Speaker 1: Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio in
Speaker 1: partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to Criminalia,
Speaker 1: where this season we're exploring the lives and motivations of
Speaker 1: some of the most notorious lady poisoners in history. I'm
Speaker 1: Holly Fry and I'm Maria Trumki, And in today's episode,
Speaker 1: we're going to look at the life of Lydia Sherman,
Speaker 1: who in total poisoned probably as many as three of
Speaker 1: her husband's and more upsettingly, eight children before she was
Speaker 1: convicted of second degree murder. So Lydia's span of crimes
Speaker 1: actually ran from around it was right around the Civil War.
Speaker 1: It was between about eighteen sixty three to the early
Speaker 1: eighteen seventies. She was the first woman in the United
Speaker 1: States to total up a double digit body count. That's
Speaker 1: quite a claim to fame. Yeah. So, Lydia was born
Speaker 1: Lydia Danbury on Christmas even four in Burlington, New Jersey.
Speaker 1: She was orphaned when her mother died just shy of
Speaker 1: a year after her birth, and at that point she
Speaker 1: was sent to live with her uncle, who was a
Speaker 1: farmer named John Clay. Game. Why her uncle, your guess
Speaker 1: is as good as ours. There is no record of
Speaker 1: who her father was or why he himself did not
Speaker 1: care for his infant daughter. By the age of sixteen,
Speaker 1: um she left the farm as she went to live
Speaker 1: with her brother in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and that's
Speaker 1: where she began working as a seamstress. It was her
Speaker 1: first job. And it was while she was living in
Speaker 1: New Brunswick that Lydia became heavily involved with the Methodist Church.
Speaker 1: And it was through the church that she met Edward Struck,
Speaker 1: who was a widowed blacksmith and he was raising six
Speaker 1: children alone. Lydia is described as charming. Descriptions of her
Speaker 1: list her as slim and pretty, with dark hair and
Speaker 1: blue eyes and porcelain skin. Smitten by her, it did
Speaker 1: not take long for Edward, who was twenty years older
Speaker 1: than her, to propose marriage and Lydia, who at the
Speaker 1: time was only eighteen, accepted. So after they got married,
Speaker 1: we don't know if they had a long courtship or not.
Speaker 1: We do know that they got married. Edward and Lydia
Speaker 1: moved to a middle class neighborhood in Harlem on d
Speaker 1: Street in New York City, and they went on to
Speaker 1: have eight children of their own. And for those keeping score, yes,
Speaker 1: that is in addition to the six children that Edward
Speaker 1: had from his previous marriage, and that would be a
Speaker 1: grand total of fourteen mouths to feed. That's a whole
Speaker 1: lot of kids. Can you imagine the chaos? I cannot,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, haveing kids at home just to school
Speaker 1: right now as chaotic cricketship. But after relocating, Lydia started
Speaker 1: working as a housekeeper, and with so many children at home,
Speaker 1: Edward decided that he was going to leave work as
Speaker 1: a blacksmith and get a different job, so he became
Speaker 1: a New York City police officer. So about six years
Speaker 1: into this new line of work, though, Edward was accused
Speaker 1: of cowardice on the job, and it was at the
Speaker 1: scene of a hotel robbery in Manhattan, but other accounts
Speaker 1: report that it might have been a barroom fight either way,
Speaker 1: though regardless of which crime was being committed, he lost
Speaker 1: his job and when this happened, he sank into a
Speaker 1: very deep depression. With a husband refusing to leave their
Speaker 1: home or get out of his bed, Lydia decided that
Speaker 1: she needed to take matters into her own hands. And
Speaker 1: you know what that means around here means boys. Then yeah. So,
Speaker 1: according to her eventual confession, I know we're jumping ahead,
Speaker 1: but we'll loop back around. Yes, Instead of getting Edward
Speaker 1: medical care, and we should point out this was not
Speaker 1: a time when things like depression were really treated with
Speaker 1: any any sort of insight, she decided instead too and
Speaker 1: we quote put him out of the way, as he
Speaker 1: would never be any good. Yeah. So she did what
Speaker 1: every I say, sarcastically caring wife does. She got herself
Speaker 1: a bag of arsenic. And if it seems like we
Speaker 1: talked about arsenic a lot around here, it's because we do.
