Episode 60, The Gorilla Man Strangler - Part 2

Welcome to Part 2 of 4 about the Gorilla Man Strangler, Earle Leonard Nelson. Today we pick up in Portland, Oregon and continue to follow Nelson’s trail of misery. We also talk about the most fabulous woman in the world, and RCA consoles. You know. For funsies.

#mistressofthemacabre #mistressofthemacabrepodcast #truecrime #truecrimepodcast #mysteries #hauntings #darkhistory #badmedicine  #podcastvisuals #thegorillaman #thedarkstrangler #serialkiller #yeoldentimes #1920scrime 

If you want to see these photos individually, go to the Facebook page or www.mistressofthemacabrepodcast.com

For all photos, follow along on IG:
 
 https://www.instagram.com/mistressofthemacabrepod

TikTok: 

tiktok.com/mistressofthemacabrepod

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@MistressoftheMacabrePodcast
 
 
 Or check out the website/blog:

 
 www.mistressofthemacabrepodcast.com
 
 FB:
 
 https://www.facebook.com/mistressofthemacabrepodcast

Bonus episodes can be found here:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mistress-of-the-macabre-podcast/id1620802774?itsct=podcast_box&itscg=30200&ls=1

Or here:

https://www.mistressofthemacabrepodcast.com/members-only
 
 
 Bonus perks can be accessed here:

 https://www.patreon.com/mistressofthemacabrepodcast

If you can spare a one time donation, it will go towards purchasing more books for my research:

https://account.venmo.com/u/SaraTiaraXO

https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/saratiaraxo?country.x=US&locale.x=en_US 

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

https://animals.sandiegozoo.org/animals/harpy-eagle

https://www.instagram.com/p/C8QQUuthlIk/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

www.mistressofthemacabrepodcast.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

