Speaker 1: Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda land Audio in
Speaker 1: partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the
Speaker 1: latest episode of Criminalia, where this season we're exploring the
Speaker 1: lives and motivations of some of the most notorious lady
Speaker 1: poisoners throughout history. Holly Fry and I'm Ranchre Markie. And
Speaker 1: the poisoner that we're talking about today is Amy Archer Gilligan.
Speaker 1: And you might know her name. She was the real
Speaker 1: life inspiration for the story behind both the play and
Speaker 1: the film Arsenic and Old Lace. And this today is
Speaker 1: the true story behind the eccentric comedy that came out
Speaker 1: of Hollywood as a result of it. And it's absolutely
Speaker 1: not a comedy, it's not at all. Um So a
Speaker 1: little bit about Amy's story. So from her birth through
Speaker 1: her death, Amy's entire story takes place in the state
Speaker 1: of Connecticut. She was born to James and Mary Duggan,
Speaker 1: probably on Halloween, but definitely in October in eighteen seventy
Speaker 1: three in the town of Milton, which at the time
Speaker 1: was sort of the northwestern part of what is now
Speaker 1: the town of Litchfield, and all accounts suggest that Amy
Speaker 1: grew up in kind of a modest circumstance, and there
Speaker 1: was really nothing about her childhood that particularly stands out. However,
Speaker 1: there was a legacy of mental illness in her immediate family.
Speaker 1: Amy's brother John became a patient. He would have been
Speaker 1: called an inmate then, which is obviously outdated terminology at
Speaker 1: the Connecticut General Hospital for the Insane, and that happened
Speaker 1: in nineteen o two and so outdated terminology. And then
Speaker 1: one of her sisters was listed as residing there as well.
Speaker 1: That was during the ninety census, so there is a
Speaker 1: strong streak there. There were between eight and ten children
Speaker 1: in the Archer family, and as many as seven are
Speaker 1: believed to have had mental health issues. It's amazing, um.
Speaker 1: So as an adult, Amy married James Archer when she
Speaker 1: was twenty three years old, and about five years later
Speaker 1: they relocated with their young daughter to Newington, which, as
Speaker 1: I was saying, also a town in Connecticut. There they
Speaker 1: lived with a man named John Seymour who was frail
Speaker 1: and elderly um and they cared for him in exchange
Speaker 1: for room and board. When John died in nineteen four
Speaker 1: the house went to his heirs, but the Archers decided
Speaker 1: to rent it and they turned it into Sister Amy's
Speaker 1: nursing Home for the elderly. And yes, you probably could
Speaker 1: hear something of an air quote around the word sister,
Speaker 1: because Amy certainly did not take any religious vows, although
Speaker 1: she was known to be a very pious woman. They
Speaker 1: were kind of trading on that name as kind of
Speaker 1: a marketing plan. Three years after they started this, though,
Speaker 1: John's family decided to sell the property, so the Archers
Speaker 1: moved to Windsor, and with their savings, they bought a
Speaker 1: red brick house at thirty seven Prospect Street. It's still
Speaker 1: there today and you can tour through all that they
Speaker 1: asked you to really not take photos. It was in
Speaker 1: this house that became the Archer Home for elderly people
Speaker 1: and chronic invalids. That is the name of the house,
Speaker 1: not a name that we will keep repeating through the episode.
Speaker 1: Right in this unassuming red brick house, this business that
Speaker 1: they started, uh, did not seem particularly out of the ordinary.
Speaker 1: Amy was reportedly a doting Christian woman who took care
Speaker 1: of those who were unable to care for themselves. She was,
Speaker 1: or at least seemed to be a positive fixture in
Speaker 1: her community. It's really true, Like if you you know,
Speaker 1: if you if you look at some of the things
Speaker 1: that she did, minus the killing, she was very caring.
Speaker 1: She was very um willing to give money to the
Speaker 1: church for variety of reasons. So if you, if you
Speaker 1: didn't know what was going on in her life, you
Speaker 1: might think that she was a positive fixture in her community.