Speaker 1: For a very long time, it was really very easy
Speaker 1: to acquire arsenic, and that's mainly because it was used
Speaker 1: as a rat poison or like bed bugs or any
Speaker 1: sort of ants insects that you had in your house.
Speaker 1: In the nineteenth century in the United States, Lydia was
Speaker 1: able to just get hers at the local drug store. So,
Speaker 1: twenty years into what had been a fairly uneventful marriage,
Speaker 1: she mixed a thimbleful of the poisonous powder into her
Speaker 1: husband's oatmeal. It took several hours of abdominal pain, diarrhea, vomiting,
Speaker 1: ant convulsions before Edward passed away. Man, Poor Edward. But
Speaker 1: she might not have thought things through so completely because
Speaker 1: now that she had, and I'm using air quotes around
Speaker 1: this folved her husband's depression, albeit not as most wives would. Uh,
Speaker 1: Lydia realized she had another problem, and that was that
Speaker 1: she had many children at home who were hungry, and
Speaker 1: Edward had been the family's primary source of income. Not
Speaker 1: a lot of consideration of like cause and effect here,
Speaker 1: probably pretty impetuous. Yeah, so let's look at the children's
Speaker 1: situation for a moment. At this point, their eldest son, John,
Speaker 1: who was sixteen, had a job. He had moved out
Speaker 1: of the house, and in hindsight, that was probably the
Speaker 1: luckiest thing he did in his life. I was imagining
Speaker 1: poor John having his he's just forced, he hates his job.
Speaker 1: He does this, but hey, he's still alive because he
Speaker 1: moved out. Uh yeah, good on your John. So they
Speaker 1: also had a younger daughter named Josephine, and Josephine had
Speaker 1: passed away years earlier from illness, so there was one
Speaker 1: for Lydia, fewer mouth to feed. Uh. Their two year
Speaker 1: old daughter. She contracted measles. But what's interesting about the
Speaker 1: measles that she had was that she didn't actually die
Speaker 1: from the symptoms that you would expect from that viral illness.
Speaker 1: She died of the same symptoms as Edward. So Lydia
Speaker 1: did what she thought was and again what she thought
Speaker 1: was the humane and rational thing to do. Are you
Speaker 1: ready for this, because it is, it's rough, and it's
Speaker 1: hard to consider someone reaching this decision. Yes, But about
Speaker 1: six weeks after edwards poisoning, Lydia poisoned her three youngest children.
Speaker 1: Those were Martha Ann, aged six, Edward Jr. Who was four,
Speaker 1: and William, who was just nine months old. And she
Speaker 1: did this all on the same day. So keeping I'm
Speaker 1: here that while this is unfathomable to those of us
Speaker 1: who are talking about it and listening, Lydia clearly saw
Speaker 1: things very differently than the rest of us do. The
Speaker 1: three youngest, she said in the eventual confession that we've
Speaker 1: been talking about throughout this episode so far, were the
Speaker 1: most burdensome in her opinion, and she said that they
Speaker 1: were the three who would not be able to contribute
Speaker 1: anything to the family. Now, you might be wondering how
Speaker 1: come no one would notice such a thing going on?
Speaker 1: Someone's husband dying, and a few months later, three children
Speaker 1: in one day. This was a time in history when
Speaker 1: it wasn't super strange for children to become ill and die,
Speaker 1: or have an accident and meet an unfortunate end. Childhood
Speaker 1: mortality rates in the nineteenth century were quite grim, and
Speaker 1: no one really raised an eyebrow when all of these
Speaker 1: kids passed away. I feel like there's also probably a
Speaker 1: numbers game, right, I don't know there were a lot
Speaker 1: of kids over there. I feel the same way, like,
Speaker 1: how can you keep track if you're not part of
Speaker 1: the family who those fourteen children are unless you're close
Speaker 1: to the family, right, But if you just lived on
Speaker 1: the street, when your next door two houses down, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't know. I'd be like, there's just kids, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of kids. But now there weren't a lot of kids.
Speaker 1: Lydia had three remaining children to care for in her home.
