Episode 59, The Gorilla Man Strangler - Part 1

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Sorry for the delay, but it’s over now!

Today is Part 1 of 4 about the Gorilla Man Strangler, a deranged and mentally unstable man who ranged across the US and Canada, leaving a trail of dead women in his wake. 

This case is insane, so buckle the fuck up and let’s go!

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Sources: 

Bestial by Harold Schechter

The Big Book of Serial Killers by Jack Rosewood

Serial Killers: Murder Without Mercy by Nigel Blundell

The Serial Killer Files by Harold Schechter

The Gorilla Man Strangler Case by Alvin A. J. Esau

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Transcript

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This podcast contains murder and mayhem, guts and gore, adult language, and sexual content. Exactly what you came here for. All the listener discretion is advised. Welcome. I am your mistress of the macabre, Sarah Tierra. Grab your Ouija board, light the candles, and grab your jar of teeth because you and I are going to escape perfect. Pour yourself a cocktail, pull the window shades closed, and find a cool, dark, quiet place. Because right now we delve into the macabre. Hello! We are back, my little baby gremlins. I've missed you so much. I'm so excited to be back in action. In case you're new here, I'm your host, Sarah Tierra. Yes, I know it's a stupid name. Long story. I apologize, it's been a really long time, but life be life in, and I have not had any time. However, here we are, and I am back with a four-part series. This is an olden timey case that takes place in 1926. It is a serial killer case, of course, and it is brutal and fucking crazy. I have been working on this case for I don't even know how long. Months, years, a decade, I'm not sure. But I'm glad to birth this story and get it out of my body. My primary source for these episodes is a really fantastic book by one of my all-time favorite true crime authors. He's also a historian. It is a book called Beast Deal, and it's written by Harold Schechter. He is amazing. Go by one of everything that he's written. Okay, so without further ado, we are just gonna jump right into this. Homicidal maniacs have existed in all times and places. They are not an indicator of our increasingly violent world. They have always been and always will be. In the realm of sexual homicide, as in all other areas of humans and the human psyche, there is no new thing under the sun. Fun fact for you guys: people think the term serial killer was coined in the mid-1970s by FBI criminologist Robert Ressler. However, that is actually incorrect. Others point to the phrase serial killer being associated with its first known published use in the New York Times on May 3, 1981, when referring to Wayne Williams, a suspect in the Atlanta Child Murders. But that is incorrect also. The term and concept were coined by German criminologist Ernst Gnatt, who described Peter Curtin, we will probably get to it, as a Syrian morder, which means serial murderer, in his article entitled Die Dusseldorfer Sexual Verbreken, published in 1930. Did you love my German just now? You're welcome. They have always been among us, and some of them retain their infamy for decades or even centuries. Others fade into the pages of history as interests change over time. This is the lesser-known case of the serial killer and necrophile, the Gorilla Man Strangler, also known as the Dark Strangler. I say this a lot to you guys, but the cases that are forgotten about blow my mind. A lot of them are so crazy and really interesting, and I just don't understand what makes things popular or not popular. I don't know, I don't subscribe. I like what I like, and this shit is crazy. Really terrible case, and I'm glad we're talking about it today. And I'm glad I got to dig up this weird and lesser-known case. I love doing this podcast. I love you guys. I just wanted to tell you that. Anyways, so are you ready to get into this insane, horrible, and olden timey case? Let's go. In the 1920s, the United States was shocked by a string of killings that seemed almost inconceivably brutal. This is not to say that Americans of that era were unfamiliar with vicious crimes. On the contrary, it was a time so rife with violence that one historian dubbed it the Lawless Decade. But the murders that made the headlines tended to involve Tommy guns, flappers, and bootleggers. Ah, there it is. Now we know why this case was forgotten about. It didn't have Tommy guns, flappers, or bootleggers. It had little old lady victims. Once again, like the Texas elderly murders, that is probably why this case didn't retain infamy. Earl Leonard Nelson was a nomadic killer and a diagnosed psychopath who murdered and raped 22 known female victims in a two-year murder rampage across the United States and into Canada from 1926 to 1927. From the West Coast of America through the Midwest and up into Canada, he left behind a trail of brutalized women. His confirmed murder count was the highest in nearly 50 years until the discovery of Dean Coral's crimes in 1973. Earl Nelson was born in Philadelphia on May 12, 1897, but was orphaned at nine months old when both of his parents died of syphilis. First his young mother, Frances, and then six months later, the father who had infected her. By the way, if you're wondering what that would look like or be like, go listen to the olden timey syphilis episode if you want to hear the gruesome details. An interesting little sidebar here, so in the history books, the notorious gorilla murderer of the 1920s is listed under the name Earl Leonard Nelson. But Nelson was his mother's name, the name he was given when his grandmother took him in. His father's name, the one Earl was actually born with, was different. It was Feral, and that is F-E-R-R-A-L. Of course, a name is not a destiny, but still it is an interesting coincidence that the little boy who would grow up to be the dreaded creature known as the Gorilla Man was born with a name so close in spelling to the word feral, F-E-R-A-L. The dictionary definition of feral is of or characteristic of a wild animal, brutal. It derives from the Latin fera, which means wild beast. Earl dropped that name in his teens, which was really bad brand management. Even as a baby, Earl Nelson had the ability to unsettle everyone around him. According to one crime writer, the earliest surviving photograph of little Earl showed, quote, a loose-mouthed, degenerate infant with a vacant expression. End quote. We are back in the savagery of ye olden times to say that about an infant child. That is wild. They were fucking brutal back then. I am happy to be back here. I'm perfectly comfortable here. Let's stay forever. Of course, this savage description was made in hindsight of the crimes. At imagine if it wasn't. Oh my god. I'd be even better. Okay. Ugh, I gotta stop laughing. At the time it was written, Nelson had already grown up to be a monster. Homely as it was, Nelson's infant face couldn't possibly have foretold his future psychopathology. After his parents died, Earl went to live in San Francisco with his devoutly religious grandmother, Jenny Nelson, who instilled in him her Pentecostal beliefs and a lifelong fascination with scripture, particularly with the apocalyptic visions of the Book of Revelation. Really great to teach a small child. We all saw that coming, right? All little boys who are forced to study the Book of Revelation end up to be totally normal and fine. Parents take notes. There were two other children in the household with Earl, Mrs. Nelson's surviving children, Willis, who was 12, and Lillian, who was 10, when their older sister, Earl's mother, died. Little is known about Mrs. Nelson, other than the fact that she was a zealous Protestant. Sounds so fun. It looks like she was willing to overlook all of the shit going on with Earl because she loved him. And also because she didn't really know any better and probably just tried to pray the psychopathy away. Not to say she was oblivious to how fucking weird he was. Those signs were impossible to miss. From his earliest years, Earl was different from other children. Often described as having a manic energy, he would also slip into depression, withdrawing into his darkened room for days. I mean, same. But I'm not depressed, I just like it there. He would sit for hours in a kitchen chair, staring blankly into space, or roam around the house with his head cocked as if listening intently to voices only he could hear. Not off to a great start, Earl. Not good at all. Problems at school began immediately. Despite his grandmother's efforts to provide him with a stable home life, Earl's behavior grew increasingly erratic with each year. By the age of seven, he had already been expelled from elementary school for his uncontrollable behavior. Though he was often passive and withdrawn, at other times he would fly into fits of rage, lashing out violently at his schoolmates, girls and boys alike. He started stealing small items from neighborhood shops. By the age of 10, he had acquired a reputation as a serious troublemaker. Earl exhibited morbid behavior and self-loathing. I don't know what self-loathing a seven-year-old could exhibit at school. That seems weird, but okay. Well, I went ahead and dug around a little more and I found an example. From his earliest years, Earl would sink into abject moods of self-loathing, an especially disconcerting phenomenon for a child so young. I'm not good for anything, the little boy would cry. I will never be good for anything, nobody wants me, I would be better off out of this world. Okay, yeah, that's self-loathing in a small child, for sure. His grandmother attributed his morbid disposition to his early misfortunes in life. After all, Earl's syphilitic parents had not only left him an orphan, but left him a legacy of degradation and disease. It would have taken a person of far greater insight than Mrs. Nelson to see Earl's stupors, his strange habits, social isolation, and impaired sense of self for what they were, the signs of mental illness. Mrs. Nelson grew increasingly desperate in her efforts to deal with her grandson. She resorted to physical punishment, though this didn't last long, because Earl matured into a broad-shouldered, deep-chested teenager with powerful arms and massively large hands. Knowing his obsession with scripture, she attempted to appeal to his religious sensibilities, warning him that the Lord would punish him for his bad behavior. On April 18th, 1906, one month before Nelson turned nine years old, San Francisco, where he lived, was rocked by a massive earthquake measuring 8.25 on the Richter scale. By the time the fires had been put out, almost 500 city blocks lay in ruins, 25,000 buildings were in ashes, and more than 450 lives had been lost. In the mind of little Earl, who, you know, he's already like obsessed with scripture, this event seemed biblical. The sights and sounds and the smell of destruction filled him with strange exhilaration. Aw, that was me during COVID. But I'm not a psychopath, I promise. Like everyone else who lived through the great San Francisco earthquake, he would remember it the rest of his life. At the height of the catastrophe, there were rumors of armed marauders who were reportedly raping women at gunpoint. Earl would enjoy recalling the fearful look on the faces of his grandma Jenny and Aunt Lillian, who was 19 at the time, as they barricaded themselves inside the home, terrified of the alleged men outside. One year later, when Earl was 10, he was trying to impress some older boys and raced across the tracks of an oncoming trolley on