Episode 15: Jesse Pomeroy, a teenage nightmare for South Boston

0:15 Everybody, It's here. Killer country. My name is Brittany Ransom. And my name is Brian Joyner and this is When Killers Get Caught, a podcast devoted to deep dives into the lives and psyches of the killers we love to learn about. Each week Brian and I will find a true Crime Story that resonated with us. Then I discuss one well known or lesser known killer and go deep into their childhood lives, methodology, and most importantly how they got caught. And then we get a little spooky and learn something about encrypted or just the supernatural, or something that Brian wants to frighten us with. So this week in True Crime, I found a story from 2017 taking place in the small city in Virginia, shedding in the Shenandoah Valley Waynesboro, where someone was taking cats and and shaving their underbellies and the legs.

1:14 Why? Nobody knows. He's just referring him as the cereal cat Shaver did. They catch this person? No. This person has not been found. Nope. Let's see, the article that I found was from April and it had been done 7 times up to that point when they reported on it. I couldn't find anything recent. I tried to see if the serial cat shaver had been found, but the police said that all the cats are returned unharmed. Those slightly bothered they all had owners because they were well groomed, wearing collars.

1:56 Police aren't exactly sure what crime they could even charge this person with. There has to be illegal in one state so but but the owners this is a direct quote would just like it to stop. Please. I'm just OK. I saw like signs that people put up on like, you know, like on posts saying like cat shaving, really like people are very upset. I thought someone was offering cat. I thought you were gonna. That was leading to somebody offering cat shaving that like the people in the community were putting up posters and stuff like, are you serious? Please stop. It has to be a teenager. First of all, it has to be a teenager just out there.

2:38 You think so? Yeah, obviously. Like getting the neighborhood cats and just shaving them and then letting them return home. Well, the best part of that was even covered in VICE because it was just so weird. I have a question. So they get they get kidnapped from home, shaved and then returned. Okay now was the shaving. Was it well done shaving? They said that it's the entire like underside of the cat and its legs, so they're leaving the top fur and the head. Yeah, but was it like someone just, like, grabbed the razor? Just like, yeah, to a cat. Well, see, at first cops thought that this was some like strange person picking up strays and like spaying and neutering them because you normally shave the underside. But then they realized these were people's pets, so they have no idea.

3:33 Those poor cats. I mean, if they didn't shave her properly, I I feel for their nipples. But I'm just saying like I'm looking at it is. Here's a sign on like a a light pose. The shaving cats, several neighborhood cats have been abducted and had their lower abdomens and groin area shaved. This is very upsetting to the cats and their owners. If you have any access information about this suspicious activity, please contact the Police Department and it gives a number. Our cats will thank you. No one's seen the person who ever did it. There were no witnesses. They don't know if it was done alone. You know it. It reminds a lot of people of the Watcher case.

4:15 Do you remember that? Was that happened in California? Oh gosh, was it California, the Watcher? These people bought a house, OK? And they started receiving letters is in New Jersey. There we go. They were this. And it was a really fancy house like, you know, $1.4 million. They started receiving hand delivered letters and they were super creepy talking about like my grandfather was a Watcher and my father was a Watcher and now it's my time to be a Watcher. You know, will the Youngblood live in this part of the house? I can't wait to hear their voices. Like, super creepy stuff. But like nothing ever came from and he'd like the watcher delivered a couple more loud letters.

4:56 The broadest is tried to sell their house. They couldn't. They tried to like get something done to it. And the city, like, wouldn't allow them to do any construction onto the area because in order for them to put up a fence, it would encroach on their, like, neighbor's property. And the fence had to be a certain, like, height. It was a crazy story and it's completely unsolved. So people are like, is this like the Watcher? Like the Cat Barber? The cat shaver. No, what this reminds me of is of a story I heard. I think it was out in either somewhere Midwest or out West. Someone was putting cowboy hats on top of pigeons on pigeons heads. You know what I mean?

5:41 Maybe this maybe. OK, unlike the Watcher, the Watcher is a real creep. This guy. Maybe this guy is just, this is somebody who just wants to see the world burn. It's just a little bit of chaotic energy. This is a chaotic neutral character in a D in D game. Chaotic neutral, not chaotic evil. Because you're not really doing anything bad. You're not breaking any laws. And I wouldn't say chaotic good because you are specifically annoying people, but you're just trying to cause some chaos in the world for funsies. I. Guess, but I feel bad because like hair growing back is no fun. It grows back weird and not in the right direction. For cats, those cats are probably hurting right now. Yeah, well, it's been a couple years, so hopefully it's never been reported again.

6:25 Like, I can't find any other articles about this past April of 2017, so apparently it stopped. If you live in Virginia, specifically the Shenandoah Valley, please write us an e-mail. OK? Caught podcast at Gmail. Did the cat shaver stop or is it still going on? My goodness, we want to know. I kind of want to know. Absolutely. No, don't listen to him. I need to know, are the cats still being unwillingly barbered? Oh. My goodness, I hope they're not. But what is your true Crime Story? OK, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. No, I just want to.

7:06 I just wanna ask you another. Just make another statement on that. You're a cat shaver. I'm just wondering, like how they could shave all those cats they must have, Like they must have been wearing some type of protective gear because those cats would not take that shit. They would definitely scratch the crap out of them or bite them at least, because they're getting the underbellies and it's strange. I mean, I mean cat won't let you touch their underside if they no, unless they really like you. This is true my cat. Yeah she she does. But anyway, yeah, but I'm just thinking, like, they had to have had some type of gear on and it like or just like drug the cat or something. OK, so spin on this, right.

7:52 Who has that kind of protective gear? People who work with animals or people who pick up strays, they have those like gloves that go up their arms. So this is somebody who works within the animal welfare field. Look, we're giving you guys clues. Chaotic. We're giving you guys clues is a veterinary assistant or something who's such a ranged vet assistant who wants to see the world itch. Yes, look at all the veterinaries around in Virginia or around that area in Virginia, Shenandoah Valley. And you'll probably find your culprit. All right. So anyway, let me ask you a question. Sure. So. If you woke up one day and there was $1.2 million deposited into your bank account accidentally, of course, what would you do? Well, normally it would say where it came from, right? Normally, yes.

8:47 So like if it came from the IRS, I would be like, hello, Mr. Government, would you like to take this back? Because nobody accidentally puts money in your bank account. Nobody does. And if they do, they're going to come looking. They will come looking for one time when I worked for the state, they accidentally put double my paycheck into my bank account. And my bank wouldn't give it back to them because they were like, this is a different kind of like the way it's deposited, it's different than like a regular like check. And so all the state did was you just have to pay us back. And so they like started like taking like 1/4 of the check from the next tracks. Yeah, that's what that happened at my one restaurant job. They had overpaid a couple of our cooks and they were like, okay.

9:42 We obviously fudge this up, so you guys are gonna have to give us that money back. And there and you know, the cooks are just, you know, help people just quit and dip. No, no, no, no. They were just complaining about it like the whole time. Like I like I understand the, you know, I I want to keep this like it was your fault for putting this in my account so I really shouldn't have to do anything about it but like I get it like they it was they messed up. So anyway, but I'm guessing you're tell me about somebody who didn't give the money back. Someone who did, who tried their hardest not to give the money back. So this is not, this is not something you can win. So the headline reads A woman arrested for refusing to return $1.2 million accidentally deposited into her bank account, who gave her the money?

10:34 I think it was. It was probably her her job. So she's a former Louisiana police dispatcher. So she was arrested last week after, you know, she allegedly would not return $1.2 million that was deposited in her bank account. Her name is Keelan Spadani Okay. She's 33. So yeah, she got fired from the Sheriff's Office after being charged for theft. So she ended up losing her job on top of, yes, probably being charged with fraud. So I'm guessing or theft. Yeah, I'm guessing. So what she was charged with was. Theft that valued over $25,000, Bank fraud and illegal transmission of monetary funds?

11:19 Yes. See Is that worth really getting charged with Grand Theft? No, absolutely not. So what happened is, I guess her job deposited extra funds into her account or somebody. Charles Schwab. So she was. Oh, Justice. Isn't that like a investment company? Or is it a bank? Charles Schwab, I'm pretty sure that's like, big. Money. It doesn't say in the article Charles Schwab. But um, but the messed up thing is, yeah, it's brokerage, banking, and finance. OK, so yeah, it's a finance company. So it's a big finance company. Like big money. Yeah, I'm not sure how they got her bank account information, so they just accidentally like put in the wrong like digit. They probably and sent a. 10 My This is what I'm thinking so. What she did was I disappear.

12:17 She she moved the money that she that was deposited into another bank account. Absolutely. Listen, if you gonna go the criminal route, you gotta do it. You need to move that money. So I think it was OK. So you're saying there's like an investment place, right? Or yeah, yeah, Charles Schwab does investment banking, brokerage stuff. So this is probably the her bank that accidentally put this money into her account. I've heard of other banks doing that. Yeah, so. And I've also heard of other people try to get away with it, but it was a guy not heard of this lady. But yeah, so she moved the money to another account, which Schwab couldn't access at all. Right, So. So since they were unable to contact her, absolutely, I would turn off my phone entirely.

13:04 Listen, if you're gonna go the criminal route, you gotta go all the way. Burn our phones. Jump to US country that doesn't have extradition. Go get lost in Mexico like you just got to go full criminal. If you're going this route, you can't stay in your old neighborhood. OK, well, they followed A lawsuit against her since they couldn't get in contact with her. But you know what? I have $1.2 million to use for my legal defense. Oh. My God, they're not gonna let you use stolen money. At this point it's stolen. I mean, wouldn't they be able to get it seized at that point? Yeah, at Prop. Maybe if you can get to her other accountant, I thought. I thought that could happen.

13:49 I thought the government could do that. Probably, But yeah, so it says they've so far recovered about 75% of the money. Oh, she want to spend this breed in, she. Yeah, she bought a new house and a new car. 2021 Honda Genesis. Hyundai Genesis. My bad. Don't want to confuse those. Wait, this happened in the last year? Yeah. Oh wow, this is recent. You would think after how often these sort of things have happened that people wouldn't try to get away with it. So. I guess the the captain of the Sheriff's Office. He says that if anyone accidentally puts an extra 0 on a utility bill, they would want that money returned or credited to them, right?

14:40 This is no different. So she has no legal rights. It also says she has no legal right to the money either. So yeah, well here's the question. Right. I would actually be quite pissed if I was paying my $40 electric bill and I put an extra 0. I don't want you to credit my electric bill 307 like $360.00. I want the $360.00 back. Exactly, It's. What are you saying? No, he said. In there you would want it credited to your account. I don't want that either. OK, you want a credited back, You want a credit or you want the money back? I want the money. I would want the money because listen, I'm like, listen, I'll credit you.

15:22 Charles Schwab, Here's $100. I'll pay it off and like 100 years. There you go, $100 a year. No, Let's say A. $100 a month? There you go. Goodness. Well, the issue with her buying that house is that, like, you know, you can't afford. I was about to say she can't afford it anymore. I bet you you know you can't afford that mortgage. I don't know. I won the lottery apparently somewhere. But yeah, that's some Well, that was like, is one of my Facebook groups that deals with, like, being, like, working. Somebody posted that like her. She had gotten like a much lower severance check because she ended up fighting with the job or whatever.

16:03 And then she ended up getting like a payment of like $20,000 in her bank account. And she was only supposed to get like 2000 or like 1200. And she was just like, what do I do with this? And I was like, contact your job, stupid. You got one. You left the job in bad straight like in on bad terms, and then they accidentally gave you too much. I'm like, go to your lawyer and tell the lawyer to go check with them. So you're saying she your this person in your group? Yeah, should have contacted the job, but what about this person? Oh no, that Lady absolutely should have. That's why I said I would have done the same thing. I was just saying if she wanted to go full criminal, she need to go all the way.