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 tea. Because if you can die according to a space perfect. Pull yourself a cocktail, pull the window shades closed, and find a cool, dark, quiet place. Because right now we delve into the macabre. Hello, my little murder muffins. Welcome back to the Mistress of the Macab podcast. We are back again this week. We are on part two of the Gorilla Man Strangler case, and it is going to be horrible. You're welcome. So where we left off last week was remember that dumbass firefighter Franny? He had seen his landlady being raped post-mortem and then decided everything was fine. Remember that whole debacle? And then he ended up going to the Texas lunch. And then remember how I fixated on trying to find the menu for the Texas lunch. Then after that, the police started arresting every man wearing a greasy gray fedora hat. Then they declared that they caught the strangler, but it was some blue-eyed dude, so it was deaf not him. That is where we left off. Also, I see the stats of this show, and I just want to say, to those of you who listen to like only part two of a topic, y'all are wild as fuck. How do you even know what's happening? I don't understand, but it's okay. You do you. If that's what you're into, go ahead. Steven and Mary Nisbet, both in their early 50s, owned a small apartment building in Oakland. At around 4 50 p.m. on August 16th, Mr. Nisbet, who was also a school custodian, arrived home from work. Entering his second floor apartment, he called out to his wife, but there was no answer. Inside the kitchen, he found the ingredients for a stew carrots, chopped onions, and potatoes. Yum. As though his wife had been interrupted in the middle of making dinner. He assumed that she had just stepped out for a moment, possibly to borrow an ingredient from a neighbor and that she'd return. Mr. Nisbet spent a few minutes inside the apartment. In the bedroom, he found his wife's purse sitting on her dresser. So obviously she couldn't have gone too far. He settled down in the living room with his newspaper. When Mr. Nisbet looked up from his paper, it was almost 6 p.m. and his wife still hadn't returned home. As far as he knew, there was only one thing that she had intended to do that day, which was to go to the offices of the Oakland Tribune and take out a classified ad for the vacant apartment on the first floor of their building. But she had planned to do that before noon. He decided next to check with the neighbors, but no one had seen Mary Nisbet all afternoon. One of the second floor tenants suggested that she could have gone to the corner grocery store to make some last-minute purchases. After checking the first floor apartment to make sure his wife wasn't there, Nisbet went to the grocery store to see if anyone there had seen her, but the grocery store owner said that he had not seen Mrs. Nisbet all day. By 7.30 p.m., now he's kind of getting frantic. He knows something's wrong, so he goes to the police station and reports his wife missing. The police sergeant on duty told Mr. Nisbet to return to his home and wait another hour. If his wife wasn't back by then, the police would look into it. Back at his building, Nisbet decided to take another look inside the one place he hadn't searched thoroughly, which was the vacant ground floor apartment. Opening the unlocked door, he moved through the living room, bedroom, and kitchen, turning on the lights as he went. But the flat seemed completely vacant. The only place left to check was the bathroom, though what his wife would be doing in there he couldn't imagine. He swung open the bathroom door and switched on the light. Upstairs tenant Margaret Bull was startled by a scream from down below. She was just headed to the door to investigate when Stephen Nisbet, pale and hysterical, came running into her flat calling for help. You and I both know that when a wife is murdered, the husband is the first suspect. And this was so in the case of Stephen Nisbet. But everyone who knew the Nisbetts, friends and family members, neighbors, tenants, attested to their deep devotion for each other. They were, according to all accounts, a perfect couple. Police noted that Steven was so affected by grief that he seemed to be on the brink of a nervous breakdown. Just like me when my Uber Eats delivery is over 15 minutes late. Fearing that he might do physical harm to himself, the police kept him under close surveillance in the hours after the discovery of his wife's body. Of the five landlady murders committed at this point, the murder of Mary Nisbet was the most brutal. Her husband had found her face down on the tiled floor of the bathroom. She had been garotted with a kitchen towel, knotted around her throat, and pulled with such force that the fabric had frayed. The ferocity of the attack had permanently indented her neck. Her blackened face had been slammed against the tiles as the killer knelt on her back. Fragments of her shattered front teeth lay in a pool of blood on the tile floor. Her hair was wildly disheveled, of course it would be, her clothing badly torn, her lower body naked and bruised. Though Nisbet was held in custody for almost 48 hours while the police checked his alibi, there seemed little doubt that the killing was indeed the work of the Dark Strangler, a theory that was confirmed when the autopsy revealed evidence of post-mortem rape. The press, however, didn't bother to wait for this finding. Hours before the autopsy was even done, they ran a headline that the Dark Strangler had struck again. Oakland police launched a massive search focusing on owners of boarding houses and apartment buildings to see if anyone else had been approached by a dark, suspicious man asking about renting a room. Their investigation turned up two witnesses who appeared to have set eyes on the suspect. One of these was David Atwood, a postman for the Nisbetz neighborhood, who told the police that he'd seen a strange man loitering outside the Nisbetz apartment building around 2 p.m. on the day of the murder. Atwood described the man as about 40 years old, 5'6 inches tall, wearing a dark gray suit and a dark fedora hat. Unfortunately, Atwood hadn't gotten a very good look at the man's face, though he had been struck by one feature, the stranger's unsettling half smile. The same smiling stranger, as the tabloids put it, had been seen by Miss Charlotte Jaffe, one of the Nisbet's tenants, when she left her apartment to do some shopping at around 2.20 p.m. on Monday. The man was standing on the front steps of the building when Miss Jaffee emerged and had said something that she couldn't really understand as she walked by him. Looking over her shoulder at him, she had been so unnerved by his weird little half smile that she quickly looked away and hurried down the street. While a team of detectives tried to track down the smiling stranger, others pursued the physical leads. At first, the towel seemed like a promising clue. Assuming that it belonged to the killer, that's a very strange assumption to make, investigators believed that they might be able to trace it by its laundry marks. What that means, I have no idea. But of course, that was stupid because the towel came from inside the Nisbet home, obviously. On Thursday, August 19th, just three days after Mary Nisbet's murder, another landlady was strangled. Isabel Galagos was a 76-year-old widow who lived in Stockton, California, and rented rooms out in her home. She was found by a former tenant who had dropped by the house to pick up his mail. As soon as this tenant, his last name is Parlet, as soon as he stepped inside the house, he saw that something was wrong. The place had been turned upside down, closets were ransacked, dressers emptied, clothes and household items were tossed onto the floor. He found Mrs. Galagos in the bedroom, her face was blue, her eyes bulging, and she had a cotton pillowcase twisted tightly around her neck. The immediate assumption was that the murder was the work of the dark strangler who'd been lured by the room to let sign in the victim's front window. That same afternoon, a Stockton lady named Sadie Powers, great name, reported another attack to the police. According to Mrs. Powers, who managed an apartment building, a dark complexioned stranger with bushy eyebrows had come to the front door inquiring about the vacancy sign hosted on the front of the building. As soon as they were alone in the apartment, the man had grabbed her by the arms and then attempted to wrap his hands around her throat. Mrs. Powers, however, put up such a fierce struggle that the assailant fled. Yasqueen, fuck him up. Even as police followed up on this lead, however, they were beginning to wonder whether Isabel Galagos had in fact been a victim of the strangler, since the state of the crime scene suggested robbery, not rape and murder, as the main motivation. I mean, I'm rolling my eyes, like, it's him. When the autopsy revealed that Mrs. Galagos had not been subjected to a sexual assault, the police chief and other members of the Stockton force were even less inclined to attribute her death to the strangler. I'm still like, hello, it's him. Once again, the investigation had hit a dead end. However, on Saturday, August 21st, another suspect was identified. John Slivkov was a Russian immigrant whose physical description matched the widely broadcast descriptions of the strangler. A police detective had spotted Slivkov loitering on a Sacramento street corner and noting his resemblance to the mystery killer had picked him up for vagrancy. The following day, Tuesday, August 24th, efforts to identify John Slivkov as the strangler fell through. After viewing the suspect, David Atwood, Charlotte Jafe, and Merton Newman, um, remember Merton Newman, agreed that John bore absolutely no resemblance to the man they had all seen. Six months by now has passed since the first murder, and investigators were no closer to a solution than they had been in the very beginning. Only one thing seemed certain. Whoever the strangler was, he clearly had a juckal and hide nature. To win his way into the homes of his victims, particularly at a time when the entire Pacific Coast was on alert for a strangler, he would have to be a man who made an exceedingly good first impression. He would have to be polite, well-spoken, and innocuous. Once alone with his prey in a vacant apartment, however, he underwent a terrifying transformation, turning into a lust-driven monster who murdered and raped with the fury of an animal. If we look at Nelson's pattern here, so during his 16-month murder spree, he will murder several people in a frenzy, and then he has a cooling off period of anywhere between 3 and 12 weeks. Nowadays we recognize this as a classic pattern of serial homicide, officially defined by the FBI, as a string of random murders interspersed with emotional cooling off periods of varying duration. As we know, this man is a classic serial killer in every way. On October 19th, 1926, at around 3:30 p.m. in Portland, Oregon, a 15-year-old boy named Charles Withers had returned to his house and found that his mother was gone. This one is really sad. I mean they all are. I guess there's no trigger warning because this whole show is a trigger warning, but this one bums me out a lot. So this kid, Charlie Withers, he comes home and his mom is gone, and at first he's not concerned. His mother, a 32-year-old divorcee named Beta, was often out running errands or visiting with friends when he got home from school. He went about his business, expecting her to show up at any moment. But when she still wasn't home by dinner time, he became worried enough to call Bob Frenzel, an intimate friend of his mother's who lived just a few blocks away. As soon as Frenzel arrived, the two searched the house and discovered that Mrs. Withers' overcoat was missing along with her hat and pocketbook. Clearly, she had gone somewhere. Frenzel called around to her friends, but none of them had seen or spoken to Beta all day. That night, 15-year-old Charlie slept alone in the big empty house. That is so sad. Early the following morning, he went to the police station and reported that his mother was missing. What a good kid. He did the right thing. He went to school that day, hoping that his mother would be there waiting for him when he got home. He even went to school. Your only parent is missing. That's a reason to skip school. And he was like, no, I'm a stand-up kid. I'm gonna get up early, go to the police station before school, and then go to school for a full day. That's crazy. Poor Charlie. As soon as he stepped through the front door of his house, however, his heart sank. He could feel the emptiness of the house even before he looked around and checked the rooms and saw that she was not there. Once again he called Frenzel, who showed up this time with another family friend, a gentleman named Cook. Frenzel proposed that the three of them do a more thorough check of Mrs. Withers' wardrobe to see what garments she might have taken with her besides her top coat and hat. Ugh, besides being sad, it's also this one's infuriating. Get ready to be fucking pissed. The Withers house was a tidy, pleasantly furnished bungalow with two bedrooms, a living room, dining room, kitchen, breakfast nook, and bathroom on the ground floor. It sounds adorable. The second story consisted of a large unfinished attic. While Charlie searched through his mother's bedroom closet, the two older men went up the stairs into the attic where Bita Withers stored some of her clothing in a steamer trunk. Ugh, I love this era. I need steamer trunks in my life immediately. Louis Vuitton, of course. The only good thing that can be said about what happens next as this tragedy unfolds is that Charlie was not present when the discovery was made in the attic. Frenzel opened the steamer trunk while Cook looked over his shoulder. Lifting the heavy lid, Frenzel carefully removed the partition tray and set it on the floorboards. The trunk was crammed with clothing which appeared to be in a state of disarray, unlike the rest of Mrs. Withers' home. Frenzel