00:00:00
This is exactly right. Audible. Goodbye. While the world watches the stars at the FIFA World Cup, Hyundai has its eyes
00:00:36
on the next generation of talent. The future soccer stars who are already turning heads at age 14.
00:00:41
Because Next doesn't wait for an invitation. And Hyundai doesn't either. Hyundai has always moved
00:00:45
the future within reach. Hyundai did it by making advanced safety standard on every vehicle. And by
00:00:50
engineering EVs with ultra fast charging capability. And Hyundai continues doing it every day because
00:00:55
the future isn't some far-off concept. It's already here. Next starts now. Hyundai, an official
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partner of FIFA. Goodbye. Where does summer take you? Maybe it's a coastal road trip or a quiet
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summer escape today. Visit Pura.com to learn more. Goodbye. Hello. And welcome to My Favorite Murder. That's Georgia Hardstark. That's Karen Kilgareth.
00:01:50
It's podcast time, everybody. Are you ready? What comes next, everyone? You tell us this time.
00:01:55
It's kind of the same thing every time. Yeah. There's no surprises. And yet every time we are.
00:02:00
And yet every time, hey, wait a second. Shocked and horrified. Well, the first thing that popped in my head is Boy Genius won a Grammy.
00:02:08
Yay! So exciting. Congratulations to Boy Genius and friend of the podcast, Phoebe Bridgers.
00:02:15
and congratulations to tracy chapman because all of america realized we love tracy chapman and
00:02:21
we're in love with tracy chapman and what an amazing thing to have her after all these years
00:02:28
go get her cred hell yeah and her love she deserves it that's cool too i'm not sure why
00:02:34
i'm doing a grammys rundown there's just those are the two things that popped into my head
00:02:38
do you see someone tweeted like hey grocery store how about you stop playing tracy chapman's fast
00:02:44
car were all gripping in the groceries. Like the last place. It just hurts your heart every time
00:02:51
you hear it. So you're just like shopping for cereal that has enough fiber in it because you're
00:02:56
old and it's like Tracy Chapman's fucking fast car comes on and then you're devastated.
00:03:01
You're devastated. And then you look and you're like, why is the cereal $12? Yeah. I've become the lady that's now asking for my receipt. Here's my newest thing that
00:03:11
bothers me a lot. This could be just kind of conspiracy, you know, overall. I'm so angry
00:03:18
that these companies are just gouging everybody because they can. I think it's so disgusting.
00:03:25
But I've started doing that thing where, you know, they used to have your individual receipt
00:03:32
that would run on that little screen where you use your credit card. And they don't put that
00:03:37
itemized bill on that screen anymore at any store that I go to. So it's like on the computer that the person's ringing up on.
00:03:45
The person can see it, but they have taken it off the credit card screen. For what I have observed in where I shop in Los Angeles, to a degree where, because the
00:03:54
complaint people have is there will be a price at the shelf and you're getting charged a
00:03:58
different price at the thing, which is a really shitty thing to do to the checkers.
00:04:04
Right. those companies are putting those checkers in the position to get yelled at or whatever when
00:04:09
they have no control. That's so subversive. I hate the subversive things are like, it's the same size
00:04:14
bottle, but now if you turn it upside down, it's like hollowed out more on the bottom. Like, I
00:04:20
think, you know, like a Gatorade, it's like, this is how they're gouging you. It's not 12 ounces
00:04:24
anymore, but it's almost, it looks like the same bottle. Yes. But they just changed a couple little
00:04:29
indents of it. So you think you're getting as much for more money and you're not. Yeah.
00:04:34
It's gross. And it should lead me to talk about something more positive, which is then I see people on TikTok, the youngsters of today, who are all about like thrifting. It's all about estate sales. It's upcycling, upcycling, buying stuff. Like basically there's a couple things I've seen people doing that are like this year, I'm not going to buy anything new.
00:04:57
Yeah, it's so cool. It really affected me because the woman who said that on her video, she opened a drawer
00:05:03
that was just filled with lipstick. And I was like, oh no, that's, I'm like, I need to do that because I don't need anything.
00:05:11
No. To be able to send a message like, hey, go to hell. Yeah. Everybody shouldn't have to pay $12 for cereal.
00:05:17
That's a ripoff. That sucks. On a positive note, on three, favorite cereal. One, two, three.
00:05:23
Lucky charms. Oh, yeah. wait did you say yours i didn't hear it oh i thought i was just asking you
00:05:30
no i didn't know how the game worked you said on three favorite you weird kind of controlling now you have to say your favorite i wanted you to get your spotlight
00:05:42
moment for lucky charms thank you oh my god thank you i didn't want to speak over lucky charms i
00:05:48
think mine is real nerdy it a raisin nut brand but we didn get sweet cereal as a kid So like I had no chance to like life That was the most sweetest cereal we were allowed That was the hippie splurge in life cereal I still love it You be like oh the wheat
00:06:07
Oh, I'm thinking of Chex. But that's an also kind of a hippie, like your mom's pretending
00:06:11
you're getting a good cereal, but it's just healthy. Oh, yeah. We'd get Chex and then we'd
00:06:15
secretly pour heaping spoonfuls of sugar on top of it and then drink the sugar, nonfat sugar milk.
00:06:22
because of course it was fucking non-fat milk every time. Get it from somewhere.
00:06:27
You have to take it. Whether it's cereal milk, the sugar bowl, whatever. Make cinnamon toast.
00:06:34
This ADHD isn't going to medicate itself. I need pure granulated sugar. I need a coping mechanism.
00:06:40
I think that's why I do adore Lucky Charms so much is because it was forbidden. Yeah.
00:06:45
Like me eating it now is like, I finally made it. Yeah, you can do what you want.
00:06:50
I feel that way about Funyuns. Whenever I eat Funyuns, I'm just like, I can do whatever I want.
00:06:55
I'm an adult. Wait, what about on the staff meeting when, who was it that was saying there was a new
00:07:00
chip that was Funyun flavored? Anna? It's like a chip, like a Lay's or something, but it's a Funyun.
00:07:07
Funyun flavor. Yeah. Who was that? We should give credit. Was it Brian? Was it Brian?
00:07:12
I want to say Brian. It was Brian. It was Brian. Yeah. You're right. Good call. It's our genius office manager, Brian Schmolt.
00:07:20
Because he held up the bag. Yeah. He did. He brought the bag to the meeting with him so that everyone could know his favorite, his favorite Super Bowl snack.
00:07:30
I mean, that's that's the level of like quality control and professionalism we require for anyone to be an employee of Exactly Right Media is bring the chips.
00:07:39
Yeah. To the meeting. Yes. Show us what you're talking about. Don't just tell us.
00:07:43
No. I have an author. Do you want a book? Sure. Okay, so this is new to me author named Angie Kim. And she wrote a book called Miracle Creek. And then more recently, a book called Happiness Falls. And I've read them both. And oh, they're good. They're like, murder slash death slash, you know, like, explosion mystery.