16:46 You can't go halfway. No. You are now on the land. This is your life now. Kiana, connect. Connect. Whatever her name was, Oh my God. This is your life. You are now a woman on the ride. I would have put that money into like Visa prepaid card. How many Visa prepaid kids you only get? Like $500 per card? He's going to keep buying it and you know you're going to pay like $10 per card for those. That that'll be worth it. It's OK. I'll still have money. I still have enough leftover. Don't, don't. Don't rub your eyes at me.

17:29 You're a mess. Ohh well that was wonderful. Was a good, good pile of wonderful. And I'm I'm happy we had a good, happy moment because I'm about to bring this mood way down. Yay, here we go. When Killers Get Caught is sponsored by the Magic Class Boutique. Now why does that name sound so familiar? Well, it's because it's a business ran by our very own Britney. That's right, the Magic Class Boutique is not only a black-owned business, it's a woman owned as well.

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18:57 That's THEMAGICCLA sp.com and use promo code COLT for 15% off. And make sure you tell Brittany that I sent you so my person of interest this week. Well, actually, before we get into this, just like I did before when I talked about Ian Hinckley Henley and Anna Myra Hinley, I do need to give someone of a content warning about my portion of this episode. The killer this week is actually a child, and his victims were all children, and the crimes against them were particularly horrible. If you're listening, I'm going to give you a small warning before I go into more details, but timestamps will be listed on the information section in the blurb for the podcast, so you could absolutely skip over this if you don't want to listen to it at all.

19:59 I won't be offended. I understand it's not everybody's jam to learn about children being abused. OK, thanks for the warning. I had to sit here and listen to it. Absolutely you do. I'm sorry, you've also been warned. You just can't skip ahead. So I did give a little bit of a hint about this week's Person of Interest last week when I said that they were one of America's youngest and earliest serial killers. He's still the youngest person in the history of Massachusetts to be convicted of firstdegree murder, and at the time, he was the youngest in the United States. Interestingly enough, we like to think that kids aren't capable of such things.

20:41 But he's not the only child in the world or during this time period. In the mid 1800s there was a German girl named Marie Schneider who killed a three-year old in 1886. She was only 12. In 1855, two preteens and Liverpool, England killed a classmate with a brick after they lost a game. So even though the Ike this makes a lot of people uncomfortable, it's not all unheard of and. What's interesting is that this wasn't like a rash decision like those cases were. Jesse Pomeroy was 14 when he committed murder, but he actually started torturing children earlier in life, and that all earned him the nickname of the Boston Boy Fiend, and he was also referred to as the Red Devil. But before he was the boy fiend, he was just a little boy. Born on November 29th, 1859 to Ruth and Pomeroy and Thomas Pomeroy in Boston, He had an older brother named Charles who was two years older than him.

21:46 Boston was this bustling growing city and unfortunately Jesse didn't have the best life growing up. He's father was an alcoholic, he's a dock worker and they grew up in the lower middle class household in a section of Boston called Chelsea. His father was a mean drunk who was prone to beating them for minor indiscretions. Sometimes things simple like skipping school, telling a lie. He would use belts and even horse whips on his sons. He would take them out behind the outhouse, behind their house and just brutally beat them until they started, until they were bleeding. For some reason, Thomas always made them strip. Naked before he beat them.

22:36 And some psychologists have discussed that this might have been the point in Jesse's childhood where he began to connect pain and sexual arousal, because this is the same sort of abuse that he recreated on his victims years later. Jesse The family couldn't keep pets because they always ended up dead. The family had pet birds and both of their heads ended up twisted off of their bodies. He was caught torturing one of the neighbors kittens and after that his mother Ruth refused to allow any more pets into their home. But that didn't really stop Jesse and he ended up killing other animals in his free time.

23:22 Yeah, I don't think just stopping the the pets coming in would stop the actions. Nope. Yeah, he didn't have a lot of friends because he looked weird and kids are cruel. He's reported to have a very large head for his frame, which children made fun of. He was also born with a white membrane over his right eye that made it look like he had a cataract. He also sometimes had seizures. He was very sensitive about his looks and he was also like a bigger kid in general than other kids his age too. He had a large mouth, but with a really small upper lip and big ears. And what I'm just telling you is that he was an easy target for children to make fun of because that's just how it works.

24:09 He didn't have a lot of friends. He hated sports and spent almost all of his free time reading stories about the American Indian Wars when he did play with other kids. And they played like scouts and Indians. He was aggressive and violent and he try and reenact the things he was reading in his books, which is why he ended up not having many friends, right? He's yeah, going a little too far. As with most psychopaths, he moved from animal torture to human torture, but when he was 12 years old, his first known victim is 4 year old William Payne. Liam Payne was found in a small, isolated cabin on Powderhorn Hill near the Chelsea Creek in South Boston the day after Christmas on 1871.

24:59 Two men were walking up the hill when they heard a small whimper near the building, and as they got closer it got louder and they realized it was definitely a child. So here's your point where you are allowed to skip. Skip off, because there's a lot more victims that come after this. And it's a lot of torture. Press this button to skip the ad. When the men into the building, they were shocked. The four year old boy was tied to the center beam of a building and he was hanging. And the only way I can explain this is if you've seen any movie about slavery in America, it looks a lot like it. The way it's described is a lot like. He's he was half stripped.

25:50 He just had his pants on. He was tied by his hands to the beam so tight that they were turning purple. His he himself was hypothermic because it was winter and he's four. They had no idea how long he'd been there and when they walked around because I guess he was facing the doorway when they walked around him to cut him down. His back was covered in blood and welts and cuts, and the worst part is, it wasn't even that he'd been hit with like a belt or a whip, but it was something that was. It was an undetermined, blunt object. So this would have been an extensive beating for it to break the skin goodness.

26:39 A board or something, anyway. The community was. Upset, the police filed the report and they attempted to talk to William. But he was four and he was in such bad shape and he was just so scared that he couldn't tell them anything about the person who took him into the cabin. Everybody just kind of went OK. Hopefully this was just an isolated incident and we won't hear about this anymore. About two months later, it's February of 1972. 7 year old boy named Tracy Harden is Jesse's next victim. He lures him to the same hill and the same building where he abused William Payne, promising that he'd be able to see the soldiers on the hill. What soldiers?

27:27 I'm not entirely sure this was 1872, so. I'm trying to remember what war was happening at this time. I did not do good enough research on that. My bad. But once they were alone, Jesse bound, Tracy beat him. This time he used to switch as well as a blunt object. But a lot more must have gone on because when Tracy Harden was found, his front teeth had been knocked out. Both his eyes were black and his nose was broken. He had also been stripped and had deep welts on his back, and Tracy could only tell the police. That had been an older boy with dark hair who had threatened to cut off his Pevis if he told anybody anything. His Pevis.

28:24 His penis, she said. Pevis. Listen, the police couldn't do much with only a hair color. But I think anybody with even a little bit of understanding of criminology knows that this isn't where this is going to end. He's working on about a 30 to 60 day cycle at this point. So two more months. It's spring 1872. He attacks an 18 year old named Robert Robert Mayer. He lures Robert by telling him he's going to promises him a trip to the Barnum and Bailey Circus. He takes the boy again to the powder. Horn Hill Cabin strips him, beats him with a stick. This time he made Robert repeat curse words while he was beating him.

29:14 Okay, question 2 questions. It's probably the same question I have while I'm gonna tell you about the next four attacks. Okay first. Question which is how old was he at this time? He's 12 and he's, you said an 18 year. Old No. An 8 year old so. The boys ate Okay, don't you say? Eating Okay. All right, Goodness. Why is no one perhaps patrolling? Why are you watching the hill? Yes. Yes, I absolutely have that question myself. I'm like they're all happening at the same location after the first. It's an abandoned prop. Do you think maybe we should take it down? Yeah, like after the first one I would have been had someone like routinely.

29:56 Like maybe the first one, we thought it was a one off, but the second one we now have a still, it's an abandoned place. You never know what's going to happen in there. So I definitely have someone patrolling the area. Nope, Nope. And we're going to. There's more attacks that happened on powder who are now. Like I said, when Robert was found, he told the police that his attacker touched himself during the beating and after Jesse reached completion. He untied the boy, set him free and told him he'd kill him if he told anybody. The police are facing just a horde of angry parents, so they began A manhunt. After the third attack, they started by questioning hundreds of brunette teen boys from Boston, but that didn't get them anywhere.

30:48 I assumed Jesse was probably questioned during this time and it didn't raise any red flags, so with no help from the cops. Parents turned to trying to be more strict with their children, telling them to stop speaking to strangers entirely, and a rumor spread that. Somehow a rumor spread that the the person who was doing the attacks had red hair with a red beard, which didn't help anybody find anybody. Jesse Pomeroy, No. So his fourth attack happened in mid-july of 19 of 1872. He lured A7 year old to powder Hornhill with the promise of money if the boy did some errands for him. This assault was the same as before. After Jesse achieved an orgasm, he left the boy in the cabin and escaped.

31:42 So were the were was the the sexual nature added after the second one. 3rd and 4th attacks have a sexual element to him that's weird and he's only attacking younger children. Only younger boys. Locally, they put out a $500 reward for information that would lead to the arrest of this fiendish boy. As the paper referred to him, vigilantes began patrolling the streets of Chelsea, trying to find who was responsible. So at this point Ruth and Pomeroy moves her family away from Chelsea. Dad is gone from the picture. Over to a less expensive neighborhood across from Chelsea Creek and South Boston.

32:25 Now, some of my sources think that she had an idea that Jesse might be committing these crimes, probably because they mirrored their abuse that she'd seen her husband commit. But it's just as likely that she moved because it might have been cheaper. But my thought is that she had to realize as soon as she moved to South Boston. That the boy fiend attacks begin happening in South Boston too. Like that's just too much of A coincidence, but I suppose a mother's love is blinding, right? His next victim is 7 year old George Pratt, who was walking alone on the South Boston shore looking for treasure.

33:08 Jesse offered him $0.25 to do an errand run. This time, when George was bound and tied, Jesse began enacting a weird fantasy. And he began berating George for telling Lyle lies while beating him with a leather belt, though this one escalated a bit. Jesse bit a chunk of the boy's cheek off and cut George with his fingernails. Then he took a sewing needle and began stabbing his body. He tried to pry open George's eye with a needle to stab him in the eye, but the boy rolled like over on his stomach and like shoved his face into the ground. Jesse bit him one more time on his left butt cheek and ran away.

33:55 Oh my goodness, this sound like this story sounds familiar. Just like. That's OK. The police rounded up every feebleminded young person they could. They did lineups, but none of the victims could pick their attacker out. The city was, I mean, Boston was full of like just a righteous rage and indignation, and the vigilantes increased their patrols. Less than a month after George Pratt Jesse kidnapped 6 year old Harry Austin, who he stripped and beat just like the others. However, after he beat this child, he then took out a pocket knife and stabbed him in the back and under his shoulders. He was going to cut off.

34:38 The young boy's penis. But he got spooked and he ran away. This is just escalating. It is because six days after that, he attacked Joseph Kennedy, who was seven. He took him to the marshes and beat him. He made Joseph recite an explicit version of the Lord's Prayer while stabbing him. Then, when Kennedy stopped moving, he cut his face. Dragged him to the beach and washed his wounds with salt water. I guess just to be like an asshole because I'm like, geez dude, you're just rubbing salt. In the wound, literally. I know six days after that, a 5 year old boy was found tied to a train post near railroad tracks who have been stripped and beaten.

35:26 When Jesse put the knife to the boy's throat, he was spotted by a rail worker and ran away. This boy was finally able to give the police some details and he told the cops that his tacker was a big boy with an eyeball that looked like a marble. So this point now it's escalating to the point where now they're happening weekly and the boy with the marble eye was definitely on a path to murder because he, I mean he was threatening to cut the throat of the most recent victim. So on September 21st of 1872, the police came to Jesse's classroom. While they were doing a full classroom by classroom search of the entire city, but Joseph Kennedy was so distressed that he was unable to identify Jesse.

