00:00:10
[music] [music] Welcome to True Crime Garage. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, thanks
00:00:43
for listening. I'm your host, Nick, and with me as always is a man who looks at life through the inside of a
00:00:49
kaleidoscope. Here is the captain. [music] >> Unadjusted kaleidoscope. It's good to be
00:00:54
seen and good to see you. Thanks for listening. [music] Thanks for telling a friend.
00:01:00
>> This week in the garage, we are very excited to be featuring Graffiti Highway
00:01:05
Double IPA by the good folks over at Trogues Independent Brewing. This hazy golden double IPA zigzags its way
00:01:14
through citrusy and tropical aromomas. with four varieties of hops. This is not a red stop [music] light and go drive,
00:01:23
but a roll down the windows and punch it adventure. [music] ABV 9.5% garage grade four and a quarter bottle
00:01:32
caps out of five. And let's give some thanks and praise to our good friends that are helping us drive the garage
00:01:38
this week. First up, a [music] big cheers to Rachel in Lehi Valley, Pennsylvania. And a big we like your jib
00:01:44
goes out to Kelly Green in Austin, Texas. >> Next, here's a cheers to Ally in Madison, Wisconsin. And let's stay in
00:01:53
Madison, Wisconsin for a doublefisted cheers. We got Justin and Lori and Madison. Everyone we just mentioned,
00:02:00
they went to trimegar.com, clicked on the pint glass, and helped us out [music] with this week's beer fund
00:02:07
for the beer run. And for that, we thank you. >> Yeah. BW beer [music] run. You need more
00:02:13
True Crime Garage for your earballs. You need us to tickle your earballs. Check out our [music] bonus show, Off the
00:02:20
Record, on Patreon and Apple Podcast subscription. And that's enough of the [music] business. All right, everybody.
00:02:27
Gather around, grab a chair, grab a beer. Let's talk some true crime. [music] >> [music]
00:02:52
[music] >> We have talked many times on this show about studying and discussing serial
00:03:02
killers. There is a deepseated need in many of us coded in our DNA to not just possess the ability to recognize evil
00:03:12
but to attempt to understand the dark side of human nature. People have a natural morbid curiosity
00:03:21
to understand the monster. What drives an individual to commit such extreme acts of violence?
00:03:30
Halloween is the season when we let the monster out. In fact, society encourages
00:03:37
the monsters to come out. And in some circles and at themed events, the monsters are celebrated.
00:03:46
But not here. Not on this show. While we will be celebrating together in the garage for Halloween, we know the only
00:03:55
time to celebrate the monsters is when they are defeated and when good triumphs over evil.
00:04:04
This is True Crime Garage. [music] [music] >> [music] >> So this week we thought we would hit the
00:04:30
road and briefly visit some of the [music] old serial killer haunts. So we will be talking about some horrific
00:04:36
killers, some well-known, others not so much. For our first stop, Captain, let's
00:04:41
go to a place that we both were very recently hanging out with fellow podcasters and having some late night
00:04:48
drinks with some of the beautiful listeners. We were in Denver, Colorado, home of the 2025
00:04:56
Crime Con. So, our first serial killer is one of our lessernown subjects of the week. Vincent Groves, who reportedly was
00:05:05
an excellent basketball player in high school, grew up in a middleclass suburb of Denver. He is said to be a hawking
00:05:13
athlete who helped to lead his high school basketball team to the state championship game in 1972.
00:05:22
Then he went off to co- college in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. But that didn't last too long as he dropped out in 1974 and
00:05:30
returned home to live with his grandmother. Now he had a successful job as an electrician. This was with the
00:05:38
Gates Rubber Company. But apparently here, Captain Groves had two hobbies. One, drinking a lot and two, hanging out
00:05:48
with sex workers. It's believed that his many hours and days spent in the red light district led him to a criminal
00:05:56
lifestyle. It's reported that Groves hung out in Lo, short for Denver's lower downtown district. A young woman who
00:06:05
Groves was associated with, her name is Janette Becca. She goes missing and before too long,
00:06:12
her naked body is found in the woods in Jefferson County, Colorado. This is in June of 1978.
00:06:21
A few months after the body is found, Vincent Groves moved in with 21-year-old Norma Jean Halford. Normma Jean's car
00:06:30
was found abandoned on a mountain road outside of Georgetown, Colorado on August 24th, 1979. The 21-year-old woman
00:06:41
norm has not been heard from nor seen since. And it's been 46 years now. Captain.
