieve over it? I

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00:34:12,719 --> 00:34:16,759
Speaker 1: cannot make sense of it all. Something comes over me.

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00:34:18,239 --> 00:34:21,879
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is. I seem to have

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00:34:21,920 --> 00:34:27,080
Speaker 1: a sort of paralysis of thought and reason. I have

385
00:34:27,200 --> 00:34:33,120
Speaker 1: an uncontrollable desire to give poison without regard to consequence.

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00:34:35,040 --> 00:34:38,840
Speaker 1: I have no objection against telling my feelings, but I

387
00:34:38,880 --> 00:34:42,880
Speaker 1: don't know my own mind. I don't know why I

388
00:34:42,960 --> 00:34:54,640
Speaker 1: do these things. Later in court, she wondered how they

389
00:34:54,680 --> 00:35:00,440
Speaker 1: could possibly find her insane. She could not possible be

390
00:35:00,480 --> 00:35:05,200
Speaker 1: insane when she knew full well that she was doing wrong,

391
00:35:06,160 --> 00:35:10,920
Speaker 1: and she went to great links to avoid being caught.

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00:35:26,480 --> 00:35:29,360
Speaker 1: So when the court ruled her not guilty by reason

393
00:35:29,400 --> 00:35:33,640
Speaker 1: of insanity, Jane thought for sure that the court would

394
00:35:33,640 --> 00:35:41,240
Speaker 1: eventually overturn the sentencing, but they didn't. The court ruled

395
00:35:41,280 --> 00:35:47,400
Speaker 1: that quote her disease being constitutional, she will never recover,

396
00:35:50,200 --> 00:35:53,799
Speaker 1: and then she was committed to Taunton Asylum, where she

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00:35:53,880 --> 00:35:59,239
Speaker 1: stayed for the remainder of her life. She died August seventeenth,

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00:36:00,120 --> 00:36:09,360
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty eight. By then she was eighty four. My

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00:36:09,400 --> 00:36:12,799
Speaker 1: godfather actually gave me a copy of her obituary as

400
00:36:12,800 --> 00:36:18,160
Speaker 1: a book release gift. The obituary refers to her as

401
00:36:18,200 --> 00:36:22,120
Speaker 1: a mass poisoner. It says she gave the names of

402
00:36:22,200 --> 00:36:27,439
Speaker 1: thirty one victims, but that she quote killed at least

403
00:36:27,480 --> 00:36:30,040
Speaker 1: one hundred from the time I became a nurse at

404
00:36:30,120 --> 00:36:34,080
Speaker 1: Boston Hospital, where I killed the first one, until I

405
00:36:34,160 --> 00:36:39,400
Speaker 1: ended the lives of the Davis family. The obit also

406
00:36:39,520 --> 00:36:43,720
Speaker 1: says she died at the asylum as just another quiet

407
00:36:43,760 --> 00:36:49,400
Speaker 1: old lady. But that's not what the nurses on her

408
00:36:49,440 --> 00:36:54,839
Speaker 1: ward said. They said from time to time Jane would

409
00:36:54,880 --> 00:36:59,319
Speaker 1: beckon them over and tell them to get the morphine

410
00:36:59,480 --> 00:37:03,080
Speaker 1: she would just share to her other patients and say,

411
00:37:03,200 --> 00:37:05,760
Speaker 1: you and I will have a lot of fun seeing

412
00:37:05,800 --> 00:37:29,760
Speaker 1: them die. And now, dear listeners, I am super pumped

413
00:37:30,280 --> 00:37:32,799
Speaker 1: to share with you the conversation I got to have

414
00:37:32,880 --> 00:37:37,360
Speaker 1: with Harold Scheckter. He not only wrote his own heavily

415
00:37:37,400 --> 00:37:41,840
Speaker 1: research book, Fatal, about Jane, but he's also written about

416
00:37:42,000 --> 00:37:47,680
Speaker 1: Ed Gain and Albert Fish. You definitely definitely know who

417
00:37:47,719 --> 00:37:50,560
Speaker 1: he is, even if you don't know you know who