00:08:07
not in both, but each of those have those themes that you're trying to solve through the case,
00:08:13
through the book. It's based on like different perspectives from different characters, usually
00:08:17
a strong female lead who's totally fallible. And it's like, what happened? It's not what you think
00:08:24
it is. It's like, it's really, it's really smart. It's a smart mystery, which I love. Angie Kim,
00:08:31
I highly recommend her books. That's great. Yeah. What about you? What you got? Well,
00:08:36
Well, I just think it's funny that when it's just 60 degrees in LA, we'll talk about the weather,
00:08:41
you know, for 10 minutes at the top of this podcast. But now that it's national news,
00:08:46
that there is a, this storm front that came in that literally they're saying is like,
00:08:51
what was the phrase they were using? It was like- Something river. Atmospheric river. But they were like, it's, the warning was like, it was not deadly. There was a
00:09:00
phrase they kept using. And like, it's been crazy. It's been raining nonstop, crazy, like hurricane
00:09:07
level winds. But we're like, it's a classic move of ours where it's like, if you do know about the
00:09:12
weather here, we won't talk about it. Right. We refuse. Like if it's trending, you won't hear
00:09:17
about it here on My Favorite Murder. Like we don't do that. We can't do that. Not us. We're
00:09:21
not weather influencers, you know, and we've never purported to be. And so did you know that there's
00:09:27
lawn care influencers? No, I don't know that. This dude goes from like neighborhood to neighborhood
00:09:34
and sees a really overgrown lawn where nobody lives there anymore or lives there. He's like,
00:09:38
can I cut this lawn? Oh, that's like, that was my first week on TikTok. That guy pressure washes
00:09:44
people's driveways too. And then cuts all of like the sidewalk grass. And yeah, that guy's amazing.
00:09:50
I'm just like, I have mowing influencers, gift wrapping influencers, where they just like gift
00:09:56
wrapped different things perfectly to show you how to do things. Yeah. Taxidermy influencers.
00:10:01
I've just been taking notes for some reason. It's almost like these days, the word influencers just means people.
00:10:08
Doing that thing a couple of times. People that do a thing sometimes. Speaking of doing things, we have a podcast network.
00:10:16
It's called Exactly Right. Here are some highlights. Okay. Big news from the world of true crime podcasting.
00:10:22
Everyone's favorite. But season 10 of Tenfold More Wicked with Kate Winkler-Dawson premieres on Monday, February 12th.
00:10:29
It's called Entitled, the season, and it covers the mysterious deaths of three men in colonial Williamsburg.
00:10:35
The trailer is out now in the Tenfold More Wicked feed. Please, please, please go follow, rate, review, all that stuff for Tenfold More Wicked so you don't miss it and also so she can get her props.
00:10:47
I mean, Kate Winkler-Dawson, the greatest in the biz. Greatest. Also, if you're looking for a little comedy, you're going to get it over at Lady to Lady because the legendary Laurie Kilmartin joins Tess, Babs and Brandy this week.
00:11:00
So go laugh along with them. That's four funny ladies all in a row. Then make sure you don't miss this week's episode of Ghosted by Roz Hernandez because guess who's the guest?
00:11:10
It's Karen Kilgareff. It's me. It's you. And they discuss some new developments in Karen's famous family hauntings.
00:11:18
So make sure you check that out. They're infamous. Everyone knows. Everybody knows about it.
00:11:23
Also, Lisa Trager, who's the co-host of That's Messed Up and SVU podcast, joins Chris and
00:11:28
me on Do You Need a Ride? We talk about Taylor Swift's impact on the bead market.
00:11:34
We talk about how long you need to hang out. Lisa's one of my favorite comedians and kind of favorite personalities.
00:11:41
I really like her style. And we have a real good chat on that episode. So check it out.
00:11:47
She's incredible. Lastly, the Exactly Right store has been refreshed with a lot of familiar merchandise that you might remember
00:11:53
that you knew and loved and wanted us to bring back And we have so go to exactlyrightstore and check it out If you spend all day waiting to take your bra off
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00:13:10
The future soccer stars who are already turning heads at age 14. Making plays that end up on everyone's feed, scoring from angles that don't make sense,
00:13:17
rewriting record books that barely had time to gather dust. Because Next doesn't wait for an invitation, and Hyundai doesn't either.
00:13:24
Hyundai has always moved the future within reach. Hyundai did it by making advanced safety standard on every vehicle.
00:13:30
Hyundai did it by engineering EVs with ultra-fast charging capability. And Hyundai continues doing it every day.
00:13:36
From robotics that change how people live to young athletes changing the game, the future isn't some far-off concept. It's already here.
00:13:44
Next starts now. Hyundai, an official partner of FIFA. Goodbye. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace.
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Goodbye. I'm going to go first this week. Okay. So, Georgia, this story is truly wild. I had not heard of it before, but it was reminding me of a different story. And I wonder if you will know what I'm talking about as it goes through. But it's a classic serial killer case, classic true crime, as we do on this show.
00:15:02
This was actually a suggestion from a listener named Cass. She sent an email, actually, a real classic way to submit a story idea.
00:15:13
The subject line was, my cousin is a serial killer. And it just says, hey, ladies, big fan from day one.
00:15:19
My third cousin on my dad's side is a serial killer. He's known as the insulin killer.
00:15:24
Here's a link for more information. Anyway, he's quite a scandalous character and worth looking into.
00:15:30
Cheers, Cass. Nice. So thank you, Cass, for that suggestion. But I'm going to talk to you first a little bit about insulin, the life-saving drug insulin that helps people regulate their blood sugar if they have diabetes.
00:15:46
But when given to a person with no medical need for it, a sudden intake of insulin, I don't know if you know this, can trigger hypoglycemia, which is a dangerous drop in blood sugar levels causing sweating, anxiousness, or irritability.
00:15:59
also shakiness, dizziness, rapid heartbeat. In extreme cases, confusion, coma, and death.
00:16:07
Yikes. I didn't know that. So in the 1950s, when this story I'm about to tell you takes place,
00:16:14
there are no tests to measure the level of insulin in a person's body outside of basically research institutes.
00:16:22
So there's no way if there's insulin in someone's system, especially a victim's, you can test for that.
00:16:29
Because of this, insulin was an effective and virtually undetectable means of killing, making it a very clever weapon of choice for one twisted man with greedy motives to murder.
00:16:45
Now I'm going to tell you about Cass's cousin, who is also the first person ever convicted of murder in the United States where the murder weapon was insulin.
00:16:55
This is the story of William Archard, the insulin killer. The main sources for today's story are a 2008 article from the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine by Vincent Marks and Caroline Richmond and the court case People v. Archard published on Justia U.S. Law's U.S. website and all the other sources are in our show notes.
00:17:17
So take a look at those. So it all starts July 24th, 1956, with the LAPD getting a call reporting
00:17:26
of violent robbery. When police arrive at the scene, 44-year-old William Archer tells Sergeant
00:17:32
Harry Andre and his team that two thieves broke into his Los Angeles home, holding he and his
00:17:38
wife Zella at gunpoint. And then the thieves injected both of them with an unknown substance
00:17:44
using a hypodermic needle before making off with $500 in cash. When William's wife, Zella, is questioned, she recounts the same story.
00:17:53
She adds that she never got a look at the thieves because they put a pillowcase over her head So investigators examine Zella She complains she feels dizzy And the police find she has two puncture wounds on her butt
00:18:08
basically, that are indicative of hypodermic needle injections, but they don't find those
00:18:13
same types of marks on William. So as the police search the crime scene, they find a hypodermic
00:18:19
needle in one of the Archer's bathroom drawers. And then they also find a partially used vial
00:18:26
of long-acting insulin in a field nearby. They also observe that while the thieves made off with
00:18:33
$500 cash, they left behind valuable jewelry that was sitting out in plain sight. So shortly after
00:18:41
the police leave, Zella's dizziness gets worse, and then she begins convulsing, and then she lapses
00:18:47
into a coma. And by the next day, Zella Archard is dead. So when the coroner conducts her autopsy,
00:18:57
he tests for several different poisons that could have been injected into her bloodstream.