36:13 Now here's an interesting thing. But he's he's the only one with the marble eyeball. He is, he is. But it's it's beyond the point because just things happen for a reason and you never understand why. We always talk about, like, serial killers and offenders like doing things to get themselves caught, right? For some reason, that afternoon, Jesse decided on his way home from school, he was going to stop by the South Boston police station. He didn't know that Joseph Kennedy was still there, being questioned by the police. And as soon as Jesse saw Joseph, he like, turned around. But Joseph saw him and immediately started going like, that's him. That's the one.

36:57 And he took off running, and the police grabbed him within a block and put him in prison. They kept him there for hours, kind of like in the dark. And they pulled him out. And then they threatened him with 100 years in prison, and he broke down and confessed. That's the one thing you can threaten the child with. They'll believe you and they will believe you. I'm going to put you in jail for 100 years if you don't tell me what you did 100 years. That's affinity. Oh my God, it's my whole life. Yeah, it is. But anyway. The next day he was taken to the main Boston City jail.

37:38 They brought the other boys who'd been attacked, who all identified him. They took him to a magistrate and all the victims recounted their abuse for the court. His mother took the stand to defend him, crying and saying he was a good boy who was so obedient and worked really hard. She left out the part where he killed her birds. And you're just going to ignore the fact that all these boys are accusing him all these separate times? Jesse testified, too, and he simply said quietly, I couldn't help myself while he looked at the floor. The juvenile justice magistrate ordered Jesse to go to the House of Reformation, As in Westborough until his 18th birthday. Newspapers reported that both Jesse and his mother cried as he was led away in handcuffs.

38:28 So back in the 1800s, reform schools were just how they dealt with youth offenders, and reform schools were about hard labor, discipline and teaching the child who was their vocation. Now I I have some issues with the Westboro House of Reformation because it was an allages school and it was for kids convicted of any crime. And also parents could send their kids there if your kid was too much to handle. So we have a whole slew of criminal activity here and non criminal activity. So obviously this is the kind of place where things are pretty jacked up and it just sounds like the United States. Well, you know what though?

39:18 Not every state is like that because. In Pennsylvania, we do house prisoners based on their kind of crime. You're not going to find someone who's murdered people with someone who has like a lower tier drug approach. Because near us Camp Hill Prison is where they do the process of like psychologically testing them and figuring out if they can be in like certain populations. Like that happens down the road. But they didn't do that at all here. It was just a free for all. Everybody can come to this place. If you don't want to go to school, set in the reform school. You tortured 7 boys. You also go to reform school like, just not people who should be in the same room with each other. Just maximum security reform school. And it it was a pretty bad place. And 100 years later, scholars have debated whether it reformed really anybody.

40:09 Probably not. Children offenders were made to work on tasks like making brass nails. Making chairs, silver plating, and then they had four hours of regular class work. And then the discipline style was very much like the military. On the surface this might seem like a good way to deal with a misbehaving child, and definitely more humane than a lot of adult prisons at that time. But in any sort of closed facility where you have child deviancy, it always is a little bit like Darwin. Kill or be killed. Eat or be eaten. And it's especially bad because most of them weren't there for the same kind of things, like Jesse Pomeroy. They were there for nonviolent offenses like shoplifting or stubbornness, which was is an actual thing I found. Send your kid to reform school for being stubborn or you can not.

41:06 All I can say is thank God I was born in 1987 and not 1887 because I would have been sent to reform school. I was a pain in the arse. But Jesse gets there. He realizes right away that if he wants to get released before his 18th birthday, he has to show them that he's reformed. His records show that he is a model inmate. And I find this really interesting because there's another serial killer who also went to a juvenile facility and was a model inmate, and his name is Ed Kemper, also someone who is particularly brutal. It just lends me to believe that Jesse had a similar kind of pathology and an ability to control himself and learn from the prison system, which is not a good thing. Now, Jesse wasn't really teased here. The older boys were rude, but the younger boys knew why he was there and avoided him entirely.

42:10 Oh. Yeah, of course he avoided. Now, they part of the discipline here was that they would flog you if you got in trouble. He avoided all of that. But he was interested in watching other children get in. Trouble. Did Was he? Was he like a tattletale? Oh, wait till you find out he got listen. So he was originally assigned to make chairs, but after like shortly after that they realized, Oh no, he's such a good boy. They removed that and they gave him a job as a whole monitor, so. He was a professional snitch. No, no, no, no. And tasked with maintaining order in his dorm and pretty much snitching on the other boys in the dorm. Not this kid.

42:54 No, absolutely not. Listen, there was one point in the history while he was there that someone left an unlocked door and about half of the kids ran away. Jesse did not. What do you mean? So there was like a almost like a prison escape, but for the children. Someone didn't lock one of the outer doors and those kids escaped. Like half of them ran away and Jesse stayed. And stayed because he didn't want to get in trouble. He wanted to get out early or, you know, or he wanted to keep his little. That is a power or something like that. There was one blemish on his record that was written about Once one of his teachers asked for help killing a snake outside of their classroom in the back garden. Jesse very happily helped her.

43:41 Not only did he kill it with a stick, but he beat the snake until it was nothing more than a pile of blood and bones for a snake. You had to kill her. You could just leave it. Exactly. Poor Danger Noodle. But that's because he loved to kill things. So he got a chance to kill things and help. So while he's in the reform school, his mother is back home in Boston launching a campaign to get him released. She's like he's too young to be in prison. He he's not the kind of like he's too young to commit those kind of crimes. The police obviously have arrested the wrong person. She wrote letters to the reform school to anybody who would help her. She pointed out that he was had been coerced into confessing by the police, which is true, because they did leave him in the darkness for hours and threatened him. And he should have had a lawyer, or at least his mother should have been allowed there while they were questioning him. So she wasn't wrong.

44:39 She she was right about that. But. They did break the law to get the confession. But ma'am, ma'am, how long has your son been in this reform school? First of all, it's not even prison. It's a reform school. Not even that long. How long was he in there? I'll tell you how long he ends up there, but like, she started this immediately. Okay. But God, I was gonna try to make a point like if he was in there for like, I don't know, a month or so, then have all these like crime. Stuff. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The crimes? Yes, the Boston fiend stopped. Oh, I wonder why it stopped is because they caught the right person and he's in reform school now. Her letters really didn't help much. Jesse actually helped himself.

45:24 A state investigator visited Ruth. They determined that her home wasn't a danger and that his mother wasn't the reason why he was a total psychopath. They checked out his brother Charles, who was upstanding and hardworking. Charles had a paper route. And he ran a newspaper stand outside of his mother's dress shop. Yeah, Charles was a overachiever. And both Charles and Ruth promised that if Jesse was released early, he'd come and work at the newsstand and at the dress shop. And Ruth promised to keep an eye on him. The investigator decided that since Jesse's dad had left and he'd had so much free time. He had been allowed to just drift, and he must have been influenced by outside forces.

46:08 That's why he started out molesting children. Even the police in Boston were forgiving of him. The captain told the papers that it would be good to give Jesse a chance to redeem himself. So less than 18 months into a fiveyear sentence, he was released. And set loose on a public that had forgotten what happened. Wait, wait, Wait 18 months? 18 months Okay well into a five year sentence. He was supposed to be there from 13 to 18, right? Okay. So all this stops, ma'am. Okay. I'm just, I'm just gonna say, well.

46:48 Listen, Ruth is a mess. Ruth continues to be a mess. Just you wait. Just you wait to see how messy Ruth is. I'm just saying, ma'am, all this stuff stopped for 18 months. Through denial, complete and total denied while he was in reform school. And I bet you it starts right back up after he gets out. Coincidence, I think. It's worse. Okay, I'm gonna stop interrupting you. Continue over your story. Your horrible story. Well, the worst thing that for me here is that no one warned the neighbors or even his past victims and their families that he was being released. Oh, see? No, you're fucked. Up. Well, normally if someone commits a crime against you when they're released, like the state sends you a letter and says.

47:30 This person who did such and such thing to you as being released from prison, but I that's now I and on top of not not only just the PTSD from like having like just the thought of that person getting out and then also fearing for your life that they might come in reactor and revenge on you so. Well, this was an oversight that made it very easy for him to find a new victim when he got back. So March 18th, 1874, six weeks after coming home, Jesse opens up his mother's shop and the newsstand on the 300 block of Broadway in South Boston. Another employee at the shop was a young boy about Jesse's age showed up as the and he was as Jesse was sleeping the store and the two begin to talk.

48:25 That boy is named Rudolph Carr. As the two talked, 10 year old little girl named Katie Curran entered the store asking to buy a notebook. She had a new teacher and was really and had gotten permission to run to the store just before school from her parents. She was expected to be home by 8:30 AM. She'd already been to another shop and was told that they were sold out. Jesse told her they had one, but it had an ink stain on it and offered her a discount. And then Jesse told Rudolph to go to the butcher shop to get scraps to feed the cat, and he took Katie downstairs into the basement to look at the inventory. By the time she realized that they weren't going to look at inventory, it was entirely too late. Jesse later confessed that he choked her and cut her throat, dragged her behind a water closet and put rocks and ash over her body.

49:25 His confession left out the fact that her head was severed and by the time she was so bad, like by the time she was found, she was so badly decomposed. They couldn't tell all of her injuries. But they were aware that he had spent a particular amount of time stabbing her lower abdomen and groin area, and he was just there, alone, so he had all the time in the world. Well, not that much time. After killing her, he washed his hands in the water closet and went upstairs to meet his brother. So this happened in minutes. Katie's disappearance caused concern. Within an hour of her not returning home, her mother was out looking for her.

50:06 The local store clerk at a store called Tobin's told her he'd sent her to Mrs. Pomeroy store because they were out and Katie's mother freaked because she had heard about the Pomeroy boy. Who had just come back from a facility and so she assumed the worst. So she stopped by the police and told them what she had been told and the police told her Jesse's not a danger to anyone anymore. Plus he only hurt little boys in the past. Never heard a girl before. And OK, there is some criminology basis for this because generally, generally they don't cross. So if this is someone who's getting some level of sexual satisfaction from harming little boys, he's not going to get the same sexual satisfaction from harming a girl. However, he wasn't beating Katie. No, he was getting off on the murder here. Killed her.

51:01 He didn't beat her. No, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah. I mean, OK, let me let me just say her mom that smart lady. Her mom's A was her mom's A1. Mom was like, you sent her to the pomeroid. Why would you do that? Yeah, Don't don't know that boy. I heard about that boy. A little devil. Hell no. I don't know my daughter. Well, they sent her home. They said Mrs. Curran home and they were really patronizing about it too, saying like, listen, Katie probably just wander off. We'll find her in a day and bring her home. So a day later nothing happened and. Rudolph Koer told the Currans Katie had been in the store when he was there, so Mrs. Curran went back to the police and she was like, so the boy who works at the store with Jesse said that she was at the store and the police were like, well, the corps boy is a known liar, but we'll send a detective to look into it. The detective went to the dress shop and was met. With a rude Mrs. Pomeroy who felt that she had been harassed by her neighbors and now she was being harassed by the cops. Of course, because she has no idea what's actually going on, she's never had any idea what's going on. I mean, technically she has, she just said a denial. But whatever.

52:19 The detective walked around the shop, didn't find anything because he didn't go into the basement. Weeks went by. Neighbors wondered if she's been shipped off to a convent by the father. At the time, Boston was a very like Protestant area and anti Catholic. So then a more credible witness, more credible than the teenage boy. Rudolph came forward and told the cops that he thought he'd seen Katie being lured into a wagon, and police closed the case, saying that she'd been kidnapped. So we're wait a wagon, OK? Before cars.

