Speaker 1: Welcome to tonight's classic episode, Fellow conspiracy Realist. We talk
Speaker 1: a lot about true crime. We examine a lot of
Speaker 1: what makes people called serial killers, and while the nomenclature right,
Speaker 1: While the term may be astonishingly recent, it turns out,
Speaker 1: you guys, that the human species may have already been
Speaker 1: well familiar with this behavior.
Speaker 2: Is this the one where we get into assassins? Or
Speaker 2: it inspired our assassins episodes?
Speaker 1: It may well be our history of Oh what are
Speaker 1: we supposed to call it?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: Targeted operations, that's the euphem is. It's like when you
Speaker 1: say regime if you don't like a government, and you
Speaker 1: say government if you like them, it's an assassin. I
Speaker 1: sure don't like them, but.
Speaker 2: I get it. It's like a targeted drone strike or
Speaker 2: a targeted nuclear attack. I know what you're saying.
Speaker 1: Are we going to start calling serial killers cereal unalivers?
Speaker 2: Is that next we should? If we want people to
Speaker 2: see this on YouTube?
Speaker 3: Oh jeez, yeah.
Speaker 1: Conspiracies within conspiracies, just like a bunch of murderous Matroshka dolls.
Speaker 1: This is our classic episode from twenty nineteen called The
Speaker 1: Eternal Shadow. Serial Killers throughout Ancient History.
Speaker 3: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 3: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 3: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 3: production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 1: Our compatriot nol Is on Adventures they call me Ben.
Speaker 1: We are joined as always with our super producer Paul.
Speaker 1: Mission control decands, most importantly, you are you. You are here,
Speaker 1: and that makes this stuff they don't want you to
Speaker 1: know a pretty gory, grim episode for us today.
Speaker 2: Man, Yeah, let's go ahead and put this warning up
Speaker 2: here right now. We're going to be discussing some things
Speaker 2: that you may not want to hear, especially if you
Speaker 2: dislike murder, sometimes, dismemberment, sometimes, torture, all kinds of things
Speaker 2: that make me squeamish. So if you feel that way,
Speaker 2: go ahead and turn back now.
Speaker 1: If you're in the middle of eating something and you
Speaker 1: have a somewhat delicate stomach, perhaps it is time to
Speaker 1: put this on pause and finish your case idea or
Speaker 1: your thuh whatever.
Speaker 2: Even if you find yourself, I don't know, in the
Speaker 2: backyard with a glass of wine, building a fountain, just
Speaker 2: you know, just know that this one's a little messed up.
Speaker 1: Serial killers, Matt, Yeah, serial killers. We've explored their lives,
Speaker 1: their methods, and their attempts to evade justice, and you know,
Speaker 1: most disturbingly, the tragedies they leave behind in their wake.
Speaker 1: This on multiple episodes, sometimes focusing on general tendencies, sometimes
Speaker 1: focusing on specific individuals. In an earlier episode, we trace
Speaker 1: the evolution of the term serial killer from its initial
Speaker 1: roots and it's not a very old term, spoiler alert
Speaker 1: to the modern day, along with the changing and at
Speaker 1: times controversial definitions involved. Usually when we talk about serial
Speaker 1: murderers on this show, we are talking about let's see,
Speaker 1: we've done a three part series on serial killers who
Speaker 1: are never apprehended. Correct, we've done We've done some looks
Speaker 1: at cults that incorporated serial killing, some human sacrifice and
Speaker 1: so on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a couple of individual ones like the original Nightstalker
Speaker 2: or what is it, the Golden State Killer?
Speaker 1: Ah, yes, yeah, that's a bit of good news, right,
Speaker 1: Golden State Killer was finally apprehended. Was that twenty eighteen?
Speaker 2: Yes? Last? Or well yes, and of last year.
Speaker 1: And when we look into these cases, we're typically exploring
Speaker 1: things in the modern day or in the recent past,
Speaker 1: because for most of us, especially here in the West,
Speaker 1: when we think of serial killers, we generally tend to
Speaker 1: think of things that happened in the twentieth century, maybe
Speaker 1: a little bit in the nineteenth century, but primarily the
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds. It goes back to about that. And now
Speaker 1: we're going to explore something different. Today. We are looking
Speaker 1: into the past to search for the first recorded serial killers,
Speaker 1: if we could find those, the ancient murderers, the murderers
Speaker 1: of old, the ones who exis before the term serial
Speaker 1: killer was ever invented. And to do that we first
Speaker 1: have to we first have to explain what we mean
Speaker 1: when we say serial killer.