00:19:01
All the tests come back negative. So Sergeant Andre mentions the vials of insulin that were
00:19:07
found at and near the crime scene. But at the time, there are no tests to measure insulin levels
00:19:13
outside of research facilities, so the coroner has no way to test for it. Zella's cause of death is ruled as bronchopneumonia,
00:19:21
and Sergeant Andre walks away suspecting foul play, but having no way to prove it.
00:19:26
How did they find those vials in the field? Like, that's so random. I know it feels like, in the movie, in my mind,
00:19:34
it went to, like, some cops with really big hats on that are just going through, like, a grassy field
00:19:41
and like being made to walk arm to arm to look for stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So we'll talk about William Archer a little bit.
00:19:50
He was born on May 5th, 1912 in Dardanelle, Arkansas, and he grew up dreaming of becoming a doctor,
00:19:57
but he didn't have the funds or the self-discipline necessary for medical school.
00:20:02
So he finds himself an alternative route and he gets work as a hospital attendant.
00:20:07
Then in 1939, at the age of 27, and he gets a job at the Camarillo State Hospital here in California as an attendant in the insulin
00:20:17
shock ward. Here he learns how to give insulin shots and glucose injections that bring patients
00:20:24
out of shock. It teaches him all the effects of insulin on the body, the danger signs to look out
00:20:30
for while patients undergo this treatment. He is in this process, in this treatment process,
00:20:36
and he is fascinated by it. He's all about it. So much so that he wants to discuss it
00:20:43
with his coworkers all the time, even outside of the ward. And at some point, he actually convinces two coworkers
00:20:51
to let him inject them with insulin so they would know what it was like, quote unquote.
00:20:57
He leaves that job in 1941, but his fascination remains. So by 1947, Williams married to his first wife, Eleanor.
00:21:05
and they live in Fontana, California. What Eleanor doesn't know though is that William is cheating on her
00:21:11
with a nurse at Kaiser Hospital named Dorothea. That'll come up later. So the same year when William's friend,
00:21:19
who's a 34-year-old man named William Jones Jr., is arrested for child molestation,
00:21:26
William Archer comes up with an idea that could allow Jones to avoid a trial and prison time.
00:21:33
Archer suggests that they stage a car accident where Jones, quote, gets a head injury.
00:21:38
This would pause his legal proceedings and garner him sympathy points. What? And then Archard says Jones's family
00:21:46
will then pay off the victim's family and get them to agree to settle out of court.
00:21:51
And of course, Archard will act as the go-between for handing off that payment. Wow.
00:21:57
Uh-huh. So you can just feel the sinister machinations in this plan. Totally. So to really sell this fake head injury, Archard proposes, you guessed it, that they inject Jones with insulin because the symptoms mimic brain trauma and then the insulin will be undetectable.
00:22:17
So Jones agrees to this plan, and he convinces his family to raise like several thousand dollars so that he can pay off the victim's family, basically.
00:22:30
Meanwhile, Archard convinces his mistress, Dorothea, who works at Kaiser, to get some insulin for him from Kaiser, from where she works.
00:22:40
So around midnight on October 10th, 1947, Archard and Jones pick up the insulin from Dorothea's house.
00:22:48
They drive out to a remote road and they stage this accident. So they bang up Jones's car and then Archard injects Jones with the insulin
00:22:57
and then positions him on the ground near the quote unquote accident. And once that's all set up,
00:23:03
Archard places an anonymous call to report the accident. And when the responders get to the scene,
00:23:09
they take Jones to the hospital. So everything looks right to the first responders. At the
00:23:16
hospital, Jones exhibits nervousness and a headache, both signs of a head injury,
00:23:20
which is bad news for me. He's also hungry and he has a low temperature, early signs of
00:23:27
hypoglycemia, but those go unrecognized because no one has any reason to believe that Jones
00:23:33
has any problems other than he could possibly have a head injury from this car accident,
00:23:37
They're not even looking for hypoglycemia. It doesn't track with what would be happening.
00:23:43
So Jones's symptoms grow worse. He's now sweating profusely. He's having muscle spasms. He's having trouble breathing. His pulse becomes irregular.
00:23:52
The doctors give him a spinal tap. They find out that his blood pressure and his blood sugar are low over the course of the day on October 11th.
00:24:00
1947, they give him three separate doses of glucose to bring his blood sugar back up,
00:24:05
but it doesn't work. And Jones slips into a coma. Then Archer comes and pays Jones a visit and
00:24:12
stays by his side in between all of these treatments. Nothing the doctors do seems to
00:24:18
be working. And at 11 a.m. on October 12th, 1947, William Jones passes away. So that could be
00:24:27
rationalized as an accidental insulin overdose from a very kind of disgusting scheme,
00:24:35
except that when Archer took Jones's, quote, several thousand dollars to pay off
00:24:40
the victim's family, he only gave them 300 and a used car, and he kept the rest several thousand
00:24:49
dollars for himself. The whole thing is like so gross. So gross. Yeah. Horrible. And essentially,
00:24:56
because all of that was under the table, William just gets out of the situation unscathed. He has
00:25:02
nothing to do with anything. Simultaneously, also he's got other stuff going on in his life. He
00:25:08
leaves his first wife, Eleanor, and he marries his insulin connection and mistress, Dorothea,
00:25:14
in August of 1949. But in 1950, William is arrested for illegal possession of morphine,
00:25:21
and he gets five years probation, but then he's caught with drugs again. So he's sent to Chino.
00:25:28
There's a minimum security prison there. He manages to escape in 1951, but authorities find him pretty quickly
00:25:35
and then they send him to San Quentin. So two years later, in 1953, Archer is released on parole
00:25:44
and he stays out of trouble basically for the next three years, doesn't seem to have any interactions
00:25:49
with the police outside of routine visits to his parole officer. Then on May 14th, 1956,
00:25:56
William and Dorothea have their marriage annulled. And the day after that, he marries his third wife,
00:26:02
Zella. So two months later, Archard will interact with the police once again, this time to call in
00:26:10
that robbery that I was telling you about at the beginning that leaves Zella dead.
00:26:14
That's a quick turnaround for all these happenings. Well, overall, it's like he was in jail for a little while, this and that.
00:26:22
But it's almost like he gets out of jail. And then suddenly he's like, I got to do this more.
00:26:28
Like, you can tell it's a person who has this obsession with a very strange, very strange thing.
00:26:35
So William Archer moves to Las Vegas, Nevada, and he meets and marries his fourth wife, Gladys, there on October 4th, 1957.
00:26:45
I am sorry to tell you this marriage doesn't last. And after they get divorced, William quickly marries his fifth wife, Juanita Plum, on March 10th.
00:26:55
We have some stellar female names in this story. Oh, my God. Like name after name of like classic cool names, older names.
00:27:04
Juanita Plum is one of the great names of our time. And also just this turnaround.
00:27:10
Like, I feel like it's very much pointing towards psychopath where it's like, right?
00:27:15
Big energy, big, like crazy eyes. They're like, whoa. Or who would play him? Who would play him?
00:27:20
So I can get a picture of my head. The Hollywood version of him is John Slattery because he has white hair and he just looks
00:27:27
like a man that would be complaining about how, why can't they just have small, medium
00:27:32
and large at Starbucks? or something like that. He looks like one of those guys.
00:27:37
Yeah, yeah. And every day kind of curmudgeon-y. A workaday. Curmudgeon-y. Yeah, okay.
00:27:44
Slattery. That's a good one. So two days after they get married, on March 12th, Juanita Plum falls into a coma.
00:27:52
When William calls for help, he tells doctors that she had been drinking and taking barbiturates.