00:06:51
>> Wow. >> So, somebody he associated with turns up dead. They find her in the woods and
00:06:57
then a woman that he is living with ends up missing. He's on somebody's radar at
00:07:04
this time. For what? It's difficult to say because he is out walking around. He's still working his job and he's
00:07:11
still up to his funny business in the red light district and his criminal behaviors and actions. This is when
00:07:19
Vincent Groves meets and then later marries a woman. Her name is Janet Hill, but not Janet's best moment, I am sure,
00:07:28
because the two are married for just five months when this goes down. This is from the October
00:07:37
2012 5280 magazine in a fantastic article by Robert Sanchez titled Chasing a Ghost. In part, it
00:07:48
reads, "By the summer of 1981, Vincent Groves and his wife Janet Hill were arguing frequently. on August 14th,
00:07:59
1981. >> You'd think the majority of the serial killers we talked about never found
00:08:04
somebody to marry, but it seems like most of them do. So, if you're single, just remember there's somebody out there
00:08:12
for everybody. Yes, that's true, Captain. As we said, by this point, Janet Hill and Vincent Grove's husband
00:08:19
and wife are arguing frequently. On August 14th, 1981, so the couple's fighting again. Nothing
00:08:27
new here. This time they're fighting about a fishing trip. Vincent Groves planned to take a fishing trip with two
00:08:34
friends and their 17-year-old daughter. Her name is Tammy Sue Woodram. Groves was taking a camper which he had
00:08:43
attached to the bed of a pickup truck that was parked outside of the couple's home. Janet Hill, his wife, is pleading
00:08:51
with him to allow her to go along on this trip, but Vincent Groves refuse refuses to bring her. He wants to go
00:09:01
solo, so he grabs the keys to the truck and he says he'd be back. He takes off for this fishing trip. The next morning,
00:09:09
Janet Hill is homesick from work when Vincent Groves appeared at their home. He says he had something to tell her,
00:09:18
but he wouldn't do it there. He says that he needed to tell her this in the mountains.
00:09:25
>> Yeah. No thanks. >> So, she wants to know, did he have sex with the teenage girl? Was their
00:09:30
marriage over? Janet Hill walked outside and waited for an explanation. Vincent Groves told her to get in the pickup,
00:09:38
which was still connected to the camper. She complies. Groves starts the engine and pulls off. They go off driving. He's
00:09:47
silent as they drove toward the foothills of the mountains. He finally made a turn into a meandering country
00:09:55
road. This is near the town of Deckers. By then, it seemed to Janet Hill they'd been driving forever.
00:10:03
Somewhere outside of the town, Groves finally began to speak. And then he started to cry.
00:10:11
The fishing trip with the friends was in fact true, he told Hill. But first, he decided to pick up the teenager Woodram
00:10:21
and the two went to Boulder, Colorado to score some cocaine party. When they had
00:10:27
gotten the stash, they drove toward Frasier. So, this is about 90 miles away. They pulled off the road. One
00:10:34
thing led to another. Grove said the girl started shooting up, but she couldn't handle it. something had gone
00:10:41
wrong. Groves is sobbing and crying and he says that the 17-year-old girl, she had overdosed and she was dead. Janet
00:10:51
Hill says she wanted to jump out of the truck and run. The girl, where was the girl? She wanted to know. Vincent Groves
00:11:01
looked at his wife and said the teenager's body was still in the camper. Now, at his
00:11:08
wife's urging, Vincent Groves turned himself into the Lakewood Police Department and
00:11:16
eventually was was actually convicted of secondderee murder after his Tammy Sue Woodroom drug overdose story fell apart.
00:11:28
So, the way that this works here, Captain, he tells police the same story or very similar story that he told his
00:11:36
wife, but the forensic evidence here showed that Tammy Sue Woodram had been beaten, raped, and strangled.
00:11:45
In court, at his trial, evidence proved that the victim was drugfree. No drugs in her system when she was killed. So,
00:11:54
his story carries no weight at all. plus all the injuries and the assaults that they could prove happened prior and
00:12:04
during her death. Prosecutors showed marks on the teenager's skin matched with that matched up with Vincent
00:12:12
Groves's belt. So, Groves is sentenced to 12 years in prison in the summer of 1982.
00:12:20
Needless to say, Janet Hill divorced him. Groves, however, and we hear this so many times
00:12:30
in these kinds of stories, Groves was a model prisoner. He taught classes. He took classes.
00:12:38
>> Couldn't behave in [clears throat] the real world, but can be a model person behind bars.
00:12:44
>> Well, it's amazing when you're doing all kinds of hardcore drugs what you may get
00:12:49
into. And all of a sudden, when those no longer are available to you, it's easy to step in line no matter how evil you
00:12:56
may be when you're fuel fueling the fire with substance abuse. Right? So, because
00:13:04
he's a model prisoner, lucky for you, Colorado Groves received an early parole. So, on February 13th, 1987, Groves was
00:13:15
released from prison. He had served just five years, just five years for raping and killing an innocent 17-year-old
00:13:25
girl. One that he knew, right? He knew the parents nonetheless. Sorry that I understand it
00:13:32
was a different time period, but that is just far too soft on violent crime for this garage guy. by September of 1988.