Speaker 1: So in comparison, today there are a bit more than
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand nursing homes and more than twenty eight thousand
Speaker 1: assisted living residencies in the United States, and together they're
Speaker 1: occupied by about two and a half million people. But
Speaker 1: in the early twentieth century when the Archers opened their doors,
Speaker 1: this was not the case at all. Most of the time,
Speaker 1: caring for your elders was the responsibility of family members,
Speaker 1: And basically the Archers were really establishing a brand new
Speaker 1: field when they did this, and they were also trying
Speaker 1: to make a place in it. They are known to
Speaker 1: even advertise their services in the local newspapers, and the
Speaker 1: Archer Home for elderly people and chronic invalids worked basically
Speaker 1: like this. Patients would either sign their life insurance policies
Speaker 1: over to Amy, or they could pay a large amount
Speaker 1: of money. By all accounts, This was right around a
Speaker 1: thousand dollars up front, but Amy did not only cater
Speaker 1: to the well off. If there were people who could
Speaker 1: not pay that lump sum up front, they were given
Speaker 1: an option to pay weekly. But no matter how they
Speaker 1: chose to pay. In return, what they got was residents
Speaker 1: and Amy's care. And there were generally anywhere between ten
Speaker 1: and twenty residents in the home at a time. So
Speaker 1: these residents Amy called them inmates, and we referred to
Speaker 1: that earlier when we were talking about her brother, and
Speaker 1: it sounds wrong to our twenty century years, but it
Speaker 1: was completely in line with the convention of the time.
Speaker 1: Everything appeared fine on the outside of this business, yet
Speaker 1: there were stories about how Amy's inmates were crowded together
Speaker 1: in rooms and often left to fend for themselves. Um
Speaker 1: and as I was just talking about, remember, the industry
Speaker 1: at this time was so brand new, and that means
Speaker 1: there were no regulatory agencies set up yet to monitor
Speaker 1: anything anything from the quality of care or anything that
Speaker 1: was going on inside the home. And in nine nine,
Speaker 1: Amy had her first brush with the law. The mc
Speaker 1: talk family of West Hartford sued the Archers over their
Speaker 1: perceived lack of care that was given to an elderly
Speaker 1: family member. They settled out of court and the Archers
Speaker 1: paid five thousand dollars to the mcclint talks. We know
Speaker 1: it's unreliable always when we talk about trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how much money in nineteen ten would equal to
Speaker 1: today's currency, but we always like to do it just
Speaker 1: kind of as a a little bit of a benchmark
Speaker 1: so you get a sense of it. So it's a
Speaker 1: little fun. Five thousand dollars in nineteen ten was a
Speaker 1: pretty tidy payout and roughly, very roughly, that's kind of
Speaker 1: the equivalent to like a hundred and thirty seven thousand today,
Speaker 1: which is really nothing to really laugh at. Um. So, actually,
Speaker 1: right now we're going to take a quick break, and
Speaker 1: when we return, we're going to talk about the mysterious
Speaker 1: and numerous deaths happening at the Archer Home. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to Criminalia. Let's get to talking about Amy's quote unquote inmates.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen which was about three years after the
Speaker 1: Archers opened the Archer Home for elderly people and chronic invalids, James,
Speaker 1: if you remember, that's Amy's first husband, suddenly died of
Speaker 1: what was at the time called Bright's disease. So Bright's
Speaker 1: disease is kidney disease. And this at this point, we're
Speaker 1: gonna do some really high level medical talk here. It's
Speaker 1: basically what happens when your kidneys become inflamed. So ultimately,
Speaker 1: if it's left untreated, that can lead the kidney failure.
Speaker 1: Today it would be called nephritis, and it has several
Speaker 1: causes such as an infection or high blood pressure. And
Speaker 1: we're just gonna put this out there and it probably
Speaker 1: won't surprise you. Exposure to arsenic not arsenic? What what's that?
Speaker 1: I've never heard him? I wonder what the symptoms. After
Speaker 1: James died, Amy began having some financial trouble, but she
Speaker 1: was still able to manage the home, and that's because
Speaker 1: she had taken out quite a hefty insurance policy on
Speaker 1: her husband just about a week or two prior to
Speaker 1: his death. A few years later, in nineteen thirteen, Amy
Speaker 1: got remarried her new groom, fifty six year old Michael Gilligan,
Speaker 1: was a healthy and vivacious man with a hefty savings account.
Speaker 1: Like Amy, Michael was a widower, plus he had four
Speaker 1: adult sons. In February nineteen fourteen, which was just about
Speaker 1: three months after they had gotten married, Michael suddenly died.
