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This is exactly right. Isn't some far off concept? It's already here. Next starts now.
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Hyundai, an official partner of FIFA. Goodbye. When a charming neurosurgeon rode into Frontier Town
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selling a persona of confidence and care, patients trusted him. He wore cowboy boots in the operating room
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and became sought after by patients. He promised to heal them. Instead, he left a trail of broken bodies.
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This is a story of greed, betrayal, and a fight for justice. Listen to Dr. Death the Cowboy wherever you get your podcasts
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or binge the entire series right now only with Audible. Goodbye. This episode is brought to you in part by Vital Farms.
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Vital Farms. Good eggs, no shortcuts. Goodbye. Hello! Hello. And welcome to my favorite murder. That's Georgia Hardstark. That is Karen Kilgariff.
00:02:01
And we're about to podcast at you. That's right. I've been in the backyard just now
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trying to make friends with the crows in my neighborhood. Oh, yeah. We got a big bag of
00:02:12
peanuts and I've been we've been shaking them at them and like throwing them and leaving them.
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And I think it's I think it's happening. I think my dream. I think they know us now.
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Are you going to train them to go find money for you and bring it back to a drawer in your office?
00:02:26
Bring me shiny things. Yeah. Like that's my dream to be friends with like crows.
00:02:30
So I think it's working. You're making it happen. Yeah. What's up with you? How am I celebrating the spring equinox?
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I mean, it was such a pretty day today. Like light breeze, bright skies. Real nice.
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Real spring is here kind of vibe outside today. Definitely springy. it feels positive yeah are you ready to like have a new season of your life self tan are you ready
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to go to the tanning beds every day is that what we're doing now is that the new trend yeah that's
00:03:02
our new thing to get deeply tanned by april 30 i don't know how will spring be different i guess
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i'll leave my house more oh that's the key that's a good challenge do you try to leave your house
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like once a day to like run an errand or like I have to walk those dogs. Okay. That's good. That's
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positive. Yeah. That's definitely helped me. It is. It can make it kind of fun. Like you're just
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walking around and like, what's up here? What's going on over here? It's helped me that like,
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I can't take a nap because it's like, well, it's a half an hour until cookies walk. So stay away.
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My naps are two hours, by the way. Some people could do a half an hour nap and they're like,
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fine for the day, but like, not me. Yeah. So I have to stay awake for cookie. Powering through. Yep. Dogs obligate us to participate in this thing called life.
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That's why I got one. Yeah. Cats like beg us not to. Cats are like, I don't care what you do. I hope you die soon.
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I have been walking Mo on a leash and a harness outside in our backyard a little bit.
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And what's the result of that? What's happening there? Nothing yet. Fleas? No, no fleas yet.
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Oh, just to like, so he can get out there, but you don't have to risk him getting eaten by a coyote.
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Yeah. Oh my God. There was like so many coyotes over the weekend in our neighborhood. There's
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always coyotes here. So yeah, just because he wants to go outside. He's such a bad boy.
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He needs some energy, like, you know, expended. So we take him outside now, or I take him outside
00:04:31
now. You should get him one of those like horse training octagons where you run him in a circle.
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That's a great idea. Right? Just keep on building things on your property for Moe to experience nature inside of.
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I mean, what else is there to buy when you don't have children? Right? Exactly. Just fill it up.
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The coyotes are serious, though. I told you the story of the one that was walking up to my back sliding glass door.
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I was just like, sir, we can't be doing this. He's going to start knocking. You should start trying to be friends with him.
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I'll be friends with crows. He's going to be like, oh, hey, I want to know if you needed your windows cleaned or it's like, what?
00:05:10
Hey, can I crash on your couch? Whose friend are you? Get away from my door. Get out of here.
00:05:18
I have a TV show. Let's hear about it. Oh, I have one too. Recommend. Okay. Maybe it's the same.
00:05:24
What if it's the same? Is it Diara from Detroit? No. Okay. Diara, D-I-A-R-R-A from Detroit.
00:05:31
It's on BET. It is so perfect for us. this incredible actress, writer, comedian, Diara Kilpatrick. It's her show. The premise is she has
00:05:43
a one night stand and gets ghosted by this dude and then puts it together that the dude is the
00:05:51
kid who got kidnapped in the nineties the like five kid who got kidnapped in the nineties and something happened to him and she has to track him down and not find him Like he like the most you know America Most Wanted like unsolved mysteries kid Right And she has to go find him
00:06:06
That's hilarious. But it's also like, it's really dark. It's really funny. It's very much like Search Party was.
00:06:12
Yeah. That's the first thing it made me think of. Yeah. That's funny. It's got those vibes. It's so good. Like it's just really fucking good.
00:06:19
That sounds like a very cool show. I want to see that. She's trying to hunt down a missing child that she hooked up with.
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And like, it's, that sounds gross. That's not what I meant, but it's really good.
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At one time missing child. We get it. But also the passion with which people go about being a citizen sleuths for dating.
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Yeah. Like it, you don't have to save it up for true crime. That's just what people are doing these days when they're trying to figure out what their
00:06:50
situationship is where they are and why they won't speak to them anymore. Like, just tell me just how, and she's going through a bad divorce.
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So she's a little like not doing well on the love front. Unstable. Yeah, exactly.
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It's ugly. It's ugly. Tough. Oh, that sounds amazing. Diara from Detroit. What about you?
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What do you have? Mine is, it's a TV show called Renegade Nell. And it's about a woman.
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And she is like, I think she's Irish. anyhow she becomes a highway woman so it's like she's a highway robber in like the 1700s
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it's orla from dairy girls i love orla so that actress louisa harland is a completely different
00:07:34
person which obviously we know she's not orla right but she is orla i know it's all we know
00:07:39
her as and all of a sudden she is this badass woman who's been gone off to find her own fortune
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her family thinks she's dead and she has a run-in with some bad guys on the highway
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and suddenly has like superpowers but she doesn't know why so no man can kill her like real super
00:07:59
powers like sci-fi you gotta see oh my god and they have all these like special effects when i
00:08:04
saw the trailer i was like put on playlist i was i don't think i'd ever put anything on a playlist
00:08:08
and i was like save for the playlist or whatever it's really great and girl powery and then just
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kind of like very well done. What's it called? It's called Renegade Nell. Renegade Nell. And if
00:08:20
I'm not mistaken, it not the superpower part. I think they blew that part up. Obviously, that was
00:08:26
the but I think it's based on a true story. Yeah. It sounds like Annie Oakley ish, right? It's based
00:08:33
on a true supernatural story. Yeah, it's based on a story of, you know, superheroes. You would think
00:08:42
that in the first couple articles about it it would say based on so yeah so maybe not probably
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not maybe what do they say like cold from real events yeah but even then that seems not appropriate
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here but anyway it's just like it's fun and it's like watching orla leave dairy and go off and like
00:09:02
become a great actress yeah like fulfill her destiny it's wonderful okay i love it do we have
00:09:10
Any corrections corners? Wait, you said a town wrong last week. Oh, yeah. Or a state or something like that.
00:09:18
I don't remember. Sorry. That's, that's, I didn't mean to call you out, but that is, you are correct.
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That is, that is corrections corner now. I bet I've never been there and it seemed right to me.
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you know those capitals when they're just the initials like that make me panic me too yeah i
00:09:42
feel like you have the same thing where it's like all of a sudden it's like i don't know is is this
00:09:46
south dakota yeah is it missouri or is it michigan i'm married to a michigander i should fucking know
00:09:51
and i don't yeah you have a little bit of a bias like i think i want it to be michigan yeah but
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what if it's just incorrect like north dakota and nebraska like come on actually those are obvious
00:10:02
Oh, do you want to brag about the news that Amy Poehler said that this was her favorite podcast?
00:10:09
That's wild. So tell the people. Well, they had this podcast conference that they have every year called Podcast Movement.
00:10:17
Although sometimes I like to call it Podcast Uprising because it sounds a little bit sinister.
00:10:22
You have to admit. I like that. It's like, let's all the podcasters get together and start some shit.
00:10:27
But anyway, she was a keynote speaker, if I'm not mistaken. And in her keynote speech, she said that this was her favorite podcast.
00:10:36
And I didn't know about it until the next day. And then Erin Brown told me and showed me the Instagram post.
00:10:44
And I kind of sat there for a second. And then I got like choked up because. No, it's weird.
00:10:49
It's crazy. It's Amy Poehler. We obviously adore her and have for a long time. Yeah.
00:10:56
She's one of the greats. Yeah, she's one of the greats and has one of the best gifts there will ever be, which is her at the Oscars with her sweatshirt on, throwing up the deuces.
00:11:06
It's so funny. That's the first thing I thought of when I heard that. I was just like, her?
00:11:11
It was great. So thank you, Amy Poehler. You're our favorite, too. Yeah, you're our favorite podcast, too.
00:11:19
In this podcast called Life. Oh, my God. Life is one big podcast, really. It really is.
00:11:24
Okay, well, speaking of podcasts, we have a podcast network, even. Yeah. It's called Exactly Right Media.