00:13:44
Okay, so he's been out what, a year and a half approximately. Let's say a year and 7 months by this point. He's back on
00:13:53
the radar of detectives and police once again. Now, I hope you're seated here, Captain, because Vincent Groves in
00:14:01
September of 1988, one year, 7 months after being released, he's a suspect in the murders of more
00:14:09
than 20 Denver girls. Jesus Christ. Of whom had been strangled. The investigators found that Vincent Groves
00:14:18
was familiar with many of these victims. Maybe they couldn't prove all, but familiar and knew and had some
00:14:28
association with some of these victims. And he was the last person seen with the
00:14:35
victims in some of these cases. >> Right. >> Results from a DNA test linked Vincent
00:14:41
Groves to the murder of 19-year-old Wanita Lavoda, whose naked body was found in April of 1988 in a rural area
00:14:51
east of Denver. and 25-year-old Diane Mansera, whose body was found in neighboring Adams County near Interstate
00:15:01
25. This is west of Denver. He was convicted of both and received a life sentence for one of the murders and a
00:15:09
20-year sentence for the other. If you're going to do the math on this these new convictions compared to the
00:15:16
old murder that he was in for, what what do we think he'll get here? About 17 years. So thankfully that doesn't appear
00:15:24
to be the case. At the trials, prosecutors provided evidence that Vincent Groves likely had involvement in
00:15:31
eight other murders in the Denver area. So they did this using testimony from witnesses and other persons there and
00:15:40
other evidence that placed Vincent as the last person seen with the victims before they were found dead or having
00:15:49
disappeared. poof, gone forever. Now, keep in mind, even though they presented that evidence and that testimonies at
00:15:59
that trial, these weren't charging allegations, right? He there were no new charges that were actually brought
00:16:07
against him. I think they were just kind of piling on for the sake of the jury and in hopes to really push to get a
00:16:15
much needed conviction and get this guy locked up. you kind of dropped the ball the first time when you left let him out
00:16:22
too early. This is the type though to me I don't know I don't know if it matters
00:16:28
when you let him out if he falls back into the drugs. It appears that he's going to fall back into the sexual
00:16:34
assaults and murder that that we know he was not just capable of but certainly guilty of on several several counts.
00:16:44
>> Yeah. It's almost like the drugs unleashed all his demons. >> A little bit of good news here in the
00:16:50
story. In the early 1990s, Vincent Groves began to have pretty severe health problems. So, for much of his
00:16:58
adult life, when he's outside of prison walls, Groves was known to deal cocaine,
00:17:05
crack, and other drugs, he was very much using everything that he was pushing. Now, here's a news flash for the 6:00
00:17:14
hour. You can't continually use hardcore drugs with without it having hardcore effects on your body, right? So, Groves
00:17:22
is diagnosed with hepatitis C and liver failure from which he died on October 31st,
00:17:32
Halloween, 1996 inside of a prison hospital near the city of Denver, Colorado, >> and nobody cried.
00:17:43
>> Well, you're right. I I don't think anybody cried, but if there were people to cry, it might be the detectives. It
00:17:51
might be some family members of other victims that were yet to be definitively linked to this serial killer. So, when
00:18:02
Vincent Groves was dying, he's in the process of dying. Detectives went to talk to him to see whether they would be
00:18:08
able to solve the mystery of the fate of many other women associated with him or
00:18:14
who they believe may have fallen victim to this monster. Right. So, shortly before his death, Captain Groves is
00:18:24
asked, like they're trying to pull a confession out of him, begging him, asked to confess to other murders, but
00:18:31
he's such a nice guy that he refuses to do so. So, he passes away. They suspected him of many more murders. Now,
00:18:40
Vincent Groves's DNA was not in a national database, but the Lakewood Police Department's cold case unit
00:18:49
actually had Vincent Groves's DNA on file. This back from their 1981 Tammy Sue Woodram murder that they
00:19:00
convicted him on. So, they have his DNA on this murder that they know he did. He's convicted of it. He spent time in
00:19:08
prison for it. Not enough, but he was there. That DNA helped posumously link Vincent Groves to the slayings of Emma
00:19:20
Jennifer, age 25, Joyce Remy, age 23, and Peggy Cuff, age 20. All who were found strangled dead in
00:19:32
1979. So these murders occurred before they got him for the Tammy Sue Woodram murder. Also,
00:19:42
they found witnesses. So now they have witness accounts tied to Vincent Groves. They're tying him to the 1988 killing of
00:19:53
Pamela Montgomery, age 35. So they get multiple witnesses saying this is kind of a before and after here.