Speaker 1: The official cause of death was listed as acute bilious attack,
Speaker 1: which basically means he was likely suffering from some kind
Speaker 1: of liver or dysfunction. Right, it's really hard to come down.
Speaker 1: I mean, some people will call it severe indigestion, but
Speaker 1: it was a little bit more major than that. Um. So,
Speaker 1: when he died, he had willed his entire estate, which
Speaker 1: was valued at about four thousand dollars. Uh, that would
Speaker 1: be very, very roughly the equivalent of say about a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars today. So he willed all of this
Speaker 1: to his wife. Um. You know, husbands will their estates
Speaker 1: to their wives all the time, it's not weird. But
Speaker 1: despite that, the authorities were suspicious, and they later determined
Speaker 1: that Michael's will was a forgery and that the handwriting
Speaker 1: it turned out matched Amy's. So at this point, there's
Speaker 1: a pattern emerging regarding the Archer home, and neighbors were
Speaker 1: starting to take notice of the high death rate among
Speaker 1: the residents there. And unlike other stories that we've shared
Speaker 1: on the show, where shady things kind of went on
Speaker 1: for a long time without anyone really getting too concern.
Speaker 1: Authorities were actually pretty quick to jump to the conclusion
Speaker 1: that these deaths were probably due to foul play in
Speaker 1: Amy's case, yet they were not so quick to actually
Speaker 1: do anything about it. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: um Amy was known among her residents for her nutritional
Speaker 1: meals and beneficial tonics. But nourishing might not be the
Speaker 1: best word to use when we talk about these nutritional
Speaker 1: meals that she served. And here's why Amy added arsenic
Speaker 1: to her recipes, resulting in the deaths of many of
Speaker 1: her residents, all of whom remember, had named her in
Speaker 1: their wills when they moved into her home, and many
Speaker 1: of them did not have relatives close by or any
Speaker 1: family at all. So we're gonna look at the story
Speaker 1: of one man who lived at the Archer home and
Speaker 1: it is his death that actually kicked off the investigation
Speaker 1: against her. One of Amy's residents was a sixty year
Speaker 1: old man named Franklin Andrews, and while he had some
Speaker 1: sort of mild disability, we don't know what kind of
Speaker 1: illness or injury it was, he was still listed as
Speaker 1: pretty healthy and robust. He routinely did yard work and
Speaker 1: other chores for Amy, and Franklin was one of the
Speaker 1: residents that did not have family nearby, but he did
Speaker 1: right to his family pretty frequently, including stories and details
Speaker 1: about his life at the Archer home. In one letter,
Speaker 1: just in passing, he happened to mention that he had
Speaker 1: noticed a surprising number of deaths among the residents. I've
Speaker 1: wondered after reading the sources on this, every single one
Speaker 1: of them says it the same way. But how do
Speaker 1: you just put that in passing right? Just like a
Speaker 1: cavalier here right? See is saturday in passing rain tomorrow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: by the way, three of my best friends just died
Speaker 1: last night. Um, so you know, good on Franklin for
Speaker 1: sharing that information now, because on one spring day, Franklin
Speaker 1: was painting the fence around the property when he suddenly collapsed.
Speaker 1: Two days later, he died of what was reported to
Speaker 1: be a stomach ulcer. Shortly after his death, his sister
Speaker 1: Nellie Pierce found some unusual correspondence among Franklin's belongings. In particular,
Speaker 1: Amy had pressured Franklin to loan her five and he
Speaker 1: had done so. Suspicious about this loan and her brother's
Speaker 1: sudden death. Nelly also contacted the authorities, and initially the
Speaker 1: district attorney was not interested in the case, but the
Speaker 1: Hartford Current definitely was. The newspaper began their own investigation,
Speaker 1: and it was their investigation that ultimately led to Amy's arrest.
Speaker 1: So among the things that they reviewed at first were
Speaker 1: death certificates. They compared these death certificates of the Archer
Speaker 1: Home residence with those of residence of the Jefferson Street
Speaker 1: Home for the Elderly in Hartford, which was less than
Speaker 1: ten miles away. It turned out that the number of
Speaker 1: deaths at the Jefferson Street Home was similar, but the
Speaker 1: population there was way larger. It was like seven times
Speaker 1: that of the Archer Home. In fact, they discovered sixty
Speaker 1: residents of the Archer Home had died since nineteen o seven,
Speaker 1: and forty eight of them had died recently between nineteen
Speaker 1: eleven and nineteen six. They also discovered Amy's weapon. Carlin
Speaker 1: Gossily was a correspondent and the oh bit writer for
Speaker 1: the Hartford Current at the time, and had for years
Speaker 1: been noticing a really high number of deaths at the
Speaker 1: Archer Home. It was a home for the elderly, yes,
Speaker 1: but the deaths seemed and to put it, mildly excessive.