00:11:31
Hey, here are some updates. Well, the first one is that the fourth episode of Butterfly King is available right now.
00:11:37
Hosts CJ and Becky are back at the Verona Palace in Sofia, Bulgaria, where a new piece of evidence allows yet another suspect to slither into the frame.
00:11:47
Follow the show wherever you like to listen so you don't miss an episode. Such a good show.
00:11:51
And more exciting true crime podcast news. Episode one of Tenfold More Wicked 11th freaking season is here Kate Winkler Dawson the queen of true crime podcasting heads to Portsmouth Rhode Island
00:12:05
to investigate the death of a puritanical pioneer who mysteriously died in the town that she founded.
00:12:12
You guys have to listen. History. Murder. What more do you want? Truly. On That's Messed Up, Kara and Lisa cover Missing Pieces, which is an SVU'd episode from season 13 in 2011.
00:12:24
You can go to that's messed up live.com for Lisa's live comedy tour dates. She is performing at clubs and colleges all around the country.
00:12:33
And she is so truly hilarious. You have to see Lisa Traeger live. If you have not yet, please go support her live.
00:12:42
You will not be sorry you did it. And the newest episode of MFM animated by Nick Terry is now playing on the exactly right YouTube channel.
00:12:51
So please subscribe to that. the episode's called Emotional Support Oxen and comes from MFM episode 254 from December of all
00:13:00
the way back in 2020. And it's from a live show too. I love that he's just like pulling. You never
00:13:06
know where he's going to go. You know, I love that. It's great. Also, just so you know, we've
00:13:11
restocked the MFM store with two popular tote bags that sold out over the holidays. So if you
00:13:16
wanted to buy the SSD GM tote bag or the still life skull tote bag, go onto that website,
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which is my favorite murder.com and go shopping. I feel like we have such a tote bag audience.
00:13:30
You know what I mean? Yeah. Because it's like, Oh, are you going to the library to get books?
00:13:34
Are you going to a farmer's market to get your like weekly produce? It's like, we're such tote bag people. We're tote bag people. That's for sure. Are you,
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Did your dad subscribe to PBS at one point in the 90s? And now you have a tote bag to prove it.
00:13:48
That's right. You have that one New Yorker bag that everyone, including me, has that has like the monster and the building.
00:13:54
You know what I'm talking about? Yep. Yeah. You're like, oh, that person's smart.
00:13:58
Cool. Does Bloomingdale's make tote bags out of their small, medium and large bag design?
00:14:03
I wonder. They must. They should. And then the one that's like the takeout food bag that says like, thank you, thank you, thank you.
00:14:10
But they made it into a tote bag. Oh, smart. Genius. So good. What else could they do?
00:14:15
My favorite murder tote bags. Hey. Hey, there we go. That wasn't planned. No, it wasn't.
00:14:21
I would, because I was actually like, let's think of five new good tote bags that are,
00:14:25
that are like the thank you, thank you, thank you tote bag. What could it be? What about a tote bag that looks like a shiny garbage bag with the yellow pull at the top?
00:14:35
And is scented with like Febreze. it has a really strong lemon scent that you're trying to get away from all the time
00:14:43
oh i hate it to like cover up whatever weird shit you have in there because you've got to like throw your banana away from friday and your gym shoes are in there
00:14:52
oh mrs febreze is here i always think i'm gonna like be a tote bag like workout person and be
00:15:00
really good at it and then i find like the socks from three months ago in the back of my car and
00:15:05
the tote bag that I was like, this is a new tote bag. It's going to make me who I am.
00:15:10
And in a way it does, because when you find that tote bag so many months later and you look inside,
00:15:15
there's like little pieces of paper at the bottom or like an old calendar or something.
00:15:21
Earplugs. I find a lot of earplugs. And you're like, wait, where'd I get these? Oh, that flight. Oh, I took this to this game. Oh,
00:15:28
this and you like piece your life backwards through what's like old pennies and a piece of gum
00:15:36
or the weirdest thing when you find a face mask in your coat or whatever oh yeah from fucking from
00:15:44
the pandemic and you're like i haven't worn this in a while deep pandemic but people are still
00:15:49
getting covid so you can slap it right back on go go ahead my cousin just got it i was just like
00:15:57
oh yeah shut up yeah yeah okay i don't want to do i don't want that i know me either oh well
00:16:04
that's right you know what that means that means it's time to start our stories when karen yells oh well and kind of panicked like nervous i mean we have a platform but we
00:16:23
can't cure COVID. And that is the issue. You guys, we tried. You know, we tried.
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There's no safe like SimpliSafe. Goodbye. Are you first this week? Yes, I am. Because, as I promised you, today I'm going to be covering part two of The Butchers of the Bayou.
00:19:31
Don't look excited and clap because this guy is a pure piece of shit. I'm sorry to clap because I am not clapping for the serial killer or for his actions.
00:19:40
Of course. But it is so satisfying to get a part two when you really enjoyed a part one.
00:19:45
And on this show, especially where there's a lot of dangling part twos that never come to be on my part as well.
00:19:53
We're always like, we should do that later. And then we don't. And you turned around and did it.
00:19:58
Those dangling part twos. We can't have those. We can't have those. Now that spring has sprung, let's not do that anymore.
00:20:04
You know what I miss? And Alejandra, can you please remind me that I miss this? is when I used to do episodes of like three stories
00:20:10
of like handwritten notes that turned into clues or whatever. Remember I used to do that
00:20:17
when I couldn't find a full story and I was panicking and it was the day of our recording in my apartment
00:20:22
and I didn't know what to do. Absolutely. No, those were good for you to, it was like a medley episode.
00:20:27
With a theme. Here's some examples of. Exactly. Okay. Those are easy too. Okay, let's do that.
00:20:33
Stop on air producing. This is episode number what? 500 and... 422. Okay. So that means back when we left off in episode 420, Baton Rouge police had just
00:20:49
apprehended serial killer Derek Todd Lee. That was in May of 2003, right? With Lee behind bars,
00:20:56
police are sure that they finally gotten the monster responsible for all the murders that
00:21:00
took place in the area between 1992 and 2003. And they're kind of like bragging like, hey,
00:21:06
we're heroes. Hey, we found we finally found this guy, you know, applauding themselves. Right.
00:21:12
Yeah. However, DNA and other evidence links Derek Todd Lee to only seven of the murders
00:21:20
they're investigating. And to the police's surprise and horror, at least another six
00:21:25
murders that they thought he had committed were not a DNA match to him. Wow. Wait, how many murders were there?
00:21:33
Well, so there was, there was like 60 some missing and murdered women in that time period
00:21:39
in Baton Rouge. So, or the area. So they were thinking that he had committed like 10 plus
00:21:44
murders, but a whole six of them don't match up to him. Horrifying. Terrifying. So then just five months later, after he had been apprehended in October,
00:21:55
of 2003, a group of ATV riders are on a ride through a remote wooded area when they come
00:22:02
across the body of a 45-year-old woman. She's a mother of three. Her name is Johnny May Williams.
00:22:11
And she's also a sex worker. And this butcher targeted sex workers in the area for sure.
00:22:19
Her cause of death is determined to have been from blunt force trauma. Both of her,
00:22:23
this is like this is classic psychotic fucked up itness like nothing special about him except
00:22:31
it was all happening at the same time in this one area you know what i mean yeah like just a
00:22:36
psychopath he had cut her hands off post-mortem and this discovery confirms the police's worst fear
00:22:45
there is another serial killer in Baton Rouge and he's still on the loose. Ugh. So let's go all the way back to 1994.
00:22:54
On the morning of March 21st, 1994, police respond to a call at St. James Place, which
00:23:00
is a retirement home in Baton Rouge. They enter the private apartment of 81-year-old retiree Anne Bryan to find that her throat
00:23:11
had been slashed and she had been stabbed about 50 times. And just like that, no leads,
00:23:18
case goes cold. Like there's nothing for them to go on. Awful. Five years later, on January 4th,
00:23:25
1999, the body of a 29 year old sex worker named Catherine Hall is found at the end of a dead end
00:23:32
street near construction site. And her body is laid right beneath a dead end sign, almost like
00:23:39
this killer's fucking with the police. She's left naked. There are ligature marks on her neck
00:23:45
indicating she's been strangled and she's covered in deliberate lacerations. So this killer likes to do post-mortem cutting. It's very sick. By the lack of blood of this
00:24:00
Police suspect the cuts were made post-mortem, perhaps in a different location before being dumped at this construction site.
00:24:06
It's a horrifying scene made even more disturbing by the sick joke of the body being placed beneath the dead end sign.
00:24:13
But police find hair on the body believed to have belonged to the killer. But because Catherine was a sex worker with a criminal background, her murder receives little media or police attention.
00:24:25
You know, it's like when Derek Todd Lee was attacking all these LSU students and local women who weren't in the sex work occupation got so much attention.
00:24:37
But these these women are thrown away to the police. So they're not getting as much attention in the media.