Speaker 2: Right, that's right. Here are the facts. Oh hey, sounds
Speaker 2: so hokey when I say it. I'm sorry everybody, but
Speaker 2: here are the facts. So a serial killer, at the
Speaker 2: most basic level is it can be described or is
Speaker 2: categorized by the manner in which they kill someone and
Speaker 2: along with the amount they kill someone, like the frequency
Speaker 2: in which they do this act. And according to the FBI,
Speaker 2: we've used them as our source before to discuss what
Speaker 2: a serial killer is. According to the FBI, serial killer
Speaker 2: is someone who commits at least three murders over the
Speaker 2: span of a month, and then there's always some some
Speaker 2: form of cooling down period, generally in emotional cooling down
Speaker 2: period in between those murders and those deaths. So this
Speaker 2: really sets them apart from say a spree killer, someone
Speaker 2: who kills a large amount of people over a short
Speaker 2: time span, or a soldier in battle who takes lives
Speaker 2: because it's part of their mission and job to do so,
Speaker 2: and in particular it's that type of killer. So, okay,
Speaker 2: let's put it this way. A spree killer has the
Speaker 2: potential of killing more people generally in the span of
Speaker 2: you know, a day or a week or something like that.
Speaker 2: Then perhaps a serial killer who kills even over the
Speaker 2: course of a year or at least, there's a potential there.
Speaker 2: So it's not just sheer numbers, it's how they.
Speaker 1: Kill, right, And serial killers will often be differentiated from
Speaker 1: other individuals who murder multiple people.
Speaker 3: In that they.
Speaker 1: Tend to have they tend to have patterns of some sort,
Speaker 1: whether it is the perceived commonality of their victims, by
Speaker 1: which we mean something that the killer themselves sees in
Speaker 1: these victims. That makes them all qualify as prey or
Speaker 1: whether it's the method of homicide that they employ. So
Speaker 1: you can see how there are some important distinctions here.
Speaker 1: How many of these individuals are alive or uncaught today.
Speaker 1: Every time we look at this we run into an
Speaker 1: unsurprising but unpleasant lack of evidence. The current estimates on
Speaker 1: serial killer numbers you see are woefully vague, and the
Speaker 1: people who have attempted to attempted to guestimate the number
Speaker 1: of unapprehended serial killers or murderers at large I always
Speaker 1: walk away with a wide range of numbers. We are
Speaker 1: going to give you a couple just to set up
Speaker 1: some bookends here. Thomas Hargrove Sky, who founded the Murder
Speaker 1: Accountability Project, And according to Hargrove and his research, there
Speaker 1: are as many as two thousand serial killers at large
Speaker 1: as of twenty eighteen in the US or at least
Speaker 1: in the anglosphere.
Speaker 2: Wow. That's a high number. Wow. And how did he
Speaker 2: get to that number? That's one of the big questions here.
Speaker 2: And really he started by asking contacts that he had
Speaker 2: with the Federal Bureau of Investigation asked them to calculate
Speaker 2: how many unsolved murders are linked to at least one
Speaker 2: other murder through DNA on the FBI's database. So there
Speaker 2: you go. Already, because they determined that about fourteen hundred murders,
Speaker 2: or roughly two percent of those, like, of all the
Speaker 2: murders within that database met the classification of being connected
Speaker 2: to at least one other. That's already pretty disturbing. But
Speaker 2: you know, if you look, if you look at the
Speaker 2: fact that not all murder cases actually involve any kind
Speaker 2: of evidence of the DNA sort at least, and not
Speaker 2: all cases are even reported to the FBI, so that
Speaker 2: two percent is a pretty low estimate. So then Hargrove
Speaker 2: went through and he said, okay, well, let's add up.
Speaker 2: Let's round it up to two thousand, just as a
Speaker 2: measure of what he believes could be closer. And that's
Speaker 2: because he continued looking.
Speaker 1: Right, he said, there are more than two hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty thousand unsolved murders just since nineteen eighty. So when
Speaker 1: we put that in perspective, he asked, how shocking is
Speaker 1: it that there are at least two thousand unrecognized series
Speaker 1: of homicides. There's an important note here, So earlier, Matt,
Speaker 1: you had broken down the FBI definition of serial killer
Speaker 1: for US, and that's three or more murder with a
Speaker 1: cooling off period. The thing about Hargrove's study is that
Speaker 1: he only required a person to have killed two other people.
Speaker 1: So what happens when we stick to the definition of
Speaker 1: three murders per killer. That's when we run into Kenna Quinnette,
Speaker 1: a criminologist at Indiana University, Perdue University, Indianapolis, and she
Speaker 1: has a much more conservative estimate. So her estimate is
Speaker 1: based on links between cases that were made by journalists
Speaker 1: or law enforcement, and there's a different metric in her study,
Speaker 1: the killer had to have murdered at least three victims
Speaker 1: conforming to that FBI serial killer definition. By her definition,
Speaker 1: there are about one hundred and fifteen serial killers dating
Speaker 1: back to the nineteen seventies in the US whose crimes
Speaker 1: have never been solved. In the same time period as
Speaker 1: her estimate for unsolved serial murders, there were roughly six
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty five solved serial murder cases. And we
Speaker 1: don't again, we don't mean that every single one of
Speaker 1: these people fits that sort of film and fiction definition.