00:20:04
and you don't want to be witnessed doing either one of these things. So Pamela was last seen by a credible witness with
00:20:12
Vincent Groves before her time of death, shortly before her time of death. And then later
00:20:20
there's another credible witness who saw her body dumped in an alley from a car that matched Vincent Groves's car. So,
00:20:30
the second witness never sees Groves or can't identify Groves, however, can identify Yeah. can't identify his
00:20:38
vehicle. And look, you you put those two things together there and it puts him on
00:20:44
a short list. Such a short list that that it has to be him. I mean, I couldn't imagine who else would fall
00:20:50
onto that list. And here's the thing, he's an easily distinguishable guy. So, at 6'5 in tall and close to 230 lb, the
00:21:02
former athlete made for one big powerful predator. Quote, "He was in a position to use his
00:21:11
size against most women, said Denver police cold case detective Mileus Yearling."
00:21:17
Yearling, who went on to tell the LA Times that even though Groves is dead, solving the cases has helped give his
00:21:27
victim's families closure. Quote, "They're surprised that we're contacting them." And then they're grateful that
00:21:35
the cases have been solved." End quote. Then we have Denver District Attorney Mitch Moresy. He said of Vincent Groves,
00:21:43
quote, "In my 30 years experience, he is the worst homegrown serial murderer." End quote. Morsy said investigators have
00:21:51
circumstantial evidence linking Groves to up to 26 additional homicides. He has contacted authorities elsewhere in the
00:22:01
state of Colorado to make sure Groves's DNA profile is available for further investigations.
00:22:09
So, while cold case detectives and the DAs were chasing a ghost, as the 5280 magazine put it, I like to think of it
00:22:19
as the ghost of some of the victims led the investigators to where they needed to go to find the killer. One more thing
00:22:30
from the Denver District Attorney, Mitch Morsy, he said, quote, "This man destroyed lives. He destroyed families.
00:22:38
We figured that he was killing two women a month. He was maybe the most prolific
00:22:44
serial killer in the state of Colorado. I believe we'll link him to more. End quote. Well, some of these serial
00:22:51
killers are not intimidating by their physical stature. But when the fight is on, they have a rage and a sickness that
00:23:01
it's hard to compete. It's hard for the victims to fight off that kind of vicious attack, but here you have an
00:23:10
individual that is intimidating physically and like you said athletic background.
00:23:20
So with that athleticism plus his rage and plus the sickness, a lot of people felt fell victim to his evil ways.
00:23:32
>> And the fuel on the fire in a lot of these cases is probably the drugs, too, right?
00:23:38
Because cocaine and crack are not the kind of drugs where you're like, "Oh, let's do some cocaine and then read a
00:23:44
nice book under a tree and take a nap." No, this is this is uh if if you're a raging homicidal maniac like this guy,
00:23:53
this is a a recipe for for as we can see here, not just disaster, but but pure pure evil. And then not even
00:24:04
the willingness to confess to one, two, or or any murders on on his deathbed. All right. Trick or treat here, Captain.
00:24:15
Mhm. >> Choose. >> I'll go with trick. >> Okay. A riddle. >> Mhm. >> I go all around the world but never
00:24:27
leave the corner. What am I? >> Sounds S sounds like the captain in the garage. [laughter]
00:24:34
>> I am a postage stamp. A stamp can travel all around the world on an envelope, but
00:24:39
always remains in the corner of the envelope that it is on. But I'll give I'll give a treat for you and for the
00:24:46
listeners too, just for playing along. We mentioned Lodo in Denver. >> Yeah. >> When Vincent Groves ran there, it was a
00:24:54
rough rough area. So, originally officially known as the Union Station neighborhood until the Denver Post
00:25:04
writer Dick Crek first referred to it as Lo in 1983 in a column that he wrote and he
00:25:14
was referring to lower downtown Denver. And I wanted to give Lodo its props because while when Groves was running
00:25:23
the streets of Lodo, it sounds like a pretty nasty, terrible place. >> Yeah, sounds like my kind of place.
00:25:30
>> Well, lower downtown Denver has become a national model of how a decaying city
00:25:37
neighborhood can be converted into a thriving residential, retail, and recreational district. So people that
00:25:45
live in this area or have visited there know that this is the Kors Field area. So if you are there, my treat to you is
00:25:55
to go to the Cherry Cricut. It is an amazing place for food, drinks, and sports. Get the 983 Big Cheesy Burger.