00:24:42
Also, there's that piece that sometimes is true. not always, that there's just no one to fight for. If a sex worker is in a situation where they are,
00:24:53
you know, say just like cut off from their family or because they're on drugs or because whatever,
00:24:58
like that idea that these people, these murderers are preying on the people that have the least
00:25:04
backing, the least like anybody that will fight for them. Totally. Absolutely. I think that's
00:25:11
part of it, right? It's like, they just want to kill. And so they find the most vulnerable
00:25:15
victims they can, who have nobody, no resources at all. It's terrible. Okay. But then a third
00:25:24
murder occurs in the spring of 1999. And it gets much more buzz because the victim is the wife of
00:25:31
a local attorney. And it's almost like if he hadn't murdered this woman, I wonder how much
00:25:37
longer, he would have gotten under the radar. He would have green rivered his way through.
00:25:41
Exactly. Right. I mean, that's, it's such a, yeah. Yeah. So Hardy Schmidt, she's 52. It's May of
00:25:50
1999. And little does she know that a man has been stalking her for the last three weeks,
00:25:56
driving around and trying to find her during her morning jogs. And at about 5.30 AM on the morning
00:26:02
of Sunday, May 30th, 1999, he finds her jogging along Quail Run Drive in Baton Rouge. And it's
00:26:09
a safe neighborhood. She lives in a good community. I think she lives in a gated community.
00:26:13
So this is so fucking awful. Get ready. A man drives up behind Hardy. He hits her with his car.
00:26:22
It sends her flying into the ditch alongside the road. We've had these stories before where
00:26:28
like someone hits a kid with a fucking bike to incapacitate. It just, I don't stop thinking about that.
00:26:35
He gets out, zip ties her around the neck and forces her into the car and drives away with her.
00:26:42
He takes her to a park nearby where he rapes her. And as soon as he's finished, he uses a zip tie to strangle her to death.
00:26:51
Two days later on April 2nd, 1999, a bicyclist riding along a Bayou bike trail off of highway 61 in St.
00:26:59
James Parish spots Hardy's body. She's been dumped roughly 35 miles away from where she was last seen.
00:27:05
Like the victim before her, she's left naked. Her body's mutilated. And despite the extra efforts from police,
00:27:13
the few leads they have bring them no closer to finding the culprit. The case again goes cold and the community is now living in fear of another
00:27:21
attack. I mean, just imagine thinking you live in a safe neighborhood and something like that happening.
00:27:26
Right. And it's already been happening, whether it's to students or whatever. It's almost like
00:27:33
there's something out there that won't be stopped. That's so creepy. Yeah. Like he got caught, but you're not safe yet, you know?
00:27:40
Yeah. It's still happening. The killing spree continues for the next two years, 1999 and 2000,
00:27:47
claiming the lives of another three women. First is the murder of 36-year-old Joyce Williams.
00:27:52
who was killed on November 12th, 1999. It's a really gruesome murder and sticks out in police minds
00:27:58
because the killer had severed Joyce's leg post-mortem. Like, what kind of sick fuck does something like this?
00:28:05
The next murder is a 52-year-old Lillian Robinson in January of 2000. Her naked body is dumped in a local fishing hole,
00:28:14
and a fisherman eventually finds her body. And then one month later, in February of 2000,
00:28:19
The third victim in this string of murders is 38-year-old Marilyn Nevels, killed in late October of 2000.
00:28:27
Her body is discarded in the Mississippi River and discovered on Halloween Day in the year 2000.
00:28:32
So as the murders continue for the next three years, the people of Baton Rouge are paralyzed with fear.
00:28:38
So these murders are happening that I just told you about concurrent with Derek Todd Lee's murder.
00:28:42
This is right before he's caught. So he's finally caught. And then the murder, the first murder I told you about, Johnny Mae Williams, happens.
00:28:50
So with Derek Todd Lee behind bars and several cold cases left unsolved, police start looking
00:28:55
for similarities between the recent murder of Johnny Mae Williams that happened right
00:29:00
after Derek Todd Lee was arrested and murders from the past 10 years that don't connect
00:29:06
to him. In their investigation, they noticed that in addition to her hands being cut off, Johnny
00:29:11
also has a marking on her neck indicating a ligature was used to strangle her, much like the
00:29:17
1999 murder of Catherine Hall. And what's also similar to Catherine Hall's death is that a hair
00:29:22
was found on the body of Johnny May Williams that didn't belong to her. So the hair is stored as
00:29:28
evidence in hopes that maybe one day they can lead, the hair can lead to the killer. This is,
00:29:34
you know, before DNA was used to actually like match people. They were just like, this could
00:29:39
hopefully potentially help in the future like 1999 some of our listeners weren't alive yet
00:29:45
i don't want to talk about that right now georgia i'm just saying they don't know
00:29:50
what like the fact that dna i don care it wasn a given i know they they live in a world yeah where the internet dna phones internet DNA and cell phones were always from history
00:30:05
always existed. Which sounds awful. You guys are at a disadvantage and we acknowledge that
00:30:10
like it sucks. But then going the other way. I mean, phones and the internet. Phones and the internet. But they must think of us in our childhood and go,
00:30:18
that's the most pathetic thing I've ever heard about. How boring are they? How did you do this? How did you write one paper?
00:30:27
I went to like Easter, whatever, my mom's birthday lunch with my family yesterday. And my now 14
00:30:33
year old nephew, Micah, could not be more of a sullen teen who, when he's not on his phone,
00:30:38
looks so miserable. Like you're almost like, get on your phone, please. You're bumming everyone out.
00:30:45
it's the old junior high slash freshman year of high school oh you wanted me to be a bright shiny
00:30:53
magical child well a load of good that did me right so watch this now we're going in reverse
00:30:58
he hasn't had figured out how to fake it like the rest of us do we all want to be that sullen teen
00:31:03
i want to be on my phone too but he's the only one that gets to be like he only has about a year or so
00:31:09
more of this before it gets real old so it's like do it while you can't like go to el coyote and like
00:31:14
eat your food and laugh at the jokes. Like you don't have to. But parents jokes are so painful
00:31:20
when you're 14. Everything. It's just like being there is awful. It's humiliating. It is. It is.
00:31:26
And you see somebody your age and then they see your family and you're like, oh my God,
00:31:30
I'm don't tell anyone you saw me here. I'm the only person with a family and they're so
00:31:34
embarrassing except Auntie Georgia and Uncle Vince who are the coolest fucking people in the world.
00:31:40
Okay. So then fast forward, like that's 1999 when they're like, maybe this hair will lead to
00:31:46
something. Fast forward to February 27th, 2004. So five years later, the body of 43 year old Donna
00:31:53
Bennett Johnston is found in a drainage canal by two people just walking their dog. Yeah.
00:31:59
You know? Yeah. And it's just three blocks away from her own house where she's found.
00:32:03
And like Catherine Hall and Johnny Mae Williams, she's found nude with postmortem cuts on her body.
00:32:09
and the police realize there's a good chance that these three murders are connected.
00:32:15
So in March of 2004, Captain Brian White of the Baton Rouge Police Department leads the task force investigating the unsolved murders.
00:32:22
They're like aware that there's another serial killer out there. He has his forensics team search the site where Donna Bennett Johnson's body was discovered.
00:32:30
And like with both Catherine Hall and Johnny May Williams, DNA is again found at the scene, believed to belong to the murderer.
00:32:39
So then on March 13th, 2004, police analyzed the hairs found on all three of the victims' bodies.
00:32:46
All those profiles turn out to be the same. So police now know they are looking for a lone white male who's responsible for all three murders.
00:32:56
But here, okay, so forensics, it's like, it's amazing. It solves everything, right?
00:33:01
But the key break in the case comes from a member of the forensic team who notices, this is detective work, a tire track left in a moist part of the road near where Donna Bennett Johnston's body was found.
00:33:19
He takes a photo impression of this simple tire track and goes to a local car dealership and he compares the tire treads until he finds a match.
00:33:29
Wow. The tire brand, it's a good year, Aqua Tread 3, you know, your favorite brand of tires.
00:33:36
Oh, I love a lot of good years, but the Aqua Tread 3 is excellent for my lifestyle.
00:33:41
It was sold to about 100 people in the Baton Rouge area. This is so crazy. Okay, investigators do track down two men.
00:33:48
Like they start going through the list of people who had bought it. They find these two men who owned these tires and they appear suspicious.
00:33:55
It's a father and son and they live together. And they admit to knowing one of the victims.
00:34:01
And I just don't understand this. Her purse is even found at their home. It's not them.
00:34:07
They check her DNA. I don't understand the story. Like it's, you can't find details online.
00:34:12
It's like. What? Well, but also it's like, if this is a small town in this part of Baton Rouge or this specific
00:34:20
area or whatever, it's like, that is the truth of coincidence that sometimes does happen.
00:34:28
Sometimes. Maybe they found her purse while walking their dog or whatever, but they also knew her because it's a small town.
00:34:35
Like, I just don't have an explanation why the purse was there, but it's not them, 100%.
00:34:39
Right. It's like the most suspicious thing that can be found in their home, and it's not them. Wow.
00:34:44
Well, thank God for DNA, because, you know, five, ten years earlier, they would have absolutely been arrested and prosecuted for this.