a shitty bicycle he had inherited from his uncle Willis. The trolley caught the rear wheel of the bike, which sent Earl flying, and he landed headfirst on the cobblestones. Oh my god, cobblestones. Swoon. Yes, that's right. We have a childhood head injury on our hands. We we knew it was coming. It is a classic serial killer in the making event. His unconscious body was carried back home. His grandmother lost her shit when she saw the terrible wound on his right temple. For nearly a week, Earl was in a coma. During his recuperation, his grandmother would sit at his bedside for hours and read the Bible to him. Grandma, please, can you read anything else? Like Harry Potter or something. Anything else, please. Finally, on the evening of the sixth day, his delirium subsided. The family physician checked Earl's eye movements, checked his wound, and asked him a few questions. Then he reassured Mrs. Nelson that she had nothing to worry about and the crisis had passed. But Nelson had suffered a very serious head injury, which we all know is a common precursor for many, many serial killers and their crimes. Earl's outbursts worsened after this incident, and his behavior became even more erratic. It is possible that the brain damage he sustained in this accident contributed to his future psychopathology. Of course, we know it's not only childhood brain injury alone that creates a monster. Earl also had the misfortune of his family inheritance of mental instability and the bizarre behavioral symptoms he had manifested from infancy. His life could have turned out the same even if he hadn't been hit by a trolley. But let's just say it definitely didn't help matters. He suffered from dizziness, memory loss, and crippling headaches for the remainder of his life. In 1908, when he was 14 years old, Earl's grandmother died. This was one year after Earl's near fatal bike accident, and he went to live with his Aunt Lillian and her husband. It was Aunt Lillian who cared for Earl the most. She was only 10 when the tiny orphan came to live with her family, and from the very start she loved him and was attentive to him. To the end of his days, she stuck by him even when the rest of the world proclaimed him a monster. She had a simple answer for those who wondered how she could defend him. Earl, she would say, was her own flesh and blood. Lillian was devoted to her nephew, but was afraid of his uncontrollable outbursts. Quote, he was just like a child, and we considered him like a child, and of course we would never go too far with him, because there was always the fear of him, end quote, she later told a newspaper reporter. At his best, there was an endearing puppy dog quality about Earl, at least in the eyes of his aunt. She perceived him as essentially an overgrown baby. His bouts of wild enthusiasm, which alternated with periods of sullen withdrawal, could also be as unrealistic as a child's. When his aunt informed him that her brother Willis was planning to construct a three-story apartment building, Earl, who was 15 at the time, was like, I'll do it. I'll build the whole thing by myself, I'll do the plumbing, I'll do everything, and it's gonna make Uncle Willis so much money. Lillian just kind of smiled and shook her head and was like, okay, idiot. She had a clear recollection of the time one year earlier when Earl had volunteered to paint the interior of her house. After working furiously at the job for a day or two, he had disappeared from the home and was gone for three weeks. Needless to say, he never finished that job. One example of how fucking weird this kid was were his eating habits. At dinner, he would drench his food in olive oil, put his face to the plate, and shovel food into his face like a fucking animal. His uncle Willis and Aunt Lillian began to refer to their nephew as the wild man of Bareno, the name of a famous freak show attraction of the time. Lillian found it especially annoying when Earl acted up, as she puts it, around her friends. On several occasions when company was over for dinner, Earl would suddenly look up from his plate and begin spewing obscenities in a Tourettez-like manner. When Lillian reprimanded him, he just smiled and went back to slurping food into his mouthhole. At other times, Earl would stroll into the kitchen where Lillian was enjoying a cup of coffee with a female friend, and he would, without uttering a single word, stare at the friend in such an unsettling way that after a few minutes the woman would grab her belongings and leave the house. Or Earl might come walking into the room on his hands, feet flailing in the air, and position himself in front of the guest like a circus acrobat. Or he might step behind an empty chair, then lift the chair up with his teeth. Totes, fine and normal. Another peculiarity was Earl's total obsession with the book of Revelation and reciting quotes from it. He also loved to talk to imaginary people. On top of all of that, Earl really, really, really enjoyed watching female family members undress. When not preoccupied with voyeurism or the scriptures, he tended to spend his time in basements, relishing the solitude and darkness. Again, same when I was a kid, and same now as an adult. But you know. I'm not a serial killer, so it's fine. Earl Nelson loved to read. What do you think he liked to read? Romance novels? Fantasy? Obviously the Bible. Duh. But what else? If you're going full serial killer reading material. Do you have any guesses? That's right. Earl was a voracious consumer of dime store detective novels. We see this over and over and over again. And what these serial killers are drawn to, usually in their pubescent years, is the imagery of the bound and or terrified or even dead, glamorous women on the covers of these books. It's like softcore bondage porn. And yeah, Earl wasn't the first. Serial killers are obsessed with these dime store detective novels, up until they stopped making them. So hot women plus implied violence equals teenage sociopath boners. Earl also loved to read tabloid newspapers and began a lifelong obsession with the occult and various pseudoscientific beliefs, including phrenology, astronomy, palmistry, and spiritualism. He also routinely managed to lose his clothing whenever he left the house. He would leave for work in clean, appropriate clothes, only to return later in the day, dressed completely differently. One example of what he came home wearing was frayed yellow pants, a baggy red sweater, leather leggings, and a cowboy hat. Where he got these clothes, we will figure out later on in this story, and it will end up being part of his modus operandi when we get to it later. Lillian saw Earl as vulnerable and friendless, a lost soul. That's not what I'm seeing, Lillian, but okay. As far as she could tell, he had no companions, his own age. Even as he grew into late adolescence, he sought out the company of much younger children. As we put on our detective hats, I mean you can look at this a couple of ways. My first thought is that there might be a sexual element to this. I mean, that's a classic. You have a lot more power and control over a much younger child than someone your own age or older. However, his victims, which we will see here in a little bit, except for two of them, were older women. His wife will turn out to be a very, very old woman. So I don't actually think it was sexual. I think the younger kids gave him the attention and respect that he could not achieve from teenagers his own age. I think he felt cool around the little kids, and that's why he hung out with them. Fucking loser. One little neighbor boy was named Arthur, and he was nine years old when Earl was 15, and he was in awe of Earl. He was impressed by Earl to the max. How would Nelson impress him? He would brag about his exploits on the Barbary coast. We will get to it in literally one minute. Very inappropriate to tell a nine-year-old, I'll say that. Or another way that he would show off was to show this young boy all the shit that he had shoplifted. It wasn't long before Arthur's dad forbid him from hanging out with Earl. The Nelson boy was deranged, Mr. West said. Everyone in the neighborhood knew it. Nelson's formal education ended when he was 14. He dropped out of school completely, taking several menial jobs. He worked at the counter of a jewelry store, he was a cook at a diner, a window washer, a hotel porter, a carpenter's assistant, a bricklayer, an upholsterer, and a common laborer. He rarely kept a job for more than a few weeks, often only for a day or two. Earl made a good first impression on his employers. He could be polite and well spoken, and his physical strength was evident from his wide shoulders and broad chest. However, his mental state never stayed hidden for long. When asked to perform a simple task, 20 minutes later it would be evident that Nelson had passed the time by staring blankly at the sky, or he would lay down his tools in the middle of a job and wander off from the worksite, never to return again. He soon began supplementing his modest earnings with any guesses? That's right. Burglary. Usually at the menial Jobs lasted only a day, a week, a month before his laziness or unsettling behavior got him fired. During these years of puberty, he got a reputation as any guesses? Yeah, that's right. A peeping tom, a daydreamer, and a compulsive masturbator. Hold on. One of those things is not like the others. I would like to say that. A peeping tom, a compulsive masturbator, not good. A daydreamer, not I don't know what's wrong with that. That seems lovely. Even as an adolescent, however, Earl had a secret life that Lillian knew nothing about. Earl had an obsessive and compulsive sex drive that even his constant masturbation could not satisfy. I mean, that would suck. Not that that's excusing what you know is about to happen. So, what's a boy to do? Nelson began frequenting the brothels of the Barbary coast by the time he was 15 years old. Morsiphilis, anyone? He also began drinking heavily. His periodic disappearances, those times when he would vanish from his home and return days or even weeks later, claiming he had been out searching for work, were in reality given over to drunken binges involving fights, sex workers, and saloons. I mean, it sounds kind of fun. But also he's fucking 15. That's wild. And you're gonna be shocked by this. At one point he contracted a venereal disease from visiting the brothels, and I just wonder personally if that made him think of his parents, but probably not because he was a psychopath. From the day he was born, Lillian helped raise Earl. He was almost like one of her own children. But by 17 years old, Earl was not just a nuisance in Lillian's household, but a threatening presence. For the first time since he came to live with her, Lillian was afraid of him. But Lillian remained stubbornly supportive of her fucking weird ass nephew. When he was arrested for burglary in 1915 for robbing a cabin in Northern California, she made a tearful appeal on his behalf at his trial. Her plea was ignored, however, and Earl was sentenced to two years in San Quentin prison. Good. What do we think Earl does next? Can you guess? What would a wayward psychopath do after dropping out of school and in between committing small petty crimes? He enlisted in the military. Not just once. He enlisted several times under several different names. This shit is so weird. Oh my god, I'm about to tell you. He is a bizarre person. By the time of his release from San Quentin, which was April 1917, America had entered the First World War. But even the most minimal demands of army life proved too much for Earl. After just six weeks in uniform, he went AWOL because he was