418
00:37:50,560 --> 00:37:54,319
Speaker 1: he is. He's written many true crime books, and he's

419
00:37:54,800 --> 00:37:59,839
Speaker 1: very frequently the expert interview in true crime documentaries and

420
00:38:00,040 --> 00:38:05,120
Speaker 1: shows like America's Most Wanted. He is in short, amazing,

421
00:38:05,480 --> 00:38:28,799
Speaker 1: and he's here. That's after the break, Harold. I'm so

422
00:38:28,840 --> 00:38:31,359
Speaker 1: excited to talk to you today. Thank you so much

423
00:38:31,400 --> 00:38:34,200
Speaker 1: for coming on and talk to us about Jane. My

424
00:38:34,239 --> 00:38:36,360
Speaker 1: first question is like, where'd you get your start? Like

425
00:38:36,400 --> 00:38:37,080
Speaker 1: how'd you do it?

426
00:38:37,440 --> 00:38:42,200
Speaker 2: My day job for forty two years until my relatively

427
00:38:42,280 --> 00:38:47,000
Speaker 2: recent retirement was as a professor of American literature. At

428
00:38:47,080 --> 00:38:51,680
Speaker 2: some point I decided that I needed to supplement my

429
00:38:51,840 --> 00:38:56,640
Speaker 2: meager academic salary somehow, so I decided to try to

430
00:38:56,640 --> 00:38:59,640
Speaker 2: write commercial books. And I was basically writing books at

431
00:38:59,640 --> 00:39:02,279
Speaker 2: that time about whatever interested me at the moment, and

432
00:39:02,360 --> 00:39:06,879
Speaker 2: I was writing a book about movie special effects when

433
00:39:06,920 --> 00:39:11,560
Speaker 2: I came across the fact previously unknown to me that

434
00:39:11,800 --> 00:39:15,040
Speaker 2: both Psycho and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which are my two

435
00:39:15,040 --> 00:39:19,120
Speaker 2: favorite horror movies, had been inspired by the same true

436
00:39:19,160 --> 00:39:22,719
Speaker 2: life case, that of ed Geen. So I pitched that

437
00:39:22,760 --> 00:39:26,800
Speaker 2: idea to my editor. She bought it. I did that book, Deviant.

438
00:39:27,760 --> 00:39:31,400
Speaker 2: So when I was actually researching Deviant, I was in

439
00:39:31,480 --> 00:39:35,360
Speaker 2: touch with Robert Block. Robert Block wrote the novel Psycho

440
00:39:36,040 --> 00:39:39,240
Speaker 2: that the movie was based on, and I said to Block,

441
00:39:39,560 --> 00:39:41,640
Speaker 2: why do you think people are so fascinated with ed

442
00:39:41,680 --> 00:39:45,680
Speaker 2: Gean And he said, because they've forgotten about Albert Fish.

443
00:39:45,760 --> 00:39:49,400
Speaker 2: So that led me to do my second book on

444
00:39:49,440 --> 00:39:53,719
Speaker 2: Albert Fish anyway before I knew it, much to my surprise,

445
00:39:54,120 --> 00:39:56,760
Speaker 2: because it wasn't the career path I had foreseen for myself.

446
00:39:57,360 --> 00:40:01,320
Speaker 2: I had become a true crime ime writer when I started.

447
00:40:02,320 --> 00:40:07,520
Speaker 2: The serial murder thing hadn't really become this big phenomenon

448
00:40:07,920 --> 00:40:10,279
Speaker 2: the way it did in the eighties and nineties. In fact,

449
00:40:10,280 --> 00:40:13,520
Speaker 2: the word serial murder I don't think appears anywhere in

450
00:40:13,600 --> 00:40:16,640
Speaker 2: My Green Book or my Fish Book because it was

451
00:40:16,719 --> 00:40:19,800
Speaker 2: coined much earlier, but it really didn't enter the language

452
00:40:20,320 --> 00:40:24,480
Speaker 2: in the nineteen eighties. When I first started doing it,

453
00:40:24,680 --> 00:40:26,560
Speaker 2: I didn't even think of it as true crime. I

454
00:40:26,560 --> 00:40:29,560
Speaker 2: thought I was inventing a new genre called true horror,