Speaker 1: So he did some investigating into the poison registers that
Speaker 1: every drug store had to keep by law. I love
Speaker 1: Carlin for this, how do too? He did such a
Speaker 1: good job and this it's amazing. That's good journalism, right man.
Speaker 1: He's an o bit writer. He went above and beyond,
Speaker 1: and in doing this research he hit the jackpot in
Speaker 1: terms of information. He found out that Amy had made
Speaker 1: multiple purchases of arsenic at H. H. Mason's drug store
Speaker 1: in Windsor, as well as other stores around town, and
Speaker 1: one storage register revealed that she had purchased a huge
Speaker 1: amount of arsenic ten ounces that is enough to kill
Speaker 1: at least a hundred people and possibly as many as
Speaker 1: two hundred. Amy cited that there were rat problems and
Speaker 1: bed bugs at the house as the reason she was
Speaker 1: making these purchases. Now, it may sound strange that the
Speaker 1: Connecticut State Police weren't the ones who really went to
Speaker 1: work on this case, but good and bad, there are
Speaker 1: actually some reasons for that. The Connecticut State Police Department
Speaker 1: had only been established for really only a few years
Speaker 1: since like nineteen o three year or so. Give her
Speaker 1: take a year, and the skills that were needed to
Speaker 1: investigate murders and forensics in general weren't really all out
Speaker 1: developed yet, but the state police were interested though. After
Speaker 1: the newspaper investigation really started to take off and they
Speaker 1: did do some of their own work. They sent in
Speaker 1: an undercover officer who pretended to be a wealthy widow
Speaker 1: in need of care, and this gave them a firsthand
Speaker 1: look at how Amy scammed her residence into giving her
Speaker 1: well everything. I was really happy to see that. Once
Speaker 1: the newspaper investigation took off, the police department was like,
Speaker 1: we should get on this. Yeah, yeah, all right. So
Speaker 1: they visited the nursing home after their undercover officer came
Speaker 1: back with this information, and they found surprisingly arsenic in
Speaker 1: the kitchen pantry. Amy again, though, claimed that she used
Speaker 1: arsenic to control an ongoing rat problem in the nursing home,
Speaker 1: but considering that she had enough arsenic you remember, to
Speaker 1: kill more than a hundred people, it sounds like there
Speaker 1: had to be more rats than residents. Like. It sounds
Speaker 1: like there was quite an infestation going on in the
Speaker 1: super rats yes, and bad Bucks kind of like us.
Speaker 1: The police did not believe this story about the rats
Speaker 1: they could do math as well. They believed that Amy
Speaker 1: was poisoning residents, but it wasn't until nineteen seventeen when
Speaker 1: they officially charged Amy with the murder of the Archer
Speaker 1: Home resident Franklin Andrews, that they found out for sure.
Speaker 1: And the investigation took more than a year to complete.
Speaker 1: During that time, bodies were exhumed and autopsies were performed,
Speaker 1: and arsenic YEP was absolutely found in the bodies. Franklin's
Speaker 1: corpse included. There were five victims who were definitely, absolutely,
Speaker 1: positively no doubt about it, poisoned by Amy with arsenic,
Speaker 1: including not only residents of her nursing home, but her
Speaker 1: second husband as well. And although you'll hear numbers like
Speaker 1: she she killed sixty upwards, the final tally it's still
Speaker 1: really high. The final tally from the authorities when they
Speaker 1: finished the investigation of the deaths was a total of forty.
Speaker 1: And when she was arrested, police asked Amy about the
Speaker 1: high number of deaths in her home and she replied, quote, well,
Speaker 1: we didn't ask them to come here, but we do
Speaker 1: the best we can for them. They are old people
Speaker 1: and some live for a long time while others die
Speaker 1: after being here a short time. I don't even have
Speaker 1: a comment for that. I have a comment for everything
Speaker 1: and learning comment. So we're going to take a quick
Speaker 1: break from our for our sponsor and we come back
Speaker 1: we will talk about Amy's trial. M welcome back to Criminalia.