00:27:58
She is taken to the hospital. She dies within hours of arrival at three o'clock on March 13th, 1958.
00:28:05
And her death is ruled as cardiac failure due to barbiturate overdose, even though no test for barbiturates
00:28:13
in her bloodstream is ever administered. So it's the husband said so, that's what's happening.
00:28:19
What doctors do find, however, is that Juanita's blood sugar is low. Conveniently for William, though,
00:28:25
this fact raises no red flags. So within a year of Juanita's death, William reunites with his fourth wife, Gladys, and they get remarried. Yes. They get it back
00:28:36
together on May 21st, 1959 in La Habra, California. So Gladys was married to a man named Frank Stewart
00:28:44
between her first time being married to William and her second time being married to him.
00:28:49
And they must have left it on good terms because somehow after those guys reunite,
00:28:56
Gladys and William. William is able to talk Frank, his new wife's ex, into participating
00:29:04
in an insurance fraud scheme with him. So this is how this one goes. And it's so funny, I think,
00:29:11
today, the idea, I'm sure people still try it or do it or whatever, but to me, insurance fraud
00:29:16
seems like the craziest idea. Like, there's people that their whole job is to look into
00:29:23
whether or not those claims are real. And it's like, it's federal. It's a federal offense too,
00:29:29
right? Isn't it? I would assume. I would assume. I have no idea. You're just fucking yourself so
00:29:33
hard if you get caught and you'll probably get caught, right? Probably. I mean, it feels like it.
00:29:40
Yeah. Okay. So here's William's plan. And then you can actually just apply that to this and be like,
00:29:46
would they get caught if this is the plan? So check it out. William has Frank take out two
00:29:50
airport accident insurance policy. So now they're involving the airport. Jesus So there a little more feds for you Okay So the first policy is for Okay That worth around do you want to guess how much that worth today
00:30:07
What year is it? 50? 59. 59, 68,000. Is that what you said? Yeah, it's 62,500. 62,500 and 58 today would be 550.
00:30:19
650, very close. Okay. All right. So close. Good one. Yeah, just tack it. Tech is zero at the end of that.
00:30:26
So crazy. So Gladys is listed as the beneficiary, but it has instructions for her to divide the payment between her daughter and Frank's two daughters.
00:30:35
And then the second policy is for $18,750, which is worth around almost $200,000 today.
00:30:42
And that one lists William's mother, Jenny Archard, as the beneficiary. So on March 16th, 1960, Frank and William go to the Las Vegas airport under the guise of being on a business trip.
00:30:56
And then once they're there, they stage a fall in the men's bathroom where Frank slips on, you guessed it, a banana peel.
00:31:06
Yes. And hits his head. Oh, my God. Was that a thing? Yeah. Yeah. It hadn't gotten to the degree of international hilarity yet.
00:31:17
I don't know. Maybe not. Seems a little hacky. So Frank hits the ground or like they stage it. Then William gives Frank
00:31:25
an insulin injection to mimic the symptoms of a head injury. So when Frank arrives at the hospital
00:31:31
at 1230 on March 17th, he's conscious with just a small cut on his head, but he has one dilated
00:31:37
pupil, which is actually an indication of possible brain injury. So because of this, doctors keep him
00:31:45
for a 24-hour observation period. And throughout that, William remains at his bedside.
00:31:51
So by 4 p.m., Frank's convulsions begin. And at 10.30 p.m. that night, Frank Stewart dies.
00:32:00
Was that his plan the whole time was for them to die probably, right? It starts to feel like it after a couple.
00:32:06
Yes, I believe so. So Frank had been diagnosed with hardening of his arteries earlier that year.
00:32:13
So then the autopsy just concludes that that was Frank's cause of death. Wow. Not the fall.
00:32:19
Or supposed to fall. Not the fall at all. No, in fact, the circumstances around that fall are so fishy that the insurance company refuses to pay out either of those policies.
00:32:28
Wow. So the whole plan doesn't work anyway. And then nobody, including the coroner, believes it or the investigator.
00:32:36
So meanwhile, back in California, Sergeant Harry Andre, who first investigated the robbery at the Archard's house, he's following this case because he could never shake his suspicion of William Archard since Zella's death in 1956.
00:32:53
he hears about Juanita and Frank's deaths, both of those. And so he reaches out to Nevada police
00:33:01
and he tells them all about William Archer's suspicious history. He makes it very clear that
00:33:06
everything points to the fact that William's using insulin as a potential, you know, murder weapon in
00:33:13
all of these cases, but he doesn't have evidence and the Nevada police don't have evidence, nothing
00:33:19
except for circumstantial. So there's kind of nothing they can do about it. So we'll go back
00:33:25
just a tiny bit before Frank Stewart's death. William Archer's brother Everett had died in an
00:33:32
accident at work and Everett's only son and William's nephew, 15-year-old Bernie Archer,
00:33:39
receives his father's workman's comp payout of $7,000, which is worth $70,000 today.
00:33:45
And that leaves Bernie under the guardianship of his grandmother, Jenny Archard, and his uncle, William.
00:33:52
Yeah. So fast forward from there, a year and a half to August 22nd, 1961. William's insurance scheme cost Frank Stewart his life, but did not pay him any money.
00:34:03
So around 4 p.m. on that day in August, William picks up his nephew, Bernie, from Bernie's grandmother's house in Long Beach.
00:34:12
and Bernie's neatly dressed and completely healthy when he drives off with his uncle.
00:34:17
By five o'clock that day, Bernie's in the hospital. And the story that William has to tell the police is odd.
00:34:25
He claims Bernie told him that he was walking home from a nearby neighborhood, the Lakewood neighborhood,
00:34:32
when he crossed an intersection and got hit by a red truck. So I guess it was supposed to be a hit and run.
00:34:40
So Bernie then basically gets himself over to the curb. He's hurt, but he's still conscious.
00:34:46
And he scribbles the truck's license plate and the words red truck onto a piece of paper.
00:34:51
And then, which totally tracks, he gets up and walks four miles back to his grandmother's house.
00:34:58
And then his grandmother calls William for help. Okay. So at the hospital, doctors find that Bernie has a chipped hip bone and a very dilated left pupil.
00:35:10
And they suspect that there's a possible brain injury from this hit and run. So they decide to keep Bernie overnight for observation.
00:35:18
And aside from complaining about being hungry, Bernie doesn't seem to be sick or hurt.
00:35:24
But by the evening, he becomes much more irritable and his temperature drops. And then the next morning, which is August 23rd, 1961, William returns to the hospital to visit Bernie.
00:35:36
And he stays there, you know, basically visits him off and on throughout that day.
00:35:41
His last visit is at 6 p.m. And at 10 p.m., Bernie falls into a coma. So the doctors can find no hemorrhaging or bruising in his brain no blood clots no other apparent reason for this comatose state They do notice that Bernie blood sugar is low Now at the same time police are following up on William story to try to track down the driver who allegedly hit Bernie
00:36:06
and they find the red truck with the same license plate that Bernie had written down,
00:36:11
parked in a used car lot that is visible from the scene of the supposed accident.
00:36:17
The only problem is that truck is an old clunker and it makes a ton of noise when it's running.
00:36:23
so anyone in the houses or the offices in that area would have known if it was being driven.
00:36:30
And when they're questioned, nobody reports seeing or hearing that truck at any time on that day that Bernie was allegedly hit.
00:36:39
Plus, the truck has no exterior damage, indicating that was involved in an accident.
00:36:45
Back at Long Beach Memorial Hospital, the doctors give Bernie glucose, trying to bring his blood sugar levels back to normal to revive him.