455
00:40:30,200 --> 00:40:35,920
Speaker 2: that I was writing stories about those rare American criminals

456
00:40:36,480 --> 00:40:42,160
Speaker 2: who were really monsters and who had entered into somehow

457
00:40:42,280 --> 00:40:47,319
Speaker 2: the cultural consciousness is these monsters. In my life as

458
00:40:47,440 --> 00:40:51,160
Speaker 2: an academic and a literary critic, One of my mentors

459
00:40:51,200 --> 00:40:56,719
Speaker 2: said that one characteristic of a genuinely mythic character in

460
00:40:56,800 --> 00:41:01,959
Speaker 2: literature is that everybody knows the character, but relatively few

461
00:41:02,000 --> 00:41:05,120
Speaker 2: people can tell you who created him. So when I

462
00:41:05,160 --> 00:41:08,520
Speaker 2: was teaching, I would say, you know, to my class, well,

463
00:41:08,520 --> 00:41:11,600
Speaker 2: how many people have heard of Sherlock Holmes? And everybody

464
00:41:11,680 --> 00:41:13,759
Speaker 2: raised their hands, and then they'd say, how many of

465
00:41:13,800 --> 00:41:16,360
Speaker 2: you know who created Sherlock Holms?

466
00:41:16,680 --> 00:41:16,799
Speaker 1: Right?

467
00:41:17,080 --> 00:41:18,560
Speaker 2: And you know, the same thing is true, have had

468
00:41:18,560 --> 00:41:22,919
Speaker 2: a elect everybody's heard of had a elector relatively few

469
00:41:22,920 --> 00:41:26,800
Speaker 2: people if you ask, would say Thomas Harris. He created

470
00:41:26,800 --> 00:41:30,800
Speaker 2: a genuinely mythic monster there in the form of a

471
00:41:30,840 --> 00:41:33,799
Speaker 2: serial killer. But I mean it ties into the way

472
00:41:33,840 --> 00:41:37,800
Speaker 2: in which, at a certain period the serial killer became

473
00:41:37,960 --> 00:41:42,480
Speaker 2: this mythic embodiment of different kinds of free floating fears

474
00:41:42,520 --> 00:41:45,439
Speaker 2: and anxieties, and it's kind of remained that way.

475
00:41:45,680 --> 00:41:47,800
Speaker 1: So I want to ask about the Jane I remember

476
00:41:48,480 --> 00:41:52,680
Speaker 1: when I read the Terrible True Confession in the Hearst periodical.

477
00:41:53,040 --> 00:41:55,279
Speaker 1: Do you remember that one where she kind of laid

478
00:41:55,320 --> 00:41:58,120
Speaker 1: out everything? Well, how do you feel about it?

479
00:41:58,840 --> 00:42:03,160
Speaker 2: You know, many notorious killers also wrote a true confession

480
00:42:03,200 --> 00:42:06,320
Speaker 2: for hers, and they were all totally fabricated. None of

481
00:42:06,360 --> 00:42:09,839
Speaker 2: them were real confessions. Hurst would sometimes pay them a

482
00:42:09,840 --> 00:42:14,080
Speaker 2: bunch of money. You have to understand that Hurst was

483
00:42:14,160 --> 00:42:17,160
Speaker 2: one of the great pioneers of what was called the

484
00:42:17,239 --> 00:42:20,880
Speaker 2: yellow Press. It was basically Hurst and Pulitzer and the

485
00:42:20,960 --> 00:42:26,840
Speaker 2: yellow Press that was a precursor of the tabloids. And

486
00:42:26,920 --> 00:42:31,000
Speaker 2: not just things like those confessions. They just make stuff

487
00:42:31,080 --> 00:42:34,439
Speaker 2: up in their news stories. You know that old saying,

488
00:42:34,520 --> 00:42:36,239
Speaker 2: never let the facts get in the way of a

489
00:42:36,280 --> 00:42:39,319
Speaker 2: good story. That was their credo. You know, they were

490
00:42:39,360 --> 00:42:41,799
Speaker 2: just making that stuff up. So I learned you had

491
00:42:41,840 --> 00:42:45,960
Speaker 2: to be very very, very very careful when you relied

492
00:42:46,120 --> 00:42:48,200
Speaker 2: on that kind of journalism.