Speaker 1: They're not all hannibal lecters. In fact, most serial killers
Speaker 1: do not have a very high IQ. But that's a
Speaker 1: lot of death, and one hundred and fifteen is still
Speaker 1: it might still be missing some pieces, because this doesn't
Speaker 1: include cases where no one ever made a link between murders. If,
Speaker 1: for instance, a serial killer murdered a person in Arkansas
Speaker 1: and then drifted to an adjacent state to kill two
Speaker 1: more people, the crimes might never have been flagged by
Speaker 1: anyone as related, so they wouldn't appear in this count.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the biggest reasons experts believe that
Speaker 1: there could be any serial killers uncought and are missed.
Speaker 1: People don't link you know, it's not like Charlie Day
Speaker 1: with a conspiracy wall. People are not linking up these
Speaker 1: various seemingly unrelated events. It's tough to do, so, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of research and it's a lot of time.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, where is Pepe? For real?
Speaker 1: Though there is no Pepe lost? Who had to inject some.
Speaker 2: Left just a tiny bit good god, Well, because it's
Speaker 2: a terrifying thought, just the unknown serial killer that just
Speaker 2: could be lurking everywhere. And even if it's only one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifteen.
Speaker 1: That's still over one hundred. Yeah, over one hundred people.
Speaker 2: They're only fifty states. That's true.
Speaker 1: That's true. And I remember, I remember we had talked
Speaker 1: about this, maybe off air one day met. But we
Speaker 1: start talking about the distribution of serial killers at least
Speaker 1: in the states. Are there more in Alaska, or they're
Speaker 1: more in Florida, and so on, And it's an interesting
Speaker 1: conversation because it quickly goes to speculation. We we don't
Speaker 1: really know. We know that the inner State in Texas
Speaker 1: is very, very dangerous, and the FBI has been keeping
Speaker 1: an eye on it. But if we count on these estimates,
Speaker 1: we can reasonably assume that there's somewhere between one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty to two thousand killers who never saw justice
Speaker 1: for their crimes. Many of them may have been incarcerated
Speaker 1: for other unrelated crimes, grand theft, auto drug possessions, something
Speaker 1: like that, and many may have died right but as
Speaker 1: grizzly as it is to point out, some remain at
Speaker 1: large and alive today. And it's tricky and not a
Speaker 1: little disheartening to realize how little we actually know about
Speaker 1: these numbers and these murders a long time ago. Actually,
Speaker 1: this is one of those conversations that you and I
Speaker 1: have been having for years, right with slight pauses in there.
Speaker 1: We've talked about it before. How much easier it seems
Speaker 1: to get away with murder and other crimes in the
Speaker 1: days before mass surveillance and forensic science. Yes, no one
Speaker 1: knew what fingerprints were, No one knew how to attract DNA,
Speaker 1: or even.
Speaker 2: Even if you got it, it was a lot harder
Speaker 2: to match somebody up with the database.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, there's no database. That's a good point. So
Speaker 1: this leads us to ask a disturbing question. Our serial
Speaker 1: killers a relatively recent phenomenon in the human story. How
Speaker 1: long have they been with us? Have serial murderers always
Speaker 1: been in our midst? The answer, sadly, is an emphatic yes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's about to get crazy after this quick
Speaker 2: word from our sponsor.
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 1: Upon closer inspection, it appears that the act of serial
Speaker 1: murder has been with our species for as long as
Speaker 1: written history, and by all indications, predates written history. These
Speaker 1: killers ran the socio economic gamut. Among their number, we
Speaker 1: find people at the very top and the very bottom
Speaker 1: of social hierarchies. We find outcast royalty, criminals and members
Speaker 1: of what functioned as the middle class. There are no
Speaker 1: common denominators for these murderers other than their actions. And
Speaker 1: here are some of the strangest examples of ancient serial
Speaker 1: killers we came across. By no means are these all
Speaker 1: of them.
Speaker 2: Let's get started with someone named zoo Shinatier and this
Speaker 2: is from originates from fifth century Yemen, so quite a
Speaker 2: time ago. This man was in the Himarite Kingdom that's
Speaker 2: a modern day Yemen. And this guy was known as
Speaker 2: or at least he's come to be known as one
Speaker 2: of the first serial killers, the first recorded at least.
Speaker 2: He was reportedly a very wealthy man. He lived in
Speaker 2: a place called Aiden. And this guy, it's really disturbed.