forced to stand guard duty one night in the cold. And he was like, nah, I'm not doing that. So following his desertion, he made his way to Salt Lake City. Among the various religious works Earl had read during his stay in prison was a book about the life of the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith. His interest in Mormonism came to nothing, but for some unknown reason, he decided to give the military another shot. Enlisting as a cook in the Navy, he soon found himself back in his hometown, stationed at San Francisco's Mare Island Naval Base. This second try at military life, however, turned out to be just as unsuccessful as his first. Once again, he deserted after a few weeks because chores. That's it. That's why. He was like not doing chores, not happening. Less than two months later in July 1917, Earl enlisted again. Again. This time as a private in the medical corps. He lasted six weeks, deserting because he would later explain to military psychologists he was bothered by a burning about his anus. And that is a direct quote, okay? He's like, I can't do this. My anus is burning. And they're like, um, okay. Things are about to get really bad, so we have to laugh while we can. Apparently, this meant that Earl had hemorrhoids, so he couldn't work or be in the military. He quit the medical corps because of anal itching. Too much for Earl. Can't continue. Must quit. Oh I mean, I forgot there was another one. So he was back in the Navy in March of 1918. He went back again. What are you doing, sir? This time Earl did not desert. He simply refused to do anything at all, preferring to pass his days reading the Bible and spouting apocalyptic sermons about the coming of the great beast whose number is 666. Earl was shunned by his shipmates, ye don't say, and despised by his superior officers. Nothing, not even a torturous two-day confinement inside a hot coal oven, could force him to do any fucking work. They literally put him in an oven. They were like, get in the oven, you fucking twat. And he still was like, can I bring my Bible? Or he still wouldn't do anything. Ugh, this guy. Next on Earl Nelson's checklist of how to make a serial killer life experiences, he was committed to a mental hospital. On April 24th, 1918, after complaining of headaches and refusing to leave his cot, he was placed in the Mare Island Naval Hospital. After three weeks of observation, Earl was committed to the Napa State Mental Hospital, arriving just nine days after his 21st birthday. A psychologist summed up his reasons for recommending commitment. The subject, he wrote, quote, continually reads his testament or gazes fixedly into space, answers questions slowly, takes no interest in what is going on about him, shows some mental deterioration. Due to refusing to work, he was put in an oven for two days, but still would not work. His reason for not working is that he did not want to serve the adversaries of the Lord. He believes the beast spoken of in Revelation as being 666 is either the Pope or the Kaiser. End quote. I'm jumping in in case you're like, what's a Kaiser? What's going on here? So the Kaiser is Wilhelm II, who was the German emperor until 1918. So he thinks that the beast or the devil is literally like either the Pope or the German Emperor. Anyways, back to the quote. Quote, he does not think he is crazy, end quote. Oh, there wasn't much left. The conclusive diagnosis was constitutional psychopathic state. They also noted one physical peculiarity of Earl's. His right pupil was notably larger than the left. And that's kind of interesting, you know, because I'm obsessed with pathologies, but his injury when he flew off his bike was to his right temple. So it's interesting that his right pupil is all fucked up. That can't be good. Doctors also learned via blood testing that Nelson had contracted both syphilis and gonorrhea in early adolescence. Earl confessed that he had masturbated daily between the ages of 13 and 18, which, you know, I'm sure every teenage boy does that, but then he said he had not done it since then. I will drop a teaser. His wife will have a lot to say about the masturbating later on. He also claimed to have overcome his addiction to liquor, swearing that he had not had a drink for seven months. This is interesting because in the future, when every action this man does is fucking scrutinized because of his crimes, there is not a single record or statement or witness that says that he was drinking or acting intoxicated or smelled like alcohol. So I actually don't think he's lying when he says that he did stop drinking. He described his childhood life as pleasant, insisted that his mind was alright, and declared that he was perfectly capable of making his own way in the world. He had, he said, no history of trauma or previous mental attacks. That's a lie. After another doctor questioned Earl for about 10 minutes, he concluded that Earl was not disoriented, paranoid, or abnormally depressed. He reported the patient was, quote, correct for place, month, and year, did not think anyone was trying to harm him, was not despondent, nervous, apprehensive, and did not think he should have been sent here. Denied illusions or hallucinations, cheerful at time of examination, denies being irritable, and enjoys himself to a reasonable extent. Could take an interest in an occupation, is very fond of his family, and is so fond of them that he feels bad to be away from home. End quote. A doctor asked Nelson, would you say you've noticed any changes in yourself since joining the Navy? To which Earl responded, Well, I have a stronger tendency to seek higher ideals and sensible things than I used to. Next, Earl was subjected to a battery of intelligence tests, most of which he performed well on. Quote, test of memory pictures, in general, good. Memory of ideas in series, good. Knowledge of arithmetic, excellent. What? General knowledge correct, except for the name of the governor of California and the rate of interest a bank usually pays. I mean, I don't know those two things, and I'm sane. Memory of recent past, good. No disturbance of idea association, orientation, good. End quote. When a doctor related the fable about the wolf who disguises himself as a shepherd, but gives himself away when he opens his mouth to speak, Earl offered a reasonable summary of the moral. Quote, it shows that when a person is not always truthful, they suffer for it, end quote. Earl insisted that, quote, it was not difficult for him to think, end quote. When asked if he experienced any peculiar thoughts, Earl replied, Well, not exactly, not any more than a first-class, intelligent person would. End quote. When asked if he believed he'd done anything wrong, Earl replied, Yes, I blame myself for enlisting in the Navy. He was then asked if he was afraid of anything, and Earl answered, only God. Then, fixing the doctor with a stare, he said, if you don't serve him, you should be afraid too. Exactly whose God Earl believed in at that moment is somewhat ambiguous. For unknown reasons, his commitment papers record his affiliation as Jewish. It is possible that Earl, who was always flirting with different religions, was going through a brief Judaic phase. It may also be the case that doctors assumed, in the casually racist manner of the times, that Earl must be Jewish because of his complexion and facial features. No one in this story from beginning to end is going to know what ethnicity or race Earl Nelson is. They think he's part black, they think he might be Hispanic, they think he's Jewish. I looked into it and all of the records say that this man is Scandinavian. Let me tell you, if you look at the photos of him, that cannot be fucking correct. So yeah, people are assuming, you know, his background this whole time, and we still have no answer to what it really is. Also because Earl lies a lot, so there's no way to know. This is not the only mistake recorded in Nelson's written report. The other, far more serious error appears just a few lines down from the misstated religion, where the psychologists concluded that Earl Leonard Farrell was, quote, not violent, homicidal, or destructive. End quote. Several weeks after his transfer to Napa, Earl received a visit from his Aunt Lillian and Uncle Willis. We do not know what was said between them, though Lillian would later testify that her nephew, who was dressed in his sailor's uniform, was unhappy with his treatment. Exactly what that treatment consisted of is also undocumented. The record shows, however, that on June 13th, 1918, Earl Leonard Nelson managed to escape. Earl was tracked down and returned to the Napa Institute on July 11th. Six weeks later, on August 25th, he escaped again. This time he remained at large for over three months. How much do you want to bet that he was at Aunt Lil's house? When he was brought back to Napa on December 3rd, his talent as a breakout artist earned him a nickname from his fellow inmates. They began calling him Houdini. The very day after his return to Napa, he escaped again. Hauled back a few months later, he managed one final elopement in the language of his official records. Altogether, he pulled off no fewer than four escapes during his 13-month incarceration. After his final escape attempt in 1919, the doctors in charge of this case were like, fuck it. And they decided to not even look for him. On his discharge records, yeah, they discharged him even though he ran away. They simply wrote improved on a former entry reporting that he was not violent, homicidal, or destructive. Nelson then returned to San Francisco to live with his aunt. She had helped him find a job as a janitor in a San Francisco hospital. Earl was still a fugitive, so as a precaution, he took the job under a pseudonym, the first of many he would assume in the coming years. This time he used Evan Lewis Fuller. It was here that Nelson met a woman, a cleaning lady in the maternity ward, named Mary Teresa Martin. Earl was smitten with her, and even she seemed surprised by this. Mary is described as a, quote, pinched and gray-haired spinster who had just turned 58 and looked every day of it. End quote. I mean, goddamn. That is so harsh. I secretly love it, but I also feel bad for her because that's so mean. They're gonna be really mean to her coming up here, too. Also, like she's just a woman. She's just working and living her life. Calm down. Her other co-workers regarded Mary as a sweet, mousy old maid. Again, damn. Painfully shy, she could be tongue-tied to the point of incoherence around other adults. Mary would cast her eyes downwards, wring her hands nervously, and stammer. Earl was the only exception to this rule, the only other adult she seemed fully at ease with. Of course, having just turned 22, he literally could have been her child, or even her grandchild. And he often acted like a child, so the shoe fits. The details of their early relationship, how Mary and Earl first came to speak to form a friendship, and how they came to be fucking are largely unknown. Mary was a very religious woman, and we can assume that Earl's constant ranting about religion and citing scripture must have made an impression on her. Only weeks after they met, Earl was like, hey, do you want to get married? And Mary, who had waited her whole life for a proposal, was like, sure, sounds great. There was, however, one little obstacle. She was Irish Catholic and Earl was Protestant. So they had a Catholic wedding, and Earl just didn't say anything about that. On Tuesday, August 5th, 1919, Mary Teresa Martin married a man young enough to not just be her son, but her grandson. Get it, Queen! And Earl Leonard Nelson took to be his wife an old ass spinster bride, the