00:26:04
This was the 2022 people's choice winning burger. The Cherry Cricket has had six first place Denver burger battle
00:26:14
winners. [music] [music] All right, we are back. Talk hands in the air. Cheers to you and thanks for
00:26:38
liking and subscribing to the podcast. Cheers to you, Colonel. >> Cheers to you, Captain. We We continue
00:26:45
to get positive reviews on iTunes and on other platforms, too. I keep I keep thinking that's going to stop someday,
00:26:52
but uh No, the listeners are hard negative ones from time to time. >> Yeah, [snorts] cuz we do. But our
00:26:58
listeners are warriors, right? We got a we got a whole army of warriors out there who you got to fight for your
00:27:04
right to garage and they do. All right, Captain. Cheers to the people in the back. Cheers to everybody out there in
00:27:10
listener land. Cheers to all the folks. You know, maybe you're listening to this
00:27:14
after you just took your kids out for beggars night and you just need to wind down on the back porch or in the garage
00:27:19
with a beer. We hope that we are doing that beer and your earballs some justice here tonight. So, we started off
00:27:29
westerly on our Beggars's Night adventure. Let's move easterly. We'll go to Planefield, Wisconsin.
00:27:39
[snorts] >> So, true crime author Johnny Trevani encouraged us to use some pages from a
00:27:48
couple of chapters. He is the writer of the recently released book, The Serial Killer Travel Guide Across America: Your
00:27:55
Coast to Coast Tour of Terror, which is the inspiration for this garage episode.
00:28:02
So, from Planefield, Wisconsin, you know where we are going because if true crime
00:28:08
were a town, well, then this disgusting, pathetic little man would be the talk of
00:28:15
said town. Edward Theodore Gene, the butcher of Planefield. Some say the ghoul of Planefield. I say serial killer
00:28:25
and body snatcher. Now that's a hobby that you don't see too often anymore. Some good
00:28:31
old-fashioned body snatching. >> Well, he was also a creative type. He liked to make furniture and clothing
00:28:38
items. >> Oh, yeah. He wasn't just sitting around doing nothing. He He [clears throat] was
00:28:43
He was busy. He was very busy. All right. from the book The Serial Killer Travel Guide across America. Here we go.
00:28:52
Ed Gene aka the Planefield Ghoul Kills two plus. His span of activities according to Johnny's book is 1944 to
00:29:03
1957. We should point out that beyond the body snatching, the grave digging, the grave robbery,
00:29:10
and the two murders, he's suspected of all kinds of other stuff. and and his shenanigans were so out there and crazy
00:29:21
and weird that I I think it's kind of difficult to get get a great idea of everything that he may have done and and
00:29:29
maybe some of that goes to his much debated level of psychosis. So from the book here it reads Gene Ed Gene
00:29:39
aka the planefield ghoul was born in Lacrosse County, Wisconsin. and his parents eventually purchased a farm in
00:29:46
Planefield. The family moved to the farm to prevent outsiders from influencing their sons, which was in retrospect a
00:29:55
shitty idea. He needed some outside influences. Ed Gene left the farm only to go to school. His mother preached to
00:30:02
her boys about how immoral the world was and that all women except for her were nothing but [ __ ] While Gene was an
00:30:12
awkward child, often laughing to himself for no reason, his awkwardness did not matter a whole lot as his mother didn't
00:30:20
allow him to have friends. Anyway, Gan's father died in 1940 from heart failure.
00:30:27
And in 1944, a brush fire occurred near the farm. And Ed's brother, his brother went to try to put out this fire. And
00:30:37
later Ed Geen reported to the police that his brother was missing. They organized a search party and Ed Gene led
00:30:44
them directly to his missing brother who laid dead with bruises on his head. The
00:30:49
whole my brother is missing. Oh, and there's the body vibe caused investigators to believe that possibly
00:30:55
Ed Gene had killed his sibling, but was never charged. That's something if you go back way in the garage archives to
00:31:04
episode I believe it was episode 49. This was back when we were still learning how to turn on a microphone. We
00:31:12
covered Ed Gene's case. >> Well, we knew how to turn them on. We just didn't know which direction to talk
00:31:18
into them. >> Didn't know how to turn them off apparently either because we've done
00:31:21
about 800 episodes since. >> Yeah. We talked about this and and I feel like when we when we were talking
00:31:28
about this portion of the Gene story that this part might have been a little lesser known or or less reported at the
00:31:35
time and and one that was a bit of a shocker for me I recall when when discovering this little tidbit of
00:31:43
information. But after his brother's death, Ed Geen lived alone with his mother who eventually died in December
00:31:50
of 1945. And then after that, Ed Gene is going to live on the farm all alone in that house. And that's when, as the
00:32:00
captain put it, little Eddie got creative. Well, Ed is very hard to research because I believe his the
00:32:09
legend of Ed Gene is probably bigger than the actual facts of Edge Gene. >> Agreed.