knew Mrs. Withers to be very organized and tidy and would have expected her to fold and store her clothing in a more orderly fashion. Reaching into the trunk, he removed a few of the garments that were on the top and then let out a scream. A scream that made Cook, quote, just about jump out of my skin, end quote, as he would later put it. Frenzel staggered backwards, and Cook looked into the trunk and saw what Frenzel had uncovered. A pair of nude female legs half covered by blouses, skirts, and sweaters. The police were then called. By the time they arrived, Frenzel and Cook had pulled most of the clothes out from the trunk. Inside, Beta Withers' corpse, naked except for a thin cotton slip, bunched up around her armpits, lay curled in a fetal position, one arm shoved between her legs. While the deputy coroner examined the body, detectives searched the house for clues. So here I derail a little bit. I don't want to get too into this detail because of how stupid it is. It's really dumb. But here we go. So these detectives find a painting of fairies flying out of a little box with like a little poem on it. This is framed inside the home. And these detectives are like, oh my god, we've solved this case. We know exactly what happened here. They then have one of their detectives squeeze himself inside the trunk, reach out and pile clothing on top of himself, then grab the partition tray from the floor and somehow put that over himself, and then somehow close the lid to the trunk. Do you see where this is going? It was truly a feat worthy of Houdini. This persuaded detectives that Beta Withers had suffocated herself by shutting herself inside the trunk. And she had been inspired to do so by the painting of the fairies. Are you screaming? I'm not screaming out loud, but I'm screaming in my soul. The fucking audacity of these error quote detectives. Luckily, the cops immediately tell this to the press. And the press are the ones that are like, are you fucking stupid? That did not happen. Even the police, when asked about this theory, admitted that, quote, trunk suicides are rare, end quote. When pressed, one Portland PD officer said he and all of his colleagues had, quote, never heard such a method being used, end quote. Still, the detectives stubbornly held on to this belief, insisting that Beta had gotten the idea from the framed bit of poetry in her kitchen. Quote, Mrs. Withers read that motto and took it too seriously. I could not be convinced that it was not murder until I read the poem. Then I tried the trunk to see if a person could do as Mrs. Withers did, enter, arrange the clothing, work the tray in place, and drop the lid. It could be done easily and all suspicion of murder vanished. End quote. Said some fucking cop. Listen, if you're like, what is this poem? It was so annoying that I deleted it and I don't have it. But it has nothing to do with suicide. It's just a dumb little poem. Okay, so as I was finalizing this script, I was like, but now I want to know what the poem is. Even though I had cut it out. So I went back and I found it from the source material again, just so that I could tell you what the poem was, so that you know how dumb it was. And it has nothing to do with anything about killing yourself and locking yourself in a trunk. Okay? So I'm gonna read you this poem. Here's her inspiration for suicide via Louis Vuitton trunk. The title of the poem is Then Laugh. Build yourself a strong box. Fashion each part with care. When it is as strong as your hand can make it, put all of your troubles there. Hide there all thought of your failures and each bitter cup that you quaff. Lock all your heartaches within it, then sit on the lid and laugh. Tell no one else its contents, never its secrets share. When you've dropped in your care and worry, keep them forever there. Hide them from sight so completely that the world will never dream half. Fasten the strong box securely, then sit on the lid and laugh. That's it. With little fairies. That's it. So diabolical, right? So fucking evil, demonic, makes you want to lock yourself in a fucking trunk. So obviously, that whole thing is stupid moving on. Stains that turned out to be a mix of blood and saliva were quickly discovered on the pillow of Mrs. Withers' bed, and the debate raged on in the police department only whether it was murder or suicide. Luckily, police did continue their investigation, bringing in various people for questioning, including Bob Frenzel, whose car had been seen in front of the Withers home on the morning of the murder, and Mrs. Withers' ex-husband, Mr. Charles Withers of Seattle, who himself was like, y'all are stupid, this was not a suicide. He told the press, I do not believe she would have done such a thing. Also, Mr. Withers and Frenzel both had airtight alibis. Other people acquainted with Beta Withers shared her ex-husband's point of view. One of her neighbors, for example, a woman named Miriam Wright, had spoken to Mrs. Withers just hours before her death. Quote, she was working out in the yard on her dahlias. She appeared unusually happy, talking about her plans for her garden this winter and next spring. Why it seems impossible that a few hours later she would have crawled into a trunk and committed suicide. End quote. Yes, Miriam Wright, you are correct. And thank you for saying that. Police agreed that Mrs. Withers appeared happy, but that doesn't mean she didn't kill herself. So police are asking around, and a few of her friends were saying that Beta might have been in financial trouble, she might have been in debt, and in danger of losing her house. The thing that points to that is the fact that she had decided to take in borders to generate extra income. Just a few days before her death, she had placed a room-to-let ad in the newspaper. Ding ding ding, wouldn't you immediately be like, oh, this is the gorilla man? The most explosive evidence of all in this one case was when the police found poor beta's personal diary. They found it in her bedroom dresser. The press will call it the love diary, and it is a chronicle of her ill fated love affair with Bob Frentzel, who she wrote lied to her about his marital status. I am not gonna all these years later further drag this poor woman through the fucking dirt. First of all, she's single. Let her do what the fuck she wants. Second of all, fuck off. Don't read her diary. Third of all, she didn't kill herself. Anyway. I am now not gonna read her diary. It's irrelevant. It has nothing to do with it. I feel so bad that they even found it. I feel bad that this even happened to her. I just feel bad. So I'm not gonna read it. It's nothing crazy. She went out with Bob, they had fun on New Year's Eve, they banged, and then, you know, he didn't say he was married, and she found that out later, and she, of course, was like upset by that, as anyone would be. For days, the Withers case was the biggest news in town, overshadowing every other local story. So bizarre was the Portland trunk death mystery, as it was being called, that it was reported in newspapers as far away as San Francisco. Obviously, we know that Nelson crams bodies into weird tiny places, so this is completely his MO. We know that. But like people got all pulled into the hype of this and also the love affair, and also was it a suicide? But it's just so stupid of them to think that. So in San Jose, another suspect in the Dark Strangler murders had been identified and arrested. Of course, like every other time they arrest the Dark Strangler, they're absolutely certain they have the right man. This time the man's name is J.E. Ross. On Tuesday, October 19th, under the pretense of being a salesman, he had gained entry into the house of Mrs. A. D. Fiore, then raped her at gunpoint. I would like to immediately interject. This is a completely different MO. Before fleeing in his car, he had warned her not to inform the police. In spite of that, Mrs. D. Fiore went directly to the police, quickly arrested Ross, already a suspect in another sexual assault. The August 23rd rape of a woman named Edna Johnson in her home. Inside Ross's car, detectives found a bludgeon fashioned from lead pipe wrapped in a cloth sack and several articles of clothing, which, according to the police, were there to effect a quick disguise. Even more incriminating were certain remarks Ross made under questioning that seemed to connect him to the unsolved murder of Laura Beale the previous March. Then the very next day after the arrest, the sheriff goes ahead and makes an announcement in the press that he can positively be able to link Ross not only to the attacks on Di Fiore and Johnson, but to the killing of Laura Beale. J.E. Ross may have been a serial rapist, but he was not the Dark Strangler. As new and alarming events in Portland were about to prove. On Thursday, October 21st, just one day after the discovery of Beta Withers' body, another Portland woman, 59-year-old landlady Virginia Grant, had been found dead in the basement of one of her properties, which was a vacant house at the time. The circumstances of her death seemed highly suspicious. Her corpse was found behind the furnace, as though it had been placed there in a deliberate act of concealment, and two diamond rings valued at several hundred dollars each were missing from her fingers. Nevertheless, the immediate judgment of the investigating officers, what the fuck are these guys doing in Portland in 1926, was that the elderly woman had died Are you ready for this? Of natural causes. That's right. You heard me right. Yep. They said, oh, she stole her own rings, had a heart attack, and then stuffed her own body behind a furnace. You know, classic. I hate it. Mrs. Grant's children were immediately justifiably outraged at this finding and demanded that the police treat their mother's death as a homicide, like anyone with any fucking common sense would do. Still, the case generated little attention compared to the controversy surrounding the sensational trunk death mystery. More remarkably still, no one seemed to draw a connection between the cases, even though the initial report of Mrs. Grant's death appeared on the first page of the newspaper, directly adjacent to an update on the Withers case. When Mabel Fluke turned up dead on Saturday afternoon, however, even the fucking stupid ass Portland police were finally compelled to admit that something sinister might be going on in their city. The only daughter of prosperous Portland businessman, William McDonald, Mabel Fluke was raised in privilege. Her life, however, had been marked by hardship. After 12 happy years of marriage, her husband, Robert, had been stricken with cancer. The stress of caring for him and of witnessing his rapid decline had taken a toll on her own health too. Still, she seemed surprisingly fit at 37, a slight pretty woman with 37. Oh my god. I mean, I thought they were gonna say like 78. No, 37. Anyways, so apparently she's surprisingly young for 37. A slight pretty woman with a perfectly oval face, milky complexion, and dark, strikingly large eyes. Aww, it's me. I'm just kidding. I don't have any of those things, but it sounds lovely. She sounds gorgeous. In the spring of 1925, the couple had sold their ranch in Independence, Oregon and returned to Portland, purchasing a two-story house. The house was tidy, wood framed, and had three rooms on the ground floor, and two more rooms plus a small unfinished attic on the second floor. Less than a year after moving in, Robert Fluke had succumbed to his illness. At her parents' insistence, old Mabel, she's 37, she's not old, had moved back to the family estate in St. John's, occupying a small bungalow on the property. Though her husband's death was a devastating loss, the young widow refused to retire from her life. Her delicate frame and fragile health belied her strength of character. Aww. Enrolling in a local business school, she undertook a course in stenography. She also decided to become a landlady, renting out and overseeing the upkeep of her former home in Selwood. On Saturday, October 16th, Mabel had placed an ad in the newspaper that read Five Room Bungalow, Completely Furnished, Electric Range, Garage on Paved Street. Reasonable to responsible party, there Wednesday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Very early Wednesday morning before her parents had gotten up for the day, Mabel left St. John's and headed out to Selwood, intending to do some house cleaning before any prospective tenants arrived. At approximately 11 a.m., a woman named Emma Schultz, who lived next door to the fluke house, stepped on her porch and saw the young widow on her hands and knees scrubbing her own front porch. Mrs. Schultz called a greeting to Mabel, who looked up from her work and exchanged a few words with the older woman, explaining that she might go out to the country after renting the house. Mrs. Schultz, who assumed that Mabel was referring to Independence, Oregon, where Robert Fluke's family lived, spent a few more minutes chatting before going back inside her own house. Another neighbor, a woman named Newton, who lived across the street from the Fluke house, noticed the young widow on several occasions that day, the last time at approximately 1 p.m., when Mabel came to the front door to admit a young couple who had just driven up to look at the house. Two hours later, Mrs. Newton glanced out of her kitchen window and saw another car pull up. A family of four, a father, mother, and two teenage girls, stepped out of the car and onto the front porch. The husband rang the doorbell, and when no one answered, he tried again. After another brief wait, the family held a quick conversation, then got back into their car and drove away. When their daughter failed to return home that evening, Mabel's parents weren't alarmed, believing that she had decided to either sleep over in Selwood or to travel on to independence to visit her husband's family. By Thursday night, however, William MacDonald was anxious enough to send his son, William Jr., out to the Selwood house. William Jr. returned a few hours later and told his parents that Mabel