53:02 Before cars. Yeah, I know. OK, OK. You're thinking it's a little more. We're still. It's not even 1900 yet, honey. Sure, I'm like. Like you like a wagon. Like a red wagon? Yes, that's what I'm thinking. Of you Really? Fuck, I was thinking, okay, wait, someone was just pulling around a wagon and like, hey, I'm going to go for a ride in my little red wagon? Oh my God, Okay, I'm sorry. That's. Great, So, and I literally wrote this in my notes, Jesse is back on his bullshit and trying to lure small boys into abandoned buildings in South Boston.

53:48 Oh my God. Okay. Most of the children are smart enough to refuse his offers of candy, money or trips to the circus. Unfortunately, there's one boy who wasn't aware of who Jesse was because he was only five years old and his name was Harry Field and he saw Jackie. He saw Jesse walking, pretending to be lost, and he offered. Jesse offered Harry 5 cent to help him get to Vernon St. and the two walked hand in hand all over South Boston as Jesse looked for a place to kill this boy. Now Harry was lucky. Because a local teenager saw the two of them walking and started yelling at Jesse and pretty much cussing him out in the street. The two of them get into an argument and that teenager pulls their hands apart and tells Henry run home smart.

54:37 I'm like the same thing like. That yes, that's like he was like why are you walking around with a 5 year old? You're 14. What's wrong with you? Hey, yo-yo, what are you doing that little kid? So yeah, that that would be the that random strange boy saved that child's life. Thank you random little boy. OK, Also these these five year olds just wandering around the streets? South Awesome. I am just imagining because in all of these cases, these little kids were just kind of walking around their neighborhoods and so I'm just wondering if we just lived in a different time. Over 100, like 130 years ago, let me tell you where you could just chill and walk around, let me tell you.

55:24 I mean, OK, I will say that I remember being like 8 years, 8 or no even younger than that, maybe 6. And there was a Chinese store on the corner of my block, and my grandma gave me money and sent me to like she gave me not only money, but she gave me a list. And sent me to the store and I like, gave it to the lady at the store. And the lady gave me a bag and I walked back up the street. So that was only in the 90s. No, I mean it took us a while to my mom walk to the store by itself. Well, see, it's completely different. Because then when I got adopted, like my people didn't let me go anywhere. Yeah, not in this town like I'm just trying to. It's just wild that it's like a six year old. I was allowed to walk down like a street in Philadelphia completely by myself.

56:13 That's highly dangerous. No, I would never do that. Now I can Philly. Oh my God. But no. Well, my grandma was kind of a crazy lady. I'm just, I'm just saying like, I live in a very suburban neighborhood, of course. And my kids, I got a 5 year old and an almost 7 year old and I would never let them out of the house without me. They're barely like they can go into the backyard. I start to be in the backyard with them. Absolutely. Like, I can't and it's not fenced off, so of course I gotta be out there with. I just would not let them out of the house by themselves. I totally vibe with you on that. I feel that way too.

56:53 Like, it's just it was a different time and you're gonna you're gonna go for a loop because the last victim was four years old. I'm fucking tired. The last one tired of shit. Won't talk about it anymore. Tell you the motherfucking kids walking around these motherfucking streets. So last victim was his name was Horace Milan and the Milans. This is actually like a really twisted fact. They moved into town and they actually moved across the street from Katie Curran's family April of 1874. The youngest Milan was four years old. He's described in all of the sources that I have as angelic. Yeah, Blonde hair, sweet face.

57:47 And his mom had a I don't I she liked to dress him up. Aw, very fancy clothing and see. See, when I think of parents who do that, I think of them treating their children like doll babies, I mean, But I like to put I like buying dresses for Cassandra. Yes, I mean, I I bought her ribbons for her hair. But exactly. See, I mean she. But she likes. She loves dresses, so. I understandable. I also love dresses. So do I. So there you go. But I'm on horses.

58:28 Last day alive, he wore a black velvet hat with a golden tassel, a black and white jacket, and a red and white checkered shirt with velvet trim and black pants. That fucking drip. Exactly. It was very fancy. Now Horace loves sweets, and early one morning he pretty much like grabbed a couple pennies from his mom's purse and like, dipped out. I don't even think like she knew. He just was like, I'm going to the bakery and walking down the street. He met Jessie Promoray, who offered to walk with him. They went to the bakery and Horace bought a small cake for himself.

59:10 And then Jesse offered to show him the harbor because he was new to Boston. What a good friend to a four year old, 4 year old. Remember that. Who cares? He will care about that. Listen, all Horace cared about was he had a cake in his hand and he was eating it. Yeah, he's like. I'm pretty sure and we're gonna find somewhere so I can sit down and eat this. Cake, Pretty much. He's like we going to OK, whatever. But interestingly enough, many witnesses saw them walking together, and even one of them reported that Jesse looked weirdly excited. Yeah, cuz he found a little Angel he wanted to kill. She testified later that his expression was so odd that she went inside to put her glasses on to go look at him more closely because it seemed weird.

59:53 A second witness saw them and assumed that they were brothers because they were walking hand in hand. This is about 40 minutes after they left the bakery. He wasn't sure why the boys were out near the train checks, but he kept his opinion to himself. Bad, bad decision. Then they wandered past an older boy named Robert Benson who was digging clams, that boy testified, and remembered thinking that the little boy was too nicely dressed to be walking around like the muddy marshes. Robert didn't actually know who Jesse was, and so he wasn't suspicious like the other people in South Boston were. Also, while they were talking to Robert, Jesse heard a gunshot. And he was like, what's that?

1:00:39 And they're like, oh, there's some guys over there shooting wild duck. So those were grownups. So Jesse made sure to go in the opposite direction of where the adults were. The last person to see Horace alive outside of Jesse was a man on the beach. He only noticed because he said that the older boy kept looking over his shoulder as if someone was following them, and nobody was following them. When they were finally alone, Jesse was like, Do you want to sit down? And so they did. And Jesse took out his knife and he cut Horace's throat. He was not efficient with this attack because Horace was still alive and fought back.

1:01:25 He's no match. A four year old is no match for a 14 year old. He's His hands and arms had signs of defensive wounds. Eventually, Jesse did manage to cut through his windpipe, which ended the fight. He continued to stab and cut the body, also focusing on the genitals here as well. There were deep marks in the sand from Horace, like digging his feet in dozens of cuts on his arms and hands, and at one point his hands have been clenched so tightly that his fingernails left marks in his palms. It was not a not a good death.

1:02:07 And then, like to add insult to injury, Jesse just leaves the body on the beach to be found like he didn't even care that poor little kid. Around 4:00 PM there are two brothers who are playing along the beach. They thought that it was a doll at first. When they got closer, it realized they realized it was a person. They'd seen a few of the grownups who were hunting ducks and went back and got help. That was there were four men who were duck hunting. So two of them stayed back while two others went to go find the police. The Millen family had been searching for Horace since noon. Yeah, at 5:30.

1:02:52 His father, they had been searching the neighborhood. His father reported him missing with the police. He described what his son was wearing. And we look like the police told him they would keep an eye out. At this point, the police didn't actually know that a body had been taken to the coroner to be examined. The coroner was a team of six men, and they sat down to gather as much evidence as they could to give. The police counted dozens of defensive wounds, 18 stab wounds to the chest. He had a punctured eyeball, completely mutilated genitals. Thankfully, almost all of those were delivered after Horace was dead. Because that would be horrible to experience while you were alive. The kill was cutting his throat.

1:03:36 They released that report to the police, but they also released it to the papers, which was common to do at that time because they were trying to, you know, find out who did it. The police then issued A bulletin trying to identify the victim. And South Boston, the South Boston precinct was like, oh, we know who that is. So before this gets printed in tomorrow's papers. They go, and it's 9:00 at night. They go to the mill and house to tell them what happened. There was only ever really one suspect, of course, as it should have been. Immediately people were like is definitely that one, but since no one had been informed that Jesse was home.

1:04:22 The police, the police chief initially thought that Jesse was still in reform school. So they were like, well, he can't be in reform school and also here in Boston murdering children. Wait, the police weren't even notified of this? Different precincts, No. Like nobody was. As I said, no one was informed and he came back home from reform school, not just the neighborhood or where the heck he was living. Well, so originally they worried there was another killer. But then the saw South Boston Chief of police informed the other police precinct No. Jesse Pomeroy has been home for about two months now. Y'all should have been told as this. They picked him up immediately. Ruth is upset. Jesse's like I didn't do anything wrong. Don't worry about it mom.

1:05:09 Six officers interrogate him, demanding to know Have you seen Horace? Do you have any connection to the mill and family? He totally keeps his cool, but he doesn't have an alibi for where he'd been from the morning to the afternoon. So then I decided to check his clothes. He has a small dark spot on his shirt, about the size of a thumb, a scratch on his face and marsh grass stuck to his shoes. They ask him, do you carry a knife? And at first he doesn't want to tell them, but then he says yeah, so the police go to his house. And find the knife, which is still covered in blood and dirt. Clean it.

1:05:49 He didn't even clean it. They gave that to the coroner and left Jesse in herself for the night. Damn 14 year olds. The next morning, they got to the beach to compare Jesse and Horace's shoe prints. They tracked the prints to an area called Mckay's Wharf, and they made a plaster cast of the footprint in the sand. Which really hadn't been done before. So they sort of created a new thing to be done in police work. Look at you guys. In this case, look at you guys go. This is now, like a thing we do all the time. It's like a yeah. Thing Jesse Hsu had a small indentation in it, and with that they were able to prove that he had definitely been at the scene of the murder. So they wake him up when they come back from the beach. They're like bang, bang, bang, come on buddy. But he's still acting like a cool guy. So then they say, well if you didn't do it like why don't we take you to the Funeral Home so you can see the body and Jesse's like, no, I'm good I killed them. Why didn't you want to see your?

1:06:56 English pretty much. He was like, Nope, I don't want to see that. Why not? Why not? You did? It so he admits that he killed him, but then he says please don't tell my mom. He had been gotten caught stealing or something. Oh my God. The Boston Globe referred to him as a moral monstrosity. This is a direct quote. He had no provocation and no rational motive for his atrocious conducts. He did not know the little ladmillon at all, but enticed him away and cut and hacked him to death with a pen knife merely for sport and the papers. Ripped into the parole board.

1:07:39 How dare you release him back into the general population? How dare you? So we only have one issue here because he's still 14, he's still juvenile, and the punishment for murder at the time was hanging, but they had never killed a child before and nobody wanted to start. And without telling anybody about. Well, we can try this time. And also on the outside of this, Ruth and Charles are struggling. No one wants to shop at their businesses anymore. Obviously the only people who stop by are there to gawk at where the boy Fiend worked. Ruth insists her son is innocent and a month after his arrest, they have to close the store. So there was another business nearby that offered to buy her shop so she would have some money to give her a little help. And so as they are doing the expansion. They find Katie Curran's body when workers are digging. Wait, so wait, wait.

1:08:39 Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on, hold on. So during this whole time, I'm guessing the mom and the brother, they just never went down. Yeah, it seems like it must have been the area. Probably unfinished because they like the way they describe is he put her under rocks, but I'm like if she had to be found by people digging. That doesn't just sound like he just put a little rocks on her. That must have been like a completely unfinished area and he could just pile some rubble on top of her and move on. So it was a space that they didn't. Yeah, they never used Okay. They would never. That's just wait, wait, another question. He stabs her, right?

1:09:22 Yes, there was. He just cleaned them. He cleaned. He washed himself off in the He washed himself open. OK? Yep. OK, kept moving. OK, so at this point, the whole community is like, Oh yeah, Jesse definitely did this, but the police are like, do you think his family was a part of it? No, obviously it was him. So they bring them in for questioning. But it also protects them because a mob of people have gathered outside on Broadway and are demanding justice. Because her house was across the street from the dress shop, so, like, there was nowhere to go. When confronted with all this information, Jesse just shrugged and was like, I don't know anything.