00:34:53
Right. Well, but again, that would have been... Circumstantial evidence? Yeah. So may not have held up in court. Those are those moments where we always get frustrated as the layman reading these stories over and over where it's like, how did they not go to jail or whatever?
00:35:06
But what are the chances? But that's just it. It's like the law allows for those chances and says those chances do exist in reality.
00:35:14
Yeah. So you can't just have circumstantial evidence. Yeah. OK. But then if you're going to argue that, like, what if they had, you know, violent criminal backgrounds?
00:35:25
That's why you don't hit people. I told you this. I'll stop. You've got to stop hitting people in public.
00:35:35
That's my favorite, though. Okay, so that lead is ruled out. So Captain White's task force split up the remaining tire owners list
00:35:44
and painstakingly questioned each one, hoping to find their killer. Finally, one of the officers, Detective Todd Morris,
00:35:52
interviews someone who during questioning puts himself at the scene of the crime on the night of the murder That man is Sean Vincent Gillis And obviously I said his middle name
00:36:07
So he is a serial killer. Right. People ask that all the time. Like, isn't it crazy that they have three names?
00:36:12
And the answer is no. They use the middle name. So that random Sean Gillis guys from Utah or whatever aren't like attacked on Facebook
00:36:22
for being a serial killer. Yes, exactly. The one thing that might be able to delineate you from somebody else is the name Lee.
00:36:31
Right. You know, fingers crossed. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So let me tell you a little about Sean Vincent Gillis. He's a lifelong resident of Baton Rouge. He's born June 24th, 1962. So what is that? A Leo? Cancer.
00:36:46
June 24th? Is that a Gemini? No, thank you. It's not. He's not one of us. No, thank you.
00:36:52
we don't want that. Shortly after he's born, his father bails on the family, all the same shit you
00:36:58
hear. He racks up a DUI, numerous traffic citations, cannabis possession, and a contempt of court
00:37:03
charge. By the 90s, when Sean is in his late 20s, early 30s, he gets work as a computer programmer,
00:37:10
but his drinking and drug use become too much of a problem and he loses his job. So he's just kind
00:37:14
of like a loser flake. He looks like a Jeffrey Dahmer type. He's got the mustache and the glasses
00:37:21
and the nerdy haircut and just kind of, you know, he looks like, he looks like Ned Flanders.
00:37:26
Oh, wow. Yeah. But also it sounds like if he could get, I could not get a job as a computer programmer.
00:37:32
Like that's not easy. He must have been smart in some ways. So he had a serious like personality disorder basically.
00:37:40
And it's like he had no violent criminal history. So it is just kind of out of the blue.
00:37:45
And so in 1994, he also has a girlfriend, a longtime girlfriend. They always do.
00:37:52
They always do. He starts dating a young single mother named Terry. And Terry works the midnight shift at a local convenience store, which just happens to be located across the street from St. James Place, the retirement home where 81-year-old Anne Bryan lived before her murder in March 1994.
00:38:12
So he was just sitting there staking out the place. Yeah. So he's brought in for questioning.
00:38:17
He's calm and nonchalant. And in the documentary Butchers of the Bayou on A&E, they show some of his interview.
00:38:25
And I mean, like cool as a cucumber, like almost like this is a card game. They're all playing drinking beers or whatever.
00:38:33
It's like not a big deal to him. Lizard person. Lizard. Yeah. So he admits to knowing Johnny May Williams and says she's even been inside his house and his car before.
00:38:44
Police proceed to question Sean for four hours and he just lets it happen. As time wears on, they're confident that this is their killer, but they lack a confession or any hard evidence against him.
00:38:56
And so they're forced to let him go. But they do manage to get a DNA swab before they release him.
00:39:02
And he just he just gives it up. Yeah. So then police covertly surveil Sean at his home because they're like, we need to keep an eye on this guy.
00:39:12
It's clearly him. Then the DNA results come back and it's a perfect match for the hairs found at three crime scenes.
00:39:19
Those of Catherine Hall, Johnny May Williams and Donna Bennett Johnson. Thank God they're keeping an eye on him.
00:39:24
And so as soon as it comes in positive before the sun comes up on April 29th, 2004, a SWAT team forces their way inside Sean's home and places him under arrest for the first degree murders of Catherine Hall, Johnny May Williams and Donna Bennett Johnston.
00:39:40
Police search his house where he lives with his longtime girlfriend and her teenage daughter, who like gets along great with Sean.
00:39:48
They thought he was a normal dude. They find in the house knives and hacksaw blades suspected to have been used as murder weapons, several heavy duty zip ties and a collection of true crime books detailing other murders.
00:40:03
They even find a belt that belonged to Donna Bennett Johnston and an earring in the trunk of his car that belonged to another one of his victims, along with blood in the trunk's interior.
00:40:15
And even the kitchen floor baseboards are confiscated by police. As forensics show, they are saturated with blood residue, meaning he had murdered at least one of his victims in his own home when his girlfriend and her daughter were out of town.
00:40:31
Wow. Yeah. But perhaps the most horrifying things they found were post-mortem photos of his victims stored on his computer and digital cameras.
00:40:42
They had tons of images. He also looked into Derek Todd Lee's murders. So he was like, he felt competitive against the other serial killer who was killing in Baton Rouge at the same time as him.
00:40:57
And when Derek Todd Lee got one murderer over him, he went out and killed so that he could,
00:41:01
Like he felt like a competition. Oh my God. This guy, I mean, it's, yeah. So as soon as the police described the evidence against him,
00:41:11
Sean Vincent Gillis confesses to eight murders in total in vivid, gruesome details, like casually.
00:41:19
Captain Brian White said, once that floodgate was open, you just couldn't stop him.
00:41:25
Quote, he wanted to tell you every detail of everyone. Like, who is a gay? In total, there are more than 34 hours of Gillis speaking to the police.
00:41:36
34 hours. Wow. However, because he asked for an attorney during the interview at one point, his detailed confessions were inadmissible during trial.
00:41:44
So even though Sean confesses his guilt even throwing in a guilty plea in 2007 for the second degree murder of his victim Joyce Williams he still goes to trial for the three first degree murder charges beginning in July of 2008 Despite his open confession to all eight of his murders there only hard evidence enough to convict him
00:42:07
of the three he's initially charged with. When it comes time for his sentencing,
00:42:13
the jury can't agree on whether or not he deserves a death penalty. Remember, they couldn't listen to his confessions,
00:42:18
his, like, casual confessions. Oh, right, right. So they only had this information.
00:42:21
They wind up deadlocked, and the judge sentences Sean to three consecutive life sentences in July of 2008,
00:42:29
Sean is taken to the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where he remains today. And that is the story of the other Butcher of the Bayou, Sean Vincent Gillis.
00:42:39
The main sources used in today's story include, again, the four-part A&E documentary, Butchers of the Bayou,
00:42:46
episode three of season two of the investigation discovery series, The Devil You Know,
00:42:50
and an article from Oxygen by Joe Jemianovich. And the other sources are listed in the show notes.
00:42:58
Oh, just a, I so regret clapping. I so regret clapping. I know what you meant. It's like when we're doing live shows
00:43:07
and they clap when we say who we're doing, like, you know, it's that thing. Yeah, it's just like,
00:43:11
oh, I want the other shoe to finally drop and I want to know the rest of this story
00:43:16
because it was a true cliffhanger. That's this podcast. that's this whole this whole podcast is i wish you hadn't told me that right that that actually
00:43:26
should be the name of this podcast wow incredible and to be not only a policeman in like baton
00:43:35
rouge at this time but just to be an average citizen that makes the huge mistake of taking
00:43:40
a walk by the river or anything like what a scary awful thing goodbye i would move immediately not
00:43:49
there's anywhere safe because look, listen. No. I mean, it would seem like it's all around you
00:43:55
at that point. Yeah. Good Lord. Oh, well, good job. Thank you. While the world watches the stars at the FIFA World Cup this summer,
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00:46:11
not only away from the bayou and america but back in time to a little place i like to go
00:46:19
when i'm feeling blue called victorian england yeah the smells the smells the smells oh my god
00:46:29
i am following some mud lurkers on tiktok so good and i think it's a woman because it looks
00:46:35
like a woman's hand that picked it up the other day it was just this close-up on you know how the
00:46:39
gravel, it's gravel, but then you look at it and you're like, there's a penny, there's a ring,
00:46:43
there's a, it's like chock full of stuff. I read a thing that was like, when you look at the gravel,
00:46:48
that nature doesn't have perfect shapes. So when you're looking at a bed of rocks or whatever,
00:46:55
look for the perfect circle because that doesn't exist in nature. So like you have to focus your
00:47:00
eyes on that or unfocus your eyes on that. Right. Kind of like you have to get what you're looking
00:47:06
out for it. Well, this lady in that very way where you can tell she knows the tricks,
00:47:10
reaches out and moves some rocks and then picks up this little blue ceramic bird.
00:47:18
And like, I don't know why I'm started crying. I was like, wait, what? That was just under there.