wasn't there and that the house had been locked. Then William Sr. went to the St. John's police station. An officer accompanied him to the Selwood home. Using a skeleton key, the two men entered the house and made a quick search of the downstairs. Lying on the kitchen table was a package of tea, a paper sack containing four eggs, and Mabel's keyring. They found her purse inside a drawer, and the sight of it made her father panic. The two men then went upstairs. It only took a moment to check the two bedrooms that were up there. There was no sign of Mabel in either of them. That left only one place left to look. The attic. The attic was nothing but a narrow space approximately five feet tall by nine feet wide. It was accessible through a small hinged panel in the hallway. A police officer opened the panel. It was pitch black inside the attic, but he had a flashlight with him and cast the light into the attic. Mabel was on her back, wearing the same dress she had been wearing on Wednesday. Her right shoe was still on her foot, the other was lying on the floorboards nearby. She had died of strangulation. Her silk scarf had been wound tightly around her neck and double knotted on one side. The smell of decomposition in the cramped space made it clear that she had been dead for several days. The discovery of Mabel Fluke's body, the third mysterious death in Portland in less than a week, sent shockwaves through the city. Even the police, who seemed so reluctant to confront the truth, admitted that there were significant connections between the cases. All three had occurred in the same section of town, southeast Portland. Each woman had been offering rooms to rent and had recently placed ads in the local newspapers. All three bodies had been found in a concealed place, crammed inside a steamer trunk, shoved behind a furnace, and hidden in a small attic. Mabel Fluke had very clearly been strangled, and there was a real possibility that both of the other victims had also been strangled. Certain personal items were also missing in each case. Like Virginia Grant, Mabel Fluke had been wearing diamond rings that were missing from her fingers. And her overcoat, like Beta Withers, was nowhere to be found. For the first time, the Portland authorities were beginning to make another connection, too. Speaking to reporters that Saturday evening, the police captain acknowledged that the deaths of Mrs. Withers, Grant, and Fluke bore an unsettling resemblance to the recent spree of killings in the Bay Area of California. He urged that, quote, women stay away from untenanted houses unless accompanied by a man. In all of these cases, the women had advertised their places for rent. Whenever a woman has such a place to rent, at least until we find out more about these cases, it is better that she have somebody stay with her until the business is transacted. This may frighten many women, but it is better that some should be frightened than there should be any more lives lost. It appears to me that this is the work of someone who is watching these advertisements. End quote. Even the dumbass motherfucking detective behind the trunk suicide theory suddenly declared publicly that, quote, Mrs. Withers and Mrs. Fluke were murdered without a question. And though I haven't investigated the Grant case as yet, I believe she met her death at the hands of the same person. End quote. So in Oregon, most people were unaware of the California crimes. However, the next day, Sunday, the Morning Oregonian filled its readers in on the story. So for the first time, the citizens of Portland are learning about the string of murders and stranglings that have been terrorizing the Bay Area, the work of the Dark Strangler. But of course, there are still some dumbass officials in Portland who were like, nope, it's not the Dark Strangler. These are unrelated tragedies. Although the facts of the flute case are irrefutable, a strangled female corpse shoved into an attic sure seems like a strong indication of foul play. A deputy coroner made the unfortunate conclusion that she may have taken her own life by knotting the scarf around her own neck, and once again stealing her own rings and cramming her own dead body into an attic. The bruises on her elbows, he explained, had been caused by, quote, her efforts to draw the knots tight, one arm having struck the sidewall of the attic, the other the floor, end quote. Which is so fucking infuriating. And while we're on this topic, the debate over Beta Withers' trunk death is still raging. After consulting several medical texts on asphyxiation, County Coroner Earl Smith told reporters that as far as he could see, the Withers case looked like a murder. During the second stage of asphyxiation, he explained, the person lapses into unconsciousness, but the body and limbs begin moving spasmatically, even violently, due to the action of uncirculated blood on the nerves. Um, that's not quite correct, sir, but okay. I mean close-ish. If Mrs. Withers had suffocated inside the trunk, Smith said, she would have dislodged the tray and trunk lid in her death spasms. Also, he noted that her body wouldn't have been lying in the peaceful, apparently sleeping attitude in which it was found. There was only one possible conclusion, according to Smith. Mrs. Withers was already dead before she was placed in the trunk. Okay, so at least one person is reading a book and putting some things together. That's good. I'm glad we at least have that much. Thank you, Mr. Smith, Dr. Smith, County Coroner Smith. Still, dumbasses are around. So, in opposition to Coroner Smith's statement, was the opinion of a quote, high police official, end quote, who, speaking anonymously to reporters, pointed out that there were no apparent marks of violence on Mrs. Withers's body. Moreover, her love diary proved that she was hopelessly despondent, that she owed bills amounting to several hundred dollars, and that her house was about to be turned over to the mortgage holders. For these and other reasons, including the testimony of her good friend Bob Frentzel, who told investigators that she had threatened suicide the previous year, the unnamed official held firm to his belief that Beta Withers had taken her own life. There was no indication that any of the women have been sexually assaulted, a fact which some officials used to debate the fact that they were murdered. You can be murdered and not raped. Do these men not know that? Listen. Who even knows what they're basing the not raped on? Maybe it's just because there's no semen, but also like maybe he didn't climax, so it's not I don't trust any of these people. I don't think they know what they're talking about. I think these women were definitely most likely raped. When asked about if the woman could be murdered and not raped, the police chief replied, there are numerous varieties of perverts, including those who kill solely for the thrill of it. So at least this police chief also is like has some fucking sense in his head. So, fun fact: on the Portland police squad assigned to these cases, there is a cop named Earl Nelson. I shit you not. There's an Earl Nelson looking for Earl Nelson. I have no idea how common of a name that was back then, but that seems crazy to me. The mayor of Portland met in his office with a group of officials, including the police chief, detective lieutenants, and the county coroner, as well as three physicians in charge of the autopsies. The police chief and his subordinates saw the deaths as the work of a single killer, someone using cunning method, as they said. The physicians had the opposite view that the three cases were unconnected. According to their findings, Mrs. Fluke met death by strangulation, possibly self-imposed. Mrs. Grant died of natural causes. I can't even say that one out loud. And remember, Mrs. Grant is the one that had a heart attack, stole her own rings, and then shoved her own body behind the furnace. Okay. And then they said Mrs. Withers died of suffocation, possibly self-inflicted. Most smartest. Get a picture of that. Most smartest. Mrs. Fluke was the one crammed into the attic with her rings missing. Mrs. Grant is the one who was shoved behind a furnace with her rings missing. And Mrs. Withers was found crammed into a steamer trunk. But these are all either natural or self-inflicted according to these doctors that did the autopsies. We are all screaming internally at these dumb dudes. Defund these three physicians. Oh wait. They're long dead. Good. They should be. Okay, so we've covered some really weird bits of info thus far. Like the Earl Nelson that's working the Earl Nelson case. And remember the one from last week that Earl Nelson's real last name is Farrell. Also, that one of the victims is named Nelson. Did we cover that yet? No, we'll get to it. Well, there's another one, but it's not another name thing. It's something different. A Portland policeman named James Russell received a letter from his cousin George, who lived in Santa Barbara. This cousin was the same George Russell whose wife Ollie had been murdered by the Dark Strangler in June. Included in the letter was a description of the suspect that had appeared in the Santa Barbara papers. 35 years old, 5 feet 8 or 10 inches tall, heavy billed, especially shoulders and chest, and very dark. Said to be of Greek nativity, although speaking excellent English, and to be a restaurant worker, either a cook or dishwasher, and also a construction worker. So as Patrolman Russell read this letter, he suddenly recalled that while making his rounds on the previous Tuesday, he had spotted someone matching this very description in the vicinity of Mabel Fluke's house in Selwood. At the time, of course, Russell hadn't thought anything of it, but now reading this, he wondered if the man he saw was really the dark strangler. So, like that connection is crazy. There's lots of crazy little connections in this story. So Russell's story immediately made it into the local newspaper, which published the description of the Strangler. But by that time, Nelson had used his escape skills once again, the ones that had earned him the nickname Houdini, and he had vanished from the city. Almost three months had passed since the murder of Mary Nisbet, the last of the Strangler's Bay Area victims. Mrs. William Anna Edmonds occupied a spacious two-story house directly across from Golden Gate Park. The middle-aged widow had been housebound for three weeks, having slipped down the main staircase and broken her shoulder blade. Even before the accident, Mrs. Edmonds had been thinking of selling her house and moving into a smaller, more manageable place. With her husband gone and her grown son Raul living on his own, the house had become too big and too empty for an aging woman. No such thing as a house too big or too empty, in my opinion. Matter how goddamn aged I am. But back to Mrs. Edmonds. She placed a classified ad in the paper and a for sale sign in one of the big front windows that faced Golden Gate Park. At around 6 p.m. on Thursday evening, Raul arrived at the house to discuss plans for his mother's 56th birthday, which was the next day. Is that aged? Is that an aged woman? 56? I don't even know anymore. I'm so old that I don't even know. Probably. I don't I have no idea. You kids, you tell me. Just kidding, don't fucking tell me. I don't want to hear it. Okay, back to this. Raul, he shows up at his mom's house, rings the doorbell, but there's no response. He then walks around to the back of the house and saw that the back door was wide open. This was highly unusual. His mother is described as having a nervous temperament. I also have a nervous temperament, by the way, and had felt even more vulnerable since her accident. She always made sure to lock her doors when she was alone. Inside the house, Raul called out to his mother, but there was no reply. He began to search the home. By the time he reached the second floor, he was already starting to panic. He checked the bedrooms, but they were empty. That left only one more place to look, which was the radio room, where his mother liked to relax in her armchair and listen to music on her RCA console. Listen, I had to look up what that was, but I was immediately like, fuck yeah. It's that huge record player slash radio thing that looks like a huge ass like China cabinet. It's massive. It was literally a radio room in this house because that console took up the entire room. You know it did. I love those consoles. I love a radio room so much. I mean, she's gonna be murdered in it, which sucks, but I love the concept and I love just like picturing her chilling in her armchair and enjoying her RCA console and just having a peaceful moment. I love that for her. I'm sad someone stole it from her, but not the RCA, it's too big to steal. But you know, her life and those moments of her life. Anyways, go look at pictures. Pictures of RCA consoles, if you're feeling bummed out by this episode, they're amazing and you might feel better, but probably not. I will put them on my social media posts and my website. Alright, back to this horrible, terrible story. So Raul tries to open the door to the radio room and was surprised to find that it was locked. His mother had never locked it before, ever, so he was like, this is weird. He used his pocket knife and picked the lock. That's hot. Inside, his mother's dead body lay sprawled on the floor, her gray hair tangled, her skirt pulled up to her knees. The jewelry she normally wore, two diamond rings and a pair of diamond earrings, were missing from her body. The police later discovered that her purse had also been stolen from her bedroom. At first, the police hesitated to connect this crime to the Dark Strangler. Listen, this is a single older woman murdered in her home after placing a classified ad in the newspaper. I would say that that is just a little bit familiar to what they've been dealing with, but okay. But the reason that they're hesitating to connect this case to the other ones is because Mrs. Edmonds had two faint bruises on her neck. There were no signs of a violent struggle, there was no uh ligature