Speaker 1: So there was George, who was fourteen, who unfortunately contracted
Speaker 1: lead poisoning from his job as a painter. Sick in bed,
Speaker 1: his mother nursed him with tea laced with arsenic And
Speaker 1: then there was Anne Eliza who was twelve and reported
Speaker 1: they called her kind of a weak and sickly child.
Speaker 1: She was never able to work to contribute to the family.
Speaker 1: And at twelve, you know, whether she was a weaken
Speaker 1: seekly child or not, I'm not surprised she wasn't contributing
Speaker 1: to the family. But none of this helped her at
Speaker 1: all to stay alive and Lydia's home. And then there
Speaker 1: was their other daughter, also named Lydia, who was eighteen,
Speaker 1: and she worked as a retail clerk. But when Lydia,
Speaker 1: the younger, fell ill with something as innocuous as what
Speaker 1: is apparently a cold or a flu, her mother also
Speaker 1: nursed her with tea poisoned with arsenic so, hating to
Speaker 1: see each child as she, she would say, suffer, as
Speaker 1: she confessed, Lydia thought that it was actually best to
Speaker 1: instead poison them all. The death certificates, though, of many
Speaker 1: of these children, listed a very not suspicious reason typhoid
Speaker 1: fever was the cause of their death, which would have
Speaker 1: been common at the time. Still living in New York City,
Speaker 1: but now without the responsibility of caring for a number
Speaker 1: of children and with no husband, Lydia convinced a sympathetic
Speaker 1: doctor to hire her as a nurse. Was a job
Speaker 1: she had for several years. We're going to take a
Speaker 1: quick break for a word from our sta, sir, but
Speaker 1: when we come back, we'll be talking about how the
Speaker 1: now single and childless Lydia's life was going. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to Criminalia. Let's get to talking about how Lydia was
Speaker 1: almost investigated by the District Attorney's office but got really lucky.
Speaker 1: Now you'll remember, Edward was a widower before he married Lydia,
Speaker 1: and he had several children before meeting her, and some
Speaker 1: of Edward's children from his previous marriage were now adults.
Speaker 1: They were all alive, and we presume, well, while this
Speaker 1: was going on, Lydia's stepson, Cornelius, stepped forward because he
Speaker 1: thought the number of deaths in such a short span
Speaker 1: of time was really quite suspicious. Thank you, Cornelius, somebody
Speaker 1: is raising a flag. Cornelia shared his concern about Lydia
Speaker 1: with the District Attorney. Yet while the d A promised
Speaker 1: an investigation, nothing happened. So this was the time of
Speaker 1: Civil War in the United States. And when the war
Speaker 1: ended in eighteen sixty five, Lydia was now forty one,
Speaker 1: and she was single, and she was childless, and she
Speaker 1: took a job selling sewing machines. And it's this job
Speaker 1: that she had that she met a man named John Curtis,
Speaker 1: and John was especially impressed with Lydia. He found out
Speaker 1: about her nursing skills and so he hired her to
Speaker 1: do that job again. In eighteen sixty seven, she would
Speaker 1: be caring for his elderly mother. Lydia moved from her
Speaker 1: home in Harlem to his home in Stratford, Connecticut. Lydia
Speaker 1: lived in Stratford, which is really small town that situated
Speaker 1: along the Long Island Sound, and for just about eight
Speaker 1: months she was there. That's when she met a man
Speaker 1: named Dennis Hurlbert, who was a rich widower. And she
Speaker 1: met him at the grocery store. A rich widower, you say,
Speaker 1: I know, right, so our Lydia, of course, as we
Speaker 1: can see the pattern here, turned on her charm and
Speaker 1: soon Dennis hired her as his housekeeper. And we presumed
Speaker 1: she left her job caring for John Curtis's mother, and
Speaker 1: we also presumed that his mother was still alive when
Speaker 1: she left, but we don't have that information. So shortly thereafter,
Speaker 1: Dennis proposed marriage. The pair married in eighteen sixty eight.