Speaker 1: Let's get into the details of Amy Archer Gilligan's trial.
Speaker 1: So the trial headlined in newspapers all across the country
Speaker 1: and it really captured people's imaginations. One headline from the
Speaker 1: Hartford Current, and this was their lead headline when the
Speaker 1: trial began. Police believe Archer home for aged a murder factory.
Speaker 1: Murder factory. Well, it's also the police believed part right
Speaker 1: like that that presupposes guilt to some degree. Under questioning,
Speaker 1: Amy insisted that she was innocent. I am a poor,
Speaker 1: hard working woman and I can't understand why I am
Speaker 1: persecuted as I have been during the last few years,
Speaker 1: The Current reported she told arresting officers. She also went
Speaker 1: on to say, quote, this is a Christian work and
Speaker 1: one that is very trying, as we have to put
Speaker 1: up with lots of things on account of the peculiarities
Speaker 1: of the old people. Again, so at her trial, Amy
Speaker 1: appeared as a petite widow who was busy raising a
Speaker 1: teenage daughter. She remember she had a daughter from her
Speaker 1: first marriage and taking care of the elderly, and everyone
Speaker 1: in town knew that she was a regular churchgoer and
Speaker 1: that she gave generously to the local church. Most of
Speaker 1: her neighbors and other churchgoers were actually quite shocked to
Speaker 1: find that she had been arrested. Psychiatrists and psychologists who
Speaker 1: were known as alienists at the time testified as to
Speaker 1: Amy's mental health, and they also brought up Amy's alleged
Speaker 1: use of morphine. So this morphine thing, we got to
Speaker 1: talk about it for a second. This only came up.
Speaker 1: It was only mentioned um this idea that she might
Speaker 1: have had a morphine addiction in one reliable source, and
Speaker 1: so we couldn't verify it. It might not be true
Speaker 1: at all, but it is kind of interesting and a
Speaker 1: little too to the leading a piece of the potential
Speaker 1: puzzle to not mention it at all. But even though
Speaker 1: we're including it, we also want to caution you to
Speaker 1: take it with a green of salt. Absolutely right, there's
Speaker 1: there's there's some There's always little bits and pieces of
Speaker 1: the stories that are a little bit too good. To
Speaker 1: not mention, but probably not true. You would think that
Speaker 1: would have come up in more than one place if
Speaker 1: it were a real issue, exactly. Um, And I believe
Speaker 1: it came up in regard to her daughter saying that
Speaker 1: my mom has a morphine addiction, you know. And I
Speaker 1: like to think that that's because her daughter was like,
Speaker 1: please don't send my mom to jail, you know. But
Speaker 1: but I have no way to verify that. So Amy's
Speaker 1: trial back to that. Amy's trial lasted for four weeks
Speaker 1: and it took the jury four hours to convict her.
Speaker 1: She was found guilty of murdering Franklin Andrews. Um But
Speaker 1: the card of public opinion, though, often has a very
Speaker 1: very different point of view. And with Amy, they believed
Speaker 1: she had killed at least twenty two other residents, if
Speaker 1: not more. But the court sentenced her to death by hanging.
Speaker 1: But and there's a big butt. Her defense team appealed
Speaker 1: and her conviction was overturned. So there was a second trial,
Speaker 1: and that began in June. This time, Amy pleaded guilty
Speaker 1: to the lethal poisoning of resident frank Andrews. She received
Speaker 1: a sentence of life in prison, which was a reduced
Speaker 1: charge of second degree murder due to reason of insanity.
Speaker 1: I find that amazing, um Hall, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you know that, like most of the um most most
Speaker 1: often when someone pleads with reason of insanity, guilty or
Speaker 1: not usually not guilty with reason of insanity, it's like
Speaker 1: it's like less than one percent. Actually it actually works
Speaker 1: in their favor lins right, you know, like it's it's
Speaker 1: such a difficult one to argue. So um, I was
Speaker 1: actually really surprised to see that that that's how her
Speaker 1: case played out. Um. Anyway, although she was tried only
Speaker 1: for the murder of Franklin Andrews, Amy was indicted for
Speaker 1: five poisoning murders in total, and the people on that
Speaker 1: list included Franklin Andrews, which is no surprise um, Alice Goudy,
Speaker 1: who was a resident, her second husband, Michael Gilligan, Charles A. Smith,
Speaker 1: also a resident, and Maud Howard Lynch I believe, also
Speaker 1: a resident. Each had died of arsenic poisoning. That is,
Speaker 1: except Maud, who's autopsy showed she was poisoned to a
Speaker 1: Stryck nine. During that second trial, it is reported that
Speaker 1: Amy kept repeating the same phrase, which was simply I
Speaker 1: want to go home. Amy was in her early forties
Speaker 1: when she began her sentence at the state prison in Wethersfield.