00:32:17
>> And the different individuals or the different movies and characters that his legend inspired then become
00:32:29
basically amplification to the legend of Ed Gene. >> The book continues on. It says in 1957,
00:32:37
Planefield Hardware store owner Bernice Warden disappeared. Edge Gene was known to be the last person who was in the
00:32:44
store before she vanished. So, the cops decided to talk to him. When police searched Ed Gin's property, they found
00:32:52
her decapitated body in a shed hung upside down. Her torso was quote dressed like a deer. It's shocking to me. Okay,
00:33:03
so we're talking about some old cases here when it comes to the Ed Gene story. Yeah,
00:33:10
>> it's really shocking to me that some of the books that discuss him either in short form or long form talking about a
00:33:20
smattering of serial killers or just focused in on Ed Gene solo. I'm shocked this picture is somewhat readily
00:33:28
available of this upside down decapitated naked body who's dressed like a deer basically split down the
00:33:37
middle. I don't want to go into too much of a description there, but it's readily
00:33:42
available enough to the point that, you know, the the bookshelves sitting behind
00:33:47
me right now when when we have company over, especially if they have small children, these doors are shut. These
00:33:55
doors are shut because it's images like that that I do not want somebody to stumble upon because you cannot you
00:34:02
cannot unsee that. Well, I'm going to say something and I hope it doesn't come off
00:34:08
insensitive, but I think one of the pieces of the equation of Edge Gene is that he lived
00:34:15
on a farm and that he came from a family of farmers. So, I think some of the actions towards these victims or slash
00:34:29
just bodies, which you could argue is a victimization of a dead person that shouldn't have been dug up like Ed did.
00:34:38
>> Mhm. >> But a lot of these things that we see, he would basically treating these
00:34:44
victims as animals. And you would see that, you know, in farmers, especially back in the day, using every piece of
00:34:52
these animals for their own survival. >> So, and this list may vary depending on
00:34:59
where you go, and I think that there's I kind of hesitate to report this list because, like I said, I've seen it. If
00:35:04
you go to four or five different sources, you're going to see a slightly different versions of this this list
00:35:12
according to what police found when they searched his home, searched the farm, the the garage, the shed. But
00:35:20
according to the serial killer travel guide across America, it says here, "After searching the house, police found
00:35:28
four noses, human bones and fragments, nine masks of human skin, bowls made from human skulls, 10 female
00:35:39
heads with the tops sewn off, human skin covering several chairs, the head of a woman named Mary Hogan in a paper bag.
00:35:50
Bernice Warden's head in a burlap sack. Nine vulvas in a shoe box. Skulls on his
00:35:57
bed post. Organs in the refrigerator. A pair of lips on a drawstring for a window shade. A belt made of human
00:36:07
female nipples. A lampshade made from the skin of a human face. So he had told investigators that over the years he had
00:36:16
gone to graveyards dozens of times to exume recently buried females female bodies and then brought the bodies home
00:36:27
where he's doing these activities here. So I want to go to let's jump from the travel guide here. Next captain let's go
00:36:36
to the late great Martin Phto. Not sure how many of our fellow American listeners will know Phto, but I would
00:36:44
bet that many of our wonderful UK listeners will know of him. Martin Phto was a brilliant professor, a great true
00:36:52
crime writer of several books and a brilliant ripperologist. Phto penned many wonderful biographies,
00:36:59
but it is his work, it is from his work for his 1986 book, Murder Guide to London, that after he studied the
00:37:08
memoirs of senior Scotland Yard officials like Sir Robert Anderson, that we learned that police suspected that
00:37:17
the ripper was a poor Polish Jew. Their words, please. and we start to learn about contemporary suspects like
00:37:25
Cosminsky, Aaron Cosminsky, and then later David Cohen. One of Phto's books, which was one of my first true crime
00:37:35
books, uh this was from 1993. It's titled The Chronicle of Crime, the infamous villains of modern history and
00:37:44
their hideous crimes. In this book, Phto grabs a snippet of a major crime, something reported nationwide and
00:37:53
worldwide. And these from all around the war world, these stories and of the time
00:37:59
period, the book covers both the 19th and the 20th centuries. So the headline that he put 1957
00:38:10
for the gain arrest is farmer crossdressed in dead women's skins. And then it has a it has a
00:38:22
similar list of what we just covered of of an inventory of what was found on the
00:38:28
farm or in the house. And phto goes on to write, "When questioned, Ed admitted to digging up the bodies of numerous
00:38:35
women from the cemetery to assemble his collection, and in addition to Mrs. Warden, he had killed bar proprietor
00:38:46
Mary Hogan in 1954." >> Yeah. Now, I guess at the time in 54, her disappearance had been put down as a
00:38:55
possible possibly connected to her connections with the Chicago underworld. So, it
00:39:01
doesn't sound like Gene was at the top of the list of suspects, but if I recall correctly, he was somebody that was
00:39:08
mentioned because I think somebody had either seen him going in to the bar or leaving the bar.