00:47:23
And it was like underneath and kind of like hidden. Some Victorian child's tea set toy.
00:47:31
A Victorian child's opium pipe that they loved so much as an eight year old. It was their pay for 12 hours of work in the factory.
00:47:41
Oh, the jolly old days. Oh, the time. So we're going back now to Victorian England.
00:47:48
So here's a quote from NPR describing London in this period of time to set the scene.
00:47:55
Quote, London was infamously filthy. It had choking, sooty. fogs, the Thames River was thick with human sewage, and the streets were covered with mud.
00:48:06
Gross. So, yeah, there you go. These days, mudlarking is a much cleaner event than I bet it would have been
00:48:13
back in the day. This is also a period during British history where the public is very concerned
00:48:18
about crime. The income gap between rich and poor is stratospheric. Theft and vandalism are up from
00:48:25
previous decades, and the newspapers and tabloids run headline after headline detailing grisly
00:48:31
sensational murders taking place across the nation. But before Jack the Ripper terrorized Whitechapel,
00:48:39
there was another Victorian murderer who stunned, horrified, and transfixed the British public.
00:48:45
So much so, the sculpture of her was put on display at Madame Tussauds' wax museum
00:48:50
before she was ever convicted. Her. Of her crimes. This is the story of murderer Kate Webster.
00:48:59
Fuck. So the sources used today are from a 1925 book called The Trial of Kate Webster,
00:49:07
edited by Elliot O'Donnell, the Murderpedia page for Katherine Webster, shout out to Murderpedia,
00:49:13
so going strong after eight long years. Excellent. And the book Victorian Murders by Jan Bondeson. And Jan Bondeson, that name might sound familiar
00:49:24
to you and I because he was heavily cited in the boy Edward Jones packet. The little creep that
00:49:31
snuck into the palace. That was a classic. The greasy little creep. And the rest of the sources
00:49:38
are in our show notes. Come back with me now. The story begins in 1849 when Catherine, who will
00:49:45
end up going by Kate Lawler, is born in a small remote Irish village. We don't know much about
00:49:52
her childhood except that she comes from a farming family. And although the Lawlers belong to the
00:49:57
lower class, they're described as, quote, respectable people. But little Kate's trying
00:50:02
to change all that. She is described as having a very intense appearance. What does that mean for
00:50:09
a child. I think I'm going to show you, but it's so funny. Like I wish there were obviously back
00:50:16
then and especially for poor people, there was no pictures. Yeah. There's no, there was no nothing.
00:50:22
That was back when you had to like pose for 15 minutes for a picture. But let me see. This was
00:50:28
a little girl who was so creepy looking that she put people on edge. Oh honey, that can't go well
00:50:34
for the beginning of your life. I don't think it makes you love the world. No. Go to our Instagram if you want to see it.
00:50:41
Now this, I'm just showing your, this is the wax figure that was at Madame Tussauds.
00:50:47
Yeah. There's like a Willem Dafoe aspect to it. It's a look into the hypnotic eye.
00:50:54
There's that vibe. They went heavy on the eyeshadow and there might be some, what's that cheek thing called that you get
00:51:01
when you get your cheeks hollowed out? Oh, the buckle fat removal? Buckle fat removal.
00:51:07
She may have gotten that. I don't know. But also she has the thing where her irises don't go.
00:51:11
There's white on the bottom of her eyes. Right, right. And she probably, if she gets mad, there's white on the top of her eyes.
00:51:18
Ooh. Which get, move away from that area if you ever experience that in the real world.
00:51:24
Okay, so imagine that as a child. Those eyes would be like three times larger. Oh, dear.
00:51:30
Oh, dear. She didn't set a chance. Oh, OK. They say she has a, quote, particularly sinister face with dark gleaming and slightly oblique eyes.
00:51:42
Hurtful. End quote. Or maybe they're just on edge because Kate indiscriminately pickpockets and steals and is constantly in trouble with the law.
00:51:50
Oh, my gosh. Truly. But she it feels to me like she has a very young sociopath or psychopathic vibe about her where she's just kind of like, you know what?
00:52:01
fuck all y'all. And she's a big liar and she lies either to get what she wants or to get out of
00:52:08
things she doesn't want to be happening, to get away with things. When she is later asked about
00:52:12
her childhood, Kate will often claim that she married a man named Captain Webster in her early
00:52:17
teens and that they had four children who, along with the captain, all died by the time she was 15
00:52:25
years old. What the fuck? Now, given the math, most historians think this is probably a made up
00:52:32
story and that Kate simply wanted to get a new last name to distance herself from her long
00:52:38
childhood criminal record while at the same time garnering sympathy for being a bereaved wife and
00:52:45
mother. And it's such an implausible story when you hear it. But then it's like it kind of is a
00:52:51
credit to probably how convincing she was that as insane as that story was, it stuck around.
00:52:56
Yeah. Because she probably made a couple people believe it. Elliot O'Donnell, who edited the 1925 book Trial of Kate Webster, has said, quote,
00:53:05
she was astonishingly self-possessed, had a wonderful control of her facial expression,
00:53:10
and had extraordinary aptitude for grasping situations and getting out of difficulties.
00:53:16
Sociopath. Got it. Yeah. So Maren left me this note. note to karen on the point about kate's alleged dead husband and children it's not technically
00:53:25
impossible to have four kids by the age of 50 yeah you know what i don't think anyone was like
00:53:30
shocked by that because it was like everyone at 15 back then yeah you're an old maid at like 20
00:53:38
yeah you're a child bride at 12 and you're washed up by the time you're 20 but there's just no
00:53:44
evidence to support it. So when Kate is 15 years old, she's arrested on larceny charges and sent
00:53:50
to prison in Wexford Ireland It unclear how much time she spends behind bars there but when she released she goes right back to stealing By 1867 she in her late teens and she stolen enough money to buy a one ticket out of town
00:54:05
Her family are completely worn out by her and her eyes and her constant arrests and her scandals.
00:54:12
So I almost made Georgia spit on her microphone. So they encourage her to move to Liverpool for a fresh start. And so she does.
00:54:24
Beautiful Liverpool. Just go start again in one of the most forgiving and refreshing cities in all of England, Liverpool.
00:54:32
You love mud, right? Because I've got a place for you. And Maren then notes at this time, Ireland is a part of the UK.
00:54:42
Ah, okay. Just FYI. So once in Liverpool, Kate falls in with other street criminals.
00:54:48
And before long, she is once again in trouble with the law. in 1868, just before her 20th birthday, she's caught stealing. This time she's convicted and
00:54:57
she's sentenced to four years in prison. When she gets out from that stint, she finds herself
00:55:02
under constant surveillance from the Liverpool police. So she decides to ditch Liverpool and
00:55:08
head down to London, where she cycles through her first round of fake names, Kate Webb, Kate Gibbons,
00:55:14
et cetera. Surprisingly, Kate's first few years in London are actually very quiet. She later claims
00:55:21
that she was doing her best to keep on the straight and narrow during this period. But she pops back
00:55:25
up on the radar in 1873 when she's around 24 years old. And that's after she moves into a home in
00:55:32
Hammersmith and becomes friendly with a family named the Porters. They live next door. And Kate
00:55:38
tells the Porters she's a domestic worker who's currently out of a job. For obvious reasons, she
00:55:43
doesn't bring up her criminal past. Sure. So Kate then begins a relationship with a man who lives in
00:55:49
Kingston. And after becoming pregnant with this man's child, she moves in with him. We don't know
00:55:55
much about this man or about the baby, including their names. And Kate herself only identifies the
00:56:01
child's father as Strong or sometimes as Mitchell. And no one knows if those are last names or
00:56:07
nicknames or anything. What if your nickname was Mitchell? Or Strong. Your nickname is Mitchell.
00:56:15
Mitchell. But this boyfriend is described as a shady character who, according to Kate,
00:56:20
eventually walks out on this family. When Strong leaves her, Kate says she has no choice but to
00:56:26
start stealing again, saying, quote, I became very impoverished, forsaken by him and committed crimes
00:56:31
for the purpose of supporting myself and my child, end quote, which, of course, very common in
00:56:37
Victorian England. Things were bad, as was it NPR at the very beginning said is a rough town.
00:56:43
And everyone's just trying to get by. The book, The Five, about the five confirmed victims of Jack the Ripper, talks so much.
00:56:53
I mean, the workhouses, you just had no chance. If you slipped under that kind of like speeding train of poverty in England, you were done.
00:57:05
And the cycle of like, and very understandable cycle of drinking to like, to get rid of the stress.
00:57:11
drinking after an 18 hour day in the, you know, the steel mill or wherever the hell.
00:57:17
It was just, yeah, people got eaten up. And so it's very, I love that book. So the five is by Haley Rubenhold, FYI.
00:57:26
Yes. Great book. Please read it. So on March 4th, 1875, when Kate's 26 years old,
00:57:34
she's picked up by the police once again. And this time she's handed an impressive 36
00:57:39
larceny charges and she's sentenced to 18 months in prison. And then in February of 1877,
00:57:45
just after she gets out of prison from that stint, I don't know that many synonyms for stint.
