Aug. 13, 2026

The Dark Strangler, Every Landlady's Nightmare: Earle Nelson | Portland, Oregon

The Dark Strangler, Every Landlady's Nightmare: Earle Nelson | Portland, Oregon
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From San Francisco to Winnipeg, he carried a worn Bible and a strange but seemingly polite smile. He answered ads about homes for sale and rooms for rent where he was invited in by unsuspecting, vulnerable women. Between February 1926 and June 1927, twenty-two women and one eight-month-old baby lost their lives to Earle Leonard Nelson – the man newspapers of the day called the 'Dark Strangler,' the 'Gorilla Man,' and the 'Gorilla Killer.' Four of those killings took place in Portland, with three occurring in a single week.

Earle Leonard Nelson was almost certainly the first serial sex murderer of the twentieth century in America; a distinction most true crime listeners have never heard because his crimes predate the term "serial killer" by roughly half a century. As an orphaned child in San Francisco, he suffered what many believe was a devastating and life-altering accident that seemed to break something in him. We follow him through repeated stints at Napa State Mental Hospital, and into the cross-country killing spree that made him briefly the most-hunted man in North America.

His Portland victims – Beata Withers, Virginia Grant, Mabel Fluke, and Blanche Myers, killed between October and November of 1926 – led to what may have been one of, if not the first serial-killer safety advisories in American history, issued by the Portland Police Bureau. Amidst the chaos of his killings, we’ll also talk about the unlikely survivors and other victims slain in his brutal spree across the country. Though the trail comes to a final conclusion, eerily on Friday, January the 13th, of 1928 in Winnipeg, his confirmed count of twenty-two would stand as the American record for nearly fifty years. Then the case, and the man, despite massive impact at the time, quietly slipped out of public memory.

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Nelson escaped at least three times before hospital staff simply

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stopped attempting to locate him.

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Oh my god.

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Yeah, yeah, this is some old time he shit. They

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were likely a little bit overwhelmed at the time, after all,

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you know, kind of a few things going on.

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Like we can't keep chasing this guy.

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No, like we simply we simply calmed. His frequent escapes

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earned him the nickname Houdini among the staff, which, honestly,

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it's far too whimsical a nickname for this, very clearly

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on whimsical bitch. Hi, Kathy, Hi, Caitlyn, Hi, creepy people. Hello,

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that was a little a little groggy, he or you?

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Uh well, I feel like I'm following in your energy,

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so maybe.

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Sorry, I'll try to pick up pick the vibe.

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Now, you're you're all right, You're all right. I get it.

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I did not sleep in today, and I'm sure that

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I'm going to be feeling that later. I will be

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groggy at a later time.

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I'm just getting it over with now.

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Yeah. I admire how proactive you are.

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Thanks, I try. You're welcome. Okay.

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This is PNW Hanson Homicides, where we chat about true crime.

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The paranormal and all things spooky in the Pacific Northwest.

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We also do little taro reading at the end of

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every episode for a bit of deeper insight into our topic.

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And if ever there was a case that was so

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long that we I was like, God, do we cut

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the taro for time? But we won't. We won't do that.

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We wouldn't do that to you. No, that's that's sacrilege.

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All right, we're gonna We're gonna keep it, uh, straight

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to business and get right to it this this go around.

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I remember when I first learned about Israel Keys. The

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thing is as scary as he is. The thought that

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he might not be the first of his kind was

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absolutely terrifying. The fact that he's not the only is terrifying.

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I wish there was something that we could do to

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identify them. But if there's one thing Bundy has taught us,

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it's that we often can't until it's too late. So

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what do we do, like avoid all men? Yeah, well,

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easy to say when you already shnagged that ring. I know, ladies,

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while I wouldn't say, we're necessarily talking about an exact

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one to one today in terms of comparison to Israel

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Keys or Ted Bundy for that matter. The Pacific Northwest

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did lose multiple victims to this man who's so soon

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become somewhat lost to history. Love that for him, well

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except for that one Hitchcock film, so even that isn't like, oh,

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he's like immortalized through this like super you know, like

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cult classic like it is, but also it's not like

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one of the better known ones, you know, Earl Leonard Ferrell.

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And there's some debate about the spelling, but we're going

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with Ferrell literally spelled fe r r al was born

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May twelfth of eighteen ninety seven in San Francisco. It's

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not my favorite version of the spelling, but I will

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say I'm kind of just glad it's not the same

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as mine. Yeah right, because spoiler he was far from

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being a San Francisco treat woo. Yeah. He was orphaned

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before his second birthday and raised by his maternal grandmother,

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Jenny Nelson, whose surname he eventually took. His mother, Francis Nelson,

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was of Danish and Irish descent and had been born

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in Iowa. His father, also born in Iowa, James Carlos Ferrell,

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was of Jewish ancestry. Don't get emotionally attached because unfortunately

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or fortunately, they will not be sticking around for story

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time with us, as implied by the fact that he

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was orphaned before his second birthday.

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But okay, I didn't catch on to that. Yeah, well

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darn yeah.