or garot used. Which, you know, we're all rolling our eyes at this. We know what those two bruises are. They're thumbs, they're thumb prints. He used his hands, she was strangled. Also, I bet her hyoid bone is going to be broken. Just a guess. The thumb prints on her neck, those sure do indicate violence, I would say. I would say they most certainly do. But let's see if the police get their shit together or not. The other thing that police question is the fact that her body had not been concealed. But as we know thus far, not every single victim of Nelson's was concealed. Yes, most of them are, but there's still a good amount that are left sprawled on top of a bed or on the floor or in a bathroom. So that is not the end all be all. The missing jewelry definitely is another link between all of the cases, but this, for some reason, this time, the police are like, oh, this was a robbery, gone bad. But there's gonna be another body that pops up and they're gonna fucking finally realize everything is connected. On Friday, three things happen that dispel any doubts about what is going on here. First, a witness came forward, a neighbor named Marjorie Patch. I love that name. According to her story, around 1.30 the previous afternoon, she had dropped by Mrs. Edmonds' house and found her on the first floor in the living room talking to a strange man. When Mrs. Edmonds explained that she was engaged in a business deal relating to the sale of her house, Mrs. Patch excused herself and left, but she did get a good look at the stranger that Edmonds was talking to. The description she gave police was close to the description of the strangler, a well-dressed working man about 35 to 40 years old, smooth-shaven with dark hair and olive complexion. The fact that the robbery had not been the sole motive behind the murder was solidified when a pathologist confirmed that Mrs. Edmonds had been not only strangled to death, but also sexually assaulted as well. So there you go. Then, Friday night, the strangler attacked again. At approximately 6 p.m., a pregnant 28-year-old woman named Mrs. H. C. Murray was viciously attacked in her home. This time there was absolutely no doubt that the culprit was the Dark Strangler. Everything about the incident was exactly the same as his previous attacks, except for one crucial difference. Mrs. Murray lived to tell her tale. She told it to reporters from her hospital bed where she was traumatized and recovering. Mrs. Murray's house had been on the market for the past several months. Like Mrs. Edmonds, she had taken out an ad in the papers. There was also a hand painted for sale sign on the front lawn. At around five o'clock on Friday evening, while her husband was still at work, someone came to the door. He saw the sign and rang the bell. Mrs. Murray told the reporters gathered at her bedside. I opened the door. I had not the slightest thought of meeting the strangler, but I always make it a practice to take every precaution when showing strange men the house. I kept a considerable distance from him from the moment I let him in, at least six or eight feet. I also left the front door open. I mean smart of her for sure. The dark haired man standing about 5'7 or 5'8, looked presentable. He was dressed in a blue suit with a white shirt, a yellow colored tie, tan shoes, and a brown fedora. Gross Earl, you sound like you look like shit. The man removed his hat and began to speak in a polite, well-spoken way that put the young woman at ease. Quote, he first asked the price of the place, and then he said he would like to look at it. I let him in and he examined the rooms in much detail. He is evidently very familiar with building and construction, for he used expressions relating to such things that I did not understand myself. End quote. While touring the rooms, the stranger began chatting about himself, explaining that he was planning to get married in three days. This will be my third marriage, he said. The first time my wife nagged me to death, the second one I took to dances and would find sitting on the laps of other men. I couldn't stand that. There was something in his tone that made Mrs. Murray pause and take a closer look at him. Quote, I was curious to see the sort of man the woman was going to get, she said. She judged his age to be around 32 or 35. He was nicely groomed, clean shaven, and his receding black hair was neatly trimmed, as though he had just been to the barber. He had thick black eyebrows and an olive complexion, though he was clearly not a foreigner. His two most striking features were his dark, piercing eyes and strong, white, perfectly even teeth. Though Mrs. Murray did not feel threatened by the stranger, she continued to keep her distance from him as they toured the house, taking care to remain six or eight feet away from him during the whole interview. Good girl. All men should stay six to eight feet away from you at all times, unless they're like family members or your spouse. Thank you, COVID Tams, for teaching me how much space is now mandatory for me personally. And also for Mrs. Murray, apparently. She was struck by the close attention that he paid to certain details closets, door locks, and especially ceilings. This is actually chillingly diabolical. Only in hindsight could she see the cunning behind the stranger's behavior. I realize now, she told reporters, that he was trying to get me to look up towards the ceiling so that he could get behind me and grab my throat. And that is exactly what he was doing. Isn't that chilling? Something so small is pointing out architecture in a house that you are potentially buying. Mrs. Murray had deliberately left all the window shades up. Entering the main bedroom, the stranger stepped over to the window and casually put his hand on the window shade pole. Whoever designed this house sure put the windows in places to get plenty of light, he said. Then as if testing to make sure that the roller functioned properly, he pulled down the shade and left it that way. This guy, I am glad we have her insights, because these details are the things that keep me up at night. He's doing normal people shit in a normal person way, and she's not even freaked out by him at all. And he's pointing out normal things. You would look at like the architecture of the building, or like if everything works, if the windows let in light, like all of this is so normal, but that's why it's so terrifying. Next, Mrs. Murray told the papers that she did let it slip that her husband would not be home from work until around 6 p.m. Reaching into his pocket, the man pulled out his watch and consulted it. I wonder if I have the right time. My watch has been running kind of slow lately. It says 5 30, he said. Checking the clock on her nightstand, Mrs. Murray confirmed that his watch was accurate. This slick ass motherfucker. This cocky ass motherfucker. Quote, the final place we inspected was the screened porch in the rear of the house. He seemed particularly interested in this and several times called my attention to the ceiling. I kept my distance, however, though I never once dreamed he was the strangler. After exhausting every pretext for lingering, he started to head out. When he reached the front door, he suddenly turned around and said, There's something about that porch I'd like to see again. I returned there with him. As we stepped onto the porch, he suddenly pointed through the screen to the garage outside. What sort of roof is that on the garage? He asked. The suddenness of the question caught Mrs. Murray off guard. Quote, for the first time I turned my back to him, and in that instant I felt his hands closing around my neck from the rear. End quote. The realization hit her with a sickening force that this was the Dark Strangler. But unlike his previous victims, Mrs. Murray was a young woman. Screaming wildly, she tore at his hands with her fingernails. Fear must have given me strength, for I succeeded in breaking that terrible grip, she said. Turning on him, she clawed at his face, then threw herself through the screen door and nearly fell down the steps leading from the back porch. Bleeding from his scratches, fuck yeah, fuck him up, girl. The strangler turned and ran through the house, leaving through the front door. Still screaming for help, Mrs. Murray ran to the front of the house, reaching the street just as the strangler disappeared around a corner. A car was passing by and she yelled, Stop that man, he attacked me, he's the strangler. Neighbors had come outside to see what the commotion was, and a neighbor ran to call the police. Yes, bitch, let him have it, you're a fucking queen. I love Mrs. Murray, she's a fighter. And she's pregnant during all of this, don't forget. Within the hour, the entire police forces of Berlingame and San Mateo, assisted by a large number of armed volunteers, were scouring the area. Roadblocks were set up, vehicles were stopped, passengers were checked. A posse of men armed with shotguns patrolled the woods and marshes. Hospitals and doctors were alerted in the event that the killer sought medical treatment for his injuries. In spite of these efforts, however, Houdini managed to escape again. With the Dark Strangler once again on the loose in the Bay Area, the San Francisco police chief called a press conference. Quote, the most dangerous criminal now at large, women who have houses for sale or rooms for rent to use the utmost caution in admitting strangers of the general description of the Strangler. He is not of a repulsive appearance. It is a mistake to believe that he has the features of an ape or gorilla, or that he is uncouth in speech or manner. He is able to gain an amicable footing with women through his suave manner. A month ago, I asked that an order be issued instructing members of the department to warn women lodging housekeepers. The strangler seems to have now switched his operations from rented rooms to houses for sale. No woman in San Francisco is safe with this man at large. The police department is doing everything possible to capture him, but it must have the cooperation of the citizenry to the fullest extent. End quote. Mrs. Murray had barely escaped from becoming Nelson's tenth murder victim. Mrs. Florence Fithian Monks of Seattle would not be as lucky. Now, my sources blame Florence for her own murder by saying that it was her fault because she wore lots of gorgeous jewelry. I say that it's Earl fucking Nelson's fault, and if a woman wants to be fabulous, she has the right to do so without being murdered. Jesus fucking Christ. But I will sit here and give you a full rundown of the jewels because they sound absolutely gorgeous. Apparently she wore them while doing chores or going to the grocery store, and I say we all need to bring this shit back. That reminds me of my grandma. Hair perfect, jewelry perfect, everything perfect, just to step out of the house and like go to the back garden. Love that so much. Do I have the energy to do that? No. But we you know, someone can bring it back. Someone else. Anyways, this woman is amazing, and anyone that talks shit about her and says she caused her own death can fuck off. But let's get back to how fabulous Florence was for a second. Okay, so she would even wear her jewelry while doing chores. She was like, hello, these are my vacuuming diamonds. And I am like, yes, Florence, that is fucking amazing. Okay, so her hands were adorned with no less than four diamond rings worth at least$5,000. How much was that in 1926? I have no idea, but I'm gonna look it up. Oh, you guys, I'm I'm dead. I love this bitch even more. So we're only on the rings. We're gonna get to all the rest of it. Just the rings alone. Five thousand dollars in nineteen twenty six is over ninety-three thousand dollars in today's money. I'm swooning over Florence. I love her. Okay, so that's the rings. She also wore a diamond bracelet and earrings, a triple strand choker made of genuine pearls, honey. You know that shit's not fake. It's Florence. She had a cluster of jeweled pins, and on the bosom of her camisole, a large diamond sunburst valued at over$3,000. Yas Queen. Her friends repeatedly cautioned her about the dangers of wearing this jewelry, calling them a temptation to almost any thief. Listen, Earl Nelson, yes, he takes shit from victims, but he's a penniless wandering vagrant. He does not murder for these things that he takes. He murders because he's a sexually motivated serial killer. So wearing jewelry in this case did not fucking cause this gorgeous queen to be murdered, and she didn't cause her own demise. I don't want that narrative out there anymore because that shit is fucked up. So several times a week, Mrs. Monks made the long drive from her country estate, of course she does, she probably has more than one, in Echo Lake Park to her home on Capitol Hill, staying by herself in the big empty house, as a queen fucking does. But Mrs. Monks scoffed at these warnings. I'm not afraid, she would say, with a carefree little wave of one ring laden hand. I mean, icon behavior. Oh, then I forgot to tell you this part. So besides all of her fabulous jewelry she wore all the time, she also strapped a small sack of loose diamonds to her right leg just below the knee. Icon. Legend. She also kept two diamond-studded brooches wrapped in a handkerchief and pinned to her underclothing. Like I'm screaming. We need a movie about Mrs. Monks. We need a book. I need photos. I need photos of the jewelry. Like she's a legend. I need to know everything about this woman. Also, I want a satchel of diamonds strapped to my leg. Can you imagine? Oh my god. That's happening. The twice-widowed woman had inherited money from both of her husbands. Of course she fucking did. She had relocated to Seattle from New York City. Of course she did. Five years earlier with her second spouse, John Monks. Mr. Monks had died soon after the move, definitely was an arsenic-laced martini, leaving his wife with substantial real estate holdings in Manhattan. Girl, goals as fuck. She was so rich that when she had a$35,000 loss through a failed investment. Hold on. Let's look it up.