Speaker 1: After Lydia made sure that Dennis made her the sole
Speaker 1: beneficiary in his will. Dennis, by the way, was eighty
Speaker 1: years old, a rich widower who's also elderly. Right sadis
Speaker 1: and so, which stinks because I bet Dennis loved her
Speaker 1: just a little more into this marriage, Lydia noticed one
Speaker 1: morning that Dennis's hands were a little shaky while he
Speaker 1: was getting ready to go to church. Now, shaky hands
Speaker 1: can be a symptom of a lot of different things,
Speaker 1: everything from dehydration and anxiety to an early warning sign
Speaker 1: of some neurological or degenerative condition like Parkinson's disease. In
Speaker 1: my case, it's ten cups of coffee. I was about
Speaker 1: to say, I have shaky hands all the time, but
Speaker 1: I drink coffee all day, and that's maybe I might
Speaker 1: be a little dehydrated, like I I please don't poison me.
Speaker 1: I'll drink more water. I'll be home right. I'm not ailing,
Speaker 1: I'm just caffinating. I'm just buzzing. But for Lydia, the
Speaker 1: actual reason, whether it was dehydration or Parkinson's disese, didn't
Speaker 1: matter at all. She took the whole shaky hands thing
Speaker 1: as her cue to put Dennis out of his misery.
Speaker 1: As we've been seeing, those are short of the words
Speaker 1: that she likes to use. It took three excruciating, I
Speaker 1: assume days for Dennis to die after he ate the
Speaker 1: arsenic laced clam chowder that Lydia had prepared for him,
Speaker 1: And so she inherited twenty thou dollars worth of real
Speaker 1: estate and ten thousand dollars in cash. It's always a
Speaker 1: little rough to convert money across time, but today that's
Speaker 1: estimated to be worth about a hundred and sixty thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: give or take. But it's definitely more than ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: So she was now single, childless, and sitting pretty with
Speaker 1: her hundred and sixty thousand dollars in cash and real estate.
Speaker 1: But it was only eight weeks later, in eighteen seventy,
Speaker 1: that Lydia met a mechanic. His name was Nelson Horatio Sherman.
Speaker 1: He went by Horatio. He lived in Derby, Connecticut, and
Speaker 1: he was really all reports seemed to suggest, a really
Speaker 1: well liked and generous guy. Her husband's all seemed like
Speaker 1: very nice men. He was also a widower, and he
Speaker 1: had four children of his own at home, and he
Speaker 1: needed a housekeeper. Man enter Lydia. She's like, I can
Speaker 1: do that job. She's like, I've been a housekeeper at
Speaker 1: least eight times, said I can help you with the children.
Speaker 1: So in the pattern that we're seeing, she's tired as
Speaker 1: a housekeeper. But they ended up getting married just a
Speaker 1: few weeks after she moved in, so it had only
Speaker 1: been a little more than a year and a half
Speaker 1: before he met Lydia that Horatio's wife had passed away.
Speaker 1: His eldest child was a son named Nelson, and he
Speaker 1: was seventeen. His daughter Addie or possibly Aida, was fourteen,
Speaker 1: and a second son, Natty, was four. There was also
Speaker 1: a toddler in the home, very young, named Frankie. And
Speaker 1: he bets on who the first victim was. I'd love
Speaker 1: to bet that it was for Ratio, but let's talk
Speaker 1: about her Ratio for a minute, because he actually was
Speaker 1: not the first victim. Hor Ratio liked to drink, and
Speaker 1: he really liked to spend Lydia's money, and these are
Speaker 1: two things that she did not really particularly like very
Speaker 1: much at all. And one afternoon, while her Ratio had
Speaker 1: been drinking, he started talking about how he felt terrible
Speaker 1: that little Frankie had been recently unwell and he wished
Speaker 1: there was something that he could do to make things
Speaker 1: better for his toddler son. So this to Lydia was
Speaker 1: like a hint or some kind of strange, poisonous, murderous nudge,
Speaker 1: because she mixed a little arsenic into the baby's bottle
Speaker 1: that night, and Frankie tied very quickly. Just the very
Speaker 1: next month, Horatio's fourteen year old daughter fell ill with
Speaker 1: the flu. Doctors were called, but there wasn't much anyone
Speaker 1: could really do for the flu at the time except
Speaker 1: wait it out. Unless you were Lydia, then you definitely
Speaker 1: knew what to do. We're going to take a quick
Speaker 1: break on that sober note for a word from one
Speaker 1: of our sponsors, and when we returned, we were going
Speaker 1: to talk about how Lydia poisoned the rest of the
Speaker 1: Sherman family. Welcome back to Criminalia. This is where it's
Speaker 1: going to get super interesting, because Lydia is about to
Speaker 1: make her fatal mistake. So Horatio, her husband, was naturally
Speaker 1: heartbroken over the deaths of his children, and his drinking
Speaker 1: began to worsen. Lydia not especially happy with his brandy drinking,
Speaker 1: habits or the drinking binge that he had embarked upon
Speaker 1: following the deaths of his children, decided she would spike
Speaker 1: his bottle of brandy with arsenic. So we all know
Speaker 1: where this is heading clearly. In eight the generally very
Speaker 1: healthy Horatio suddenly became quite ill and the family doctor,
Speaker 1: Dr jac Beardsley came to treat him, but during the
Speaker 1: examination became really suspicious of his symptoms. When Horatio died,
Speaker 1: Dr Beardsley asked Lydia if he could order an autopsy.