1:10:04 The police were like, how about this? We're going to give you 2 days to think about this. And if you can't tell us anything about Katie Curran's death, we're going to have to assume Charles and your mother had something to do with this when they came back. He gave them a confession with all of the details on how he killed Katie and he was like my family had nothing to do with it. When he was asked why he killed Katie, he said. I don't know. I wanted to see how she would act like a person being killed. Yeah, Jackass. So he I feel like he falls under the the kind of partially like killers who just do it for the thrill. Now, with the second murder under his belt, it definitely seems like he might become the youngest person executed in Massachusetts.

1:10:55 The only thing that could save him would be if they could prove he was insane, and they did that using something called the McNaughton Rules. This came from a trial in England in 1830. This man named McNaughton, killed the Prime Minister's secretary because he believed that the Prime Minister was part of a conspiracy to kill him. He was acquitted due to being obviously unwell. But the public was very upset, and so they created something called the McNaughton Rules to determine if a defendant was incapable of understanding the charges against him, unable to assist in his own defense, or unaware of the difference between right and wrong at the time he committed the offense.

1:11:35 The same thing we talked about in the Herbert Mullen case, it's it's very much the difference between Anatoly Onna Prienko. Who was hearing voices but knew entirely what he was doing the entire time, versus John Hinckley, who did not think it was wrong to shoot President Reagan to get the favor of a Hollywood celebrity like Hinckley definitely thought he was. What do you mean? It was perfectly all right to kill him. They told me to do it, so it's in line, but it's an important distinction to make. So for Jesse, they need to figure out now if he's aware that what he was doing was wrong at as as it was happening. So at the time they called psychiatrist alienists. Weird word, but I just refer them as doctors here. Three different doctors examined Jesse 2 for the defense and one for the prosecution.

1:12:28 He got close to one of the defense doctors named Doctor John Tyler, and he told Tyler about molesting the young boys. And how it was because he had an impulse that would just come over him, and he told Tyler how he would get this sharp pain in his head that would go from one side to the other and it wouldn't stop until he hurt somebody. Then he got a letter from his mom saying don't tell the doctors that you did anything unless you really did something. And if you didn't do it, definitely deny it. And he interpreted that as. Absolutely deny everything.

1:13:09 So two months before trial, he recanted his entire confession to the doctors, and no amount of prodding could make him change his mind on this. God damn. You mom. The final report issued by Tyler said that Jesse had no pity for the boys he tortured or the murder victims. He had no sorrow or remorse for his acts, but he gave 2 conflicting opinions. He said Jesse knew right from wrong, but that he was. Forever going to be a threat to society and need to be restrained so that no one else could be endangered because he was definitely 100% insane and they were like, oh, that didn't answer. Was he insane when he did it though So it didn't help. The trial was set and his attorneys were just hoping to keep him alive.

1:13:58 Jesse apparently thought he'd only go to jail for about 5 years and then he'd be allowed to join the Navy. Absolutely not. I don't know what sort of weird thought this kid had, but you know what? That's what that's kids are weird. That's, let's say, teenagers are. Yeah, there you go. So Trial started December 8th, 1874, and just like many of the trials we discussed on the podcast packed, it's the event of the century. It was on front page news all down the Eastern Seaboard. Despite this being very exciting for all the gawkers, it wasn't long and drawn out like a lot of modern trials are. They picked a jury in under an hour, began opening arguments on the same day. Prosecutor began by just straight up telling the jury the definition of murder.

1:14:43 And I'm going to be really honest. This isn't funny, but it's funny because it was reported by local newspapers that he was very droll and quite boring. The prosecutor? Well, yeah, it's not. They were like. He's not exciting at all. God, this guy sucks. What do you want for? What do you want from them? Come on now. You know what people want. They want Tom Cruise. You can't handle the truth. They they want excitement in the courtroom. People don't realize that real law is boring. They want Keanu Reeves up in there. Oh my God. They want what was that? Who's? Who's the one who yelled. You can't handle. The truth is that. That's the one about the the naval officer who was hurt. Yes, that one.

1:15:29 That's what they want. They want that excitement. They don't realize that real law is boring and it's a lot of paperwork. So the prosecutor just, it calls all the witnesses who saw Jesse walking the horse on the beach. They all can't rereport their previous stuff that they told the police. He brings out the shoe cast. The police discussed the confession. Throughout all of this, Jesse is unfazed. Even during the more gruesome discussion of what happened during the murders. He sits leaning back in his chair with his hands behind his neck, like relaxing during the trial. Then the defense start.

1:16:10 Now see, Jesse's attorney was giving him the razzle dazzle. He explains an excruciating detail about how Jesse learned to harm these boys from his alcoholic, runaway dad. He went into all of Jesse's past crimes, and he asked the court to think about could Jesse be sane after experiencing all of that? That's just the opening argument here. So in laying on the defense to prove that Jesse was legally insane. He brought up witness after witness to back it up, and he starts with Ruth Pomeroy. Ruth tells the court about how Jesse had all of these childhood and illnesses that addled his mind. He had a brain fever.

1:16:55 He had seizures. He suffered after all of that. He suffered from insomnia, dizziness, violent headaches. They bring in witnesses from their old neighborhood who discussed how he would like, try and hurt animals. And then he would like run off, holding his head in pain. One of his teachers would discuss how he would have these really loud outbursts and when he would get in trouble he would like, get mad and be like, no, it's not fair like a child. Then they brought in Robert, who still had the scars from when Jesse attacked him. And I don't know why the defense did this. They were trying to show how crazy this attack was. But it definitely backfired because it made the jury so angry that they were like, Oh no, there's no way we're acquitting this point.

1:17:45 Absolutely. After that, the doctors testified. Dr. Tyler restates his report. Jesse is a lunatic, needs to be kept in prison for life. But the prosecutor cross examined him and got Tyler to admit that Jesse showed no other signs of madness outside of murder and torture. Which is weird, because you know, if you're insane, I would expect to see something. See it? Outside of just the clinic, so second doctor thought that Jesse was legally insane, but under cross examination admitted that Jesse fleeing the scene was definitely to avoid punishment, which meant he knew it was wrong. Then Doctor George Chote was the 3rd doctor and he was the doctor for the prosecution.

1:18:30 So it was no surprise that he called Jesse cunning and deeply manipulative and free of all mental defects. That one sounds a lot more true. Just just saying. Maybe closing arguments. And then after five hours of deliberation, the jury came back determining he was guilty of first degree murder, but they requested clemency for him because he was so young. However, this is not something a judge can do. Clemency can only be granted by the governor, so the judge ordered Jesse to be taken to a cell and await execution. So unlike now in 21st century death row, inmates in the 19th century did not wait for 20-30 years on death row. You were lucky if you were on death row for a year. Then.

1:19:19 See, this is. I'm just saying this is, I'm sorry, continue. However, the thing here was that nobody wanted to do it, but the public wanted justice for Horace and Katie. So they were like, hey, let's take this to the governor. So the governor at the time, his name was William Gaston, though it's spelled Gaston. And it really made it really made it hard for me not to call him Governor Gaston. No one hangs like Gaston. I quit little boys like Gaston. Oh, we're going to hell.

1:20:03 Well, well, here's the thing. So Gaston did what every politician does. He elected a committee to study it and report back. Oh, come on, you just had a freaking trial about this. Nope. Nope. The committee is torn. And so Gaston asked the citizens of Boston what to do. And so they do a public hearing and people speak for and against it, and it goes all day long. Governor's like, okay, I'm going to take this into account. And then nothing happens for weeks. And while nothing happens, another disturbed man in his 20s kills a little boy in Boston. And the people in Boston are like, what are you going to do about the Pomeroy boy? Because somebody else is now killing boys because they know that they won't get murdered for it. So the governor's like, all right, bring the committee back. We're going to have the committee vote, committee votes 5 to 4 to allow the sentence to stand. Jesse will hang, but Governor Gaston won't sign the death warrant.

1:21:11 This actually probably cost him his position as governor because in 1876, Alexander Rice ran on the Hang Jesse Pomeroy platform and won. Obviously, he was elected. He's like, listen, if you elect me, I will hang Jesse Pomeroy. I will hang that child. I will kill that child if you will elect me. Oh my God. I would love to find like, any sort of old. I looked, I tried. I wanted to see a picture or a poster or anything that listed this. Couldn't find it all. Oh my God, I guess, you know, governor of Boston, not as important as, you know, holding on to like old presidential papers.

1:22:02 Right. Boom, I said. Governor of Boston, Governor of Massachusetts. Oh my goodness. There's no governor. I I kind of. I knew what you meant. But yeah, but regardless, Alexander Rice is elected 1876. So in August of 1876, he brings together his advisors and he's like, listen, I'm not going to hang this kid. Dude, come on. That was your whole thing. I was with you. I voted for you. I went back in time. I voted for you. Come on. I moved to Boston. I went back in time, moved to Boston, and but yo, you probably couldn't even vote in Boston. You probably we couldn't.

1:22:42 Neither of us could. I'm like, what are you doing here, boy? I don't. I don't think the you're given a Southern accent and this is a Boston accent. You never know, so I I might even try a Boston. Accent, but this is this was in the North too. But you know, Oh no, no, there were, listen, there were no rights in the north as well. So sundown towns existed in the north. I digress. He says choose advisors. Like, listen, the people of Boston have had about two years to calm down. He's like, I think they'll accept a sentence less than death, but it still needs to be severe. So the governor orders that he will spend his life not only behind bars but in solitary confinement, which we know now in modern day is pretty bad.

1:23:32 I mean, solitary is considered torture, so I guess it's okay to torture the torturer. I don't know. Jesse was allowed a monthly visit from his mother at the President Charlestown, and he had a pretty boring existence. Once his mother died, the only people he ever saw were the guards patrolling. His brother had died in the war. So yeah, I think that was in like 18 nineties. His brother died. Every so often a reporter would phone the president and ask about him, but they were never allowed to actually talk to him or interview him. Over time, governors came and went.

1:24:16 They all met the most famous prisoner in Massachusetts, and then they went on their way. He ultimately spent 41 years in solitary confinement. And then in 1917, they kind of relaxed his sentence a little bit. They said that he at this point he's meddled and they let him go. In general population, originally, when he's released, he's known as like, the worst prisoner there. For a time, something that like kind of, like made him happy. Many of these prisoners had grown up hearing about him. But then something worse actually happened, because after enough time, he kind of became a faceless inmate who nobody knew about and nobody was afraid of anymore. And that was kind of worse than solitary confinement for him, because for a sociopath who liked being known as the the boy fiend of Boston, being forgotten is terrible. But he never showed any remorse the entire 58 years he was in prison.

1:25:21 He never apologized to his victims or any of their families. By 1929, he was in poor health. He's 71 years old and they finally moved him to a Bridgewater prison farm for better medical care. It was actually his first and only ride in an automobile, cuz he had been in prison for so long he didn't know anything about any of the new life outside of the prison. That's right. They have wagons. The little red wagons they're riding me. A few reporters actually watched his transfer and reported that he was a deadened creature, gazing with lustreless eyes upon a world that means nothing to him. It's like okay, so we're both saying, reporters wrote.

1:26:05 Real flowery back then, that. Was fantastic. I love how they wrote that. That's just like, imagine, that's like a a dragon, OK, A dragon has been sealed away. Yeah. And lazing with lustreless eyes upon a world that means nothing. To him. And then he finally gets out. And it's just like, I don't care about any of this going on outside of me. I'll Yeah, but yeah, he died two years later at that prison. The press referred to him as the most friendless person in the world. Of course, his only wish when he knew he was going to die was that he'd be cremated. Since his brother had died and his mother died of old age, he had no living family and no one to care for him, so his only was die. He was like cremate me, scatter me when they end the wind and so that's what they did.