493
00:42:48,480 --> 00:42:51,439
Speaker 1: Right, Well, thank you for validating that which I had

494
00:42:51,440 --> 00:42:53,760
Speaker 1: in the back of my head. And then I wanted

495
00:42:53,800 --> 00:42:58,560
Speaker 1: to ask you about the book that you are releasing

496
00:42:58,640 --> 00:43:01,960
Speaker 1: I think in the fall. Can you tell us about it.

497
00:43:03,160 --> 00:43:06,440
Speaker 2: Well, it's a book called murder Abelia, A History of

498
00:43:06,520 --> 00:43:10,120
Speaker 2: Crime in one hundred Objects. It's a book that I've

499
00:43:10,160 --> 00:43:13,360
Speaker 2: been wanting to do for a long time. When I

500
00:43:13,400 --> 00:43:17,560
Speaker 2: write books, I like to have a certain object connected

501
00:43:17,600 --> 00:43:20,840
Speaker 2: to the crime that I keep with me. These things

502
00:43:20,960 --> 00:43:24,000
Speaker 2: radiate with some kind of meaning, and it often makes

503
00:43:24,440 --> 00:43:26,560
Speaker 2: what I'm writing about more real to me. I don't

504
00:43:26,560 --> 00:43:29,000
Speaker 2: know if you remember John Walsh, you know, the America's

505
00:43:29,040 --> 00:43:32,680
Speaker 2: most wanted guy. He had a son, Adam, who was

506
00:43:32,760 --> 00:43:36,480
Speaker 2: abducted and horribly murdered. Anyway, Walsh had a kind of

507
00:43:36,480 --> 00:43:39,600
Speaker 2: overra like show for a while and he asked me

508
00:43:39,680 --> 00:43:43,680
Speaker 2: to be on the subject of people who collect all

509
00:43:43,719 --> 00:43:46,600
Speaker 2: these murder relics. And I was on with a guy

510
00:43:46,680 --> 00:43:51,239
Speaker 2: named Andy Kahan, who works for some kind of victim

511
00:43:51,480 --> 00:43:58,279
Speaker 2: advocacy department in the Houston Police Department. And Andy was

512
00:43:58,400 --> 00:44:02,319
Speaker 2: very horrified by the fact if there were people who would, like,

513
00:44:03,080 --> 00:44:07,120
Speaker 2: you know, collect a lock of Charles Manson's hair or something.

514
00:44:07,640 --> 00:44:10,960
Speaker 2: And he's the one who coined the term murderabilia. And

515
00:44:11,680 --> 00:44:14,960
Speaker 2: on the show I pointed out to him that there

516
00:44:15,000 --> 00:44:18,360
Speaker 2: was nothing new about this. I mean, you can go

517
00:44:18,440 --> 00:44:22,640
Speaker 2: back to the eighteenth hundreds and every time there was

518
00:44:22,680 --> 00:44:27,200
Speaker 2: a sacial crime, you know, crowds would converge on the

519
00:44:27,200 --> 00:44:31,800
Speaker 2: crime scene and take splinters of the house or whatever.

520
00:44:32,600 --> 00:44:35,719
Speaker 2: Back then, one of the perks of being an executioner

521
00:44:36,480 --> 00:44:39,640
Speaker 2: was you got to keep the noose, and these executioners

522
00:44:39,640 --> 00:44:41,839
Speaker 2: would cut the noose up into one inch pieces and

523
00:44:41,880 --> 00:44:46,680
Speaker 2: sell them. So for whatever reason, these dark, macabre relics.