Speaker 2: Remember that thing, that whole warning we gave you at
Speaker 2: the top, just remember it still stands. He would reportedly
Speaker 2: lure young men, young boys into his home with the
Speaker 2: promise of things that they needed at the time in
Speaker 2: fifth century Yemen or fifth century what is now Yemen, food, money,
Speaker 2: things again, things that they required, and he would strip
Speaker 2: them naked. He would assault them, generally it included rape
Speaker 2: at least from the things that we found. He would
Speaker 2: then kill them generally by throwing them naked out of
Speaker 2: an upper story window of his home, and he did
Speaker 2: this repeatedly, and then, thankfully, one of the young men
Speaker 2: that he lured into his home was able to put
Speaker 2: a stop to him and stabbed him to death. There's
Speaker 2: a man at least that was named in one book
Speaker 2: that recorded it as zarash as the young man who
Speaker 2: killed him, thankfully, But he's only the start, and he's
Speaker 2: really messed up, and it only gets.
Speaker 1: Worse, right, right, He is not the first. He is
Speaker 1: just one of the earliest that.
Speaker 2: We know of. Yeah, well again because it's fifth century,
Speaker 2: so it was written down a little more easily than
Speaker 2: some of the even earlier ones.
Speaker 1: That we'll find very important point with shu Shinatir. He
Speaker 1: was definitely doing this. We're going to run into some
Speaker 1: strange concerns we always need to have about historical documents.
Speaker 1: But this guy definitely was a child murderer and a
Speaker 1: somewhat prolific one until, of course, as you said, Matt,
Speaker 1: one of his victims managed to take his life. Let's
Speaker 1: move on to someone who is commonly called the world's
Speaker 1: first recorded serial killer or the world's first female serial killer.
Speaker 1: This is Lucusta the Poisoner. So she gets this title
Speaker 1: all the time. You'll hear it pretty often. I did
Speaker 1: an episode about her for another show, Ridiculous History, where
Speaker 1: I also called her the one of the first recorded
Speaker 1: serial killers. But there's a question here because she wasn't
Speaker 1: so much a serial killer as a paid assassin. So
Speaker 1: members of the Roman elite were hiring her to poison
Speaker 1: the coworkers they didn't like, or to get rid of
Speaker 1: their relatives if they wanted an inheritance, you know, and
Speaker 1: great Uncle Flavius has just taken too long to kick
Speaker 1: the bucket. She grew up in what we call France today,
Speaker 1: and she had an encyclopedia knowledge of herbal medicine and
Speaker 1: plant lore. The local elite saw her knowledge as a
Speaker 1: way to get rid of their enemies without a fuss,
Speaker 1: and she saw a market opportunity. So she wasn't necessarily
Speaker 1: motivated by some sort of again perceived commonality of the victims, right,
Speaker 1: She wasn't looking for young people or brunettes or so on.
Speaker 1: She was doing this as a job, and she became
Speaker 1: pretty famous. She was arrested a few times, but the
Speaker 1: people in power who used her services always kept her
Speaker 1: out of jail. She got rescued by her wealthy patrons
Speaker 1: numerous times, and eventually she was called to the city
Speaker 1: of Rome to assist the Empress Agrippina in getting rid
Speaker 1: of her husband, and she served a Grappina. She went
Speaker 1: on to serve the infamous Emperor Nero, who just loved her,
Speaker 1: and a lot of stuff about Nero is exaggerated, but
Speaker 1: he was not a nice character. When he died, she
Speaker 1: found herself robbed of all the protection she had enjoyed
Speaker 1: for decades. She had even set up a poison school.
Speaker 1: At this point, she was immediately sentenced to death for
Speaker 1: her role in the murders of dozens and dozens of
Speaker 1: upper crust members of Roman society. And again, like the
Speaker 1: case with Zushinatier, we know that she was real and
Speaker 1: we know she actually did this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly as soon as I think Galba was the
Speaker 2: person who took over after Nero fell. But yeah, he
Speaker 2: definitely said, hey, guess what you get to die now.
Speaker 2: It really messed up, but at least somebody put an
Speaker 2: end to the assassinations. Now, let's move on to one
Speaker 2: of the first forms of serial killers that we ever
Speaker 2: covered on this show. Back in a video we made
Speaker 2: about where wolves in the history of lycanthropy fascinating stuff.
Speaker 2: So if we go to the Middle Ages in Europe,
Speaker 2: there were a lot of killers, deranged people who would
Speaker 2: go around doing just terrible things, everything from murder to cannibalism,
Speaker 2: just just the worst of the worst. There were human
Speaker 2: men that would go out and do this that were
Speaker 2: considered to be werewolves, or at least thought to be werewolves.
Speaker 2: And there are some pretty intense claims made about these men,
Speaker 2: even claims by the men themselves who believed, perhaps truly
Speaker 2: believed that they would transform in some way to a
Speaker 2: wolf or at least the spirit of a wolf.