00:39:13
>> They saw his truck outside. >> Yeah. And it phto goes on to write, "Ed ate parts of his corpses. Weirdest of
00:39:20
all, at full moon, he liked to dance, dressed up as a woman in mask, wig, waste coat, and greavves with a vulva
00:39:31
held to him by panties. Sheriff's officers wondered with a shudder as they explored
00:39:40
the half of the house Ed had sealed up. These rooms turned out to be those inhabited by his puritanical mother,
00:39:51
preserved exactly as they had been at the time of her death. Then people realized that Mrs. Hogan and Mrs. Warden
00:39:58
slightly resembled the late Mrs. Gene, who had always taught Ed that women were bad and sex was wicked. Ed has been sent
00:40:08
straight to the lunatic asylum without anyone pausing to consider a trial. >> I believe these are the only two
00:40:15
killings that he ever confessed to. But like you said, we believe he's responsible for the death of his brother
00:40:25
and possibly many others. But when they find these victims that he dug up that weren't victims of his murder, but
00:40:36
victims of his grave robbery, I think that's where it got very convoluted for investigators to decipher what he was
00:40:45
responsible and what he wasn't responsible for. >> Yeah. And the one thing that's great
00:40:49
about this book, The Chronicle of Crime, there's often a picture that is typically grabbed from a
00:40:57
newspaper, but there is a picture here of Ed Gene, and he's he's wearing a flannel hat. He looks like your typical
00:41:05
Wisconsin farmer of that time period. He's the police were nice enough to let him put on a jacket and gloves. Um,
00:41:13
yeah, and he just looks like your your kind of your regular Joe. He comes from such a small town that I think everybody
00:41:19
tried to be nice to everybody. And even though he was a little bit of the town weirdo,
00:41:27
>> I think he was >> Yes. But I think he was nice and polite to people. So that's where law
00:41:35
enforcement wasn't really suspicious of all the activities he was doing. And also he's out on the farm and if you
00:41:42
just don't have visitors then there's no way of people knowing in a lot of these
00:41:47
farms it's just not common place to just pop on the property and start looking around.
00:41:53
>> Well and you're exactly right and he was even polite with the police and he like
00:41:57
we said he's kind of the local oddball and don't you hear that? It's like, oh, yeah, he's he's weird, but he's
00:42:04
harmless. And I think that's what everybody kind of considered Ed to be for most of his life until they his
00:42:11
mother passes away and then they find out that he's been killing women and he's got all this horrific stuff in his
00:42:20
house and farm. Now, I do want to jump real quick to this is from Mary Brett's book titled Out of the Mouth of Serial
00:42:28
Killers. This is pageuh 139 here and she's talking about Ed Gene here and these are some of the things
00:42:37
that he said. So regarding the Bernice Warden's murder or murderer I should say when he is questioned by police, Ed
00:42:47
Gan's response is quote, "It must have been someone pretty cold-blooded that had committed that murder in Ed's
00:42:53
opinion." And then when he's asked about the missing woman, Mary Hogan, which we
00:43:00
would ultimately learn is likely his first victim, he says, quote, "She isn't missing. She's at the farm right now."
00:43:08
End quote. So he he's not going way out of his way to try to hide the facts of of the case. And and I guess why would
00:43:18
he? regardless of what you think his state of mind is. I mean, they're finding the evidence, plain and simple,
00:43:25
right there on his farm in his house. And then I'll I'll go to one more book for Ed Gene here, Captain. This one's by
00:43:33
Paul Anthony Woods titled Ed Gene Psycho. Now, this is this is unbelievable. This is from the very back
00:43:42
of the book here. >> Go for it. >> Unbelievable. I can't I this will never make any sense to me in in any context
00:43:50
at all, but there is according to his book Edge Gene Psycho, there is an Edge Gene fan club, an Edge Gene fan club. So
00:43:59
you can get a certificate of membership which is a certificate with your name on
00:44:05
it that says that this certifies that blank let's say the captain this certifies that the captain is a member
00:44:11
in good standing of the official international Edge Gene fan club and has been registered as an official member
00:44:18
entitled to all membership benefits. I have no idea what those benefits would be, but one apparently is this
00:44:24
certificate of membership and then it's dated and then it would be signed by the
00:44:29
president of the official international Edge Gene fan club. There was a limited edition t-shirt. This is Gallery of
00:44:38
Horror and it has Ed Gan's picture on it and there's also buttons and stickers and all those kinds of things. And we're
00:44:48
not going to go to this city or state on our little adventure here this week, but
00:44:53
the mailing address for the Edge Gene fan club is out of Tempe, Arizona. >> Wow.