00:36:55
And incredibly, in the middle of this ordeal, William's mother, Jenny Archard, passes away.
00:37:02
There's no information on the details of her death, but that's just something to know in the background.
00:37:10
So now William is the sole guardian of his nephew, Bernie. And also that makes him the sole heir of both his mother, Jenny's estate,
00:37:19
and the money Bernie got from his father's payout. On August 26, 1961, Bernie's transferred from the intensive care surgical unit
00:37:29
where he was basically constantly surrounded by nurses and sometimes doctors most of the time
00:37:35
to a private intensive care room. And then for the next several days, William visits Bernie.
00:37:41
10 days later, Bernie Archer dies on September 2, 1961. He was 15 years old. That's awful.
00:37:49
Because Bernie Archer's death takes place in California, the story hits local newspapers, and the LAPD, Sergeant Andre, sees William Archer's name in relation to a suspicious death once again.
00:38:03
Only now, this is back in Sergeant Andre's jurisdiction. So Andre reaches out to a Sergeant White in the homicide unit who investigates fatal road accidents.
00:38:16
and Sergeant White finds evidence or the lack thereof that points to Bernie's hit and run being a fake.
00:38:23
And Sergeant Andre again suspects that William Archer had injected his nephew with insulin
00:38:29
and the possibility of insulin rejection also crosses the mind of the pathologist
00:38:34
that's conducting Bernie's autopsy given his low glucose levels. But again, there's no way to prove the presence of insulin.
00:38:43
So he rules Bernie's cause of death to be injuries sustained from that alleged car accident.
00:38:49
On April 18th, 1965, William Archer uses a fake name, James Lynn Arden, to marry his seventh wife, Mary Brinker Post,
00:39:00
who is a fairly successful romance novelist. So Mary has a pretty large savings account,
00:39:08
and William, who is unemployed and I think has been unemployed for a while, He takes advantage of this. So between May of 1965 and October of 1966, William spends $21,600 of Mary's money, which is about $200,000 in today's money.
00:39:29
And by October 20th, 1966, Mary has to file for bankruptcy. And as a result, William leaves her.
00:39:37
So he just basically comes in, lives off of her, parasites off of her, and then leaves.
00:39:44
And she writes letters to him every day for the next eight days, begging him to come back to her.
00:39:49
He does not. And then on October 28th, 1966, Mary actually gets into a real car accident.
00:39:57
She goes to the doctor. She only had cuts and bruises. She's sent home. William hears about this car accident.
00:40:04
Oh, no. And he goes back to Mary on Halloween, October 31st of 1966. So the next day, Mary's feeling fine.
00:40:13
She's no longer experiencing any of the pain or discomfort that she was feeling from her minor accident injuries.
00:40:20
But that night, Mary's neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Field, notice that the lights are on in Mary's house and they stay on until the early morning hours.
00:40:30
Mrs. Field actually woke up between 3 and 4 a.m., my favorite time to wake up in the middle of the night, and noticed Mary's lights were still on, which is very unusual.
00:40:40
The next morning around 8 a.m. on November 2nd, William knocks on the field's door dressed in a suit saying Mary isn't waking up and asking them to come over and help.
00:40:52
When they do, they find Mary lying comatose in her bed. Her face is swollen. Her tongue's hanging out.
00:40:59
She's salivating. It's bad. So she's rushed to the hospital. William tells the doctors there that Mary had taken sleeping pills.
00:41:07
And they find barbiturates in her system. But they also find that her glucose levels are low.
00:41:13
Dude, this guy won't quit. Like, what the fuck? It's wild. And you know what? Like, we've heard of the angel of death stories where there's like nurses in hospitals that do this.
00:41:25
But it's like he couldn't get into the hospital. He's doing it from the outside.
00:41:29
Totally. Or like getting them into the hospital and then doing it while they're there.
00:41:33
Yeah. It's such a weird backwards version of those types of serial killers. So Mary Brinker Post dies the next day on November 3rd, 1966.
00:41:45
Now coincidentally Sergeant White who was the homicide detective who Sergeant Andre had consulted about Bernie Archer fatal car accident in 61 he has since been promoted to lieutenant and he is now assigned to investigate Mary Brinker Post death
00:42:05
Oh, good. Yes. Finally. So he knows all about William Archard's history, and he's determined to not let him get away with
00:42:15
a sixth murder. So at this point, enough time has passed that an effective method for measuring
00:42:21
insulin levels has actually been established. But Lieutenant White has never heard of like the
00:42:28
standard way of doing it. But he does find a doctor named Dr. Edward Arkea, who's developed
00:42:34
his own insulin measuring test. So Lieutenant White asks Dr. Arkea to test tissue from both
00:42:40
Mary and Bernie's bodies. And while he waits for results, he starts painstakingly conducting over
00:42:47
400 witness interviews with everyone, ranging from Archard's former girlfriends to his old
00:42:54
boss at the state hospital. And in one of the most compelling interviews, talking to his second wife,
00:42:59
Dorothea, Dorothea, for the first time ever, talks about William Jones Jr.'s death. And that's the
00:43:07
man accused of molesting a child that they tried to fake a car accident. And Dorothea confirms
00:43:13
that she acquired the insulin that William used to fake Jones' head injury symptoms.
00:43:20
So finally, the police now have actual concrete evidence, and they don't even need Dr. Arkea's final test results.
00:43:29
They arrest William Dale Archer for the first-degree murders of Zella Archer, Bernie Archer, and Mary Brinker Post on July 27, 1967.
00:43:38
seven. So his trial begins on December 4th of that year, and he pleads not guilty to all three
00:43:45
murder counts. He also waives his right to a jury trial and instead opts to have the judge make the
00:43:51
final ruling on his guilt. The good news is that just in time for the trial, Dr. Arkea is able to
00:43:57
prove that there were high amounts of insulin in both Mary's and Bernie's bodies. And because of
00:44:04
these test results, the causes of death for all six suspected victims are re-examined by expert
00:44:10
witnesses. And in each case, even if the exact insulin levels in the body couldn't be determined,
00:44:16
the symptoms each person experienced and the timing of William's visits and their sudden
00:44:21
declines point to a high likelihood that these victims were given large doses of insulin by
00:44:27
William Archard. And of course, William's motives are revealed during the trial, which is all
00:44:33
monetary gain. It's just insane. Like I'm laughing, but in that way of like, it sounds so stupid. You're just killing members of your family.
00:44:43
Yeah. Psychopath. Total psychopath. Just nuts. And each case of murder or suspected murder, William stood to make a large sum of
00:44:51
money. He made a couple thousand off of Williams Jones Jr. He stood to gain moderate inheritances
00:44:58
from Zella and Mary's deaths. And although William already had access to the workers' comp payout
00:45:04
that Bernie got after his father's death, William was able to assume total control
00:45:10
over all of that money once Bernie died himself. So that one, even it was like, he just was knocking off anyone who was slightly in the way.
00:45:19
You didn't even need to kill your nephew, but you fucking did it anyway. And then that, to me, pulls back in his own mother's death.
00:45:26
Right. Because she was the other name on that. Absolutely. And if you're just killing everybody for money, I mean, why wouldn't he?
00:45:34
Anyway, that's my own personal theory, a legend. So his wife Juanita actually had an estate that was valued around $40,000 at the time,
00:45:45
which would be worth $420,000 today. The only thing was after her death, they read the will.
00:45:54
She left him $1. So he was not the executor of her estate or anything like that.
00:46:00
He had already gotten a bunch of money out of her, but it is kind of nice to know that she, like, he didn't get what he wanted.
00:46:08
He could have lived off of that money for a long time, I think. And she was like, no, no.