Speaker 1: In the sixteenth century, it was a French peasant named
Speaker 1: Pierre Bourgeau who was apparently under the control the thrall
Speaker 1: of several figures clad in black, and this is per
Speaker 1: his testimony, including one man named Michael ver Dunn. So,
Speaker 1: according to Brugeau's story, Verdunn gave him an ointment that
Speaker 1: would transform him from a man into a wolf. And
Speaker 1: we talk about this a little bit in the past
Speaker 1: in various episodes. The way that were wolves are generally
Speaker 1: thought to transform nowadays is you get bit by a
Speaker 1: were wolf, but you survive. Yes, that's the way in right,
Speaker 1: and then you follow the path of the wolf. However,
Speaker 1: back then, you could become a wolf through any number
Speaker 1: of weird satanic rituals, drinking water from a water from
Speaker 1: a wolf's print in the light of the full boon,
Speaker 1: wearing a belt made out of a wolf pelt, or
Speaker 1: just rubbing yourself down with some ointment, yeah.
Speaker 2: Or you know, taking a potion. As you said before,
Speaker 2: there are a lot of ways that people could be
Speaker 2: you know, from a rational, very rational standpoint, a lot
Speaker 2: of ways that people could be convinced that they can
Speaker 2: become a werewolf or have become a werewolf.
Speaker 1: And there's some pretty fascinating arguments that are by no
Speaker 1: means water proof, but there are some pretty fascinating arguments
Speaker 1: that some of these ointments were in fact hallucinogens, and
Speaker 1: so these people really did, at least from their perspective, transform,
Speaker 1: even if not physically. There was a third guy who
Speaker 1: was named in this fiasco with weird, really weird, first
Speaker 1: named Philibert. Yeah, doesn't sound like a killer, Philibert Montaute.
Speaker 1: So Brigot, Montaut and Verdun became known as the werewolves
Speaker 1: of Polygony and they were collectively responsible for the murders
Speaker 1: of several children. They confessed to these murders.
Speaker 2: They did, But how why did they confess? Ben Oh?
Speaker 1: Because they were getting tortured left and right, day and
Speaker 1: day out like nobody's business.
Speaker 2: And full on tortured, bad torture beyond the things that
Speaker 2: you see in any mob movie you've ever seen. It's
Speaker 2: really truly medieval.
Speaker 1: Stuff, such the point that they could have easily died
Speaker 1: during the torture. So they catch Dune and allegedly they
Speaker 1: catch them covered in blood, and they begin torturing him.
Speaker 1: Confess to your crimes. What infernal powers have allowed you
Speaker 1: to transform into an otherworldly agent of Satan? And who
Speaker 1: was with you? Tell us essentially what your covenant is? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and identify the members therein So, under torture, he confesses
Speaker 1: to whatever they say he did, and then he says, also,
Speaker 1: these two guys, Brigo and Monteaux are in on this
Speaker 1: with me. And then they get apprehended. Burgo gets tortured
Speaker 1: and he says, these two guys forced me to renounce
Speaker 1: God and turn into a werewolf. I had to do
Speaker 1: it to survive. And you know, they're breaking more of
Speaker 1: his limbs, and they're saying, well, did you kill hundreds
Speaker 1: of children? He's saying something like yes, please, God stop,
Speaker 1: don't kill me.
Speaker 2: And just quickly, as sidebar, let's talk about the torture
Speaker 2: that was used against these guys, because it's something that
Speaker 2: I've seen pictures of before and I looked at it again,
Speaker 2: and you may have heard of it, called something that's
Speaker 2: a torture wheel of sorts. And in a lot of
Speaker 2: these pictures, these woodcuts that still remain today, copies of them,
Speaker 2: you can see what's being employed. And it is so brutal.
Speaker 2: I'm just I'm gonna describe it trigger warning. Here Where
Speaker 2: you were laid down where and there are I guess,
Speaker 2: wedges put beneath the places in where your joints are
Speaker 2: and your arm your major arm and leg bones are broken.
Speaker 2: And then you're where those bones are broken. You are
Speaker 2: wrapped around this wheel like a wooden looks like a
Speaker 2: large wooden wagon wheel, and then you are hung from
Speaker 2: on this wheel on a stake of some sort and
Speaker 2: basically turned upside down while you're still alive. It's hard
Speaker 2: to imagine you can find pictures of it. The thing is,
Speaker 2: if you if you can imagine, which is very difficult
Speaker 2: to do going through something like that and the pain
Speaker 2: and terror involved. Then it really does make you realize
Speaker 2: that the confessions made when undergoing that are to be
Speaker 2: taken with a grain of salt.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and we probably will never know for sure to
Speaker 1: what degree these three men were guilty. However, they were
Speaker 1: not the only quote unquote werewolves of the time. There
Speaker 1: was a serial killer. It was also a cannibal named
Speaker 1: Peter Stump sometimes spelled Stump or Stube, and he was
Speaker 1: called the werewolf of Bedburg, who was a one armed
Speaker 1: farmer lived in fifteenth century Germany. Over the course of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five years, he's thought to have murdered fourteen children,
Speaker 1: two pregnant women, and he might not have ever been caught,
Speaker 1: but like many serial killers, he seemed to have a
Speaker 1: degrading mental state. Yeah, which is how you know things
Speaker 1: like Dennis Radar, right, the BTK killer would have gotten
Speaker 1: away had his mental state not continued to decay such
Speaker 1: that he felt like he had to be recognized for
Speaker 1: his terrible, terrible crimes. This guy Stump or Stump or Stube.