Speaker 1: Five years later, in July, amy situation changed when she
Speaker 1: was transferred to the Connecticut Valley Hospital in Middletown, a
Speaker 1: state run institution for people with mental illness. So we
Speaker 1: have brought this up before, but let's take a brief
Speaker 1: moment to review some of the facts about female serial
Speaker 1: killers in the United States. They definitely use poison to
Speaker 1: kill their victims. That is not the only weapon that
Speaker 1: female serial killers have been known to use, but it
Speaker 1: goes beyond that, right we've talked about before. They usually
Speaker 1: know they're victims, and most often they were actually the
Speaker 1: official caretakers of those victims, such as being in a
Speaker 1: situation where they were nursing them. And they often kill
Speaker 1: for financial gain. And if you look at sort of
Speaker 1: that basic profile, Amy really checks a lot of these boxes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Mental illness as well is also listed as a common
Speaker 1: thing among female serial killers. Uh a guestimate of about
Speaker 1: have some type of mental illness during the time that
Speaker 1: they commit their crime. Though her psychiatric records are sealed,
Speaker 1: there are one or two things that we do know
Speaker 1: about Amy's stay at the Connecticut Valley Hospital one she
Speaker 1: continued to read and pray with her Bible in her
Speaker 1: lap daily, and to she enjoyed playing funeral music on
Speaker 1: the piano there, even when no one had died. I
Speaker 1: really liked that detail. It's very haunted mansion e right,
Speaker 1: absolutely right, like every day she played a dirge. She
Speaker 1: spent the remaining thirty eight years of her life there,
Speaker 1: and she died on April nineteen sixty two of natural causes.
Speaker 1: There is something interesting here in her story that comes
Speaker 1: up in some accounts of her time in the hospital,
Speaker 1: and I feel like it needs to be included. Because
Speaker 1: she was convicted of poisoning many of her residents through
Speaker 1: the meals that she served to them. In prison, Amy
Speaker 1: allegedly was allowed to work in the hospital's cafeteria. And
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that anything was reported as going wrong.
Speaker 1: Nothing happened, but it just seemed to me like it
Speaker 1: was poor planning, right. I guess if they were confident
Speaker 1: she couldn't get her hands on nine, they were like, well,
Speaker 1: we need somebody to cook. There is one good thing
Speaker 1: that came out of all of this. In an effort
Speaker 1: to prevent anything like this from happening again. In the
Speaker 1: same year as Amy's first trial, nineteen, the Connecticut state
Speaker 1: legislature introduced a bill requiring the license of quote old
Speaker 1: folks homes. And this was the first time nursing homes
Speaker 1: would be required to have inspections and to annually report deaths.
Speaker 1: Of course, this is something we would probably just end on.
Speaker 1: There is also the star studded piece of her story.
Speaker 1: So Amy's trial and conviction, like we said earlier, was
Speaker 1: really hot and heavy in the media, and that was
Speaker 1: across the nation, and it caught the eye of Joseph
Speaker 1: kessel Ring, a playwright who was based in New York,
Speaker 1: and he adapted this story into a play, um, a
Speaker 1: black comedy that he entitled Our Snack and Old Lace,
Speaker 1: which you might recognize the place starred Boris Karloff, and
Speaker 1: it was a huge hit, and it was adapted into
Speaker 1: film by the same name, which started carry grant and
Speaker 1: as a standard of high school theater departments across the country.
Speaker 1: Exactly now, people are in this play and they don't
Speaker 1: really grasp the gravity of it's a exactly so um
Speaker 1: So her poison was our Snack and maybe once strychnine,
Speaker 1: but Holly, what's yours? Well, so for what's your poison
Speaker 1: this time? You know, I always like to ruminate on
Speaker 1: the tale we have been discussing. And the thing that
Speaker 1: I loved that we didn't talk a ton about, but
Speaker 1: it does come up, is how people in the community
Speaker 1: perceived her as really just like a very you know, sweet,
Speaker 1: wonderful person. And so I thought it would be a
Speaker 1: fun thing to play on that, and I came up
Speaker 1: with a cocktail called Sweetest pie Um, which could then
Speaker 1: hurt you if you drink too much of it um.