1:26:52 And that kind of ends the saga of the boy fiend of Boston. A pretty horrible kid. That was terrible and horrible person. I mean, I knew about him. I just didn't know all the details. Yeah, I think I've heard this story before. I think I mentioned him in one of the tik toks when I talked about children that kill. But I mean, that was a one minute video, not an hour of discussing his entire life that. Was bad? Oh yeah. I definitely agree with the the group of people who were like, why did y'all let him out? I mean, I think he still would have been a menace to society at 18.

1:27:33 He probably would have gotten out and killed somebody at 18, but then there wouldn't have been any dispute. They would have just hung him because he was an adult. Exactly. See, you know the the real issue there was it took them two years to decide to put him in solitary. And those little babies would have lived a little longer. True. Poor kids. Yeah, this is a rough one. I hated every moment of it. That's why it took me a long time to finish it. You're making fun of me for doing an all nighter to finish my notes, but whenever it's like a kid thing, it takes me forever. I understand it. I understand like I stopped doing this to myself. Stop doing myself.

1:28:17 Stop doing it to both of us. I'm sorry. Killing me over here, Smalls, No. So what do we have on the spooky side of life? Let me just say this episode's gonna be long, okay. And I do not apologize for that. So let me pull this story out of my hat. So you know what I always loved, even as a little kid? The Jersey Devil.

1:29:06 Besides that okay anime. Besides anime? Scary movies. Yeah, you ask what you love. That's what I know. You're naming all this stuff, that's true. I don't know. I'm not just. Not right. You're not hitting the right button, OK. Magic. Are we gonna talk about what I think we're gonna? Talk about No, I'm not talking about witchcraft right here. No. I'm talking about stage magic. No, you're a delight.

1:29:49 I love you so much. I only wish we had cameras for this. I know. See how happy I absolutely am right now? My goodness, this is just say his name. Say his name. Let me get in my story Okay now. I remember when I was like, I don't know 10 or 12 and. We took our yearly trip down to Florida. There's this place in like the Orlando area. It's like this little amusement type of strip. I don't know what you want to call it, but it's called Old Town Okay and we would just walk down, up and down the streets cuz they had great shops. Yeah.

1:30:36 Do you walk by yourself? No, I did not. Didn't no see no. We're in different state, definitely. No. I definitely have heard, though Orlando's kind of rough. Yeah, outside of the tourist areas, it's not a place you wanna be chilling out by yourself. No, absolutely not. So as walking down the streets of Old Town, I, like, literally stopped dead in my tracks because I saw this wondrous shop. It was a magic shop if my eyes were bright. And I begged my parents to go, my mom to go inside and my God, my tiny mind exploded. And there was like magic tricks lying in the walls. They had like monster masks.

1:31:25 They had Todd pads. They were wants they had. And all this also, like even now if I saw this, it's like they're just nice to go into. I've seen them as a grown up and I'm like, this is just cool. I don't want to buy any of those little boxes of tricks, but they're cool places, I. Would still freak out. I would still blow like mine would still be blown. So I was in heaven. So I left that store with like a magic wand and like, you know, little coin trick. So I was freaking happy. Funny thing is, like my siblings and my siblings and their dad, they would, they'd clown me because I bought it and I didn't know how to use it. Well, you could.

1:32:13 Learn after that my mom and I was into knives. So here we are. So why am I talking about my childhood again? And why am I talking about magic? Well, because we're finally going to sit down and talk about one of the greatest magicians, illusionists, and medium debunker, Harry Houdini. Yeah, buddy. Oh yeah, I've been waiting for this one. I've been wanting to hear about how Houdini hated psychics. I love it.

1:32:57 Oh, goodness. I'm glad you're happy. You know how you were like, thank you for this gift. Yes, When I talked about Debbie. Yes, thank you for this gift. This is my favorite thing. This is another gift you had your gift with the horns only I got. See, I got you 2 gifts this year, all right? I gotta do better. I gotta find you another person who justifiably murdered, like 20 people. There you go. Righteous. Murder. Righteous murder. I loved it so much. So what I'm going to talk about this week is not the magic side of you know, Houdini. Of course not. But how This man kind of made it his mission to debunk mediums. That's right.

1:33:47 So I'd say the catalyst for his debunking journey would be the passing of his mother in 1913. So after her death, he was, you know, unsurprisingly overcome with grief. Feel you been there, buddy. Yeah, it's not a good time. So I guess what he did was that sometimes he would lie on her gravestone or, you know, and then just, you know, speak to the earth. Like speaking to her. Ohh, wow. Yeah. I haven't even visited my mom. I can't. I just feel like it would be an overwhelming experience. So I'm just gonna, like, love you from afar.

1:34:28 But he decided to go to her gravestone and talk to. Her. Yeah, This is just, he was just like, he called like multiple searches. I looked at, they called like, he called her his Angel on earth. So yeah, she was like his world. And it was like I I cannot relate to that, of course, because my mother is still alive, but. I just. I feel for you. I absolutely can. Feel for him. I feel for you. Yeah, I would. It's one of those few things people like. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. That's it's that bad. Losing a parent is that bad.

1:35:14 I once read an article from the Guardian and we talked about how he had an uncle who had gotten like a blown up in a war, like an explosion happened, and he had shrapnel in his body. And he said that like every once in a while a piece of shrapnel would just decide to start moving and it would very painfully force its way out of its body. And that is grief, and it just keeps coming and coming. It doesn't stop. So that's I feel for Harry. So all this time. Talking to her grave, he was always wondering if there's a way to communicate with the dead. Right.

1:35:56 So and con spiritualism with such one living person could commune with the dead with the assistance of a medium through seances and back then this is when they used to do that thing with the table, right? And everyone sat around the table and. That fun stuff, it was like a big to do. Now people are like, I'm gonna sit with you in your living room and we're just gonna talk. But this was like a big deal. Yeah, no Luigi boards right now. Oh gosh, you're not a fan. So, fun fact, I don't know if you knew about this, but Harry Houdini actually performed fake seances during his early years as a magician.

1:36:42 No, I I didn't know he did that. I thought that he just hated them. No, this is before he hated them, so so was he, like, scamming people? No, this was part of his magic act. Okay. Like, I know a lot of magicians back in that day actually did stuff like this. But yeah, but yeah, so he, like, really wanted to believe in spiritualism. But he knew that there might be frauds out there, of course, like this stuff he was doing. So the years now 1920, he becomes friends with the author of the Sri like home novels Conan Doyle.

1:37:28 Wow. So both author Arthur and his wife were believers of spiritualism. His wife, Jean, was also a practicing medium. Oh no. So Doyle's interest in spiritualism came after the death of his son in World War One. He publicly endorsed the practice by donating money to popular mediums of the time. I just don't see this going well for their friendship. So. So while Houdini was in England, you know, he'd hang out with his buddy Arthur. He'd invite them. Hit the dohails to his shows and he hang out with them at their place.

1:38:16 They were homies, basically. One day Houdini and his wife Bess, Arthur and Jean were sitting at lunch and Houdini's doing tricks for, you know, Arthur's kids. And when spiritualism comes up, so this is when Jean tells them that, you know, she's a practicing medium. And Houdini is like, here we go with this bullshit. Oh, OK. But you know, he he doesn't say anything because you know, that's his friend's wife. So so he holds his tongue. But he does ask he he asked him to suggest, you know, a medium for him to visit, and he promises to go with an open mind willing to believe that's a lie.

1:38:58 No, look, I believe, OK. I would no, I believe that he he truly like. He wasn't going to these things just to debunk them at first. Like, you know, I'm just going to go. I know it's a lot of bullshit, but, you know, I'm just going to go and see, you know what it's like, basically. Like, that'd be like asking me to go like, see Sylvia Brown and be like, just keep an open mind, Brittany, and I'm like. No. Yeah. I can't. I can't. Not with her. I can't. No, not at all. It would need to be some unknown. Never been on TV, psychic. Not somebody who makes money off of this. I don't trust them. Oh my. God fuck Sylvia Brown.

1:39:39 Anyway, so to recommend any Britain and supposedly most famous medium in England. Let me say he wasn't impressed, OK? So she basically did everything Houdini did when he did his fake seances, doors opening, chairs rocking back and forth, candles flickering, the whole 9. Yards. But how do you make that fake? What I don't know. Magic.

1:40:21 Ohh, I said How do you make it fake? And you said magic. There you go. He stays friends with Arthur as of this though. Ohh, that's nice. Like, he's still, you know, he's still friendly with him. He he's not like an asshole. Like, you sent me to this person and she's obviously a fake. Like she's the most famous in like England, though. And she's obviously a fake. Ooh, I mean, Houdini was a famous magician, so yeah, she should have known. She should have, like, put on her best foot forward or something. Like you can't be doing, like the basic stuff you do for the normies, like Harry Houdini's coming to your show like get, you know, give him the razzle dazzle. Yeah, Razzle Dazzle exactly did not help her. So the Doyles are visiting New York. The year is 1922 now, so.

1:41:15 Doyle and Houdini are attending the banquet for the Society of American Magicians when Houdini says he'll demonstrate how a magician fakes spiritualism. He fakes. He fakes spiritualist phenomena, is what was said. So Arthur obviously is upset about this. He says he didn't want to see spiritualism mocked. So Houdini does another trick. He does a trick with his wife and Doyle's jacket and puts her in her chest and whatever. So it is, it's a it's. I'm pretty sure it's a great trick to watch not to read about.

1:42:03 So now they're in Atlantic City same year. And you know, Doyle is in the Houdini's or I guess, yeah, she still has a they're, you know, they're at a hotel. And Jean Doyle offers to help Houdini commune with his mother. Bad decision. Houdini tries to be optimistic. So, you know, during the seance she uses automatic writing. You know what that is? Okay. Awesome. So it's for anybody who doesn't know, it's basically just the medium is like, I guess they're communicating with the spirit and then the spirit talks to the medium. You make yourself like a conduit, yeah. And you hold a pencil and they close their eyes and then whatever gets drawn that's supposed to come from. The Spirit.

1:42:59 The Spirit. Yes. So she wrote things, so words and stuff for this one. So she wrote things like. This is from Houdini's quote. UN quote, Mom, I think I remember this one. Things like I'm happy or it's so different over here, you know, vague messages like that. Houdini both knows this, so for one, Gene wrote in English. Yep, I do remember hearing about this. His mom was like German. Or something. Houdini and his mom are German. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember those.

1:43:40 And his mom only speaks German or spoke German, and on every page there was a cross at the top. His mom was Jewish. Didn't remember that one though. I remember the fact that he was mad because he was like if she had said anything it would have been in German, not in so medium. Who didn't know German would have been like, I do not. This sounds like she's growling at me from the afterlife, if I'm honest. Listen, German is an aggressive sounding language. But you can tell what it is. You can be saying like, I love you and it sounds vicious. Oh my God, just look it up.

1:44:22 This is just German is a hardcore language. Yes. Nothing. It's not cool. It just sounds real intense. So Can you imagine? You're just like, all right, I'm just going to listen and all of a sudden you just hear somebody like a DMX and in your ear. Well, if she's being a conduit for her, she could be able to still write that stuff, though. Do you know how to write in German? Okay. But she's being a conduit. The spirit is controlling her hand, so she will be able to true. If she really was being a conduit, then she would have probably written in German. Exactly. Also, though, she just was not being a conduit. She was just trying to be nice. Yes, and all you did was make him angry. Yes. Also, the science was on his mom's birthday and Gene or was a bad time.