Speaker 1: When he was caught he said, look, yeah, I drank
Speaker 1: that cow's blood.
Speaker 2: You know what else?
Speaker 1: I also have eaten fetuses. And I had a son.
Speaker 1: I ate his brain. I don't care. I'm a monster.
Speaker 1: And the thing was in his non kill her life.
Speaker 1: He was a wealthy farmer and he was a widower.
Speaker 1: He had two children, the son of an unknown age
Speaker 1: and a daughter called Beale or Sybil, who was, as
Speaker 1: far as you know, at least older than fifteen. He
Speaker 1: was subjected to torture who stretched on her rack, and
Speaker 1: that's when he claimed he had been practicing black magic
Speaker 1: since he was twelve years old. He said the devil
Speaker 1: had allowed him to change into a wolf, and for
Speaker 1: twenty five years, he said he had been an insatiable
Speaker 1: bloodsucker animals, men, women, children. He confessed when he was
Speaker 1: when he was presented with the possibility of more torture,
Speaker 1: and he was also accused of having an incestuous relationship
Speaker 1: with his daughter. She was sentenced to die with him,
Speaker 1: and he said that he had had intercourse with a succubus,
Speaker 1: again confessing under torture. This did not save him. These
Speaker 1: confessions instead led to his execution on October thirty one,
Speaker 1: fifteen eighty nine. He his mistress and his daughter were murdered.
Speaker 1: He was murdered in a particularly gruesome way. He was
Speaker 1: put on the wheel that you mentioned earlier, Matt, and
Speaker 1: they tore flesh from his body in ten places with
Speaker 1: red hot pinchers, then his arms and legs, then his
Speaker 1: limbs were broken with an axe head to prevent him
Speaker 1: from returning from the grave, and he was beheaded. They
Speaker 1: burned his body. His daughter and his mistress were aflayed
Speaker 1: and strangled and then also burned along with him, and
Speaker 1: the authorities placed his severed head on top of a
Speaker 1: pole with the torture wheel and a figure of a
Speaker 1: wolf audit, so they were convinced that he did something.
Speaker 1: While none of these men were, of course proven to
Speaker 1: be capable of physically changing shape, contemporary accounts paint a
Speaker 1: picture of one or two possibilities. One they could have
Speaker 1: been mentally ill and homicidal. Two, they could have been
Speaker 1: mentally ill and confessing to non existent or exaggerated crimes
Speaker 1: see and this is a distinct possibility. They could have
Speaker 1: been completely innocent and falsely confessing to avoid further torture.
Speaker 1: But there's an entire genre in Europe around this time
Speaker 1: of people being accused of lycanthropy. And this is just
Speaker 1: the beginning of the story. We'll come back with more
Speaker 1: tales of ancient serial killers after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: We've been in Europe for some time. Let's travel to
Speaker 1: South America to the story of Rios e Lis Buguer.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is a woman who was also known as
Speaker 2: law Quintralla. And this had to do with her the
Speaker 2: color of her hair. She had very striking red hair
Speaker 2: and she lived in Chile. She was an aristocrat and landowner.
Speaker 2: She allegedly carried out about forty murders, around forty murders
Speaker 2: while she while she was basically a tyrant of sorts
Speaker 2: over a lot of just a lot of people who
Speaker 2: were working on her estate rough you know, they're indigenous
Speaker 2: workers who then she was in charge of, and she
Speaker 2: was just brutal to them. Apparently now she was a
Speaker 2: member of you know, what would be considered a privileged
Speaker 2: set of people under Santiago in colonial Santiago, and she
Speaker 2: was said to just have delighted it was her she
Speaker 2: very much enjoyed doing depraved things, things that were sacrilegious
Speaker 2: in nature, I guess to the church, things that were
Speaker 2: sexual and you know, having to do with consumption, like
Speaker 2: over indulging, copious consumption exactly. It's hedonism, that's exactly what
Speaker 2: it is. And there's another person, Elizabeth Bathory from history
Speaker 2: that we've kind of heard about a couple of times
Speaker 2: that this person, Laquintralla, has similarities with. She had a
Speaker 2: violent temper. Again, she's a noble woman. She's got a
Speaker 2: fondness for torture, and specifically torturing people who are underneath her,
Speaker 2: her subordinates. She seemed to delight in it, like we said. Now, besides,
Speaker 2: you know, her indentured servants and her slaves, she also
Speaker 2: murdered lovers, which is something we may see here in
Speaker 2: the future. Here she even murdered a priest and even
Speaker 2: committed patricide and killed her father. Now, you know, in
Speaker 2: this case, a lot of the people we've spoken about
Speaker 2: haven't been wealth be wealthy, but this is one of
Speaker 2: the first cases we see that the wealth is actually
Speaker 2: being used to avoid justice. It's kind of like the
Speaker 2: person from Rome we were speaking about, Friends in high Places, yeah, Lacusta, Yeah,
Speaker 2: where she was able to use her influence to avoid
Speaker 2: justice for quite a while, several years in fact, and
Speaker 2: she even would donate to the church, to the Catholic
Speaker 2: Church in order to kind of grease the hand in
Speaker 2: a way to be a little a little bit safer,
Speaker 2: even though it's kind of a known thing.