00:57:52
Stint sounds good. Stint's pretty good. She is arrested again and sentenced to another 12 months behind bars,
00:57:58
all for theft. And so Kate and Strong are now both out of the picture. So the couple's young
00:58:04
son is raised by a woman named Sarah Crease, who met the couple while they were living in Kingston.
00:58:11
So Sarah and Kate aren't friends, but Sarah sees Kate struggling and feels really sorry for her.
00:58:18
And in 1878, when Kate has served out her latest sentence, Sarah tries to set her up with a
00:58:24
legitimate job. At first, she invites Kate to come along with her on her own cleaning gigs,
00:58:29
because she's, you know, somebody's maid. And then she asks her employer, a woman named Miss
00:58:34
Loader, if Kate can cover a few shifts for her here and there. Miss Loader eventually takes a
00:58:39
liking to Kate and connects her with a friend that's looking for a full-time live-in maid.
00:58:44
And that woman's name is Julia Martha Thomas. So clearly Kate's like, I gotta get it together. I
00:58:51
have a kid. I'm in London. Like I can't be in jail all the time. And so it seemed like she was like,
00:58:57
I'm going to be a ladies maid like so many people are. So Julia Thomas is in her mid-50s. She has
00:59:03
outlived two husbands and she lives alone in a semi-detached apartment in a large stone villa
00:59:09
in Richmond, which is in Southwest London. This is far from the hustle and bustle of the city center.
00:59:16
Julia's home is surrounded by gardens. It's on a relatively quiet street with just a few houses
00:59:21
and one business nearby. It's the pub next door and it's called the hole in the wall.
00:59:27
So according to the people who knew her, Julia has an interesting personality. You know what that means.
00:59:33
Fun. She's described as, quote, distinctly eccentric and, quote, easily roused to wrath.
00:59:40
And despite being middle class, she reportedly likes to present herself as being very rich by wearing lots of jewelry and fine silk dresses.
00:59:50
If you put them all on at once, you look really rich. All your jewelry. Yeah. And then you act real eccentric real roused what was it roused to anger what was it roused to wrath I mean she like the bitch like to fight Yeah Julia out in these streets with her fine silk dress
01:00:07
It's suspected Julia Thomas hires Kate simply because it sounds aristocratic to have a maid.
01:00:13
Sure. It's not clear that she actually needs one. Another thing about Julia, she's reportedly very, very rude to the people that she hires to work in her home.
01:00:22
When Kate starts her maid duties in early February of 1879, she seems to get along with Julia well.
01:00:29
So for several days, Kate doesn't say anything negative about her boss, only that she's grateful for the opportunity to work.
01:00:37
But then somehow everything goes sour very quickly. And by the end of her first week, Kate says, quote,
01:00:44
At first I thought her a nice old lady and I hoped I might be comfortable and happy with her.
01:00:48
But I found her very trying, and she used to do many things to annoy me during my work.
01:00:53
When I finished my work in my rooms, she would go over it again after me and point out places where she said I did not clean, showing evidence of a nasty spirit towards me.
01:01:03
So according to people who've written about this case, Julia's nitpicky attitude towards Kate results in Kate being very chilly, if not outwardly hostile toward her boss.
01:01:15
In fact, it's said that by the end of Kate's first week on the job, Julia is afraid of her maid.
01:01:21
And because of this, she fires her. Which is, you know, fair is fair. It's like, you're kind of acting like an asshole.
01:01:30
And then the person that you hired doesn't like that. And then you're like, oh, no, I don't like this.
01:01:35
So then you're like, okay, this whole thing isn't working out. It's how it is sometimes.
01:01:39
But Julia doesn't want any trouble. So she tells Kate that she can keep living in her house and continue working for her until the end of the month and makes Kate's official last day, Friday, February 28th.
01:01:52
She doesn't feel great about this arrangement that she has concocted. She's already super uncomfortable living with Kate.
01:02:00
According to Elliot O'Donnell, quote, Miss Thomas tried her hardest to get someone to stay with her.
01:02:06
She asked several members of the church she attended and on their refusing, eventually succeeded in getting a lady and her daughter to lodge with her for a fortnight.
01:02:15
What do you think happened in those couple days? Like something, someone snapped.
01:02:20
Like intense fighting. Probably Julia, the lady of the house, thought she could kind of do what she wanted.
01:02:27
And she came up with Kate, who's like, no, no, no, I do what I want. Yeah, and they butted heads.
01:02:34
And they seriously butted heads. And maybe like Kate at that point was so kind of street worn.
01:02:43
Yeah. That she went street real fast. Right. And Julia was like, I thought I was.
01:02:49
Yeah. She's used to people like kowtowing to her probably, Julia. Probably because if you think about that like British politeness thing where like you don't raise your voice and it's like it's super crazy to raise your voice.
01:03:01
Yeah, especially to someone rich and, you know, aristocratic and shit. Pretending to be rich.
01:03:06
Your boss, yeah. Yeah. Okay. I think it's very interesting, though. I'm reading a lot into Julia not being able to get anybody to come and stay at her house.
01:03:17
Yeah. Yeah, they're like, Julia, no. Yeah, they're like, you are the most high maintenance and you, now I go there and you're
01:03:24
going to yell at me. Yeah. Like you yell at the maid. Yeah, or like you always panic about something.
01:03:28
Yeah. So eventually Friday the 28th rolls around and as planned, the mother and daughter leave.
01:03:34
Like they said, you got me for two weeks. That's it. Or a fortnight. But not Kate.
01:03:40
Kate asks if she can keep boarding there through the weekend, complaining that it's too hard to find short term lodging on a Friday or Saturday.
01:03:48
She says she'll have a much better shot at leasing a new place at the start of the next week when there's less demand, more vacancies.
01:03:54
it's unclear if Julia feels sorry for Kate or if she's just afraid of her. Either way, she agrees to let Kate stay through the weekend.
01:04:03
Not good. So finally, it's Sunday, Kate's last day working and in the house. Even though the two women don't like each other, they both know they don't like each other.
01:04:16
Kate's just carrying out her normal duties that day. Everything seems to be fine.
01:04:20
except as part of their work agreement, Julia always gives Kate Sunday afternoon off
01:04:27
on the condition that Kate has to return in the early afternoon so she can help Julia get dressed
01:04:32
for evening church services. But not today, as you would imagine, as I would also do.
01:04:39
I'm not coming back to fucking help you on my last day of work. I'm done. You can't fire me more.
01:04:46
You can't fire me. I quit. So Kate is next door at the hole in the wall, drinking at that pub.
01:04:53
Oh, got it. Easy to find. She's getting drunk, chatting up the other patrons. She is not concerned about the time.
01:05:00
When she finally does decide she's ready to go, she stumbles back over to Julia's house.
01:05:06
Julia has not left for church yet. And Julia is furious. She wastes no time reprimanding Kate for keeping her waiting.
01:05:14
but at this point as we well know kate's not having it because she's drunk according to julia
01:05:21
herself who would later confide in her fellow church members quote kate flew into a terrible
01:05:27
passion kate becomes absolutely enraged and hurls every insult and curse word in the book at julia
01:05:35
this absolutely freaks julia out so she gets dressed by herself and then just runs out of
01:05:42
house and runs to church. Surprisingly, after the service, Julia heads straight home. And as far as
01:05:49
we know she doesn make any attempt to have somebody come back to the house with her So all those church people who were talking about it afterwards like she didn go around and go will you please come back with me and help me get this crazy maid out of my house I wonder why Well it says on this piece of paper maybe Julia thought that Kate would have calmed down by then
01:06:10
Right. Or even better that she would have just taken her shit and gotten out. Right.
01:06:14
That was the end of it. Yeah. She could have been in a full fantasy of like, that's over.
01:06:18
And that was it. She yelled, we're done. But when Julia does arrive home, she finds neither seemed to be the case.
01:06:25
And here's what happened next. According to Kate Webster herself, quote, upon her return from church before the usual hour, Mrs. Thomas came in and went upstairs.
01:06:36
I went up after her and we had an argument which ripened into a quarrel, which I didn't realize quarrel was one above argument.
01:06:43
Yeah. It is. Yeah. Which ripened into a quarrel, and in the height of my anger and rage, I threw her from the top of the stairs to the ground floor.
01:06:52
She had a very heavy fall. I felt that she was seriously injured, and I became agitated at what had occurred, lost all control of myself, and to prevent her screaming and getting me into trouble, I caught her by the throat, and in the struggle, she was choked, and I threw her on the floor.
01:07:08
She was choked. No, no. You choked her. To death. julia morgan is dead kate webster killed her wow so kate of course immediately starts covering
01:07:21
her tracks in my least favorite way these true crime stories always have if you do not like
01:07:28
grisly things you're gonna want to dip for about a minute and a half well you shouldn't have
01:07:33
listened to my story either yeah exactly if you're still upset from george's story
01:07:37
it gets worse is there a post trigger warning is that a thing yeah does those help at all
01:07:42
So Kate proceeds to dismember Julia's body, boil her limbs and torso on the kitchen stove, and burn her organs in the oven.