1:45:06 Or his mom did not mention it at all. When you know Houdini said this to you know Doyle's. You know, I'm pretty sure you said it in the most politely play the most polite way ever, Arthur. Is initially, you know, defensive, of course, he said. Houdini's mom could have learned English in heaven. Yep, I do remember hearing that too. And that spirits don't care about the earthly calendar, so she wouldn't bring up her birthday. Look, let me tell you something. I'm gonna care about the earthly calendar. Yeah, right.

1:45:47 Listen, listen. If you out, if I outlive you, you best believe November 6, 2057. I'm gonna be over here. How you doing, Brian? What's up? Oh my God, yeah. If you do a seance for me and it's on 5720, like 87, yeah, what am I over here cutting my life down to only like 50 years? On my birthday and you don't bring me a gift. I'm gonna come to the say on and the first thing I was gonna come out of my mouth is where's my present? It's my birthday. What I'm supposed to give it to you? How I'm supposed to give it to? You pour some lick it out for me, all right, I. I'll have a cup waiting. I can pour one out for the homie. I can do that absolutely.

1:46:33 Now at this time, actually forever, Houdini didn't think that they were fakes or frauds. You just thought they were. Very self deluded. Yeah. So he was like she believes this. I just don't got no thank you. Yeah, what a nice He still really wants to be friends with them. So I mean, but the Doyles on the other hand, for some reason thought that Houdini was moved by the experience. Parser even went as far as going publicly to say that Houdini was a spiritualist believer that we've gone too far.

1:47:25 So that was another bad decision on his part. Well, how do you speak for me? How about that? Yeah. So Houdini was like, all right. I've taken all I can stand and I can't stands no more. So he told the media that spiritualism is a sham and those who practice it are frauds. And so a few starts between these two friends. Arthur would write that Houdini was conceited and self opinionated, and Houdini would write that Doyle was seen now and easily bamboozled.

1:48:05 They would roast each other this way for a while. I'm just saying that is a roast. He's like you, easily bamboozled. You're a silly man, you feebleminded. Believe anything. Pull the wool over your. Eyes Ohh goodness so. At this time, Houdini went on his way to attend as many seances as possible, so this is when this happened. To expose mediums. All right then.

1:48:46 This man even would even where this guise is, cuz after a while people if they recognized it was him they wouldn't do it. They were like, I won't do the seance if he's here. We don't like his energy. He would wear like must. He is bad energy. He's gonna block the. Spirit. Yeah, exactly. Really. He's gonna show them that you're a fake and you're kicking the table underneath. So yeah, he we're like mustaches and hats and like freaking like other elaborate disguises. Here's my thing, though, Did he have a like a like a Russian act? Like a Russian? Did he have a German accent? I'm not sure I'm gonna say 'cause he lived in America for a while. Yeah, but so do you, like, lose that 'cause if I mean, I feel like if I'm a medium, but like, no Germans, just none. If you sign up and you are a German, no thank you. Racist.

1:49:36 No Germans. Listen, I'm trying to keep scamming people and the Great Houdini is ruining my money. Oh my goodness. So when he would disguise himself, you know, sit down, he'd see something that was fake. He'd stand up and say I am Houdini. You are a fraud. Okay you rip off. That's a flax. I just think he like, I imagine just some ripping off his mustache. Yes, absolutely. What if he wore his little like Houdini leotard and he just, like, pulled up his jacket? I am Houdini.

1:50:17 You are a fraud, ma'am. So yeah, he wrote a book called A Magician Among the Spirits he Called. He called the frauds leeches because they exploited grieving people and he took their money. Yeah, but you know, he didn't give that book away for free. Of course not. I mean, no. But hey, he didn't fake. He didn't fake people out. He gave him the tooth. He gave him the tooth okay. So there was a committee that he joined that was part of the Scientific American magazine They. The committee that he joined, they had offered a reward. Goodness, was it $2500?

1:51:06 Or? Yeah, that's what it was, $2500 to anyone who could truly demonstrate paranormal powers. This just reminds me of the people who don't like the warrants. Look look good, $500 Make a Spirit of pair right here. We're not touching that. Oh goodness that. That's kind of like the energy. Though yeah, I know, it really is. Make them. Come on, show them to me. I mean, but yeah, like if you're medium and you're trying to hold a seance and you want me to believe that is true, like give me a spirit, give me like, give me something.

1:51:53 So there was one woman who came really close to winning this reward. I'm not sure if if you've heard of this, this, this whole. I remember this. OK, so basically this is like Houdini's greatest opponent in the on the medium plane. Her name was Mina. Crandon. No. So but she was also named Marjorie, just that was I guess her Medium name. Her people named her Marjorie to protect her actual name. So basically, for Medium to receive this reward, Kunini obviously had to be present for, you know, their seance and he had to know, like the people that were going to be. In the seance.

1:52:52 So she had been able to show off her talents to many before, you know, Houdini, you know, got there and many believed that she was like the real deal and she was known. She was known to hold her seances okay. So I'm not going to say this yet, but I guess the way she was dressed. She would just dress in like a a nice sheer type robe. All right, yeah. And Ghost in a show. A lot of like, a lot of, I guess I'm not gonna say men, but men, they said that she was too good looking for her own good. That's a weird compliment.

1:53:42 Yeah, I saw. I got to take off Rick. Not all of us, but this is one part of Wikipedia that she would sometimes perform her seances in the nude and she would even jump into the lapse of the male participants. See, they don't even care if they read me the spirits at this point. So yeah. So there's this guy Jay Malcolm Bird, who was a believer of Marjorie's and also a member of the Scientific American magazine. He wasn't part of this committee that Houdini was on, he was just part of the magazine.

1:54:32 So it's kind of a bit of a conflict of interest, don't you think not? He was a believer of hers and he was a believer of them titties. I'm sorry, I'm just. Saying he's a believer of hers and he's part of this magazine that they're holding a contest for, like to watch her jiggle and jangle while she pretended to talk to the experience. Now there are like there is speculation that he was enchanted by her. That's what I said. Didn't I say that? Oh, he was.

1:55:13 What's the word sprung? Yes, he was, but yeah, he was. What's the word? Typmotized. It typmotized. There you go. I'm sorry. I'm being crass. Oh my goodness. She literally didn't make it say answers. Of course he was. Listen, I have eyes. I would have probably been like, oh, look at that. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, but her husband was always in attendance with these seances as well. OK, I that don't mean I'm gonna do anything to her that don't. Mean. I'm not gonna look. Thank you. I'm not gonna. I'm gonna look at. I didn't say I was gonna touch her. Oh, my God.

1:55:53 I would not violate her. I would just stare. Anyway, he told her about this contest. And you know, she agreed to enter, so Houdini asked him. He's like, so you think she deserves this prize Bird goes? Absolutely. I wonder why. So Houdini, Oh my goodness, attends her seance first thing. Well, okay. So before he attends her seance, he gets okay. So this woman, she's from Boston, Okay? Oh, another Boston story. Look at this. See you how this happens randomly. So.

1:56:37 So he gets the Boston right with his partner and the first thing he finds out is that members of the committee kind of took bribes from the crandoms, like I guess one of the other committee members, he got a loan from her husband. And then Bird also got some type of bribe thing, so he can't trust anyone to be serious about this. Yeah, basically. And of course, right.

1:57:22 I already said this. Her appearance. Enchanted bird. I already said this enchanted. By the titties. So not getting one by me. So I'm going to try to explain how she did her seances. So one part of it was that she had this box. Oh, you know what? I think I have a picture of this. So she had this box, there's this box and it had wires in it and it it was like what was connected? And there was a bell. And I freaking closed that damn tab out.

1:58:07 Well, actually, that closed out. No. OK, so there was. So this is a box, right? The littlest wooden box she had. And she'd place it on the floor in like, in between her legs, sort of like by her feet, Like in front of her feet. And she'd have her. Arms like bound and her legs bound so she couldn't really move. Okay them and I guess they would turn the lights out and when she would commune with the spirits, I guess she'd have them ring the bell. And if there was a spirit there, right?

1:58:49 Okay. So where's the box? You're supposed to show me the box. Wait, I'm showing. No, I'm showing you like the diagram of how it was. So it was between your feet. Now for this test to work, there was one committee member sitting on her on her one side and her husband or somebody else sitting on her other side, let me tell you. How extra this man Houdini was Okay okay. He. I guess the day of the seance he uses a What did he say it was? It was a oh, I didn't write it down, but he wraps like this rubber band type thing.

1:59:49 Around his leg, like below his knee, so that it would get swollen and tender, so that when he was sitting next to her he'd be able to feel if she moved her legs to try to ring the bell on the box. Right, So if she bumped into him, it'd be like ow. Well, okay, So here's how they set it up. Okay, Houdini's sitting on like her left. One side, I don't know. He's sitting on one side of her and he has a box between his legs and I think it's Bird that's sitting on her other side. So Houdini is holding her hand to make sure she doesn't move, and he has his ankle placed in front of hers so she can't move. So she can't move.

2:00:38 And here's the here's a picture of basically how it looked. Geez. So yeah, and behind them was a cabinet type thing. It's like a divider, I guess you call it so. So he did this just to make sure he could feel like any movement from her at all because his leg was so tender. All right. So, so he cut off his circulation to try and. Yeah. All right, that was a whole day. He had it on the whole day. Jesus, I must hurt a lot.

2:01:19 And that night, that's when he took it off and his leg was just look like I said extra. This is pretty his fault, Lord. So of course during the same houses this time they need the lights off, so the lights go down. And sure enough, when the lights go out. He could feel her slowly but surely, like moving her, like inching her foot towards the box that was between his legs, Like slowly, like very slowly, like so he like she didn't think he could feel it. And then when she got to the bell or the box, she rang the bell, and then he could feel her slowly moving her foot back. Or was he feeling his leg throbbing from the lack of blood?

2:02:17 I'm just saying. He no. He already took the band off though, so it was back to normal. It was just swollen and very tender. OK. Alright, alright. Next part, OK. There's another part in in the seance is when she OK, so she has like this spirit guide type thing. I guess it's. Mediums have this sometimes, yes. And his name was Walter, and he couldn't make things levitate, so she had this megaphone. That's not what spirit guides do. They're supposed to help you, not perform tricks.

2:03:01 So she had this megaphone that he would make levitate just to make sure, like the proof that he was there. Okay. So, like I said, so OK, so it's still dark, right? And I showed you the cabinet that's behind her, like a little foldable thing. OK, so it's still dark. And she asked Byrd to go the OK Walter asked for an illuminated plaque to put on top of the the bellbox for some reason. So Bert leaves the room. And you can hear the cabinet behind her like kind of crash or move. You said this was like they got close. How is this closed?

2:04:00 This seems like a complete farce from the beginning. What do you mean? Yeah, Okay, you said. Like this one almost made it. No, it did because the reason why it almost did is because most of the committee members that were there before Houdini got there. They were either bribed or okay, I thought. She had almost convinced Houdini. No, no, no, no. So I was expecting some level of almost realness. This is just a complete lie. No, no, no, no. From the beginning he was like, fuck this, but no. So okay. So Houdini is holding both of her hands now because Bird's gone. And then the cabinet moves right cuz he probably tripped and fell on it.

2:04:52 You said it made a crash. That's not how it's supposed to happen, is it? And then, OK, so after it crashes, she gives Houdini her foot. So he's in control of both her hands and her feet. Now he's holding both of them. Yes, at this after the crash of the cabinet and it's still dark, OK. So Walter asked Houdini, where would you like me to throw this megaphone? And Houdini says towards me, and it's tossed at his feet in Phoenix Wright style.

2:05:37 He's like, objective, you know Phoenix Wright? Yes. Objection. Objection. That's what I meant. I got you. That's why I wrote too. Objection. Well, anyway, he says it throw the lights on. And then her husband was standing there wearing all black. He says it's in his head. He doesn't say it out loud, so I'm guessing that the cabinet was closer. It was right behind her. That's what I wrote, yeah. He showed a picture of it. It was right behind her. So Houdini deduced. Was that when Bird got up to leave? She tilted the cabinet and I guess the megaphone was sitting on top of the cabinet.