unknown 1:00:19

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:20

Which in today's money is drumroll, please,$0,05. Wait,$652,963.56 today. So she lost that much money and she didn't even blink. And she told her friends that that amount of money was, quote, a trifle, end quote. Among her friends, she was rumored to be worth at least$500,000, which back then was about$10 million. Having decided to make her country home her sole residence, Mrs. Monks had been trying to sell the Capitol Hill house. She had placed a for sale sign in the parlor window and taken out weekly ads in the Seattle Times. The most recent had appeared on Monday, November 22nd. The ad indicated that Mrs. Monks would be at the house between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. on Wednesday the 24th to show the property to interested parties. She showed up a day early driving down from Echo Lake Park first thing Tuesday morning. Not long after her arrival, she made a phone call to her friend. The two women discussed plans for several upcoming social functions, including a dinner party Mrs. Monks was organizing. Neighbor Anna McDonald saw several people show up that day to see the house, including a young couple, a gray-haired man, and a tall blonde man. At around 2.30 p.m. that same day, Mrs. Monks called her caterer, Otto Kirchbach, to discuss the upcoming party she was planning. Her own personal caterer. You know who she's giving? She's giving Patricia from Southern Charm. I am in love with that woman. I mean, she has a butler in 2026. That's insanity. And her jeweled and feathered Moumous are life. But I will say that Mrs. Monks wears Chanel skirt suits and not moumous, but like they're giving the same energy. Mrs. Monks is giving Couture business attire, even in retirement, for sure. It was going to be very elaborate, Kirchbach later recalled. I had bought turkeys and other things for it, and she wanted the turkeys carved in front of the guests. She also asked me to change her order for a punch to one for cider and to supply small raisins. I want to hear everything that was on that menu. Literally every detail. But I unfortunately don't have that. After about 15 minutes, Mrs. Monk said, I've got to go now, Otto, someone's at the door. She then hung up the phone. Later, Kirchbach would wonder if that someone had been Mrs. Monk's killer. Shit. Oh yeah, this is a murder podcast. But for like two minutes there, it was a Mrs. Monk's podcast, it was a lifestyles of the rich and famous podcast, and I was here for it. But not anymore. At approximately 8 p.m., a friend of Mrs. Monks came by the house as planned to discuss the big dinner party. He rang the bell again and again, and he was surprised that Mrs. Monks did not respond. He then went to a nearby drugstore, called her from the payphone, but got no answer. So he returned to the house and walked around it. All of the windows were dark. Confused, he headed back to his home. At around 6 p.m. the following evening, Wednesday, November 23rd, 1926, neighbor Edward McDonald looked out of his living room window and saw a middle-aged couple standing on the front porch of Mrs. Monks' home. The man was pounding on the door angrily. Mr. McDonald went out to investigate. The man said that he and his wife had called Mrs. Monks the previous week and made an appointment to see the house. They had come a really long way and they were pissed off that she was not there. Since Mrs. Monk spent only part of each week in the city, she arranged for McDonald to show the house if she wasn't there. So McDonald went and got his key, let the couple inside, and began to lead them around the premises, but they were clearly not interested in the house. They must have had terrible taste because I'm telling you, Mrs. Monks' house was probably lit as fuck and gorgeous. Fools, they missed out. Before they had finished viewing the first floor, the man with bad taste announced that he and his wife had seen enough. Thanking Mr. McDonald for showing them around, the couple with bad taste left. McDonald headed back to his house, wondering where Mrs. Monks was. It was completely unlike her to forget an appointment. Something important must have come up. About an hour later, it occurred to him to check her garage. When he saw her car was parked inside it, that's when he became worried. Clearly, Mrs. Monks could not have gone very far. He also knew that she suffered from dizzy spells and was worried that she could be lying unconscious somewhere in the house. He went to the house of another neighbor, and the two men went to search Mrs. Monks' house, beginning in the attic and working their way down to the cellar. In the cellar, McDonald couldn't find the light switch. Striking a match, he and the other man looked around the room, empty except for the big, silent furnace that loomed in the shadows, but they saw no sign of Mrs. Monks. I know. I know you already know where this is going. At approximately 8 p.m., an hour after the two men had given up and gone back to their homes, the caretaker of her country estate showed up at her door. He had been trying to contact her by phone since the previous evening. This man knew about Mrs. Monk's heart condition and was worried about a medical incident, so he had driven down to investigate. He knocked, but there was no answer, so he let himself into the house with a spare key and searched the first floor. Inside the kitchen, he discovered an entire loaf of bread, an untouched marble cake, oh my god, yum, and a wilting bunch of celery. The house was nearly empty. Because most of the furniture had been removed in anticipation of the sale. The only exception was Mrs. Monk's second floor bedroom. Switching on the light, Raymond was startled to see something that McDonald and the other dude had somehow overlooked. The bureau drawers had been opened and ransacked, and so at the closet, but he did not see Mrs. Monks. Raymond then made his way down to the cellar. Unlike McDonald, he knew where the light switch was, so as soon as he turned it on, he panicked. Something heavy had been dragged across the dirt floor. There was a trail leading from the foot of the stairs to the rear of the furnace. Even before he crossed the floor and looked behind the furnace, Raymond knew what he would find. When his worst fears were confirmed, he ran up the stairs and made a frantic call to the police. The murder of Florence Monks was a milestone in the Dark Strangler case. Not only did it cause an uproar in Seattle, but it even made the pages of the New York Times, which ran a half-column story about the murder. For the first time, the Strangler case was national news. Not that everyone assumed that the wealthy widow had been killed by the Dark Strangler. The crime definitely fit the Strangler's MO. Her body was stuffed into a cramped, concealed space. She was a widower who lived alone. There were finger marks around her throat, and she had obviously been choked to death. There was also a large contusion on her head, resulting in a hemorrhage between the scalp and skull. The coroner, who was openly skeptical of the strangler theory, believed that Mrs. Monks may have been bludgeoned to death, possibly with a coal shovel that was found a few feet away from her body. Given her heart condition, it was also conceivable that she had died of shock, allegedly. The post mortem exam conducted the following day seemed to prove this theory. As the newspapers delicately put it, the examination failed to disclose the slightest evidence that the woman had been subjected to any indignity. The coroner told the press that robbery and not sexual homicide was the motive for the crime, which we all know is fucking bullshit. Supporting this theory, police discovered that shortly before her murder, Mrs. Monks had emptied her safety deposit box at the Seattle National Bank of all of its contents, including a collection of diamond pins, rings, and bracelets that had been appraised at somewhere between four and five thousand dollars. Besides the jewelry he had stripped from Mrs. Monks' body, the killer had apparently made off with these jewels too, making authorities believe that the killer was someone with an intimate knowledge of the widow's habits. This, I will concede, that's an appropriate assumption. I would look at this and think that it was someone that knew she was going to that bank, it's someone that worked at that bank, it's someone that followed her home from that bank. The timing that she would empty that box and then immediately be murdered is crazy. And that it was just random that Nelson randomly happened upon her right after she had done that is wild. But yeah, I would I would assume that too. So yeah, Nelson basically just got lucky, air quote lucky, so to speak. Over the next few days, detectives focused their attention on several suspects, primarily the gray-haired man and the blonde man who had come by to view the house. But both men had airtight alibis, and the police were left with only one lead, provided by a Mrs. Louise Baker, Mrs. Monx's niece. Several weeks earlier, a dark, round faced stranger had appeared at her aunt's door holding some kind of paper which had Mrs. Munx's name on it. Just as the widow was about to close the door on him, the stranger asked if she lived there alone, and she told him that it was none of his business and slammed the door in his face. Fuck yeah, that's our girl. She is everything, and this is the energy we need. When Mrs. Munks told her this story, Mrs. Baker was like, it's dangerous for you to spend so much time in that big house all by yourself, especially with so much valuable jewelry. But Mrs. Monks had laughed off her niece's fears. She laughs in the face of death, Mrs. Monks. She's fucking serious for all from Game of Thrones, mixed with like the Queen of Thorns. I can't say this enough. I love this woman. So listen to this fucking infuriating bullshit. The Captain of Detectives, sounds like a fake title for sure, Charles Tennet, held a press conference in which he vented his scorn at the vanity of women like Mrs. Monks, suggesting that if anyone was to blame for her death, it was the victim herself. Her fate, he declared, should stand as a warning to others. Quote, come and take them. That's what these women are saying to every cut purse and sneak thief that comes along. They load themselves up with a lot of bar pins, diamond sunbursts, and expensive rings, and open and never failing invitation to some crook to help himself. In New York City alone, there are scores of such women robbed every day, many of them killed. We have been fortunate here, but the woman how? But the woman who is known to carry large amounts of gems around with her, as Mrs. Monks did, is never safe. End quote. Sir, go fuck yourself. The chief of police, however, disagreed. Thank God. Taking issue not with only the captain, but the coroner as well, the chief declared his conviction that the killer of Mrs. Monks was the same fiend who had already killed a string of landladies in San Francisco and Portland. Tiny little fingerclaps. One man has common sense. Congratulations. Quote, there is no question in my mind that the man we're looking for is the same criminal who has had such uncanny success in covering up his tracks in California and Portland. The methods of working are exactly parallel with the procedure in the murder of Mrs. Monks. End quote. He then described the suspect as, quote, the most cunning and cold-blooded killer in the annals of Pacific Coast crime. A killer whose perverted senses delight in the throttling of helpless women. He speaks good English, is integrating in the extreme, is of vigorous constitution, brawny of build, although fairly short of stature, and has the smooth olive complexion of a man of Italian or Serbian descent. End quote. He then said Mrs. Monkx's killer was no thief, but a degenerate, the same beast man strangler who had recently slain three Portland women. In none of these cases was murder necessary, he said. There was no necessity of killing Mrs. Monks. There was none in any of the Portland cases. It is simply that the killer took delight in his work. He did not kill for profit. He killed for the satisfaction it gave him. End quote. Well thank fuck that in this story, like I said before, there's one man with a brain in his head that is not a chauvinistic piece of shit. So yes, props to this police chief, for sure. He's a man ahead of his time. At noon on November 29th, 1926, the doorbell rang at the Portland home of 48-year-old Blanche Myers. She got up from the dining table where she was having lunch with a friend, Alexander Muir, left the kitchen door ajar, and went to the front door. Do you want to know what they were having for lunch? Because I certainly did. They were having a delicious, classic lunch of liver and eggs with pumpernickel bread and coffee. Yik. But very 1926 of them. Muir could hear Blanche having a conversation with a male visitor. Muir owned the home, but he leased it to Blanche Myers, who in turn rented out the two spare rooms on the second floor. She had begun taking in lodgers four years earlier when her husband, Frederick, died of a heart attack, leaving her with two kids to raise. At the moment, the smaller of the spare bedrooms was vacant, and Mrs. Myers had placed