524
00:44:47,040 --> 00:44:50,759
Speaker 2: I've always exerted this fascination, and you know I don't

525
00:44:50,760 --> 00:44:53,480
Speaker 2: collect them, but for one reason or another, I have

526
00:44:53,600 --> 00:44:56,560
Speaker 2: come into possession of a few of them. So the

527
00:44:56,640 --> 00:45:00,319
Speaker 2: book is not the history, but it's a history of

528
00:45:00,400 --> 00:45:04,279
Speaker 2: crime starting in the eighteen hundreds by eighteen thirty, and

529
00:45:04,320 --> 00:45:10,120
Speaker 2: each crime is accompanied by a picture of some object

530
00:45:10,200 --> 00:45:13,520
Speaker 2: that relates to the crime, and the object becomes kind

531
00:45:13,520 --> 00:45:16,040
Speaker 2: of a springboard for my talking about the crime.

532
00:45:16,400 --> 00:45:18,520
Speaker 1: Did you have an object for the Jane book?

533
00:45:18,800 --> 00:45:21,799
Speaker 2: Well, actually, I have a bottle of Hyundai mineral water,

534
00:45:22,680 --> 00:45:26,040
Speaker 2: which was her favorite beverage, which you dispensed what poison?

535
00:45:26,719 --> 00:45:29,880
Speaker 1: Did it still have the water in it? No, Okay, that.

536
00:45:29,840 --> 00:45:33,919
Speaker 2: Would be wild. Yeah, it's a beautiful bottle. So yes,

537
00:45:34,600 --> 00:45:35,960
Speaker 2: So what's in Murder of Bilia?

538
00:45:42,239 --> 00:45:44,360
Speaker 1: I'm so glad I got to share that with y'all.

539
00:45:45,440 --> 00:45:47,440
Speaker 1: Just a fun little aside that I didn't mention in

540
00:45:47,480 --> 00:45:50,200
Speaker 1: the interview because I didn't want to pull focus onto myself.

541
00:45:50,640 --> 00:45:54,080
Speaker 1: But when my book released mid Pandemic, my godfather also

542
00:45:54,160 --> 00:45:56,880
Speaker 1: sent me a bottle of Hunyati mineral water to celebrate.

543
00:45:57,239 --> 00:45:59,040
Speaker 1: I'll link in the show notes to the photo of

544
00:45:59,120 --> 00:46:02,960
Speaker 1: us choosing like my at the Murder Abelia. We also

545
00:46:03,040 --> 00:46:06,399
Speaker 1: have links to Harold Scheckter's books, both the one about

546
00:46:06,480 --> 00:46:11,600
Speaker 1: Jane Toppin and the forthcoming one entitled Murder Abelia, and

547
00:46:11,680 --> 00:46:16,719
Speaker 1: we'll have a link to my book there too. Join

548
00:46:16,760 --> 00:46:19,759
Speaker 1: me next week on the Greatest True Crime Stories Ever

549
00:46:19,840 --> 00:46:24,160
Speaker 1: Told for the remarkable story of Holly Dunn, the only

550
00:46:24,239 --> 00:46:31,160
Speaker 1: survivor of the Railroad serial Killer. For more information about

551
00:46:31,160 --> 00:46:34,400
Speaker 1: this case and others we cover on the show, visit

552
00:46:34,480 --> 00:46:38,880
Speaker 1: Diversion Audio dot com. Sign up for Diversion's newsletter and

553
00:46:38,960 --> 00:46:41,360
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Speaker 1: scenes features with the hosts and actors from diversions podcasts,

555
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Speaker 1: more shows you'll love from Diversion and our partners, and

556
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Speaker 1: other exclusive tidbits you can't get anywhere else. That's Diversion

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00:46:54,480 --> 00:46:59,440
Speaker 1: Audio dot Com to sign up for the newsletter. The

558
00:46:59,480 --> 00:47:02,920
Speaker 1: Greatest Through Crime Stories Ever Told is a production of

559
00:47:03,000 --> 00:47:07,880
Speaker 1: Diversion Audio. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer. I wrote this episode

560
00:47:08,080 --> 00:47:12,120
Speaker 1: and our editorial director is Nora Batel. Our show is

561
00:47:12,160 --> 00:47:16,400
Speaker 1: produced and directed by Mark Francis. Our development team is

562
00:47:16,440 --> 00:47:22,359
Speaker 1: Emma Dumouth and Jacob Bronstein. Theme music by Tyler cash

563
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564
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