woman of his dreams, and the first in a large amount of elderly women who would become the objects of his increasingly deadly obsession. Shocker, this union was short-lived. But I will say this is another woman that he had twisted around his finger. Mary would stick by him his entire life, just like his aunt Lillian. Also, Shocker, I think he was very calculating when choosing a bride. I think her meek personality and older age were both things he knew he could take advantage of, and he did. He also has a fetish for old women, so that fit right into his playbook as well. So this marriage was a disaster. Mary had taken her vows seriously, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. Even so, she was not prepared for what the fuck was coming her way, which was life with Earl Nelson. I mean, no one could have been prepared for that. She would later testify that her brief time with the man she knew as Evan Fuller was, quote, a trying experience, end quote. Um, yeah, he didn't even tell her his name. She thinks that his name is Evan Fuller. It's not. And I mean, how understated to call being married to this person a trying experience. I wonder what it's like to be a stoic, understated person. If you're one of those, let me know. Tell me what it's like. I have no idea. So Nelson's personal habits were a constant source of mortification to Mary, who was prim and proper. It quickly became clear that her husband's standards of hygiene were non-existent. He did not bathe, and that was a problem in their tiny, dilapidated apartment. Mary was immediately cast into the role she would play throughout their entire marriage and I mean his whole life, which is mommy. One evening before they were about to go out and visit her family, Mary put her foot down and insisted that Earl take a bath. Earl went into the bathroom and came back with a glass of water. He then sat on the edge of the bed, took off his shoes and socks, and poured the glass of water onto his disgusting toes. And Mary was like, Are you trying to say that that's a bath? And Earl was like, Well, my toes are clean. So yeah. And then he put his shoes and socks back on and they went to go visit her family. That alone, for me, would be grounds for divorce before we get into all the other weird shit and the masturbating and the serial killing. Not only was Earl an annoying, disgusting piece of shit at home, but his public behavior also made her physically squirm with embarrassment. He still ate in the disgusting way that he used to as a child, and he even did it at restaurants. He would take forever to read the menu and then order something disgusting like a bowl of stewed prunes or a dish of boiled spinach. Then he would dump liquid on it, raise the plate to his face, and shovel it down his throat, as if it were a feeding trough. And meanwhile, everyone else in the restaurant is staring at them and they're horrified. His freakish fashion sense, also unchanged since childhood, was also a source of constant embarrassment to Mary. He would leave the home in the morning dressed in decent clothing and then show up later that day in a completely different, tattered, raggedy ass outfit. As Harold Schechter puts it, he looked like a shipwrecked survivor. Or he would appear in some like weird ass outfit. He'd show up in a sailor suit, a golfing outfit, or the uniform of a Stanford University student. Yet other times he would come home in a weird, color-coordinated ensemble. Like another elderly woman who had been burdened with him, his grandmother Jenny, who resembled Earl's new wife in more ways than one, Mary did what she could to keep him presentable. Early in their marriage, she used some of her savings to buy him a new overcoat. The next day, Earl went off, went about his day wearing the new coat. When he returned that evening, the coat was gone, and so were the rest of his clothes, which had been replaced with a suit of rags. He also managed to lose his underwear, a habit of his since childhood. One time she came home and discovered that he had taken her best skirt, cut it up, and made it into a pair of pants for himself. I would you're getting murdered. I would murder you. No. Then there were the times where Earl would jump out of bed in the middle of the night, throw clothes on, and announce that he was going out to look for a job. Or the time that he and Mary spent an entire day looking at houses with a realtor just to have Earl say that they had found the perfect one. He then shoved his hand into his pocket, pulled out$2, and made an offer for a down payment to the realtor. Mary had never been so fucking mortified in her entire life. He's like, perfect, I'll take this house. How's$2 sound? Oh my god. This guy, I tell ya, I can't with him. Sometimes when Mary asked him to perform a simple household chore, he would run off and hide like a toddler. He would hide behind the window curtains or behind the sofa. To Mary, living with Earl was like motherhood. These are all very bizarre annoyances, don't get me wrong. I would fucking kill a bitch for doing what. Of any of those things. I would be like, get out of here. We're done. But from here, things are gonna get a whole lot darker. Mary's later testimony stated that Earl made her life a living hell. Soon after marriage came the jealousy. At first, Mary found it kind of cute, maybe even endearing, but Mary found it impossible to have anything to do with another human being without sending her husband into a jealous fit. He would berate her if she so much as said hello to a trolley conductor or stopped a stranger on the street to ask the time. Even her female friends became the objects of his resentment. He would accuse her of caring more for them than she did about him. It reached the point where Mary was afraid to even talk to her own brother. In spite of his violent moods, his wild suspicions, and angry accusations, Mary never felt threatened by Earl. At least not in the beginning of their marriage. There was something helpless and childlike about him at that time. Although the relationship often felt like mother and son, it was husband and wife. We already know that Earl has some sexual obsessions. And Mary is not a kinky gal, but she was down for some missionary to keep her husband happy. Earl wanted sex from her all the time, and if she refused, he would repeatedly masturbate in front of her, which to put it mildly, she was not into. In February of 1920, six months after they married, Mary became ill and was rushed to the hospital. At first, Earl behaved like a normal person, visiting her and bringing her flowers. His presence quickly became oppressive, though. He would sit at her bedside for hours on end, staring blankly into space or glaring at her doctor, whom he regarded as a rival. L-O-L, you wish, you fucking loser. The day she was discharged, Earl brought her home, helped her change into her pajamas, and put her to bed. He then climbed in beside her and raped her. Her brother, Frank, had been telling her to leave Earl. He was like, This guy is fucking weird. You should leave him. Visiting Mary in the hospital one day, Frank found his brother-in-law sitting in a chair beside her, staring at the ceiling without blinking. Frank was like, Hello, Earl, and Earl pretended he wasn't there and continued to stare at the ceiling. Also, if that isn't creepy enough, his lips were moving as if he was talking silently. Frank is then like, hey, your husband is fucking crazy. And Mary was trying not to cry because she's also a very devout Roman Catholic and, as she puts it, an Irish woman of the old type. So divorce for her was out of the question. She had vowed to stick by her husband in sickness and in health. And because he was sick, mentally sick, she called it the worst kind of sickness you could have. Right from the start of their marriage, Earl had been afflicted with savage, recurring headaches. When they struck his face turned white and pinched, his eyes darkened until they looked like two black empty holes. Mary would try to soothe him by applying witch hazel to his brow, but nothing seemed to help. One day, while working for a landscape gardener, Nelson fell from the upper branches of a tree and landed on his head. He was admitted to the hospital with a serious concussion, but left after two days, showing up at home with his head so heavily bandaged that his eyes were barely visible beneath the gauze. Afterwards, his headaches grew more frequent, and his behavior became even more erratic. More and more often, Mary would find him sitting silently in the kitchen, staring intently at nothing. When she asked what he was doing, he would point wildly at the blank wall, and he would say, The faces, don't you see them? His religious preoccupation also grew more extreme, burgeoning into a kind of mania. He began wearing a rosary. One night when he and Mary were out for a walk, they passed a store that sold religious articles. In the display window was a painting of Jesus Christ. Earl became excited, and he said, see, see, and was pointing at the picture. And Mary was like, see what? And Earl was like, right there, don't I look like Christ? Not long afterwards, Mary went to see her priest. She was crying when she explained her predicament and asked his advice. He told her, quote, kindness can cure insanity, end quote. He told her to do her best and bear with it, which is terrible advice. Let's maybe consult a doctor and not a priest. For a while, Earl and Mary moved in with his aunt Lillian. During this period of time, Earl would sometimes disappear for weeks at a time without telling anyone where he was going. Even Lillian could not understand why Mary would tolerate this behavior from her husband. The last straw was when they both got jobs at a school in Palo Alto. That is Mary and Earl. Earl was jealous of every single man that worked there and flew into rages in front of the children and just generally terrified the shit out of everyone around him. Mary finally decided to leave him. She would stay in Palo Alto and he could fuck off back to Aunt Lillian. Earl said nothing, but the look on his face was so terrifying that Mary turned and ran, hiding at a neighbor's house. When she returned in the morning, Earl was gone. That afternoon, however, Earl came back. Mary was at work when Earl suddenly appeared, looking as if he'd spent the night in a gutter. There was something in his face that rattled Mary so badly that she dropped her broom and ran. Earl chased her, cornering her in the pantry. He begged her to take him back. When Mary refused, his eyes were terrifying. The pupils contracted so completely that there was nothing but white. It's him, ain't it? He said. Who? Mary asked, horrified. Him, the one who's keeping you from me. And she's like, Earl, there's no one else. I'll get you back, he said. And he raised his hands as though he meant to strangle her. Mary screamed, ran past him, and ran for help. Her boss ended up calling the police. Earl appeared, panting and clenching his hands, shouting, I'll get you, I'll get you. And then Evan was gone. In case you forgot, Mary still doesn't know Earl's real name, and she thinks that his name is Evan. Within a few days of being evicted from his marital home, Nelson attempted to commit his first murder. It's impossible to know exactly what happened on May 19th, 1921. The only existing record is a brief article from the following day's newspaper, and the information it contains is sparse. It doesn't say how Nelson came to choose the house or what his motives were for lying his way in. The victim was 12-year-old Mary Summers. That's right. She isn't going to be the only young victim. This man is also a pedophile. Only these