a room-to-rent sign in the front window. Muir was himself recently widowed at 30 years old, and he enjoyed having lunch and chatting with Blanche. Mrs. Myers came back to the kitchen 15 minutes later. Just found a renter for that empty room, paid a week in advance, she told him. Some fellow that came by last Saturday asking about the room. He looks like a logger. Funny for a logger to take a room so far uptown. Is he a drinking man? Muir asked. I asked, said Mrs. Myers. He said he did, but only a little now and then. Seems respectable enough. Mrs. Myers told him the lodger had gone to lie down for a nap. Muir hung around another five minutes, then decided it was time for him to leave around 1 p.m. In the next hour, according to the coroner's estimate, Mrs. Myers was called to the second floor room by her new tenant. She was still in the kitchen when he called, possibly cleaning up after lunch, since her pink tea apron was on when she entered his room. Exactly how he diverted her attention is not known, but we know he had a lot of practice in deception at this point in time. It's likely he used the same ploy that he had with Mrs. H. C. Murray and tricked her into glancing at the ceiling. Look at that big water stain right over the bed, he could have said, or that plaster is about to go. Mrs. Myers would have done what we all would have done. It's literally a reflex. Especially when you don't think you're in any danger, so you're not on alert. She likely looked up towards the spot he was pointing to, exposing her throat. It would have only taken seconds for her to realize that there was no loose plaster about to fall onto the bed, and that was all the time he needed. In an instant he attacked. Mrs. Myers' older son was away at college, but his younger brother still lived at home. It was the younger brother, Lawrence, who notified the police after his mother had been missing for 12 hours. Police officers responded to the call. They found Mrs. Myers in the upstairs room. Lawrence himself had looked in the room when searching for her, but he failed to see her body because it was shoved beneath the single bed and concealed by a low-hanging quilt. Blanche had been strangled to death with her pink tea apron. I bet you knew I was gonna say it was the pink tea apron, didn't you? You little detective. It had been savagely twisted around her neck five times and secured with two square knots. Some spots of blood that had leaked from her ears had been covered with a throw rug. There was also a thin trail of blood on the floor. The killer had obviously garotted Mrs. Myers in the middle of the room and then hidden her body underneath the bed. Whether he had raped her wasn't immediately clear. Though her skirt was hiked up above her knees, police believed that the garment might have become disarranged when the killer dragged her body feet first across the room. He definitely raped her. The circumstances surrounding the deaths of the four Portland women were too similar to ignore, and by now, generally everyone believed that these murders were committed by the same killer. The day that Mrs. Myers' death was reported on the front page of the newspaper, the article ran a chart showing the similarities between the four cases. Thank God someone's doing it. Mrs. Beta Withers, 35, a landlady, her body found jammed inside a trunk. Mrs. Virginia Grant, 59 years old, a landlady, her body found stuffed behind a furnace. Mrs. Mabel Fluke, 37, a landlady, her body found hidden in the attic, and now Mrs. Florence Myers, 48, a landlady, her body found stuffed beneath a bed. In the latest case, as in each of the others, a few items belonging to the victim had been taken by the killer, who had made off with Mrs. Myers' diamond engagement ring, her wristwatch, and a total of$8.50 from her purse. It was the opinion of the police chief, despite this, that robbery was not the motive of the crimes, since some of the items stolen from the victims, like Beta Withers' hat or Mabel Fluke's coat, were of no real worth. Very astutely, I think, for the first time, the Portland police chief told reporters at a news conference that the killer had taken items more as curios or souvenirs than for their value. Correct, sir. Good job. Exactly why a homicidal maniac would be interested in mementos was a puzzle to the police, though it wouldn't be at all surprising to us today, and we know that it's common for a serial killer to remove trophies from a murder scene. Fetishistic objects associated with the victim. Anything from a driver's license to a body part that helped the killer relive his crimes and fantasies. Amazingly, for the time period, they immediately sealed off the Myers crime scene, and no one was permitted to touch anything in the room until the coroner arrived, and the fingerprint expert had dusted the entire room. Even the cigarette butts found in an ashtray were collected for analysis, which is pretty ahead of its time. To preserve a crime scene that way and collect evidence that way. It's like the very, very, very beginning of this shit for sure. This diligence had an immediate payoff. The fingerprint expert was able to discover and photograph three perfect fingerprints on the iron headboard of the bed, which police checked against thousands in their files. In the meantime, the Portland chief of detectives issued a public warning to all Portland landladies. Do not show your houses or rooms for rent while alone. If necessary, call a policeman to accompany you. Crimes such as these should be prevented and could be prevented if women would be more careful. Go fuck yourself. I do not wish to unduly alarm the people of Portland, but there is no denying that the situation is grave. I am confident that the man operating in Portland is the same slayer who murdered the woman here. You don't have to be much of a sleuth to know that the murders are the work of the same man, he said. Alexander Muir, the last person to see the victim alive, came forward right away. Unfortunately, though, he had not seen the suspect. He did provide one useful lead, recalling something Mrs. Myers had mentioned, that the stranger had initially come by her house on the previous Saturday to ask about the room. Pursuing this lead, detectives discovered that one of Mrs. Myers' oldest friends, a Seattle resident named Nellie Stengel, had visited the victim on that Saturday. They immediately interviewed her at her home. Much to their disappointment, though, Mrs. Stengel had not seen the suspect. Apparently she left before he arrived. So now the entire city is in a panic, and the mayor of Portland announced that he would provide$100 of his own money for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the Dark Strangler. The reward fund was matched by citizens and the city council and soon was up to$1,300. And this is fucking hilarious. The mayor is then like, I am gonna withdraw my personal offer. He was like, just kidding. I don't actually care about women dying. I want my money back. What a fucking twat. Also, in case you wanted to know,$1,300 in 1926 is$24,000 today. Mrs. Myers' younger son, Lawrence, made an eerie statement to reporters. His mother had apparently experienced a strange premonition of her death. Just one month earlier, she had handed him a sealed envelope instructing him to open it in case of an accident. Inside, as Lawrence had just discovered after her death, was a brief obituary notice handwritten by his mother, and a request that she be buried in a vault at the Portland Cemetery in an inexpensive coffin. That Mrs. Myers, for whatever odd reason, had been thinking about the possibility of her own untimely death was confirmed by the deputy coroner, who happened to be a friend of Mrs. Myers. So about a year before she was killed, the coroner said that he and Mrs. Myers had been talking about his work. Well, Ben, she had said, if you ever find me lying dead, please don't take my body to the morgue. I want it to go to the Holman and Lutz undertaking parlors. At the time, the coroner had made light of her concern, wondering why such a young woman would even be thinking about that, but now, remembering her wishes, he made sure to follow them. Even as the morticians at Holman and Lutz were preparing Blanche Myers' body for burial, a major break was occurring in the murder investigation. It was the most significant turn in the Dark Strangler case since the testimony of Mrs. H. C. Murray, the pregnant woman in California who had survived her terrifying attack by the killer. Two elderly widows, Mrs. Edna Gaylord, a manager of a rooming house in Portland, and her longtime tenant, Mrs. Sophie Yates, revealed that during the four days preceding the most recent murder, they had been sharing their home with the Dark Strangler. According to the two women who told their story to the police on Wednesday, December 1st, a man calling himself Adrian Harris had showed up at the boarding house exactly one week earlier at around 10 a.m. on the day before Thanksgiving. They described him as a short but stocky man in his late twenties with a swarthy complexion, dark hair, and piercing black eyes. In one hand, he had a shiny new suitcase. Though somewhat shabbily dressed, he presented himself like a perfect gentleman, taking off his brown cap as he stood on the doorstep and introduced himself. He was a carpenter, he said, who would be working in Portland for an indefinite period of time. Mrs. Gaylord noticed that he spoke with a lisp, his thick lips bulging slightly when he talked. When the landlady confirmed that she had a room available on the second floor, he took it without even seeing it, and paid her a week's rent in advance. Mrs. Gaylord led him up to his room and left him there to get some rest. He had been traveling all night and he explained that he felt dog tired. Later that day, he came down into the parlor where Mrs. Gaylord and her tenant were chatting by the fireplace. He settled into a chair, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, and joined the conversation. Before long, the talk turned to Thanksgiving Day plans. The landlady said she was not in a financial position to make much for dinner, but that she'd do her best to put together a nice meal, and Mr. Harris was welcome to join them. Harris chatted with the two women, telling them about his background. He was Danish, he had parents that immigrated from Copenhagen when he was five. He said he'd been married for a brief time, but his wife couldn't stop flirting with other men, so he had divorced her. Mrs. Gaylord and Mrs. Yates shook their heads as he provided several shocking examples of his ex-wife's shameless behavior. Since the breakup of his marriage, he had been moving around, making his living in logging camps. He had now managed to save up money, he said, and wanted to start his own construction business, building and selling small houses in Portland. After 15 minutes, the well-spoken young man, whose only fault that she could see was being a smoker, excused himself and returned to his room. A short while later, he reappeared in the parlor, dressed in a coat and a hat. I'll be back in a short while. I have some errands to run, he said. He showed up at the house again an hour later, carrying several overstuffed grocery bags. Taking them into the kitchen, he set them on the counter. The two women followed after him, delighted and surprised. He was smiling from ear to ear, almost like a small child. And he said, Tomorrow we will have a real holiday feast. So he had gone out and bought a shitload of groceries for Thanksgiving Day dinner. And like a little kid unwrapping birthday gifts, he began emptying the bags onto the counter. Mrs. Gaylord said, But Mr. Harris, there's so much food. And the man said that he had gone whole hog on the groceries, spending$14. That is$260 today, which is a good amount of money for food for three people, honestly. Then the three of them had a grand old time together the following day. They made Thanksgiving dinner and stuffed themselves on food. Well, Mr. Harris told them stories about spiritualism, the occult, and philosophy. He was clearly a very religious person. His speech was heavy with recitations of the scripture. Way to ruin Thanksgiving, Earl. Not the scripture, all day. Again. Get another fucking topic. In total, the man stayed at the boarding house for four and a half days. For the most part, he stayed in his room, emerging only at dusk, where he would briefly leave the house to go purchase a copy of the newspaper. Gee, I wonder why. At around 10 a.m. on Monday, November 29th, which was the day of Blanche Myers' murder, he appeared in the front hallway, suitcase in hand. He was leaving for Vancouver, Washington, he said. Since he had paid a full week's rent in advance, this sudden departure, less than five days after his arrival, struck the women as odd. It also made no sense when they considered the story that he had planned to settle in Portland and go into the construction business. It was Wednesday afternoon when Mrs. Gaylord realized with complete shock who that young man was. She was seated in the parlor reading the newspaper account of Blanche Myers' murder. When she came upon the description of the Dark Strangler suspect, she literally screamed so loud that Mrs. Yates came running in from