Speaker 1: Maybe, yeah, she epsteined it essent. Yeah, you know, because
Speaker 1: she was paying off judges, lawyers, she had many relatives
Speaker 1: in political positions. She did go on trial, but despite
Speaker 1: being pegged for forty separate murders, the trial was stalled
Speaker 1: as a result of her influence. She was released and
Speaker 1: then this is around the sixteen hundreds, from sixteen thirty
Speaker 1: seven on, she was released and she lived out the
Speaker 1: remainder of her life. She eventually passed away in sixteen
Speaker 1: sixty five of old age, not in jail, and thirty
Speaker 1: years later the judiciary system caught up and they said,
Speaker 1: let's investigate these things. But she was dead, so whatever
Speaker 1: she did, whatever kind of justice she would face, it
Speaker 1: would not be earthly justice. And years after her death
Speaker 1: her home was abandoned because people thought that her ghosts
Speaker 1: still walked the premises. And let's stick with let's stick
Speaker 1: with female serial killers here. There's another one, Gulia Tofana.
Speaker 1: As we know, there's a stereotype that tells us female
Speaker 1: serial killers generally seemed to prefer poison as their primary
Speaker 1: a murder instrument. This is a stereotype. Stereotypes are everywhere.
Speaker 1: There may be a tendency, but that's certainly not everybody. However,
Speaker 1: Gulia Tofana is a poster child for the compulsive poisoning crew.
Speaker 2: And again, like similar to our earlier example.
Speaker 1: And here's our question. Is she We have confirmed kills
Speaker 1: on her side, but is she a serial killer or
Speaker 1: is she someone in a gruesome profession? She was helping
Speaker 1: wives who wanted to kill their husbands, along with her
Speaker 1: daughter who worked with her, and a couple of assistants,
Speaker 1: and they were mass producing poison. It was a kind
Speaker 1: of it was believed to be related to arsenic So
Speaker 1: is she a businesswoman?
Speaker 2: She a killer? Is she both? She even had a
Speaker 2: poison named after her.
Speaker 1: Right, that's that's true?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, what was it?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean it's the specific I guess version of
Speaker 2: of arsenic right, the Aqua Tofana.
Speaker 3: So don't.
Speaker 1: Don't take it if you read that in an ingredient
Speaker 1: list or anything. Don't don't bother with that. Put those
Speaker 1: cheese nips away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not a fancy bottled water aqua ta fauna.
Speaker 2: That's what it sounds like to me.
Speaker 1: And we have time for one more. Let's see, let's
Speaker 1: go with Liu pingree. Liu pingli was a Han prince.
Speaker 1: Like some of our other early serial killers, he was
Speaker 1: from wealth. He was born in the second century BC.
Speaker 1: He is one of the earliest serial killers that we
Speaker 1: have on record. So there are a couple of different
Speaker 1: competing ones. Here is the third son of Liu Hu,
Speaker 1: who is Prince Yao of Liang and the grandson of
Speaker 1: the Emperor One and the nephew of the Emperor Jing,
Speaker 1: so he is very very well connected. According to book
Speaker 1: called Records of the Grand Historian, this guy was a monster.
Speaker 1: He was arrogant and cruel, and his idea of a
Speaker 1: fun time would be to round up some of his
Speaker 1: friends or his followers and go on marauding expeditions with
Speaker 1: slaves from the court or with young men who are
Speaker 1: on the wrong side of the law, and they would
Speaker 1: literally ride out around town and the countryside and they
Speaker 1: would murder people for fun and steal their stuff just
Speaker 1: because he thought it was a lark.
Speaker 2: Wow, It's like the definition of marauder is that a
Speaker 2: correct term.
Speaker 1: Yeah, gosh, this is not like the werewolves of Polygony, right.
Speaker 1: We know exactly what he did. He killed and his
Speaker 1: crew killed over one hundred people, and they became infamous.
Speaker 1: These murders were known across the kingdom, and people were
Speaker 1: afraid to go out at night. Eventually, things get to
Speaker 1: a boiling point and someone, a son of someone he
Speaker 1: had killed, accuses him and tells the Emperor, you know, look,
Speaker 1: your son is a monster. He's running around killing people
Speaker 1: for sport. And as soon as that person said it,
Speaker 1: other people spoke out, and officials in the court said,
Speaker 1: you have to kill your nephew. More than one hundred
Speaker 1: people have died, how many more have to die? And
Speaker 1: the Emperor said, I can't. I can't bring myself to
Speaker 1: kill my nephew, no matter what kind of person he is.