Speaker 1: Truly amazingly, Lydia said yes to it. We're gonna talking
Speaker 1: about this somewhere at the end. So her Ratio's organs
Speaker 1: were sent to Yale for analysis, where Yale professor George
Speaker 1: Frederick Barker found out that, yes, large quantities of arsenic
Speaker 1: were in the remains of the body, and because of
Speaker 1: those results, more bodies were exhumed, autopsies were performed, and
Speaker 1: this happened for Dennis Hurlbert as well as Frankie and
Speaker 1: Addie Sherman, and if you can all probably guess arsenic
Speaker 1: was indeed found. So confronted with the evidence of poison,
Speaker 1: it turned out there was no need to launch into
Speaker 1: an interrogation because Lydia confessed to murdering every single one
Speaker 1: of them, and she was apprehended on June seven in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy two. So at the time she was still
Speaker 1: living in Connecticut. She was in New Brunswick, but authorities
Speaker 1: moved her to New Haven to await her trial. And
Speaker 1: while she did for her trial to begin, Lydia wrote
Speaker 1: a book about her alleged crimes. The title of her
Speaker 1: best selling confession is as long as her victim list.
Speaker 1: It's crazy and we're going to do our best to
Speaker 1: carry to the exclamation points of this title, which there
Speaker 1: are more than fine. Which is the poison Fiend, life,
Speaker 1: Crimes and conviction of Lydia Sherman, the modern Lucretia Borgia
Speaker 1: recently tried in New Haven, Connecticut, for poisoning three husbands
Speaker 1: and eight of her children. Her life in full, exciting
Speaker 1: account of her trial, the fearful evidence, the most startling
Speaker 1: and sensational series of crimes ever committed in this country.
Speaker 1: Her conviction, it's quite a title. It's like the title
Speaker 1: and then all the chapter headings, I know, like she's
Speaker 1: like her conviction and then appendix. Um. So anyway, that
Speaker 1: title aside. It was believed at the beginning of her
Speaker 1: trial that Lydia probably poisoned about a dozen people then.
Speaker 1: That included three husbands, Edward Struck, Dennis Halbert, and Horatio Sherman.
Speaker 1: And it's also believed that she poisoned between five and
Speaker 1: eight children, six of whom were her biological children, the
Speaker 1: others being her stepchildren. It's more likely that it was eight,
Speaker 1: possibly one or two more. It's really hard to know
Speaker 1: because of these records. I also have many question marks
Speaker 1: about her time as a nurse. I do too, I
Speaker 1: have very many questions. Is a nurse, Yes, But when
Speaker 1: she confessed, Lydia calmly explained that she only meant to
Speaker 1: kill her ratios children. That's right, you're hearing it correctly.