the kitchen to see what was wrong. I love these two women, they are besties, and now they survived a serial killer together and had Thanksgiving dinner with him. This is another movie idea right here. It's like the Golden Girls, but with like a splash of Ted Bundy. I bet they told this story the rest of their lives at every fucking Dinner party every holiday. They were like, you want to hear a story? I got one for you. I also really, really, really want to know everything they cooked for Thanksgiving dinner. Who cooked what? Who ate what? What did you make? Couldn't find that information, but wish I had it for sure. And that would also be in the movie. The whole menu plan would be in the movie. Oh my god. Then they would write a cookbook together, and it would be what I cooked for the Gorilla Man Strangler with my bestie. New York Times bestseller. So once Mrs. Gaylord read that article, she contacted the police. There was also a very compelling reason why the police didn't immediately write these women off as hysterical women like they do every single time with everyone else. They actually have a reason to be like, oh shit, we have to take them seriously. So, for reasons only known to himself, Adrian Harris had given an extravagant gift to each of the two women. He had done it on the day after Thanksgiving. Coming down from his bedroom, he gathered the women in the parlor and gave each of them several expensive pieces of jewelry. He had given the landlady a triple strand choker of pearls and a white gold necklace, along with several smaller items, including a gold pin and a silver fountain pen. Mrs. Yates received a diamond bracelet with matching earrings, a gold perfume bottle, and a jeweled brooch. They had tried to refuse these weird gifts, but the man was insistent. According to Mrs. Gaylord's account, Harrison said that he had no use for the jewelry and wanted to share it with them because they had so little. I mean, fucking rude. But okay. I'll I'll take the jewelry, yeah. You can give me them diamonds. Less than 15 minutes after receiving Mrs. Gaylord's call, detectives arrived at her house to examine the jewelry. The moment they saw it, they knew this was the jewelry of the fabulous Mrs. Florence Monks. The jewelry that Adrian Harris had given to the two widows was an exact match. And they were like, fuck, we don't get to even keep it? That sucks. By Wednesday evening, the jewelry was at police headquarters in Seattle, where the three most striking pieces, I'm sure they were all striking though, the white gold necklace, the triple strand string of pearls, and the diamond bracelet were arranged on a black velvet jeweler's tray and photographed. The picture appeared on the front page of the following day's paper. Less than 45 minutes after the paper hit the newsstands, police received a call from Mrs. Harry G. Allen, a close friend of the victim. Those look like Florence's jewels, she said. She was brought down to the headquarters by Squad Car to view and identify the jewelry, which she confirmed they belonged to Mrs. Monks. Later in the day, several more of Mrs. Monks' friends and neighbors had positively identified the jewelry. On top of that, four different pawn shop owners had called the police with the same exact story. The previous day, a dark-complexioned young man had appeared in their stores attempting to sell a white gold woman's pin, which was stolen from Mrs. Munks. None of the pawnbrokers had purchased the pin because Nelson turned down all of their offers for some fucking reason. This didn't lead to anything at all, so then they go to every single pawn shop and they just start arresting people that had pawned shit that might look like the strangler. They did this to 12 different men, actually, and none of them were Earl fucking Nelson. They then compared the fingerprints of these men to the fingerprints they found on the iron headboard at the Blanche Myers crime scene. None of them matched, so all of the men were released. Police then lifted fingerprints from a black pocketbook that Mrs. Monks had, and they compared them to the fingerprints from the headboard, and they were a match. So now they can definitely connect those two murders. This was followed by a frantic manhunt by the police that led exactly nowhere. The stranglers' whereabouts were unknown. Portland investigators did manage to turn up another eyewitness who had come into contact with the killer. This was a grocer named Russell Gordon, who owned the store where Adrian Harris had purchased$14 worth of groceries on the day before Thanksgiving. According to Gordon, Harris was such a pleasant, soft-spoken, and polite individual that it was almost impossible to believe he could be the notorious strangler. First of all, Gordon, he is aggressive to older women, and you're not one, so your opinion really doesn't matter. Quote, why I never spoke to a nicer mannered fellow, end quote. Gordon told the police when they interviewed him. Listen, we all know that men have most men have zero intuition, and this is one of the billion examples of that. I always think about like if a boyfriend and girlfriend were at one of the fundraiser events that Ted Bundy went to, the woman would be like, that guy gives me the creeps, and the man would be like, but he's so polite. He seems like a great guy, honey. He's so charming. And then later she would be like, look at the newspaper. I fucking told you so, Kevin. And then she would get to bring it up for the rest of his life. Anyways, this is just one account of many, including the two landladies that Nelson had stayed with, and others that had spent time with him and lived to tell about it, that he is polite and well spoken. As one newspaper said, quote, when not in the midst of his heinous crimes, the Dark Strangler has an engaging personality, quiet habits, and pleasing manners. End quote. No, he's actually a fucking freak show, but he is able to hide behind a mask pretty well. Quote, the murderer isn't a maniac in the sense that he is mentally deranged, but there must be a screw loose somewhere, end quote, said the chief of detectives. The best explanation that authorities could come up with was that the strangler possessed a dual personality and they love to call him a real-life Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In 1926, a criminal who could seem perfectly ordinary one moment and then turn into a sexually motivated killer the next was clearly so extraordinary that he seemed like a man out of a horror novel. The time had not yet arrived when psychopathic lust murderers, capable of concealing their malevolence behind a mask of bland normality, would become a grimly familiar feature of American society. By now the Pacific coast had gotten too hot for Nelson, and he would never return to either Portland or any of his other previous hunting grounds. Instead, he embarked on an odyssey that would eventually take him to the opposite end of the continent and halfway back again. Keeping on the move was not a problem for this homicidal maniac known as the Dark Strangler and sometimes the Phantom Killer. Ever since adolescence, when he would disappear from his family home for weeks at a time, he had been possessed by a powerful wanderlust. Three weeks after Blanche Myers' murder, he would show up in Council Bluffs, Iowa. For the next six months, he would head southward to Kansas City, Missouri, and then Philadelphia, Buffalo, Detroit, and Chicago. And everywhere he went, women died. And that is where we are leaving things for today. We obviously will pick it up next time with the next murder, and there's still a lot more left. So yeah, I mean, I don't even this fucking guy is the only thing that comes to mind. I think you might know what time it is. It's time for nature. It's fucking cool. Photos of the Harpy Eagle always make me stop everything I'm doing and just stare at them. They are so terrifying and gorgeous and amazing. And I just right this second realize that they basically are the Mothman. The Harpy Eagle is legendary, although few people have seen one in their native habitat. These great birds are named after harpies, the predatory, frightful flying creatures with hooked beaks and claws of Greek mythology. This dark gray bird of prey has a very distinctive look, with feathers atop its head that fan into a bold crest when the bird feels threatened. Some smaller gray feathers create a facial disc that may focus sound waves to improve the bird's hearing, similar to owls. Like most eagles, the female harpy is almost twice as large as the male. The harpy eagle's legs can be as thick as a small child's wrist. That's what she said, and its curved black talons are larger than a grizzly bear's claws at five inches long. The harpy may not be the largest bird of prey, that title belongs to the Andean Condor, but this extraordinary creature is definitely the heaviest and most powerful of birds. Harpy eagles range from Mexico to northern Argentina and live in forested areas. Despite their wingspan, which can reach up to six and a half feet across, harpies fly through their forest home with great agility. For nesting, harpies favor silk cotton trees and usually build nests 90 to 140 feet above the ground. They like to use trees with widely spaced branches for a clear flight path to and from the nest. Harpies use large sticks to create the nest's huge frame and line it with softer greens, seed pods, and animal fur to make it warm and comfortable. A harpy nest measures about 4 feet thick and 5 feet across, large enough for a human to lie across. Once built, an eagle pair may reuse and remodel the same nest for many years. The strong silent type, harpy eagles do not vocalize much. When heard, they wail, croak, whistle, click, and mew. Harpies are great at saving precious energy. You will never see a harpy eagle soaring over the top of a rainforest. Instead, the powerful harpy flies below the forest canopy and uses its great talents to snatch up monkeys and sloths that weigh up to 17 pounds. A harpy is capable, in a serious chase, of reaching speeds of 50 miles an hour. It dives down onto its prey and snatches it with a giant outstretched foot. Its short, broad wings help the harpy fly almost straight up, too, so it can attack prey from below as well as above. And the harpy eagle can turn its head upside down to get a better look at its potential meal. The bird perches silently for hours, up to 23, in a tree, patiently waiting to catch unsuspecting prey. It has excellent vision and can see something less than one inch in size from almost 660 feet away. The deadly talons of a harpy eagle can exert several hundred pounds of pressure, crushing the bones of its prey and instantly killing its victim. A harpy also feeds on possums, porcupines, young deer, snakes, and iguanas. Heavier prey is taken to a stump or low branch and partially eaten since it's too heavy to be carried whole to the nest. Most of the harpy's food is found in the rainforest canopy and understory instead of on the forest floor. The larger females tend to take sloths and monkeys, and the smaller, more agile, faster males tend to take more quantities of smaller food items. This increases the pair's odds of eating on a regular basis. Harpies are thought to mate for life, but they are elusive in the wild, so it's hard to say with 100% certainty. As parents, they fiercely defend their eggs and young. The mother lays one or two eggs in a clutch and she only reproduces every two to three years. Both parents incubate eggs, with the female taking most of the responsibility. Ain't that the way it goes, girl. Each harpy eagle pair needs several square miles of undisturbed forest to thrive. Since these eagles are non-migratory, they hunt their established range continuously. Years of logging, destruction of nesting sites, and poaching have eliminated this bird from much of its former range, especially the northern part, and it's now rare in many areas. Their most current threat comes from hunters shooting the birds for sport. Who the fuck would do that? Who? Is it you? I will find you if it's you. Harpy parents raise at most a single eaglet every two years, so once the number of harpy eagles in a particular area has been reduced, it is hard for the population to recover. Until recently, the San Diego Zoo was the only zoo in the United States to breed this rare bird. Now Zoo Miami has reared a chick from parents in the San Diego Zoo. 15 Heartbeat Eagles have hatched here since 1992, and in 1998, two offspring were reintroduced into their native habitat in Panama. Why does that make me want to cry? I'm literally about to cry. I'm just happy. I hope we can reintroduce them to their native lands and let them live. I will have pictures of this amazing animal. I will have pictures of Earl fucking Nelson. Go fuck yourself. That's it for this week. I will see you next week with part three. And until then, clutch your fucking pearls. But like, literally, make sure no one steals them from you. And also definitely wear them when you're vacuuming. Just to make yourself happy. That's it. I'm leaving now. Okay. Bye. Link 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 Macabre 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. Until friends, 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.