00:44:59
>> What's up, Tempe? What are you doing? What are you doing? Now, >> don't blame Tempe for this club.
00:45:06
>> Just one person in Tempe. Um, >> and who wants to wear a shirt with Ed's ugly mug on it?
00:45:15
>> You know what I mean? Like that's kind of bizarre. Let's put a ugly man's face on
00:45:21
my t-shirt. >> Yeah. But again, the the legend of Ed is going to keep growing because the amount
00:45:29
of fabrications and just blatant lies that this Ryan Murphy project, the Edge Gene monster on
00:45:38
Netflix, people are going to watch this eight-part series and think that this is
00:45:45
somewhat factual because I think some people go, "Well, it's about a real person, So, it has to be based on facts
00:45:56
just like a documentary. And it's not. And there's a whole there's a whole thing towards the end where he's in
00:46:05
communication with Richard Speck, another serial killer. And what the show is claiming is Richard Speck was in
00:46:13
contact with Ted Bundy before some of the Ted Bundy murders. And then it h then it shows Ed talking to the FBI
00:46:26
saying, "Hey, I think uh this guy you should look into is this guy probably goes by the name Ted. Probably drives a
00:46:32
Volkswagen Beetle and he's being he's been in correspondence with Richard Spec." And so when they caught Bundy as
00:46:41
a part of the Monster series, it shows Ed going, "Hey, I did something good in this world." But we there's no evidence
00:46:49
that Ted Bundy wrote Richard Speck. And we have no evidence that Richard Speck even wrote Ed Gene.
00:46:57
>> Yes, that's that's [snorts] absolutely correct. And we would have to believe there's every reason to believe that all
00:47:06
of that mail would have been very meticulously meticulously monitored. So the one thing that always will stick
00:47:17
with me with Ed Gene, not just that picture that I had mentioned of the victim hanging in the shed, you can't
00:47:23
unsee that. But one thing that is unfortunately tattooed on my brain having read about him as as a youngster
00:47:31
is the portion of the story where they say that he would dress up in these skin suits or portions of these skin suits
00:47:38
and and dance in the moonlight or dance in the graveyard at night in the pitch black or so for for now because for most
00:47:47
of my life having read that when I was young anytime there's a song that mentions you know dancing dancing in the
00:47:54
moonlight or Dance by the Light of the Moon. There's a whole bunch of them that >> Moon Dancer. There's all kinds of songs
00:48:01
that are that are like that. My freaking [snorts] brain goes to an image of like a
00:48:09
silhouette shadow figure of Gene dressed in skin suit or as a woman dancing in the graveyard or or with the
00:48:20
with the big moon right in front of him. it like I cannot I don't know if there's
00:48:26
enough beer in this garage to get that that out of my head for some reason. But anytime from that day on to this day,
00:48:35
that's what I think of when there's a there's a moon dance song that I hear. >> Well, like you said, um this image, a
00:48:42
real life image you won't ever be able to get out of your head. Well, the eight-part Netflix
00:48:49
docu [clears throat] The eight-part Netflix monster Ed Gene series has probably a
00:48:56
thousand images I'll never be able to get out of my head >> and eight episodes that I'll probably
00:49:01
never be able to get off of my Netflix app. All right, trick or treat here, Captain.
00:49:07
Before we wrap up, >> let's go with uh treat. >> All right, for treat and we'll circle
00:49:12
back to your trick. You're not getting off that easy. According to Johnny Travisani in his great book, he says,
00:49:18
"Before you leave the Planefield, Wisconsin area, make sure you check out the annual Pentwell Palooa ice fishery
00:49:26
and raffle that takes place in January at the Lore Bar and Grill." And he says, "If you've never checked out an indoor
00:49:35
ice fishing tournament, this is your chance." And they have cash prizes for the the tournament as well. and raffles
00:49:45
that go along with this. >> $10 goes to the winner. >> I think it's he puts 1,500 is the top
00:49:53
cash prize, but I would imagine that would probably change from year to year, but indoor ice fishing sounds absolutely
00:50:03
fantastic to me. And here's your trick, Captain. Another riddle. What happens >> once in a lifetime, twice in a moment,
00:50:12
but never in a thousand years? >> Once in a lifetime. Sex. >> The letter M. I had sex [music] once. Just
00:50:25
let everybody know. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Thanks for joining us here in the
00:50:45
garage. Stick around for part two, more fascinating and disturbing facts of serial killers. And until then, be good,
00:50:55
be kind, and don't live. Heat. Heat. [music] [music] [music] >> [music]