2:06:22 This is, this is. I mean, it's out there, but it could probably happen. So she tilted the the cabinet with her foot before she gave her other foot to Houdini. And on top of the cabinet was a megaphone. So. When the megaphone fell off the cabinet, it landed on her head like a dunt cap, so she just went boop. And yeah, basically. So once it landed on her head and she, you know, Walter asked him where she wanted, he wanted the megaphone to land. So she just freaking jerked her head towards Houdini. That's ridiculous. And it fell in his at his feet.

2:07:04 This is what hey. OK, so then what? OK, so by this time, Houdini was like, OK, she was, he already knew she was a fraud by, you know, by the end of all of that. But they come back for two more seances. Well, actually, they no, they come back for two. They come back for more seances. I wanna say two more that sounds. Awful. I think they're like they're they're at least two more. So second one is more of the same stuff. The spirit. Walter wanted to lift the table that they were sitting at, so everyone had to move back in their seats, even Marjorie, and then the table starts lifting.

2:07:52 Now, like I said, everyone had to move back and everyone was astonished. Except for Houdini. Because while the table was lifting up, he was feeling under a table, and that's when he felt the head under a head underneath of the table it was Marjorie's head. So what she had done was when she moved back in her seat, I guess she like leaned forward underneath the table to like be able to rise it up with her head. That's bizarre. Very bizarre, but I'm guessing these mediums had to find out creative ways to fake these seances. This is weird MM.

2:08:37 HM so this right here is one thing. Was enough to debunker right on the spot. But the committee, you know, you know, Houdini's like, yo, can I just, like leave? Can. Yeah. Can it, like, stop this because this is freaking ridiculous And the committee is like, no, no, no, no, no, no, We gotta wait. We gotta wait. And they can use like, fucking fine. So they do another box thing. This time, Houdini's wearing like a a Garter belt because. Just because. And so he rolls his leg up right? And Margie is wearing her stockings this time and he uses his guarded belt just to catch her stockings to make sure that you know he can feel when she doesn't move because he's not going to, you know, cut a circulation off again today.

2:09:30 He needs his blood to be flowing so he he catches her stocking when she starts to move and. And she's like, are you wearing your Garter belt? And he's like, yeah. Why? And she's like, well, it's cutting my skin. Could you could you, like, take it off? And so he takes it off. And then he could still move her. He could still feel her move her leg to the bell and the bell rings again. So yeah. So you think this is enough? No, still not enough. Next. This is where the shake starts getting. Even more ridiculous, OK?

2:10:15 They construct this large box for her to sit inside. What? There's a they they put her inside a large wooden box trap, sort of, yeah. OK. You know, only her head is able to stick out in her arms, oh Lord, so that they can still hold her arms. Oh my God. And that she won't be able to move. And get out-of-the-box. My goodness, this is insane. So as the lights go out, the top of the box is ripped off and Marjorie says Walter did it, Hoduni says.

2:10:58 This is fucking bullshit. No okay, I appreciate this statement from Harry Houdini because it is bullshit. Yeah, OK, so now in between seances, the first one and the second one, Bird is staying. Well, actually, even before the seances start, Bird is staying with Marjorie and her husband. Oh, OK. And after the first seance, Actually I think it was after. Yeah, no after the second one when he finds her heading to the table, right? He goes back and he runs and tells Marjorie and her husband, hey, he knows you're faking it and he's going to, like, denounce you. So I don't know what to do.

2:11:48 So there was even an article written by Bird at this time or written, I guess, from him. Someone else wrote it, but it was, you know, his accounts praising Marjorie and newspapers. Even printed this that she had stumped experts and then she'd even stumped Houdini. No, that's bad. Don't say that about him. Houdini was fucking pissed. He was pissed. He was like, all right, yeah, okay. So after the first box attempt, when the league got ripped off, they'd added metal plates to the side so they could latch it.

2:12:29 So we can't get ripped off again. So the second is it for the box They exclude Bird from, you know, all the seances. And when Houdini used the box again, Bird like, he busts in and he's like, why wasn't I involved in this one? Houdini goes. Hold on, it's on my phone. Pull it up, you're so slow, Okay, he says. I eject to Mr. Bird being in the seance room because he has betrayed the committee and hindered their work. He has not kept to himself.

2:13:11 Things told him in the strictest confidence, as he should as secretary to the committee. So he's like, you literally ran back and told her all these things that we were doing like? He was like, he's kind of like her accomplice in this whole thing to make to get her to win this money. So, so after Houdini says this bird he like, denies it. Of course. He's like, why you do that? No, no, no, no, no, no. And then he fesses up. He's like okay, yes. I just wanted to protect Marjorie and stuff like that and blah blah blah.

2:13:55 Then he quits Simpin extra. So now she's in the box again, and at this time, Walter starts accusing Houdini of trying to set Marjorie up. Why? How is she trying to set her up, you ask? He he accuses Houdini's assistant, or yeah, assistant, of placing A ruler underneath the pillow that Marjorie has her feet on in the box before she got into the box. So that she'd be able to use the ruler to to what what he's saying is that they planted this evidence in there so that they could say you had this in there. So you use this to ring the bell, right? Now Moudini also calls bullshit on this because he's like my assistant didn't do this, blah blah. But later on there was a interview with his assistant that said that.

2:14:57 Oh yeah, we've also only put that in there, and I bet you it came out after he died. But you know when he couldn't defend himself? Yeah, but a lot of people said that that assistant, he wasn't, he wasn't being honest either. So no. Yeah. So no one really knows how that ruler got there, Ghost. Yeah. So anyway, he, you know, Walter, he curses Houdini out. He tells him get the hell out of the house. So there's one more seance. OK. Oh my God. There's one more, one more seance.

2:15:41 So Houdini, this one Houdini is there, is ready to denounce her at, you know, publicly at this event that they're at. When, you know, she tells him she's like, Marjorie tells him she's like, I don't want my son to hear that I'm a fraud. And then Houdini goes, don't be a fraud then. So there's another cortraption made to, like, house her. House her Yes. It wasn't like a box. It was just like just. Kind of like used to like strap, basically strap her and so she couldn't fucking move at all and at the end of the seance nothing happened.

2:16:31 Like nothing happened during the seance because she couldn't do nothing because. She couldn't fucking do nothing, so Marjorie didn't win the prize, Bird was outed as an accomplice of hers and Houdini was satisfied. Satisfied, I think, because he debunked another medium. So during her seances, this is a little side note. Marjorie had been able to manifest some type of, like, actoplasm from her mouth and her vagina. Oh no. So it's been debunked as animal tissue, so it's speculated that she.

2:17:19 Inserted it into herself before the seance, and then she would. And then, just like the ping pong ball in Tijuana, she went. She, she, she, she'd whip it out. So yeah, that's a that's a thing. Very powerful Kegels. Yeah, yeah. So that's the thing. Okay 1926 Houdini's constant medium debunking. With Houdini's constant medium debunking, the US Senate holds hearings to outlaw fortune telling the bill was passed and mediums were pissed.

2:17:59 Yeah. Houdini received letters from medium mediums predicting his very violent death. Oh, I think I do OK. So let me preface this. Preface. I don't know why I said it like that, but it's preface. Houdini was known for being able to take a punch in the gut from anyone. He did this by flexing his abdomen, you know, tightening it so he can be able to take a hit. And he, you know, would take challenges as well. During one of his shows in Montreal, the student wanted to test this out.

2:18:44 So before the show, he goes to Houdini's dressing room, sucker punches the man five times in the gut before Houdini could prepare himself, you know, with his flexing. Afterwards, Houdini felt severe pain, but he powered through his performance. Next few days he had a fever of 104 degrees Fahrenheit. The cause was appendicitis, and a doctor suggested surgery immediately. Houdini ignored him and performed one more show. During the show, he passed out, was revived, and then rushed to Detroit's Grace Hospital. Now, even though the appendice was removed, it ruptured and developed.

2:19:37 Yeah, and it developed into what's the word you're trying to say. Paratonitis, Peritonitis. There you go. Watch a lot of Doctor shows. I feel a lot peritonitis. There you go. So he passed away on Halloween at the age of 52. Yep. And now on Halloween, mediums like to try and call him, which is so disrespectful. So disrespectful. Anyway, he like you. He didn't. So there were rumors that spiritualists killed him. So apparently there was a book that was also written. I forget what the title was.

2:20:25 Apparently Spiritualists they wrote about it's fearless in Houdini in the book. So apparently spiritualists had a nasty habit of poisoning people. And there wasn't really an autopsy to confirm that it was appendicitis. So it's kind of like maybe he was poisoned, right? Right. So, yeah, poor Houdini. Artsa Doyle and his wife said that during their seance with Houdini, you know, in Atlantic City, his mother said. That her son would die young.

2:21:10 But they didn't want to tell him that, hoping that it was wrong after the fact. Hindsight 2020. So over the next 10 years. Houdini's wife. This is the last part. Houdini's wife would hold seances on Halloween to contact her husband. Oh, I didn't know that she tried to. Yes. OK, lady. See. Houdini gave her a code word to use. I would do something like this, absolutely. Before he died to make sure she was really contacting him. That's right.

2:21:53 None of the medium she had, like Hold the Seances could ever tell her the code word. Do we know what it was? No coconuts. It's like everybody's like safe for it is pineapple or some. Bananas, yeah. You know, I I have a like as a last fuck you, I'm guess I'm thinking that Houdini gave her the password, like gave his wife the password, but would never tell the mediums this because he just was like, fuck you. Yeah, think about it. Your wife says there's a special code that I should know to meet you. He's like, fuck you, your butt.

2:22:35 Yeah, suck a Dick. Oh goodness. And that is my tail. There you go. It was a great time, you. Got to learn some stuff about Houdini. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I did learn some new things about Houdini. Yeah. And just like we say at the end of every episode, oh, I do have news. Oh, you have news. I don't have any more serial killer earrings. What do you mean they're sold out? Ohh shit. So yeah, sorry to anybody who's listening. I do still have the really cool long knives though, the gold and silver ones. What the hunter knives?

2:23:18 Not the hunting knives. The ones that are like super long and shiny and like mirror. Like ohh OK yeah. Just ohh, those ones. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So do you still have those? But yeah, that's a. Nice. That's pretty awesome though. You sold out? Yeah. God, so not too bad. Not too bad. No, not at all. Gotta get somewhere in stock. Brittany's like, no, I'm not making any more. We'll see, We'll see. We might do something different. Next time there you go, you know, But as usual, if you are listening on any platform that allows you to rate or vote, please do that. We would appreciate it greatly. Yes, please leave us reviews and you can always e-mail us.

2:24:02 Like I said, if you live in Shendoah Valley, I would like to know if the Serial cat shaver is still shaving. That is caughtpodcast@gmail.com please. I wanna know if he stopped. Are you the serial cat shaver? Just listen. I won't tell anybody. You just tell me. That would be awesome, yeah. If you're the serial cat shaver, please let us know. We just want to know why. I just. I want a motive. It was this just like some Joker level stuff. We're not going to turn you in, I promise. Absolutely not. We. Don't even live in Virginia and you can always find me on TikTok. Last couple days I've been talking about Munch housing by proxy or factitious disorder in true crime world.

2:24:51 Brian streams at Foxy Trainer on Twitch. Yeah, he does not do any tik toks other than to promote the podcast. That's that's basically what I do. I'm sorry. It's OK Media. It's hard to have a lot of platforms. No worries. I just don't know how to do it. TikTok. I'm 32. Leave me alone. I'm I am 33. You know how to do it. I'm an old man. Ohh, stop it. But yeah. Ohh goodness. But um this is a great night. Yeah, we wish you all a spooky week. Yeah. Have a great one. Thanks for listening.

2:25:33 Good night.