Speaker 1: She confessed to poisoning four children, but the killing her
Speaker 1: ratio himself was just an unfortunate accident. Her story was
Speaker 1: that Horatio, who was often drunk, must have mistakenly mixed
Speaker 1: that arsenic she kept in their home for controlling the
Speaker 1: rat population into the brandy that he kept next to
Speaker 1: his bed. I always like to mix a little poison
Speaker 1: in with my Her story doesn't make anything Lydia's trial
Speaker 1: began in April eighteen seventy two, and it only lasted
Speaker 1: eight days. The tabloids, doing what they do best, called
Speaker 1: it the Horror of the century. A newspaper headlines named
Speaker 1: Lydia America's queen killer, the poison fiend, the modern day
Speaker 1: Lucretia Borgia, and simply the Derby Poisoner. So the Derby
Speaker 1: Poisoner really stuck as her nickname. But I actually personally
Speaker 1: like the poison fiend. It's just my opinion, wasn't there.
Speaker 1: So when Lydia appeared in court, she looked quite proper
Speaker 1: and put together. She wore a black dress, a shawl, gloves,
Speaker 1: a hat with a thin veil, and in the courtroom,
Speaker 1: despite having confessed too many murders, claims she was innocent
Speaker 1: because again she thought she was being merciful. I'm guessing.
Speaker 1: I yes, I believe though, So the jury faced with
Speaker 1: an overwhelming amount of evidence suggesting she in fact was
Speaker 1: not innocent. Remember there was an exhamation in autopsy performed
Speaker 1: with toxicology reports, right, So they convicted her of second
Speaker 1: degree murder of her third husband, Horatio Sherman, and for
Speaker 1: that second degree murder, conviction. She was sentenced to life
Speaker 1: in prison. There is an interesting anecdote about Lydia's time
Speaker 1: in prison. I thought this was crazy. It's a little bananas.
Speaker 1: The reports go that about five years into her sentence,
Speaker 1: she feigned an illness and escaped. And what's interesting is
Speaker 1: she didn't escape and like go on the lamb and
Speaker 1: assume a different identity. She actually just went back to
Speaker 1: being Vidia. She took a job as a housekeeper to
Speaker 1: a wealthy widower. However, she was taken back to her
Speaker 1: prison cell about a week after escaping, and he survived.
Speaker 1: The lucky man. Details on how she was identified and
Speaker 1: brought back in her a little stamped, but a little bit,
Speaker 1: but she did go back to her old neighborhood and
Speaker 1: people will know you. Yeah. So, Lydia spent the rest
Speaker 1: of her life in prison. She died of cancer at
Speaker 1: the age of fifty three on May six, eight seventy eight,
Speaker 1: in the Weathersfield State Prison in Weathersfield, Connecticut. So one
Speaker 1: of the things that Holly and I were talking about
Speaker 1: as we were putting this episode together is how, unlike
Speaker 1: most of the women we've talked about this season, Lydia
Speaker 1: is unlike Julia Agrippina, who poisoned for power, or Marie
Speaker 1: Bernard who poisoned for frankly, just cold, hard cash. Lydia
Speaker 1: didn't ever seem to poison for any particular reason at all,
Speaker 1: except maybe our guest is to solve little problems in life,
Speaker 1: like sick with a cold out of milk, just small
Speaker 1: things that would happen in a household normally. Lydia's reaction
Speaker 1: was clearly, we should kill the children. And this is,
Speaker 1: as we all know, not a normal way to deal
Speaker 1: with such offens in your life. And today Lydia would
Speaker 1: have been given a mental health assessment as part of
Speaker 1: her trial. But in nineteenth century America, diagnosis and care
Speaker 1: for mental illness was pretty much non existent, and we
Speaker 1: talked about her husband's depression, writing something that was just
Speaker 1: never addressed exactly. There were some asylums, but you weren't
Speaker 1: going to be in them unless you were rich, and
Speaker 1: many of them were non delightful. It was not really
Speaker 1: about treatment. It was about hiding people who were ill, exactly.
Speaker 1: It had nothing to do with your mental illness, and
Speaker 1: often things that were perceived as mental illness tended to
Speaker 1: be considered a result of brain damage, or sometimes for
Speaker 1: some folks, they would explain it as demonic, perhaps a
Speaker 1: possession issue, or some other ill spirit involved in creating
Speaker 1: behavior that was not societal norm. In the US, some
Speaker 1: people with mental illness were cared for and kept safe
Speaker 1: by their families. Lydia doesn't to have family. She was
Speaker 1: a housekeeper, perpetually married and had more children and killed them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there is obviously a mental break when you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: the baby is weak, I can fix this, the baby
Speaker 1: has colic, let me poison him. Yeah, it's a strain.