01:07:53
She would later say her goal was to shrink the remains so they'd be easier to get rid of.
01:07:58
She cleans up all the blood around the home from dismembering her boss in her own home.
01:08:03
And then she puts Julia's remains into a big wooden box and everything fit except for one of Julia's feet and her head.
01:08:13
So she keeps those outside this box. Oh, my God. It's a big wooden box that's incredibly heavy.
01:08:20
And Kate realizes that she's going to have to move it, but she needs more time to figure out how she's going to do that.
01:08:26
So she just closes it up and like kind of like she doesn't put it aside because it's really heavy,
01:08:32
but just like that's going to go there for a while. She has snapped in a big way.
01:08:37
And then she takes Julia's foot, her severed foot to a nearby garbage dump and tosses it onto the garbage heap,
01:08:45
which is so Victorian England, or at least the way I shouldn't say that because there'll be a thousand historians being like,
01:08:51
actually, no, it wasn't. But I picture that you walk down the street and there's like,
01:08:57
there's old kind of falling down houses and antique stores and stuff. And then just to the left, there would just be a big, like, three-story pile of garbage.
01:09:05
Yeah, heaps of garbage everywhere. Heaps of garbage here and there. Yeah. They hadn't learned yet to put it outside the city limits.
01:09:12
Right, into the Thames. Yeah. Where we can now dig it up. Where we can mudlark the fuck out of it now.
01:09:18
Exactly, exactly. Then she puts Julia's head into a large handbag. I think I was talking about all the other stuff, because it just gets worse, of course.
01:09:26
she puts Julia's head into a large handbag, a bag that witnesses will later report seeing Kate
01:09:32
leave Julia's home with. It's gruesome. It's horrible. And it is, you know, it's a part of
01:09:40
all of these stories that we get to. And then we go, why did we, why did we start out on this
01:09:44
journey in the first place? But I think we do it for this reason to talk about what is this
01:09:50
escalation that Kate just experienced between lifelong larceny of just like, I just want what
01:09:55
I want when I want it to the serious gruesome murder and dissection of her boss. Like that's so,
01:10:03
so extreme. Like to have that in you, it's like, how have you had that in you your whole life?
01:10:09
And it comes out now. And it's scary to think like that there are people out there who do have that
01:10:14
capability in them. And is it all of us that, because is that also a human capability? If some
01:10:21
of the humans can do it. Do all the humans have the capability? I mean, I think that's what's so
01:10:26
fascinating. One of the things that's fascinating about true crime is like, is that in all of us?
01:10:31
Or is that nature, nurture, or circumstance, or what? I just don't think when they get to the
01:10:38
problem solving point, which to me is the point of no return, where they're like, I'm going to cut
01:10:46
up a body. I can't ever go there. Do you remember the movie Shallow Grave? No. It was like a huge
01:10:53
90s movie. It was so good. And it's, they have to kill a roommate. And then they cut the body up.
01:10:59
And I'm like, in the movie, I was just like, no, no. Well, can we go even further back and that
01:11:04
her solution for having shoved this person down the stairs and not wanting to get in trouble for
01:11:11
that was to then kill them. Like, that's where I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, that's not,
01:11:18
that's not how you don't get in trouble for hurting someone. Well, and also doesn't it sound like part of a lie where it was like, the truth is she snapped
01:11:27
and went berserk. And then in retrospect, she was like, well, it's her fault that I did that
01:11:33
because she was going to tell on me by screaming because I was killing her. Right. I had to, like, what are you talking about?
01:11:40
She made me. She made me. Okay. Was any of that worth the trouble? I'm not sure.
01:11:46
We solved it. We solved human experiences. We know why women listen to true crime now.
01:11:54
This is incredible. So two days after Kate Webster kills Julia Thomas, Kate decides to pay a visit to her old neighbors in Hammersmith, the Porters.
01:12:03
She hasn't seen them in several years, and she hasn't stayed in touch. So the Porters, who last knew Kate as a down-on-her-luck domestic worker,
01:12:11
are shocked to see her at their door in a nice silk dress, wearing lots of jewelry.
01:12:17
I bet. Mm-hmm. Kate wastes no time telling Henry Porter, the, you know, patriarch of the family,
01:12:23
that her name is now Kate Thomas, claiming that she's been married and widowed since she's seen them.
01:12:30
since she's lived in Hammersmith. She also claims to have recently inherited a house in Richmond
01:12:34
from an aunt who just passed away. And it's through this inheritance that Kate says
01:12:39
she ended up with a bunch of furniture that she has no need for. So she asks Henry if he might know anyone who'd be interested in buying it.
01:12:47
So according to Elliot O'Donnell, Kate's scheme is obvious here. She wants to make cash by selling Julia's belongings
01:12:55
to people who don't live in Richmond and have no way of connecting them back to Julia.
01:13:00
Because at this point, Julia is just dead and missing, but she hasn't been reported missing by anybody.
01:13:09
And I guess luckily for Kate, Henry Porter agrees to set her up with someone who might be interested in buying those things.
01:13:16
And then Kate asks the Porters for one more favor. She needs help dropping off a box in Richmond.
01:13:22
She claims it's a gift for a friend, but it's way too heavy for her to carry herself.
01:13:27
Mm-hmm. So Henry's son, Robert Porter, kindly offers to help her. After returning to Richmond with Kate and picking up this very heavy box,
01:13:37
Robert carries it all the way to a bench in the middle of Richmond Bridge, where Kate says she will be meeting her friend.
01:13:44
And at this point, it's well into the evening. It's very dark outside. But instead of asking Robert to sit with her while she waits,
01:13:51
Kate asks for some privacy and tells Robert to walk to the end of the bridge. and when she's done with her meeting, she'll come find him.
01:14:00
Before Robert can even make it to the end of the bridge, he hears a big splash in the water,
01:14:05
turns around, looks back toward the middle of the bridge and even though it's dark,
01:14:09
he can see Kate leaning against the bridge and the box is now gone. He's pretty sure that Kate just threw the box into the river.
01:14:17
A little time passes. Kate meets back up with Robert at the end of the bridge. She no longer has the box.
01:14:24
She tells him that her friend stopped by to pick it up. Robert decides he's not going to confront Kate about this.
01:14:32
He just decides he's going to commit the whole thing to memory and talk about it to someone else.
01:14:38
So meanwhile, Kate is living out of Julia's apartment, wearing Julia's clothing and her jewelry,
01:14:45
and basically trying to sell anything that she doesn't want to keep for herself.
01:14:50
Get ready if you're a squeamish. This includes the gold bridge work from Julia's teeth, which Kate has pulled from her decapitated skull.
01:15:00
So we're talking about just someone who does not care. Yeah. Like a huge. Sociopath.
01:15:08
Yeah. A disconnect from like. Oh, yes. Reality and like human emotions. And kind of just like all business.
01:15:16
It's very like, I need to get mine. Yeah. Here it is. And here it is. so the morning after the suspicious bridge activity kate's heavy wooden box is spotted
01:15:28
under the richmond bridge an unsuspecting man opens it up and finds dismembered body parts
01:15:36
inside and immediately alerts officers at the nearby barnes police station so these officers
01:15:42
look through the box and they basically they can tell that the victim is a female they think that
01:15:49
all of these body parts belong to one person, but because there is no head, they have no idea who it
01:15:56
is and they don't know how to identify the person. So it soon becomes the talk of the town and
01:16:02
newspapers are of course flooded with information about the so-called Barnes mystery. So back in
01:16:08
Hammersmith, Robert Porter sees all this newspaper coverage and gets a very bad feeling. So he goes
01:16:13
and tells his father about that night with Kate on the bridge and how he felt certain that she had
01:16:19
He lied about meeting a friend to hand off this gift And instead he thinks that she the one that dumped that big box filled with body parts that the police and the newspapers are now describing Before Henry Porter heard any of this from his son
01:16:34
he had connected Kate with a furniture broker named John Church, and John ultimately agreed to
01:16:39
buy multiple pieces of furniture and clothing from Kate. But once he brought the items home,
01:16:45
He begins to look through them and he becomes very unsettled. He finds a diary belonging to someone named Julia Martha Thomas, as well as a mail that's addressed to Julia Thomas.
01:16:57
And he suspects that he's been sold stolen goods. So he calls up Henry to tell him that.
01:17:03
And that's perfect timing because Henry tells John about the Barnes mystery that they saw in the paper and his son's unnerving story.
01:17:11
So all three men decide it's time to go to the police. So up until this point, Julia's neighbors have been watching as all of her belongings have been carried out of her apartment and they have been growing concerned.
01:17:25
It's reported that one of them even approaches Kate directly and asks her what's going on.
01:17:30
But it's not until the police finally visit Julia's home that the terrifying reality hits.
01:17:35
Upon entering, they discover charred bones, an axe and a razor believed to have been used to dismember Julia's body.