00:46:13
So March 5th, 1968, the judge, of course, finds William Dale Archard guilty of murder in the first degree for the deaths of Zella Archard, Bernie Archard, and Mary Brinker Post.
00:46:25
So the next day, he is sentenced to death in San Quentin's gas chamber. Although four years later, in 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court outlaws the death penalty, calling it cruel and unusual punishment.
00:46:38
So William's sentence is commuted to life imprisonment. Then two years later, in 74, the death penalty is reinstated and William's death sentence is reconfirmed.
00:46:49
But in 1977, he actually dies of pneumonia at the age of 65. William was only ever convicted of Zella, Bernie and Mary's murders
00:47:00
But the evidence surrounding William Jones, Juanita Plum Archard and Frank Stewart's deaths were ruled as admissible in court
00:47:09
And all six of these deaths established a clear pattern of circumstances pointing to the guilt of William Archard
00:47:17
And his use of insulin as a murder weapon And that is the story of William Dale Archard, the insulin killer.
00:47:27
Wow. I really hate him. I mean, he's just like a feral animal. Yeah. Useless piece of shit.
00:47:34
But also the idea that he would go and sit by their bedside, like as they're in a coma and give them more insulin or doing whatever he was doing.
00:47:42
That's the idea. Probably he just kept injecting them. I mean, who's to say, but they stayed in those comas and then they died.
00:47:49
Where did he get that insulin from after the one ex? I mean, I don't know, but he was arrested with drugs on him.
00:47:58
So he clearly was getting... other connections. Yeah, I wonder. Because that was his passion. Yeah. Wow. Great job. Never heard
00:48:06
of that one. Same. And thank you, Cass, for suggesting it because that was a really a
00:48:10
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the staunch woman everyone watch gray gardens if you haven't and then go watch the documentary now
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I totally agree. I'm just thinking of Bill Hader and fucking sweatpants on his head.
00:52:01
Okay. Stop it. Quit it. Stop it. Stop it now. Today I'm going to be covering a story about a
00:52:08
scrappy immigrant woman who used her street savvy and determination to feed her family
00:52:13
at all costs to turn her petty crimes into a multi-million dollar criminal operation,
00:52:19
making her one of the most infamous names in the New York organized criminal underworld of the
00:52:24
1860s until she was captured in the 1880s. This is the story of Mother Mandelbaum.
00:52:32
Oh. And the main sources I used in today's story include an article from Smithsonian Magazine
00:52:38
titled The Life and Crimes of Old Mother Mandelbaum by Karen Abbott and an article from Tablet
00:52:45
Magazine written by Alan Levine and all the other sources are listed in our show notes.
00:52:51
So here's a little background on Miss Mother Mandelbaum. She's born in Hanover, Prussia,
00:52:57
which is now Castle, Germany, on March 25th, 1825. Her name is Frederica Henrietta Augusta
00:53:07
Vinsner. And she grows up in a Jewish family. So she's like a Jewish to boot. Other than that,
00:53:14
not much is known about her upbringing. But in 1848, at the age of 23, she marries a peddler,
00:53:20
which is a door-to-door salesman. Did we all know that? I don't know. A peddler? Oh, yeah,
00:53:25
I guess so. Peddling goods. But I didn't know door-to-door. Yeah, they bring it to you.
00:53:29
Yeah, I guess like, yeah, you're pushing your cart down the street. His name is Wolf Mandelbaum.
00:53:36
She takes up the same work to help pay the bills for their home in Germany until 1850
00:53:40
when the pair immigrate to America. And they settle in the Little Germany section of New York's Lower East Side.
00:53:47
The neighborhood is a cramped home to German immigrants with as many as 15 people squeezing
00:53:53
into small apartments that were as little as 325 square feet Having done the tenement museum tour in New York City 15 people in that little space sounds like a nightmare
00:54:07
It makes me think, well, that's why those like old pictures in the day, there's just kids out in the street.
00:54:13
You just can't have people inside the house until they absolutely have to be, like eating and sleeping.
00:54:18
Yeah, until you have to sleep or eat, that's, you don't come home. Now just go outside, walk around, five-year-old.
00:54:25
Yeah. So in New York, Frederica and Wolf work as street vendors reselling anything and everything
00:54:31
they can get their hands on. It almost sounds like a kind of dumpster diving lifestyle.
00:54:34
They sell items like broken timepieces, silk scraps, and small pieces of coal. Anything they can scavenge that's worth even the tiniest bit of money. And they work 14 hours a day
00:54:45
and only bring home about $6 per week. And that is in the 1850s. So $6 a week is the equivalent
00:54:53
of how much money a week they brought home in today's money. $100? 186 a week. Yeah, that's not enough.
00:55:03
It's barely enough for the two of them to survive on. So when they end up having four children,
00:55:08
Frederica realizes she needs to come up with a better way to make money. So then in August of 1857, this thing called the Panic of 1857 begins
00:55:17
when the management of a large Ohio and New York-based bank called the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company
00:55:25
makes fraudulent investments that bankrupt the company. And so it's very similar to the crash
00:55:32
and the Great Depression of the 30s, but this happens in 1857. This triggers a global economic crisis,
00:55:40
hundreds of other banks and businesses fold and thousands of Americans lose their job.
00:55:45
But Frederica, being the savvy business woman that she is, sees an opportunity in the chaos.
00:55:50
The kids of New York City, the little street urchins that are sent out of their house, have found their families in a new
00:55:57
level of poverty, and they're resorting to pickpocketing and looting and then selling
00:56:02
those stolen goods to make money. And that practice is known as fencing. So these are two
00:56:07
great skills for Frederica to capitalize on. She befriends the young thieves. They range in age from
00:56:13
eight to 15 years old and encourages their behavior, offering to buy their stolen goods in
00:56:18
bulk for pennies and then flipping the goods at a fifth of their wholesale price and still
00:56:24
turning a heavy profit. So instead of the kids selling piece by piece, she fucking offers to
00:56:30
buy the whole bag for pennies on the dollar and then is able to sell them at a higher price.
00:56:35
Yeah. But the thing is, she is a very like loving and matronly woman. So she earns their trust.
00:56:42
They love her. They love the positive feedback she gives them. Like great job today, kids.
00:56:48
they love the attention of course and that money they need all those things and as a result she
00:56:53
earns herself the nickname mother mandelbaum or marm the only likeness i saw of her was like a
00:57:00
sketch drawing and it looks like you know those in the back of the magazines way back when it's
00:57:05
like can you draw this you can get into art school it looks like a little old lady like silhouette
00:57:10
drawing of one of those things yeah she's a standard little lady i don't know who played
00:57:15
or in the movie because I don't know what she looks like. And she's probably like,
00:57:19
someone do math for me. If she was born in 1825 and it's like the 1850s, she's not that old.
00:57:27
She's in her late 30s. She's been stressing about fencing and reselling stolen shit. So it's been
00:57:34
aging her face and hair. And four children and you are in poverty. Like that's going to age.
00:57:39
I get the vibe of like a Kathy Bates energy where it's like she can be bad and good at the same.
00:57:46
She's good to the kids and bad in terms of the law, I guess. Savvy. Yeah. She sounds really smart.
00:57:53
Kathy Bates is a great idea. By 1865, Marm is moving so much stolen product that she and Wolf have to lease out a storefront at Clinton Street and Rivington Street to legitimize her operation.