facts are known. Sometime during that Wednesday afternoon, Nelson appeared unexpectedly at the household of Mr. Charles Summers. The door was opened by Summers' 24-year-old son, Charles Jr., claiming to be a plumber who had come to repair a leaky gas pipe. Nelson gained access to the house and immediately went into the cellar where 12-year-old Mary Summers was playing with her dolls. Moments later, Charles Jr. heard his sister scream. Earl had put down his tools and attacked Mary by attempting to strangle her. Mary put up a fierce fight though, and she was kicking and screaming and clawing at his face, and she was able to fend him off until her brother heard her cries. Yes, this is a 12-year-old warrior princess. I love you, Mary. I'm so happy you fought and you survived. Earl had not yet mastered his trademark method of swift strangulation. This was the trial run. And unfortunately, he would learn from it. After a struggle in the basement with the brother, Earl managed to flee the scene. Summers chased him into the street and tackled him. Houdini, once again, managed to get away, but Summers went to the police department, reported the crime, and gave a perfect description of Earl. And two hours later, he was arrested on a trolley car, taken to the city jail, and booked on an assault charge. He looks like the victim of a crime in his mugshot because both of the Summers children fucked his ass up. And I love, love, love these kids. Hell yeah. So back to the poor wife, Mary. She really can't get away from this guy. So the police show up the next morning and tell her that Earl attacked a child in San Francisco. And Mary was like, who the fuck is Earl Leonard Nelson? And they're like, um, that's your husband. So in one morning, she found out, A, he's a violent pedophile, and B, that she had married an entirely different person than she had thought. In spite of all he had put her through, Mary continued to feel responsible for Earl, and she would until the last days of his life. She made arrangements to take days off work and visit him in jail. Earl was babbling about voices in his head, staring into the empty air and threatening suicide. During his first night in jail, he had also somehow managed to pluck out his eyebrows with his fingernails. In his cell, Mary found her husband in a strait jacket, strapped to a cot. Though he stared at her with crazed, browless eyes, he didn't seem to recognize her. He kept ranting about the faces on the wall. When Mary insisted that there were no faces, he shut his eyes and then opened them, stared at the wall, and started screaming again, there they are, can't you see them? Later that day, Mary went to Aunt Lillian's house, and that's when Lillian told her about Earl's previous stint in the Napa mental hospital. Now, at this point, Mary and Lillian have lived together. They know each other well. You would think at some point Lillian would have been like, hey, why are you calling Earl Evan? Or that she would have been like, oh yeah, he does that. He's been in the insane asylum before. Like it's so weird that she didn't do that. Anyways, apparently this was the first Mary had heard of any of this. So suddenly she is faced with many disturbing discoveries about her own husband, his true identity, and his recent history as a mental patient, as well as another piece of information the police had uncovered and told her, which was Earl's record as a military deserter. In an effort to keep him out of prison on the assault charge, the two women decided to go ahead with insanity proceedings against Earl. The hearing took place on June 13, 1921. The judge declared that by reason of insanity, Earl was dangerous to be at large. A commitment order was filed the same afternoon. Despite several further escapes and attempted escapes, Nelson was released from the Napa institution yet again in 1925 when he was 28 years old. Doctors noted improved on his chart at the time of release. This assessment was not just wrong, but it was dangerously wrong. Before being released, doctors asked Earl how he felt about his future, and Earl said, quote, I feel I can do much better now. I am ready to lead a more evolved life, end quote. The paper trail documenting Earl's public life during the years following his discharge from the Napa mental institution are sparse. He spent some of his time helping his Aunt Lillian paint the interior of her new house. You think she would have learned from the first time, but okay. When he wasn't staying with her, he was rooming at an unknown place. Aunt Lillian didn't know where he was living. He would just show up in the morning, work for as long as he liked, and then disappear. He returned to Palo Alto, where his long-suffering wife took him back. For several months they lived together. Then he disappeared. Mary was like, good, get out of here. So she was like, I'm not going to find him. He had not been threatening her with violence, but he was still a weird ass burden, so she was happy to be rid of him. The doctors at the mental hospital had explained to Mary that among his other disorders, Earl suffered from nomadic dementia or an irresistible urge to wander. So she was like, I'm just gonna let him wander. Get out of here. The only eyewitnesses to Earl's activities during this time period of his life are a couple that Earl worked for. He worked as a handyman, gardener, and groundskeeper. And the dude's name that hired him is Frank. Though Earl's habits were still, as always, highly erratic, with this job he could work when he wanted to. Frank was admittedly amused by Earl. He told everyone that he was a simple fool. Years later, Frank was asked to describe Nelson's behavior in court. He recalled the way that Earl would, quote, repeatedly go to work with his tools in one hand and a Bible in the other, laying down the Bible, proceed to work with his tools for a short time, when he would suddenly cease, stand fixed as a statue, gaze upward at the sky, and remain in that posture. End quote. Interrupting his work to stare at nothing in particular was a practice of Nelson's. Frank recalled another instance when Earl shaved his head, quote, in such a way that the hair was not altogether taken off in one place, and the head completely denuded in another, end quote. So, yeah, like shaved all the way down in patches and then just other patches sticking out. Earl had saved his shaven hair and offered it to Mrs. Frank as pillow stuffing. No, thank you, sir, and you're gonna have to leave immediately. Another time, Earl, quote, took a wheelbarrow and slowly walked around the road for a distance of about five miles, picking up small pebbles, end quote. After wheeling his load back to Frank's workshed, Earl painted each of the pebbles with whitewash and then proceeded to lay them out in a strange random pattern of trails around the property. Frank also remembered a time when Earl left an automobile he was driving on the road without explanation and did not return for it. In spite of all of this fucking weirdness, Frank regarded Earl as a strong man, a willing laborer, with a kindly manner, who readily followed instructions and never demuring or hesitating. As far as Frank was concerned, his handyman was harmless. The women in Frank's life, however, were not amused by Earl. Because they are not fucking idiots like men tend to be. They have intuition. One of these women that was not fucking amused by this behavior was Mrs. LJ Casey, a friend of the Arnolds, that's Frank and his wife, who spent a week with them at their Palo Alto home in 1926. To Mrs. Casey, there was something deeply unsettling about Nelson, who would later testify that he was always laughing and talking to himself. One afternoon during her visit, she saw Earl sitting coatless in a drenching rainstorm, gazing with a weird intensity at the sky. Later, she told Frank, I would not have that man around. He is surely crazy. But Frank laughed it off and said, Earl, he's a harmless fool. Who cares? Increasingly, however, Frank's wife, Rhonda, came to realize that her husband was a stupid asshole and that Earl was a problem. As Frank would later explain, his wife eventually grew anxious and fearful of having Earl around our home and children, a man of such peculiar traits and tendencies, and she requested that I send him away for the reason that he was not mentally sound and right. Though Frank continued to believe that his wife was dramatic, he finally gave in to her urgings and let Earl go. As it turned out, the intuitions of the two women were even sharper than they knew. The only other known fact about Earl's life during this time is that by the time Frank fired him, Earl Leonard Nelson had already begun to kill. Next, Earl embarked on an evangelical tour through the United States and Canada. Brandishing a Bible and spouting verses, Earl stayed at a string of boarding houses. He also embarked on the murder rampage that would make him the most feared and prolific serial killer of his era. During the next few months, Nelson ranged along the West Coast from San Francisco to Seattle and back on a monstrous spree of murder and mayhem. Most of his victims were landladies of boarding houses. All were strangled and raped post-mortem. A number of the corpses were left stuffed in small spaces, such as inside a trunk or behind a basement furnace. The press had dubbed the unknown maniac the Dark Strangler. A massive manhunt was launched all along the West Coast. That is a summary. We are going to go over every single murder. So let's start at the beginning. 60-year-old Clara Newman was a shrewd, tough-minded woman who had managed to turn a small inheritance into a considerable fortune by her investments in real estate. In 1926, she owned property in several states, including two homes in San Francisco and a parcel of land that was apparently very large in Pennsylvania. You go, babe. From her way of life, however, you would never know it. She's called an aged spinster by the newspapers, but besides that, she dressed simply, survived on a meager diet, and lived in a few sparsely furnished rooms on the ground floor of her house in San Francisco. Though her mind was sharp, Miss Newman was physically frail and required help in managing daily tasks. She received it from her nephew, Merton Newman, who has the most 1926 name I've ever heard in my life, who also lived in the house, occupying two second story rooms with his wife and 19-year-old son. The top floor of the house was divided into two apartments. One of these was rented to a couple named Brown. The other had been vacant since the start of the new year. For nearly two months, Miss Newman had been trying to rent it, displaying a room-to-let sign in the window at the front of her house. On the morning of Saturday, February 20th, 1926, Merton Newman was alone in his second floor apartment. Shortly before noon, he heard the doorbell. Glancing up from his paper, he could hear the sounds of an exchange of words between the person at the door and his aunt. About 15 minutes later, he laid down his newspaper. He decided to go into the basement and check the furnace because it was cold in the apartment and the furnace had been acting up lately. Merton noticed a half-cooked sausage in a frying pan on the stove. I'm hungry. The burner beneath the pan was off. So apparently the person at the door had caught his aunt in the middle of preparing her lunch and she turned off the gas before going to the door. Merton then spent about 15 minutes in the cellar fucking around with the furnace before heading back up. As he left the kitchen, he saw a figure walking quickly to the back door. It was a man, and Merton called out to him, and the man paused with his