Speaker 1: There's obviously like an issue at hand. There. What makes
Speaker 1: me sad about Lydia's story is that no one really
Speaker 1: stepped in at any point. But I'm not sure who
Speaker 1: that would have been. As we said, like, yeah, neighbors
Speaker 1: don't always know everybody's business, and exactly don't, and even
Speaker 1: if you do, you don't step in often. So Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is not a particularly happy or fun one, but
Speaker 1: it is fascinating in terms of also just how many
Speaker 1: repetition cycles she managed to go through. It's a good
Speaker 1: indicator of how little information actually traveled unless it was
Speaker 1: headline news. You could step from life to life and
Speaker 1: no one would really be any of the wiser. Very true,
Speaker 1: very true. Do you want to do something fun now
Speaker 1: that we brought the room down? Oh my gosh, can
Speaker 1: we do something that's a little more off? So let's
Speaker 1: talk about this. What's your poison this week? Holly? Alright
Speaker 1: Lydia's poisoning crimes are horrific. But I I was particularly
Speaker 1: struck by and had difficulty getting out of my head
Speaker 1: the poisoning of the baby bottle. So I came up
Speaker 1: with a cocktail called Mother's Milk. Now that is a
Speaker 1: grim inspiration, but is delicious. This is not like a
Speaker 1: recipe we found on the internet, correctly special, although it
Speaker 1: is very similar to a white Russian, but in lieu
Speaker 1: of coffee liqueur, which you would normally find in a
Speaker 1: white Russian, I subbed in butterscotch schnops. So it's two
Speaker 1: ounces of vodka, one ounce of butterscotch ops, and one
Speaker 1: ounce of heavy cream. And I put that into a
Speaker 1: shaker and I shook it vigorously. And then you want
Speaker 1: to pour it out. You don't want to strain it
Speaker 1: because you want that little foamy whip creamy head that
Speaker 1: you get on the cream. Poured it into a coupe
Speaker 1: that just had a little bit of ice in it,
Speaker 1: because a coup is often how you would serve a dessert,
Speaker 1: cocktail or even you did it on ice, you did
Speaker 1: it on rocks. I shook it dry, I shook it
Speaker 1: without ice, but then I poured it onto just a
Speaker 1: little bit of ice, pretty light, and then I just
Speaker 1: tapped a little bit of nutmeg on the top of it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's the best part of like like holiday drink.
Speaker 1: You never get that in July. Very good autumnal or
Speaker 1: winter drink. And it is absolutely delicious, And yes, I
Speaker 1: super enjoyed it, although it did slap me in the
Speaker 1: face a little harder than I Yeah, I think it's
Speaker 1: a thing for me anytime there's like a sugary liqueur
Speaker 1: in the mix, even though it's lighter in alcohol, there's
Speaker 1: something about the way my body is up taking the
Speaker 1: sugar that it like makes a fast tunnel for the vodka,
Speaker 1: so just opens the doors. So it was another one
Speaker 1: where I was like, just the one, please, just the one,
Speaker 1: thank you. I think that's a great attribute to Frankie
Speaker 1: and his baby bottle. Yes, obviously not good for children, no, no,
Speaker 1: although at that time they probably were running Brandy on
Speaker 1: his teething right anyway, just time and place yes in
Speaker 1: remembrance of all of the lives cut short by Lydia Sherman.
Speaker 1: We will raise a toast and hope that if there
Speaker 1: is an afterlife, that they found peace there. So that
Speaker 1: wraps up today's show. Thank you so much for spending
Speaker 1: this time with us and learning about Lydia's heroine story.
Speaker 1: We hope that you will stick around and come and
Speaker 1: visit with us next time when we feature yet another
Speaker 1: lady poisoner. Criminalia is a production of Shawonda land Audio
Speaker 1: and partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: Shonda land Audio, please visit the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: M hm hm