00:58:04
So she basically, they get a storefront to sell their stolen goods. they live in the apartment above the store, like life's getting better. She positions herself as a
00:58:14
dry goods saleswoman saying that's what the store is for and like has a bunch of dry goods bullshit,
00:58:18
but all her illicit fencing business does go on there. So she's got lentils and stuff on the
00:58:25
shelves, but then she's like, are you looking for, you know, this man's wallet or whatever?
00:58:30
Exactly. That's for a second. I honestly thought it was like a store with stolen goods on the
00:58:35
shelves where I'm like, well, people are going to go in there and recognize their stuff and get mad.
00:58:41
Not that brazen. About her business, Marm is a woman of few words, but one regular phrase of
00:58:46
hers cements itself in New Yorkers' minds, which is, quote, it takes brains to be a real lady.
00:58:52
Hey. Her husband, Wolf, on the other hand, is what New York City Police Chief George Washington
00:58:59
Wallings calls a non-entity, meaning it's clear that Marm is in charge of the fucking operation.
00:59:06
She seems quiet but brash. And he's kind of along for the ride. But he dies in 1875.
00:59:11
Marm wastes no time mourning her loss, but instead markets her business even further. She's like,
00:59:16
I'm on my own here now. Expanding her pool of customers, she visits synagogues, beer halls, and the Bowery's Eighth Ward Thieves Exchange, which is an entire flea market for
00:59:27
fencers where authorities tend to look the other way. Like, oh my God, take me there.
00:59:32
Oh my God. Please. If you had stuff stolen, you'd be so mad, but to go in there and actually be able
00:59:39
to shop and just be like, oh my God, I love this ring. The Instagram haul video that you would make
00:59:44
after that. It would be epic. The best. So she goes there and she establishes herself as a fencing
00:59:51
mainstay And soon Marm operation outgrows her little storefront and she has to lease out several warehouses across Manhattan Brooklyn Albany New York and Passaic New Jersey to store her goods That how much looting and thieving they doing
01:00:07
But also in this moment, should we maybe discuss the possibility that Marm is a hoarder
01:00:12
only because it's like, these items are hot. Get rid of it. Don't get a warehouse.
01:00:17
Have a fucking fire cell. Bring those prices down. Turnover. Do something. We want turnover.
01:00:23
Yeah, I know what you mean. Melt it down. I also couldn't tell exactly. I think they broke into houses and just stole all their shit.
01:00:29
I think it was more than pickpocketing. So I think there was actually a lot of stuff.
01:00:33
Okay. Like large items. I thought everything was pocket-sized. No, I think it's like looting.
01:00:39
Got you. Essentially. So the other thing she has to do, other than just get more customers, is make nice with the local police.
01:00:46
And that's exactly what she does. She not only makes friends with crooked cops, of course, bribing them to let her operations run freely,
01:00:53
but she also establishes friendly relationships with several judges at the Fifth District Court
01:00:58
and Tammany Hall politicians. So you know Tammany Hall back then. It's a faction of immigrant
01:01:05
Democrats, particularly Irish Catholics, who gained control of the party in New York in the
01:01:09
1850s. So there's all kinds of movies that you could watch involving Tammany Hall. I think Gangs
01:01:14
of New York. Gangs of New York, yeah. So the politicians tap Marm's influence to sway what
01:01:20
they really need, which is the local Jewish vote. So she's able to go around and like get everyone
01:01:28
to vote for them during election years and exchange. No one hassles her about her business.
01:01:33
Wow. So she's got clout. She often hosts lavish dinner parties for all her closest associates,
01:01:39
putting cops, crooks, and politicians together at the same table. Again, take me there. My God.
01:01:45
Make that movie, please. Ugh, the canopies. As Marm's business improves, so does the quality of her product.
01:01:52
She's no longer hawking things like scraps, you know, and hunks of coal. She's moving things like silk, like full fucking reams of silk and lace, diamonds, horses,
01:02:03
carriages, and all sorts of precious metals, all of which are stolen. She's careful to only handle one heist at a time with just a handful of crooks working
01:02:13
each job beneath her and she keeps her own hands clean, of course, as all good criminals do,
01:02:18
never doing any of the thieving herself. Yeah. She's the face of the business. Exactly.
01:02:23
She's the front. Right. But thieves aren't the only crooks working under Marm Mandelbaum. She
01:02:28
also got engravers to change stolen jewelry so they wouldn't be traceable anymore.
01:02:34
She gets handsome cab drivers to help her thieves make quick escapes from their heists
01:02:38
and powerful defense attorneys on retainer for five grand a year who fend off any and all theft
01:02:45
accusations that come her way. You want to guess five grand a year? Five grand a year in 1850 or
01:02:51
75? Around, yes, 60s, 70s. Now I'm trying to do math based on the last story, but is it
01:02:59
two million a year? It's 136,500. So no. Oh, that's not even close. No. It's way over. I've
01:03:07
gone way over. I just know lawyers are expensive. They are. Okay. Not to mention her own kids are
01:03:14
now teenagers. They accompany her during business deals to keep watch for undercover cops for the
01:03:20
few she isn't bribing. And then she hires this guy to be her muscle. His name's Herman Stoud,
01:03:26
who serves as security and handler. And I'm going to hope also her secret lover. That is totally
01:03:31
made up, but in my mind, that'd be great because she isn't that fucking old. And he moves purchase
01:03:37
goods as well around in the warehouses. So that's her little team. In 1880, after about 15 years of
01:03:44
fencing, Marm has thieves working for her in cities up and down the East Coast, even up through
01:03:48
Eastern Canada and into Mexico, moving product across state and county lines. She is such a pro
01:03:55
at recruiting and training thieves that she allegedly opens up an underground school teaching
01:04:01
the art to these little street urchins of pickpocketing, picking locks and burglary and
01:04:07
safe blowing teaches his kids these things. Holy shit. And for the smarter ones, she allegedly
01:04:13
teaches them about blackmail and confidence schemes as well. So she's got her little organization,
01:04:19
cherub faced, like, you know, dirty little kids. It's perfect. In the street. It is. Yes. Sophie
01:04:26
Lyons, who goes on to become one of the most infamous con women in American history. She even
01:04:30
trains her as a kid. Oh. And she is a feminist at heart. She takes special care to train women
01:04:36
thieves in particular because she's frustrated that so many women are, quote, wasting life being
01:04:42
housekeepers. So with her intricate network of these underlings helping her move millions of
01:04:48
dollars worth of stolen goods, Marm Frederica Mandelbaum establishes herself, according to
01:04:53
the New York Times in 1884, as, quote, the nucleus and center of the whole organization of crime
01:04:59
in New York City. Yeah. As such, it would only be a matter of time before someone tries to stop her, of course.
01:05:06
Yeah. So that time comes in the spring of 1884, when a cohort of disgruntled silk merchants
01:05:11
approach New York District Attorney Peter Olney. Marm's march-down prices are causing the legal merchants to lose as much as six grand a year
01:05:20
in revenue, which is equivalent to about $181,000 a year. And Marm's crimes, while nonviolent in nature, are still causing harm to honest business
01:05:29
people. So this is not the first time Peter Oldney has heard about Marm Mandelbaum, an anti-Tammany
01:05:36
Democrat. He's been battling Marm's Tammany political friends in the political sphere for
01:05:40
years. So he's super anti. He can't stand Marm and her operations, and he hates her influence over the
01:05:48
NYPD and their corruption. So he hires the renowned private detective agency, the Pinkertons,
01:05:54
Pinkertons Mm To try and take Mother Mandelbaum down So Pinkerton detective Gustav Frank is assigned the case He meets with a legitimate silk seller and expert and spends three weeks learning the
01:06:08
silk trade business, as well as how to identify top quality silk. Then he gets to work befriending a man on the inside, one of Marm's trusted thieves,
01:06:18
over a period of months. So this is like deep undercover for him. Yeah. So while Detective Frank is infiltrating Marm's inner circle as a silk trader naming himself Stein, other Pinkerton detectives are working with a local silk shop placing these like really discreet markers on bolts of silk. And that way, if any of Marm's thieves steal the shop silk, the detective will be able to identify it. And of course, as expected, her thieves steal the mark bolts.