01:17:42
so now police are looking for kate webster but suddenly she's nowhere to be found on march 23rd
01:17:49
several weeks after the murder kate's description is finally printed in all the newspapers in
01:17:54
connection with the barnes mystery so of course it becomes like it's all the headlines kate realizes
01:18:01
now for sure that the police are looking for her but she has a plan so she takes the money that
01:18:08
she's been making from selling the furniture and the clothing. And she picks up her young son
01:18:13
and hightails it to Ireland. But she is tracked down by British police because investigators
01:18:19
assumed that she'd be trying to head back home. Plus, with Kate taking her son with her, she's
01:18:26
instantly identifiable. So on March 30th, Kate Webster is arrested and charged with Julia Thomas's
01:18:32
murder. So of course, this trial is a media sensation and the line between fact and fiction
01:18:38
becomes incredibly fuzzy. One particularly creepy and very persistent rumor is that Kate tried to
01:18:45
sell off rendered fat from Julia's body. There's even a quote attributed to the owner of the hole
01:18:51
in the wall saying, quote, a day or two after the murder, Kate went around amongst the neighbors
01:18:56
offering for sale two jars of fat, which she declared to be the best dripping, end quote.
01:19:02
Oh my God. This story almost certainly isn't true, but basically it added to Kate being branded as the female Sweeney Todd.
01:19:15
Yeah, I think it's true. I'm on the jury and I think it's true. I wouldn't doubt it only because if she's pulling gold plates out of a decapitated head, why is that going any further?
01:19:27
She's done all these horrible things to the body. Why wouldn't she? She's not like a mastermind because she left letters inside of the furniture she's selling.
01:19:37
She's not like, she's just doing her thing. Yeah, she's just doing it. Okay, so alongside the nonstop and over-the-top newspaper headlines, publishers are also churning out so-called souvenir booklets, recounting Kate's life, crimes, and eventual execution.
01:19:55
Soon street ballads and street poems are written documenting this case. But the cherry on top of the sensational coverage comes when Madame Tussauds immediately gets to work creating a wax version of Kate.
01:20:08
And on Easter Sunday, 1879, it's put on display at Baker Street and people flock to see the murderess's wax likeness up close.
01:20:19
Creepy. So that's the picture we're going to put on Instagram for you guys of this creepy picture I showed George at the beginning.
01:20:25
It really is. I mean, they would have to make it creepy or they would just be making a wax figure of a lady.
01:20:31
Absolutely. But meanwhile, over at the Old Bailey, Kate's trial is the hottest ticket in town.
01:20:37
In fact, the future king of Sweden makes the long trek to London to watch the proceedings.
01:20:42
Murderino. Right. A lot of fuss is made about what Kate looks like. But that also has to do with her Irish heritage coming into play and the racism about Irish people at the time As Jan Bondeson writes in the book Victorian Murders quote So that basically that Jan quoting the papers at the time
01:21:14
And then he says, her appearance and behavior were seen as key signs of her inherently criminal nature.
01:21:21
Her callous lying in court caused revulsion. The anti-Irish sentiments of the time were also fueled by her crime.
01:21:28
The denigration of Kate Webster was part of the public perception of the Irish as innately criminal.
01:21:34
Damn. Yeah, the Irish weren't liked at the time. So even though the verdict is all but decided in the court of public opinion,
01:21:42
the actual criminal case against Kate Webster is very weak. as Kate's trial drags on,
01:21:48
police still haven't found a head that matches the dismembered remains that they have.
01:21:53
Well, they have other heads, but they can't match it up. Like that's troubling. Probably.
01:21:58
What the prosecution does have though is a lot of circumstantial evidence against Kate,
01:22:03
but Kate is claiming she's innocent, which is the most psychopathic thing to do, right?
01:22:09
I didn't do any of this. I'll describe to you in detail how I did it. I didn't do it.
01:22:14
Right. So on July 8th, just six days after the trial began, the jury hands down their verdict. Kate Webster is guilty. When asked if she had anything to say before the court, Kate once again denies killing Julia. And then she drops a bombshell. Out of the blue, she now claims to be pregnant.
01:22:34
At first, this sends shockwaves to the British public. It's yet again another sharp turn in a rapidly unfolding real-life mystery,
01:22:42
but Kate's pregnancy claims are soon dismissed as yet another one of her lies. A few weeks later, on the night before her scheduled execution,
01:22:49
Kate finally confesses her guilt to a lawyer and to her presiding priest. And the next morning, July 29th, 1879, Kate Webster is hanged to death in a shed,
01:23:00
not in view of the public on the property of Wandsworth prison. And her last words are,
01:23:07
quote, Lord have mercy upon me, end quote. She was 30 years old. 30. It is not clear whatever happened to her son. I think her son, like at that point was probably,
01:23:18
hopefully Sarah Kreese took him under her wing. But now we're going to fast forward. Here's a
01:23:24
little addendum to this story that I think you're going to enjoy. We're going to fast forward 128
01:23:29
years to 2007. And this is when British national treasure and naturalist Sir David Attenborough
01:23:36
just so happens to own the property adjacent to Julia Thomas's old apartment. After all these
01:23:44
years, the hole in the wall pub is still standing next door, but it has fallen on hard times.
01:23:50
And by 2009, the pub is shuttered. So David Attenborough buys the property with the hopes
01:23:57
of converting it into an outdoor space complete with a greenhouse and an orchard. By 2010,
01:24:04
Attenborough hires contractors to carry out the remodeling plan, and that October, just in time
01:24:10
for Halloween, workers are breaking up the pub's foundation when they find a human skull.
01:24:17
What? Because of the hole in the wall's association with Kate Webster, the skull is immediately suspected to be Julia's missing head from all those years ago.
01:24:28
I have chills. According to Jan Bondeson, quote, carbon dating indicated that the skull was dated between 1650 and 1880,
01:24:36
but it had been deposited on the top of a layer of Victorian tiles. The skull had fracture marks consistent with Kate Webster's account of throwing Mrs. Thomas down the stairs
01:24:46
and was found to have low collagen levels consistent with being boiled. It entirely lacked teeth, something that is of importance,
01:24:56
since we know that Kate Webster stole Mrs. Thomas's snappers, which is from this quote.
01:25:02
I'm not saying snappers. From 2009. Oh, my God. Yeah. Which contained a gold plate to have them sold.
01:25:09
In July 2011, the coroner concluded that the skull was indeed that of Mrs. Thomas.
01:25:15
David Attenborough. Yeah Right Yeah And so with that with David Attenborough remodel that little mystery that was still left over from this horrible murder was solved
01:25:29
And that is the story of the Victorian era murder of Julia Martha Thomas by Kate Webster.
01:25:37
Wait, so she like put it in the rafters? Like, what's the story there? Behind some tiles?
01:25:42
Like, what does that mean? They don't specify. I'm not sure. But it sounds like it was if they were down breaking up the foundation, she may have figured out a way to bury it or put it like in the basement somewhere.
01:25:54
Yeah. Like she knew the little crawl spaces and crevices in this bar she used to go to all the time. Oh, my God.
01:26:02
Yeah. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. Wow. That was wild. Like that is a book. That's so interesting. So interesting.
01:26:12
So crazy. What was the book called that's about that? I'll tell you. Well, there's, of course, there's Murderpedia.
01:26:18
Don't forget. Sure. The book Murderpedia. There is the book from 1925 is called Trial of Kate Webster.
01:26:24
Okay. And then the Jan Bondeson book is Victorian Murders. So that's where he kind of does it.
01:26:31
It's like an anthology. Yeah. Is that the right word? He goes over a bunch of different stuff that happened.
01:26:36
Yeah. I can hear the parrots, the literal parrots screaming in the trees outside of my
01:26:43
fucking house now, which means that this episode is over. That's our goodbye music.
01:26:50
There's literally, we have parrots in the neighborhood. They're like, literal green parrots. Like it's such a trip that have like escaped from there. And they
01:26:58
scream their fucking heads off. And they're like, stop podcasting. You're driving us insane.
01:27:05
And if you're going to give the crows peanuts, you have to give peanuts to us too.
01:27:08
It's only fair. Yeah. But they're like, we want crackers. So let's change this shit up.
01:27:15
I'll do crackers. Throw more good stuff. Listen, if you want to be my friend, you can have any snack you want.
01:27:22
Any snack there is. Well, thanks listener for listening. You're good at it. We appreciate you using your senses to be here with us.
01:27:32
We know it's hard in today's world. You know, it's a slog. Jesus. We just got one of your full on senses for like an hour and what looks to be an hour and a half.
01:27:42
That is generous. And you got a bunch of hours. It may not feel like it, but you did.
01:27:47
Yeah, you did. You know what? Listeners, stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye.
01:27:54
Elvis, do you want a cookie? Ah! Goodbye! Goodbye. Because Next doesn't wait for an invitation.
01:29:29
And Hyundai doesn't either. Hyundai has always moved the future within reach. Hyundai did it by making advanced safety standard on every vehicle.
01:29:35
And by engineering EVs with ultra-fast charging capability. And Hyundai continues doing it every day because the future isn't some far-off concept.
01:29:43
It's already here. Next starts now. Hyundai, an official partner of FIFA. Goodbye.