Speaker 1: But I will do the next best thing. He stripped
Speaker 1: Leu Pingli of all of his royal titles, made him
Speaker 1: just regular shmo, and banished him to County Shangyong. What
Speaker 1: happened after that, we don't know, because again it's it's
Speaker 1: very difficult for us to trace the lives of commonplace
Speaker 1: people at this day.
Speaker 2: High you know. Yeah, when you got stripped of that title,
Speaker 2: it kind of banished even what he did to the unknown.
Speaker 1: But this is pretty surprising stuff when you see just
Speaker 1: from a few examples, you see how prevalent serial murdering is,
Speaker 1: or at least the accusations thereof. That's where we have
Speaker 1: to talk about the problems with historical accounts, right yep.
Speaker 1: The same sources that would appear to be our primary
Speaker 1: means of learning a story may often be the very
Speaker 1: same sources that prevent us from learning the truth. Because
Speaker 1: you think propaganda is bad now, oh body, right.
Speaker 2: When you're the one who survives the end of a
Speaker 2: sword and the other person does not, you can write
Speaker 2: whatever you want.
Speaker 1: Right exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: History is written by the winners, and often just seeing
Speaker 1: something in print was enough to damn someone in the
Speaker 1: public eye. There's a fantastic book called A Devil in
Speaker 1: the Shape of a Woman that looks at this practice
Speaker 1: in the Salem witch tribes. And what we find is
Speaker 1: that more so in Europe, but also a little bit
Speaker 1: in Salem, there are questions of there are questions of motive.
Speaker 1: Did the accusers always believe someone was in league with
Speaker 1: the devil? Or were they pushing the case because according
Speaker 1: to law in some communities, the inquisitors or the accusers
Speaker 1: got a piece of the person's estate when they were
Speaker 1: found to be a witch.
Speaker 2: It's definitely possible, right right, And yeah, man, you gotta
Speaker 2: think about literacy rates as well in general for certain
Speaker 2: regions where things are happening historically, and also the people
Speaker 2: who can read the stuff that is being written. There
Speaker 2: a lot of times, the people who can make the
Speaker 2: laws or enact justice right or something to that effect.
Speaker 2: And when there's a written document that says it's an
Speaker 2: accusatory document, it's going to stand out with the people
Speaker 2: who who are looking to root out heresy, to root
Speaker 2: out things that would go against the church and or
Speaker 2: well the state, sometimes the nation, but usually the church.
Speaker 1: And in several of the cases above, Despite these salient
Speaker 1: historical questions, we have found cooperating sources that appear to
Speaker 1: confirm some basic and disturbing truths. And just with this
Speaker 1: small collection of examples, we have illustrated that the concept
Speaker 1: of serial murderers predates the term serial killer. The same
Speaker 1: psychoses are present, if not prevalent, and we will never
Speaker 1: know how many serial murderers existed we don't have a
Speaker 1: particularly sharp understanding of how many exist today. However, we
Speaker 1: can surmise that this practice and these people have been
Speaker 1: with humanity since before the dawn of modern history, a
Speaker 1: dark shadow falling behind our species from the day the
Speaker 1: first Homo sapiens emerged.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and oh my god, and let's bring something else
Speaker 2: up here really fast. We've been talking about serial murders
Speaker 2: and serial killers and how many may exist right now. Well,
Speaker 2: there's a person that we talked to through the Zodiac
Speaker 2: Killer show named Peter Vronsky, and he brings up a
Speaker 2: very fascinating idea here. He believes that when there's economic downturn,
Speaker 2: especially on a wide scale in any region or globally
Speaker 2: even or just in a town, the probability of creating
Speaker 2: a future serial killer who is going through this, uh,
Speaker 2: the economic downturn, all the realities that you face when
Speaker 2: that's happening, He believes that you increase the probability of
Speaker 2: creating serial killers. And in his opinion, he wrote a
Speaker 2: book called Sons of Kin, and in it he describes
Speaker 2: how because of the financial crisis from two thousand and
Speaker 2: seven two thousand and eight, we are actually creating a
Speaker 2: new generation of serial killers, or we have generated essentially
Speaker 2: a new season of serial killers that will emerge ten
Speaker 2: twenty years from now. And he believes that that economic
Speaker 2: downturn at least in some way helped to create those
Speaker 2: serial killers. Fascinating stuff, fast.
Speaker 1: Scaring, fascinating. I'd love to I'd love to check out
Speaker 1: this book. I'd love to learn more about his work.
Speaker 1: And that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't
Speaker 1: wait to hear your thoughts. We try to be easy
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