01:06:45
So at this point, this detective Frank, under the name of Stein, convinces Marm to sell him 12,000 yards of silk.
01:06:54
And so on July 21st, 1884, she, as her standard procedure, waits until she has his payment in hand and then she gives him the silk, much of which has the secret markings on it.
01:07:05
She's screwed. It's enough evidence to earn authorities a search warrant on her store, which detective Frank serves her the next morning.
01:07:12
she's in her carriage right out front of the store when the man she thought she knew as stein
01:07:17
hands her the warrant and reveals his true identity and in a rage she shouts quote you
01:07:22
wretch you before punching detective frank in the face police search the store to find a wealth of stolen goods including silk jewelry precious
01:07:35
gems silverware fine clothing antique furniture and more the stash they find marvels one journalist
01:07:42
who comments, quote, it did not seem possible that so much wealth could be assembled in one spot.
01:07:47
So she was fucking rhyming and thieving. Kind of love it. I just would love to see the difference
01:07:52
between it's all that wealth. And then like, did she still just live in that apartment over her
01:07:56
fake shop, like keeping it real low key? Totally. I don't know about how she spent the money or what
01:08:03
she did with it, but sounds like she enjoyed her life. Well, and also it sounds like she
01:08:07
kept her cover well. Right. Right. So Marm Mandelbaum, her son, Julius Mandelbaum, and her
01:08:15
muscle, Herman Stout, are all placed under arrest for possession of stolen silk. Marm declares her
01:08:22
innocence. She denies any of it. She seems very offended that one would even say such a thing
01:08:27
about her. Right. That's what you do. That's the only move you have left when you get caught.
01:08:32
She posts bail for herself, her son, and her muscle. And her lawyers push the trial back as much as they can.
01:08:41
Meanwhile, because she's clearly at flight risk, Pinkerton detectives surveil her house around the clock.
01:08:46
But Marm outsmarts them. She has a member of her house staff dress up like her to fool the detectives.
01:08:53
And as they're following that lookalike, they slip away. And by the time the trial date rolls around,
01:08:59
Marm, Julius, and Herman have all made their escape. By December 5th, 1884, they end up
01:09:06
crossing the border into Canada. And because their crimes are not extraditable, extraditable? That's
01:09:13
a word. The NYPD are powerless. And unless they decide to return to the US on their own, there's
01:09:19
nothing the authorities can do to bring them back. Wow. Yeah. So Marm, Julius, and Herman
01:09:25
settle down in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. After that, Marm goes on to live an apparently crime-free
01:09:31
life in Hamilton, Ontario. She joins the local Jewish congregation, opens an honest law-abiding
01:09:38
hat shop. There's rumors about her maybe having some crime going on still, but there's no proof.
01:09:46
The biggest allegation, though, in her later life is that Marm manages to secretly return to the
01:09:50
United States one last time in 1885 to attend the funeral of her youngest daughter, Anna,
01:09:56
who was 18 when she died. She dons a disguise and alternating between train rides and a private carriage, she allegedly
01:10:04
slips back into New York for just a quick moment to watch the procession of her daughter's
01:10:10
funeral from afar. So she left her four kids behind and escaped. Yeah, she took one kid, the only other kid who was facing charges.
01:10:18
So the other kids were fine. You know what I mean? Oh, got it. So they could do that. Yeah.
01:10:22
Yeah. The story's unconfirmed, but what is confirmed is her undeniable level of success.
01:10:28
Throughout the entirety of her fencing career, Marm is said to have moved anywhere from 150 to 300 million in today's money.
01:10:38
Yep. Her lifetime take home profit is estimated at anywhere between 15 to 30 million in today's money.
01:10:47
Holy shit. So that's her take home. So hopefully she was living a little bit high life over in Canada.
01:10:53
You're up there with the curtains closed in your apartment above your shop, but inside it's just tiled in gold and diamonds.
01:11:00
Yeah. Opulence. It looks like Jeannie's bottle from I Dream of Jeannie. Yeah. In the Smithsonian article, it says one journalist puts it, she was the person who,
01:11:11
quote, first put crime in America on a syndicated basis. So she was the first one to like make it a fucking like a machine.
01:11:19
Yeah. Yeah. Using small children. Not great today. Not great. We don't love it. Interestingly, if you don't love that, then you shouldn't love the rollbacks of child labor laws that they're doing right now.
01:11:30
But that's right. I was going to say, unless there's something we don't know about.
01:11:35
And I actually now definitely want to read a book about this woman for sure to get all the details.
01:11:40
But like, it sounds like she did that without abusing the children. Like making them love her was what made that business go.
01:11:47
That's what the story goes. Yeah. And I hope it's true. I do too. Yeah. At age 69, Marm catches a long drawn out sickness that ultimately takes her life on February 26th, 1894.
01:12:00
Or although it is said that she faked her death and put rocks in the coffin. Like there is a rumor that that's not true, too, that she's fucking lived.
01:12:09
Yeah, that would make sense. So she could go back to New York. Yeah, because it says even though she dies a free woman, she allegedly passes away missing her life as a criminal legend in the Lower East Side.
01:12:20
Yeah. So maybe she faked it and fucking went back home. Who knows? She made it in New York City to the degree where she was running.
01:12:30
shit as a jewish immigrant woman in the fucking 1800s and widow and a widow yeah right unreal
01:12:37
unreal she must have had that sparkle in the eye oh i bet she did and that is the story of mother
01:12:44
mandelbaum wow full props to mother mandelbaum that's right it's like the oliver twist story
01:12:53
but the kids aren't abused or it's not bad. I just need it to be that. I need it to be the flip side.
01:13:01
And like, look, if you get mad at these people getting their stuff stolen, everyone had insurance back then.
01:13:05
Don't, you know, calm down. Right. You ensure your art and your antiques and your fucking horses I mean there just a big warehouse in Passaic that got a horse in it That I love that idea Well can move that right now Just put it out
01:13:21
in Passaic. Yeah, let's die. It's first so that you can't tell whose horse it is. Well, we did it
01:13:29
again. We really did. That was a delightful episode. I find I feel I feel the same way.
01:13:35
send us your story suggestions at myfavoritemurder.com or your hometowns. We always
01:13:40
love your hometowns, whatever they may be. We love your hometowns for sure. Yeah. Any story,
01:13:43
if you know about a, an anti-hero, an inspiring story, is that even possible? A true crime story
01:13:50
that's got a little kick on the side of inspiration. I don't know what I'm saying.
01:13:56
We love a kicky story. What am I saying? I don't know. It's raining really bad. So it's not your
01:14:00
fault. We love a kicky story. It's all I've ever wanted to say. Why won't you let me say it?
01:14:06
It's raining. Let us do what we want. We're in Los Angeles. Let us stay sexy. And don't get murdered.
01:14:13
Come on. Elvis, do you want a cookie? This has been an Exactly Right production Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck Our managing producer is Hannah Kyle Creighton Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo This episode was mixed by Liana Squalache
01:14:35
Our researchers are Maren McClashen and Allie Elkin. Email your hometowns to myfavoritemurder at gmail.com.
01:14:41
Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at myfavoritemurder and Twitter at myfavemurder.
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