Speaker 1: And basically I wanted to make something that tasted like
Speaker 1: cherry pie so um. This one is one point five
Speaker 1: ounces of vodka, one point five ounces of a cherry liqueur, oh,
Speaker 1: one ounce of simple syrup, and then uh, this next one.
Speaker 1: It depends on what people have in their kitchens. Either
Speaker 1: a drop, just a drop of vanilla extract, because if
Speaker 1: you have ever tasted vanilla extract, you know it is
Speaker 1: not delicious on its own. Really could as a child
Speaker 1: because you think it's gonna taste like a cookie, and
Speaker 1: in fact it tastes like getting slapt um. So just
Speaker 1: a drop because it does give it a bakery flavor
Speaker 1: that you don't quite get if you just use vanilla syrup. Also,
Speaker 1: if you're like me and you like to bake, and
Speaker 1: maybe you have invested in having um powdered vanilla, like
Speaker 1: scraped vanilla that's been just pulverized, you can also do
Speaker 1: just a little pinch of that instead. Um, either one
Speaker 1: of those works, and then two ounces of ginger ale
Speaker 1: and you're gonna stir that all together. But then to
Speaker 1: serve it, come with me, because you're gonna melt a
Speaker 1: little bit of butter and um, use a pastry brush
Speaker 1: to just paint that around the rim of your glass,
Speaker 1: and then rim it with Graham cracker crushed right right,
Speaker 1: so you get like a nice buttery crust sensation as
Speaker 1: you sip. And then you just pour your your concoction
Speaker 1: your drinking over ice. I like, although if you wanted
Speaker 1: to get a sense of like a fresh baked pie,
Speaker 1: you could leave the ice out if you don't mind
Speaker 1: a room tempt drink. Um, it's so yummy, but it
Speaker 1: is definitely full of alcohol. So I thought that's sound.
Speaker 1: That was the thing that seemed very wholesome, but is
Speaker 1: in factful of alcohol. So that is the sweetest pie.
Speaker 1: It's quite me, I will say, um, and it does.
Speaker 1: It tastes like a little dessert in your hand, especially
Speaker 1: because you get that nice buttery graham cracker crust situation.
Speaker 1: That is a lovely, lovely addition to the drink Listen.
Speaker 1: I am always going to figure out a way to
Speaker 1: put butter if I can, so if you if you
Speaker 1: yes butter and ginger ale, I put ginger ale and everything.
Speaker 1: You could also do it. If ginger ale is not
Speaker 1: something you like, you could also do it with just
Speaker 1: like um, um, you know, any sparkling water there just
Speaker 1: to give it it just um. I found that before
Speaker 1: I added that it's just a little too thick and
Speaker 1: syrupy because fruit liqueurs can tend to be a little
Speaker 1: bit like the viscosity is a little thick. Um, So
Speaker 1: that's really there to to further move that around like
Speaker 1: the vodka does some And also because I just didn't
Speaker 1: want to pour straight alcohol into a glass, even though
Speaker 1: that often delights me. Um, No, I thought it would
Speaker 1: help also because that's a little too bitey, and you
Speaker 1: want to take some of that bite off of it
Speaker 1: and make it a little more like a baked good
Speaker 1: um and for me, ginger ale does a nice job
Speaker 1: of rounding that flavor out. But if other people don't
Speaker 1: like to jail, you can use anything there or even
Speaker 1: like a little juice if you wanted, would be fine.
Speaker 1: I have a tart cherry juice that actually would probably do.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I like to rail, so I don't really
Speaker 1: need to let me choose my own cherry adventure. Yes
Speaker 1: you could. I mean, that's the thing, right, This is
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that once you have it down
Speaker 1: and you know how you like your mix, you could
Speaker 1: use other fruit liquors to make different alcoholic pie drinks.
Speaker 1: You could just just play. That's what it's about. I
Speaker 1: do want to make sure we thank everybody for spending
Speaker 1: this time with us this week, and we cannot wait
Speaker 1: to talk to you again next week. Criminalia is a
Speaker 1: production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio.
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