hand on the doorknob and glanced over his shoulder. Merton couldn't see much of the man's face, but he could see that he was oddly dressed in baggy pants and a military shirt. Also, despite the cold weather, he didn't have a coat on. Merton guessed that the man was about 30 years old and could see that he was powerfully built, stocky, and deep chested. Merton is like, Can I help you? And the man says, Tell the landlady I'll return in an hour. I would like to rent that empty apartment. And with that he opened the door and walked off. Merton went over to the back door, but the stranger had already disappeared. Merton returned to his apartment. By 2 p.m. he went downstairs to find his aunt to discuss replacing the furnace. This dude has a real bee in his bonnet about this furnace. He cannot let it go. As he passed through the kitchen again, Merton noticed that the frying pan with the unheated sausage was still on the stove. Real quick, what's your favorite sausage? I love the Beyond sausages. They're delicious. I like the dinner ones, but I also like the breakfast ones. They're my favorite. There was also this sausage they had at the dollar store. I know that sounds crazy, but it was the best sausage I've ever had in my life. I think it might have been like Evan Williams. Is that a thing? Or is that a whiskey? I don't know. It was smoked turkey sausage and it was lit as fuck. I'm sure full of nitrates, but delicious. What's your favorite sausage? Since we're on the subject. Okay, back to the story. So next he went to his aunt's bedroom. The door was open, and he could see that his aunt was not inside. So he checked the other rooms on the first floor, but she was nowhere to be found. Then he went up to the third floor and knocked on the door of the Browns' apartment. Charles Brown, yes, Charlie Brown, answered the door. He confirmed that he and his wife had heard Miss Newman come up there a few hours ago talking with someone. The Browns had assumed that the landlady was showing the vacant apartment to a prospective tenant. Merton tried the doorknob of the vacant apartment and found that it was locked, which was weird. I feel like I'm saying weird so much this episode. Sorry, I will try to do better. I will increase my vocabulary for y'all, because I feel like it's getting out of control. So he pounded on the door, but there was nothing but silence in return. So finally, he decided to kick the door open. This apartment consisted of a single small bedroom and a tiny kitchen, just big enough to accommodate a stove, an icebox, and a sink. Small as she was, Clara Newman's body covered most of the kitchen floor. She was Curled on her left side, naked from the waist down, her house dress having been pulled up above her waist. The wooden beads from her necklace lay scattered on the floor. Merton shouted for Brown to call the police and then dropped to his knees beside his aunt. He shook her to try to wake her, but he soon saw that she was already dead. The autopsy took place that evening. The police surgeon concluded that the bruises on the victim's neck had been made by powerful fingers. Miss Newman's death was declared to be murder by strangulation. Fingerprints found on the inside knob of the attic door were photographed and sent to the Bureau of Criminal Identification in the hope of finding a match. A vagrant was picked up in Oakland within 24 hours of the murder, but after viewing the man, Miss Newman's nephew confirmed that that was not the man who was in their house. The two workmen who had been repairing the neighboring roof at the time of the murder were questioned as witnesses, but neither man had gotten a good look at the suspect. The story of Miss Newman's death, headlined Fiend Murder of Spinster, rude, made the front page of the newspaper, but it quickly faded from memory as her murder was shocking but not enough to cause widespread concern. The public's reaction might have been different if one appalling detail had been revealed. The surgeon had confirmed that Mrs. Newman had been raped, or as the olden timing newspapers put it, criminally attacked. That one fact was withheld from the public. First, he had strangled her to death, and then he had raped her post-mortem. Although he was retired from the real estate business, Harvey J. Beale kept an office in downtown San Jose, where he spent a few hours each week overseeing his investments. At 1 p.m. on Tuesday, March 2nd, 1926, he kissed his wife Laura goodbye and left their ground floor apartment. The building itself was actually owned by Mrs. Beale. At that time, all the apartments were occupied except one, a recently vacated, furnished one-bedroom on the third floor. Mrs. Beale, who managed the property, had put a room to let sign up just a few days earlier. In addition to her duties as landlady, Laura Beale was active in her church and the leader of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. By all accounts, she was a sweet-tempered soul. The photograph of her that would run in the following day's paper shows a woman whose strong, slightly handsome features are softened by her gentle expression. When Harvey Beale returned home around 6 p.m., the door to his apartment was open. He called out to his wife as he entered the front hallway, but there was no reply. Inside the living room, he found his wife's reading glasses lying on top of the afternoon newspaper at the foot of her favorite easy chair. Assuming that she had gone over to a neighbor's, he went into the kitchen to fix himself a sandwich. Yom. When an hour passed with no sign of his wife, he began to worry. He checked with the other residents of the building, but none of them had seen his wife that day. One of the tenants, however, had noticed that the door of the Beale's apartment was open as early as 4 p.m. When he heard this, Mr. Beale was alarmed. He and the neighbors began a search of the entire neighborhood, but Laura Beale was nowhere to be found. By 10 p.m. there was only one place left to look, the vacant third floor apartment. Mr. Beale had already tried the door earlier that evening, but it had been locked. He found a spare key in his wife's dresser and went back to the apartment, opened the door, and stepped inside. He found his wife's body splayed across the mattress in the bedroom. From the condition of the room and the horrible bruises on her face, he could see that there had been a violent struggle. She had been strangled with the silk cord of her dressing gown, which had been twisted so tightly around her neck that it was embedded in her flesh. Her garments were pulled up to her waist. It was clear that the 65-year-old woman had been sexually assaulted, though it wasn't until the autopsy that the coroner determined she had been raped post mortem. The first page story in the next day's newspaper sent shockwaves through the area. As the story noted, the appalling murder of Mrs. Beale appeared to be the work of, quote, the same fiend who two weeks ago strangled a woman in similar circumstances in San Francisco, end quote. This was confirmed the next afternoon by Mr. H. S. Bailey, the owner of an ice cream parlor directly across the street from Beale's apartment. When questioned by the police, he recalled he had spotted a man hurrying from the building around 4.30 p.m., the approximate time of the murder, according to the coroner. This man's description matched the one provided by Merton Newman, the nephew of the killer's previous victim. Bailey was taken to the Bureau of Criminal Identification, where he was shown photographs of every degenerate known to police in the hope that he'd be able to identify the culprit. In the meantime, the San Jose police sought advice from a specialist in abnormal psychology, Dr. L. E. Stalking, who was the head of a local mental hospital, who declared that the killer was, quote, a maniac possessing extreme criminal cunning, end quote. Like, thanks so much for that. Case solved. Not really. The news that a homicidal maniac was at large in San Jose set off a full-blown panic. The police were inundated with phone calls from landladies who were reporting suspicious characters left and right. As they fucking should be. And also you're welcome. They're doing your job for you. All of the sources are like, oh, the women, they're being hysterical, especially the landladies. But I'm like, for good fucking reason they're being murdered. And also they're solving your shit for you. So why are you annoyed by that? Listen, you can tell that men write these books. I'm just gonna say that. Moving on. Okay, not moving on here. I left a direct quote. Quote, like Mrs. Rochester's story, most of the ostensible air quote leads that flooded police headquarters in the days following Laura Beale's murder were utterly useless. Either facts that had no bearing on the case or sheer overwrought fantasy. In spite of their dubious quality, however, at least two of these tales were taken seriously. End quote. Like, what the fuck? They're literally trying to protect themselves and their community. They're solving a serial killer case. They're not hysterical idiots. Women are dying. Also, we're gonna find out later how many fucking attacks this guy's doing. There is a shitload of women that were attacked by him, but they lived to tell about it because he was sloppy and he was rushing. So, like, truly, probably most of these women were attacked by him. Even if it wasn't him, they still need to be reporting that shit. They were being attacked. They were under siege and they were reporting it to the police like they fucking should. That's it. Period. Okay, so here is an example of one hysterical woman's useless tip. Okay, and this is actually a full-blown attack by Earl. Mrs. D. L. Courier reported that on Friday afternoon, while she was napping in her bedroom with her four-year-old son, she heard a strange noise and opened her eyes to see an unkempt man standing over her. Screaming, she jumped up from her bed and ran out of the room with the man running after her. He managed to grab the hem of her night dress, ripping it as she ran to the front door. She had just pulled open the door when the man overtook her. Gripping her in his powerful arms, he stuffed a pocket handkerchief into her mouth to stop her from screaming, then wound the torn strip of the night dress around her neck, preparing to strangle her. Struggling wildly, Mrs. Courier managed to get herself out of his grasp, but fell and struck her head on the doorframe and was rendered unconscious. When she woke up, the man had ran off. So later that same afternoon, Miss Ethel Elhart was alone in her father's plumbing shop when a man of uncouth appearance with several days' growth of beard on his face entered the store. When Miss Elhart asked him what he wanted, he stepped up to the counter, looked at her with an evil leer, and responded nothing. Suddenly he lunged across the counter, seized her wrists, and tried to drag her into his arms. Pulling herself free from him, she ran to the end of the counter towards the rear door. She burst into the alley and ran around the front of the building and back into the store, slammed and locked the door, and then ran to the back door and locked it, just as the man who chased her all the way around the building came running up to it. He pressed his ugly face to the door pane and he was standing there leering at her until he saw her pick up the phone to call the police, at which point he ran off. So take note of a few details here, like the victimology and also the fact that this attacker was noted to have an unkempt appearance and several days' growth of beard on his face. Because this is part of Nelson's MO. These accounts ran in the papers, causing near hysteria. To everyone's relief, however, the Sunday newspaper ran the story strangler maniac suspect jailed by San Jose police. So a suspect was arrested. He was a 33-year-old Austrian immigrant named Joe Kiesek, whose description matched that of the suspect. Dark hair, olive complexion, barrel chest, freakishly long arms. When a cop spotted him acting suspiciously, Kisack was dressed in a dirty army shirt, the same kind of shirt that the strangler was wearing when he fled Clara Newman's house in San Francisco. Kiesek had been rambling and he was talking about women when they picked him up, and they couldn't really understand anything he was saying. He seemed mentally unbalanced. But he did manage to give cops his home address, and the cops went there to see if they could find any evidence. They found nothing. Back at the station, Kisek calmed down enough to give a perfectly lucid account of his whereabouts the past few days. Several witnesses came forward who confirmed every part of his alibi. So they had to release him. There were rumors going around town that the strangler maniac had been seen leaving the city with a companion. Spoiler alert, that was incorrect. They were like, great, at least he's gone. Also, as weeks passed without further incidents, the people of San Francisco were also like, okay, cool, he's probably gone. But he hadn't left. He was only taking a break and it wouldn't last for long. Every afternoon around 2 p.m., Mrs. Lillian St. Mary, love that name, put on her hat and coat and went out to do her daily shopping. The 63-year-old San Francisco woman, who had been separated from her husband for 12 years, lived with her adult son James. To bring in extra income, Mrs. St. Mary rented the spare rooms in her large house. Most of them were vacant in the summer of 1926. One of Mrs. St. Mary's duties was to prepare dinner for her lodgers. Each afternoon she would make the rounds of the neighborhood shops, picking up groceries for the evening meal. On Thursday, June 10th, 1926, Mrs. St. Mary was just about to head out on her daily errands. Her coat and hat were already on, her purse was in her hands. At that moment, the doorbell rang. Walking to the front door, the elderly woman opened it and found herself facing a young man neatly dressed in a blue pinstriped suit. He told her he was looking for a place to stay, and he had seen the room for rent sign in her front window. Mrs. St. Mary invited him inside. Lucky you came when you did. I was just about to walk out the door, she said. Leading the way up to the second floor, she opened the door to the furnished room and stepped inside. The stranger entered behind her. As soon as they entered the room, he closed the door and locked it behind him. Hearing the lock, Mrs. St. Mary turned. Police later speculated that she may have tried to scream, but she never had a chance. Before she could utter a sound, his hands were around her throat. One of the boarders, named R.C. Brian, returned home from work around 5 p.m. and was surprised to find that the kitchen was empty. Normally, Mrs. St. Mary could be found at the counter, preparing dinner. Heading up to the second floor, Brian noticed that the door to an unoccupied room was ajar. He looked inside and froze. The landlady was stretched out on top of the bed, her mouth open, her eyes bulging. Her gray hair, normally pinned back in a tidy bun, was in disarray, and her clothes were disheveled, her dress shoved up to her waist, exposing her open legs. Even from the doorway, Brian could see that she was dead. He ran down the stairway and into the parlor to call the police. Police first on the scene made a brief examination of the room, noticing a few details of the crime scene. There was a still damp urine stain on the rug. They then deduced that Mrs. St. Mary had been attacked in the center of the room. The finger marks on her throat showed how savagely she had been strangled. So did the nine broken ribs discovered during the autopsy. Apparently, the killer had knelt with his full body weight on her chest while strangling her. The fact that her eyeglasses were still on her face suggested that she had not put up a struggle. The attack had been too quick. The killer had gotten his hands around her throat before she could even scream. A boarder who lived directly beneath the murder room had been home the entire day and had never even heard a sound. Before fleeing the room, the killer had posed Mrs. St. Mary's body on the bed, then put her hat on the mattress beside her and placed her folded coat underneath her feet. Though the landlady's purse was missing, she was still wearing the pearl necklace and jeweled earrings she put on in preparation for leaving the house. Clearly the motive for the attack wasn't robbery, it was sexual homicide. The autopsy conducted later that evening confirmed that, like with the previous victims, Mrs. St. Mary had been sexually assaulted after death. They went through the motions of interviewing Mrs. St. Mary's husband, or estranged husband, actually, Joseph, but they seemed pretty clear on the fact that the murders had been done by the Dark Strangler, as the newspapers were now calling this murderer. They also had a sighting on a trolley of a man matching the Dark Strangler description behaving strangely on a trolley in the area of the attack. The captain of detectives told reporters, quote, This description and other circumstances leave no doubt in my mind that the so-called Dark Strangler is the man we want for the slaying of Mrs. St. Mary. He gained admission to Mrs. St. Mary's home through the same pretense of renting a room, and the method of strangulation in each instance was similar. End quote. He announced that he had put every member of the city's homicide and robbery squads on the case, and he felt confident it was only a matter of time before the strangler was apprehended. In the meantime, he urged that all women in the region, particularly every landlady or rooming house owner, follow special precautions. Under no circumstances should they enter a vacant room with a man they don't know or even admit one to their premises unless a third party was present. He advised that negotiations with a stranger should be conducted through a speaking tube or over the telephone. Such precautions are essential to prevent further depredations by the strangler, he said. By the way, a speaking tube is a non-electric pre-telephone intercom system consisting of pipes, often brass or rubber, connecting rooms, ships, or aircraft to transmit sound over distances. Popular in the 19th century, they allowed residents to summon servants. Isn't that the best? Don't you love learning old and timey things? I love it so much. Women were calling the police to report attacks and attempted attacks in the San Francisco area. Honestly, were these Nelson? Probably a lot of them were. We know he's on a fucking rampage, and it's reasonable to think there are survivors who got away. My sources again say that women are hysterical in general, and that these tips are not credible. Also, a tip and an attack are two different things. That word is not synonymous with the other. He is an opportunist, clearly, in a raging sexual murderer, and yeah, he's out there trying to attack who the fuck ever is nearby or available to him. So again, I think it's logical and probable that there are many women who were attacked and survived. Again, they arrest someone and immediately tell the papers that they caught the strangler. This time it is a San Francisco butcher named Otto Kruger, whose appearance was approximate to the Strangler. Also, they list the fact that he liked to rant bitterly about his ex-wife as a reason that it could be him. Uh, but once again, he's alibied out and he's not the killer. On Thursday, June 24th, another woman had been murdered, a 53-year-old boarding house manager named Ollie Russell. Mrs. Russell listened to the warnings the police had given since Lillian St. Mary's murder two weeks before. If anything, she seemed more apprehensive than most of her neighbors, taking precautions to keep herself safe. To deter burglars, she had fixed the windows of her home so that they couldn't be opened more than six inches, and on the fateful day of her murder, she made sure to remove the rings from her fingers, tie them in a kerchief, and conceal them behind some books in her sitting room before answering the door. So there must have been something about the person that came to the door, something about his appearance, behavior, or manner of speech that disarmed Mrs. Russell's suspicions. The police could only guess at what that something might be. Only one fact was certain, that when the dark, stocky stranger appeared at her door asking to see the vacant room advertised in her window, Mrs. Russell let him inside. It was one of her boarders, a fireman for the Southern Pacific Railroad named William Frane, who discovered the murder. Though the story he told the police seemed so stupid that for a while Franey himself was a suspect. So Franey worked at night and he was asleep on the afternoon of June 24th when he was awakened by a commotion in the adjoining bedroom, which had been vacant for several weeks. Thinking that newboarders were moving in and banging their shit around, Frany just tried to go back to sleep. But when the noises continued, he got up from his bed, walked to the door, which separated the two rooms, and looked through the keyhole. He was confused. He saw a man with his pants pulled down to his knees lying on top of a woman, but he couldn't see who the woman was because the man was on top of her. The banging noise that had awakened him was the knocking of the headboard against the wall, which is disgusting in the context that we are speaking of. Embarrassed, Franny was like, oh shit, I don't really know what to do. So he kind of just like stepped away and was like, huh, okay. Then of course, I mean, because he's human, he was like, let me just take well let me just take a second look. Let me look again. This time the man was standing up from the bed, pulling up his pants and adjusting his clothing. He was wearing a shabby gray suit. Then the man walked out of sight. The woman, meanwhile, continued to lie motionless on the mattress, her dress drawn up above her hips, her legs parted and exposed. The window shades in the bedroom were closed, and her head was turned so that Frany couldn't see her features. But he is like, I don't know, I think that could be Mrs. Russell, the landlady. I'm gonna bury the lead here and just tell you that Franny is not the sharpest tool in the shed. Then the man reappeared. He pulled out a handkerchief, mopped his brow, then grabbed his greasy fedora from the mattress and put it on his head, and then he just casually strolled out of the room. Now Franny is like, what the fuck? But not really. He's an idiot. But he's like flustered. So he goes and he washes his face in the wash basin outside on the porch. And then he's like, I don't know, what should I do? It was obvious that the man in the gray suit was not Mrs. Russell's husband, George, who ran a pool hall and eatery called the Texas Lunch. Oh my god, I'm so hungry. I want to go there right now. What do you think they serve? I bet it's so good. You know, I love an antique menu. I went to my primary sources that I usually go to and I could not find it. However, I did find out that this kind of restaurant is usually attached to like a boarding house or it's like a pool hall, and so they didn't really have menus. It would be verbal or it would be like a chalkboard. But I found out that most likely the core items sold are chili con carne, chili and beans, canned tamales with chili, hamburgers, steak sandwiches, hot dogs. They also would serve breakfast like eggs, fried or scrambled, bacon, ham, potatoes, and bread or toast. Very common also would be pie, usually apple or custard pie, and coffee, bottomless, cheap, shitty coffee, and milk. The price range would be from 10 cents for chili to 40 cents for a full meal. I just wanted to throw that in there and let you know. Brainy found it hard to believe that the 53-year-old landlady would be entertaining gentleman callers while her husband was away at work. But he's also like, I don't know, weirder things have happened, and I don't really want to get into other people's business. So now he's like, well, let me go look again, and he goes to the window. He's outside the window and he's looking in, and the woman is still just laying there, not moving. But now he could see something from this angle, which was dark stains on the mattress that appeared to be blood. You would think that this is the point where you'd be like, oh shit, I should probably do something. No, not for this fucking idiot. So he's like, Oh, let me go get George, her husband, and let me go to the Texas lunch. Then halfway there, he's Like, no, if Mrs. Russell was just fucking some dude and she's sleeping because they just had sex and the stains on the mattress aren't blood, or if they are blood, it was just for the nosebleed because the sexual activity was so strenuous. So then he just goes back to the house and he's like, Oh well, maybe I should go wake her up. So then he's like, But I don't want to go in the room. Let me just go to the front door and ring the doorbell and wake her up. So he does that. And guess what? No one answered. Then he goes into the house and he's like, huh, the door to Mrs. Russell's bedroom is open, and she never left her door to her bedroom open. So now he starts yelling her name. And honestly, this fucking idiot, I don't know what took you this long to realize something was wrong. You're also a firefighter. You'd think you had better instincts, Jesus Christ. But anyways, no. So finally at this point, he's like, Alright, I'm gonna go actually go to the Texas lunch. Now he's like, Well, what do I say to the husband? And he's like, was she cheating on him? Is it foul play? I don't really wanna, you know, cause a big stir. Uh, time to cause a big stir. But okay, so he finds George and he is like, hey, do you know where your wife is? I can think of literally 117 other things I would say instead of that, but okay, sir. So then the husband is like, she's at home, dude, where she always is, unless she went to play cards with the neighbors. So Frany is like, has the apartment next to mine been rented? We're getting a little warmer here, Franny. And Russell is like, no, I don't think so. So finally Russell is like, what is going on? And Franny told him about the noises coming from next door, but he made sure not to say what he had seen in the room. And then he's just like, I think you should come home and look for yourself. This guy. So a few minutes later, the two men were back at the boarding house. Discovering that the door to the vacant bedroom was locked, they headed around to the rear porch and looked through the window. Russell, the husband, could see the woman stretched out on the bed, but he couldn't see her face. And you didn't know that was your wife? Even if you couldn't see her face? Okay. The two men decided to check with several of Mrs. Russell's friends in the neighborhood, but no one had seen the landlady since 2 45 p.m. So they fully found like a lady laying motionless on the bed. Can't tell that it's his wife somehow. And then they're like, huh, let's go ask if anyone's seen Mrs. Russell. What? Wouldn't you get be like, we have to get into that room? Oh my god, I just don't understand what's happening. Okay, so yeah, they're like, no, we haven't seen her. The last person that saw her was her friend Laura Fields, who had given her a jar of jelly. Of homemade jelly. Isn't that so wholesome and sweet and therefore very sad? Oh my god. Shortly after 3 p.m., Mrs. Fields had received a thank you call from her friend. And that was the last time anyone heard from Ollie Russell. Returning to his house with Franey, George Russell found a spare key to the door of the bedroom, opened it, and stepped inside. He yelled out, Oh my god, as Franey ran to call the police. Her battered face gruesomely discolored, Ollie Russell lay dead on the mattress. She'd been strangled with a loop of cord pulled tight enough to tear the flesh of her throat. Blood had pulled from her neck onto the mattress, and there were bloody marks on the doorframe. Frane himself was the first to fall under suspicion. Suspicion of being a dumbass. Just kidding. They think he's a murderer. After going to the crime scene, the police captain declared that it would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible, for Franny to have seen the things he saw through the keyhole. Franny was detained and his room thoroughly searched. However, within 24 hours, Franny was released due to a lack of evidence. By then, the autopsy on Mrs. Russell's body had been completed at a funeral home. The autopsy revealed that the victim had been attacked by a degenerate who had violated her body after death. This ghastly finding confirmed what many had already assumed that the landlady's killer was the same monster who had already committed three identical murders in the Bay Area. Quote, there is no doubt in my mind that the murder was committed by the strangler, end quote, said the chief of police. A telegram was sent to every city along the coast, alerting police to be on the lookout for a man matching the description provided by Franey. The police bulletin described the suspect as, quote, about 35 years old, 5 feet 8 inches tall, medium build, high cheekbones, dark skin, thin face, long wavy sandy hair, looks like a laborer, was dressed in a dark gray suit, clothes were not in very good condition and rather shabby. Had on a gray fedora hat, which may have some grease spots on it, broad chest and shoulders. End quote. Gross. Greasy fedora. I can't. From San Francisco to the Mexican border, investigators combed the coastline in search of the strangler. In Santa Barbara itself, police launched the biggest manhunt in city history. Over the next week, they arrested a fuckload of suspects, only to release them within hours. Some were picked up for no other reason than they were wearing a greasy gray fedora. I mean, fair. Meanwhile, police were applying the latest advances in crime detection technology in an effort to track down the strangler. A bloody thumbprint found on the doorframe of the murder room was photographed. Afterward, the section of wood imprinted with the bloody print was removed from the doorframe and sent to Sacramento for analysis by experts. Unfortunately, they were not able to come up with a match. Shortly after this, the police and press announced that the dark strangler had been caught. Yeah, I know. We're hearing that a lot. A man had confessed to the crimes this time. He told police his name was Philip H. Brown, and he had been arrested for vagrancy in Needles, California. He was wearing a shabby dark gray suit at the time. Brown claimed that he killed two women in San Francisco, one in San Bernardino, one in Santa Barbara, and one around Oakland. This man looked nothing like the descriptions of the Strangler, and he had bright blue eyes. That did not stop the police and press from announcing that the Strangler had been caught. He had even formally been charged with the murder of Ollie Russell. However, on Monday, August 16th, the matter of if this man was the Dark Strangler was solved. And that is where we have to stop for today. We will pick it up next time with the very next murder. We still have a lot of murders to go. This spree is not even close to being over. But before we go for today, you know what time it is. It's time for nature. It's fucking cool. We've seen plants and insects posing as something else entirely in order to confuse their natural predators. But the macrosilix Maya, a moth native to Southeastern Asia, takes mimicry to a whole new level by literally painting an entire scene on its wings. Looking at the macrocylix Maya moth, it's impossible to ignore the scene on its wings. Two flies feasting on some brown spots that could be mistaken for fresh bird droppings. It's a pretty disgusting picture, and apparently we're not the only ones who think so. I think it's rat as fuck, and so do you. Many of this moth's predators will not eat insects that are feasting on bird droppings associating them with potential disease. So the natural pattern acts as a defense mechanism for the otherwise helpless insect. And if this visual representation of flies eating feces wasn't impressive enough, the moth reportedly also gives off a pungent odor that could be mistaken for actual bird droppings. How fucking metal is that? Go look at the photos on my website or on social media. I know what you're thinking, these photos must have been edited. I don't blame you. The flies look so realistic. The outline of the body of the flies is so accurate, especially the head, and the brown splashes also appear to be real. There's even light reflecting off the bodies of the flies. Like, how did the moths even develop this specific pattern? It's not like they knew what would keep predators at bay. Nature just figured it out, and it is beautiful and amazing. Well, as it often seems to happen, the evolution of the macrocylix maya was most likely random. Eons ago, a slight mutation caused a moth to have a pattern that somewhat resembled the clear scene we now associate the whole species with. It proved effective enough to keep predators at bay, so the genes were passed on. Then natural selection happened. The moths that had mutations for the fly feasting on droppings pattern were more likely to reproduce, while specimens featuring other motifs did not. It was survival of the fittest, and the pattern likely evolved over generations, with the most believable pattern outliving the others. The original patterns were probably nowhere as realistic as they are today, but it evolved over time. This is probably still a work in progress, with slight mutations making the disgusting picture even more realistic. There's some pretty mind-blowing mimicry in nature, from a moth that perfectly resembles a dead tree leaf or a harmless caterpillar that resembles a menacing snake's head, but the macrocylix Maya is the first creature I've seen mimicking a relatively complex scene, complemented by an appropriately foul smell. I am obsessed with these moths. That is it though for today. I hope you enjoyed this terrible story and that amazing moth. And I will be back, it won't be four months. I'll be back within the month, at least, for part two. But yeah, that's it. I will talk to you next time. Okay. Bye. Full source notes are available at mistress of the macabrepodcast.com as well as photos pertaining to each episode. Follow along on Instagram for all the insane and gory photos at Mistress of the Macab Podcast. Please leave a five-star rating and review wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps the show grow, and I will love you forever. And tell a friend if you even have any. Bonus content is available at patreon.com or on Apple Podcast Subscriptions. I'm just one young teenage girl writing, researching, producing, editing, and recording the show. Your support goes a long way. If you have topic ideas, questions, comments, animal facts, or unsettling stories you'd like to share, email me at mistress of the macabre podcast at gmail.com.