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Yeah, don't get emotionally invested in them as characters. They

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both died as a result of contracting syphilis, which, yeah,

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it doesn't sound like a fun way to go, but

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it was a popular one for a while there. Yeah,

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a lot of people died of civilis. His grandmother, Jenny,

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was a devout Pentecostal, still raising two of her own

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younger children, Willis and Lillian, who were both roughly a

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decade older than Earl, which is kind of I always

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find that sort of odd. It's kind of off putting.

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You have like a aunt and uncle that are essentially

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only a decade older than you, and then you're being

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raised alongside them. That's got to be kind of awkward.

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Yeah, a lot of it.

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Maybe maybe that's just me. Family dynamics, yeah, they can

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be complicated. Though he was raised in a deeply religious household,

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earl behavior became increasingly disturbing throughout his upbringing. He was

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expelled from his primary school in San Francisco at age

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seven dang so young, very young, for what was described

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as morbid conduct.

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I want to know, but I don't.

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Yeah, and fortunately or unfortunately, it's unclear what exactly occurred.

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But it certainly doesn't seem to bode well.

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Yeah, to expel a seven year old like that, it

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has to be really.

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Bad, right, It's got to be pretty extreme behavior. He

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was a lone wolf type, likely in no small part

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due to his violent outbursts, petty theft, and other strange behavior.

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His grandmother described episodes of him leaving for school in

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clean clothes and returning in attire that had been reduced

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to essentially rags, as if he had swapped garments with

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an unhoused person.

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Oh, I mean, that's all.

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It's a little unsettling, Like, how does a kid do

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that much damage to, you know, their clothing in that Like.

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It'd be sweet if he actually was trading his clothes,

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But no, he's just like destroying his own clothes that

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they love.

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Strastically different.

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Okay, he's sure just ravaging the clothing somehow. And I

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crawling around in the woods, right, I just feel like

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people also stereotypically had a lot less clothing in this era.

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Yeah, you had to like fix everything right.

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There was no such thing as fast fashion, so you

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weren't getting a new top from she and every other week.

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Yeah.

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She also recalled that he quoted scripture in what felt

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like a compulsive manner.

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He quoted Scripture.

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Yes, okay, like compulsively, like to a degree that was

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not normal to a woman who was extremely religious.

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Maybe the religion is like affecting his mental health, that's

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the reason here.

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Yeah, I feel as though it seems like, even at

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this early stage, kind of a fair assumption that's something.

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There's a screw loose, and whether or not the religion

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is playing a role is debatable. But Yike's Rachel, his

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female cousin, said that he had watched her undress on

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multiple occasions and from here, if things weren't looking bad enough,

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it's honestly an absolute avalanche. It's it's not good. When

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Nelson was about ten or eleven, he was struck head

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on by a moving streetcar as he was riding his bicycle.

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Well, shit, yeah, I.

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Feel like, you know, things weren't going well to begin with.

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But uh, that isn't going to do him any favors.

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According to some sources, at the time, doctors didn't anticipate

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that he would ever recover. They didn't really expect that

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he would survive, probably because he was left with a

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horrific head injury, some sources even indicating that he was

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left with a literal hole in his head. Yikes, yeah,

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which that made me wonder if this was the origin

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story for the idiom about like a hole in your head.

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But actually, it turns out it comes from a Yiddish saying,

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which oddly enough still kind of tracks since his father

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was Jewish. Either way, etomology is so interesting, Well, rabbit hole,

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we have to find the little pockets of light where

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we can. He remained unconscious for nearly a week. When

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he woke, family members described a permanent change in him,

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severe headaches, occasional dizziness, memory lapses, and periods of talking

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to invisible people, and then a lot of the behaviors

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that were already an issue. It kind of just seems

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like they escalated at this point.

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Oh no, yeah, you would hope it would just like

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maybe change him for like change those parts of him,

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you know, right, which changes other parts yeah.

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I mean, not that anyone wants the practice of lobotomy

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to be picked back up, but one of the things

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that they were pursuing there was that it typically made

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people very docile, and it's like, couldn't have had that

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in this case, Like, right, it's unfortunate. He continued the

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practice of obsessively reading the Book of Revelation. It is revelation.

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I always want to say revelations. It is indeed revelation singular.

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I don't care.

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Yeah, So he continued that practice as a teenager and

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could quote and could quote long passages from memory, a

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habit that he would later weaponize with his victims, which

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isn't really something that I'm gonna get into, like in

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great detail. Let's just say like there's kind of a

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thread of like this guy feels like he may be

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experiencing kind of some sort of almost religious psychosis. That's

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kind of it's a broader theme. In his early teens,

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Nelson began frequenting brothels and bars in San Francisco's Barbary

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Coast Red Light District. That's where he contracted of venereal disease.

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Given the prevalence of syphilis at the time, if I

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had to guess, that would be it. But I did

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not see it specifically confirmed in any of my source material.

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It just said venereal disease. So also because it was

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like still killing people in this era, you know, maybe

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it was something else.

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I don't know how did he get that though. Didn't

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he just go to like the red light district to

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read them scripture?

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Yeah you know, that's a really good point, I would

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have assumed. Yeah, yeah, weird. Yeah, excellent observation, Cassie.

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Thank you.

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He grew into an unusually strong, physically fit young man

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of stocky build, and I'm immediately picturing like the guys

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of Jersey Shore. But then source material goes on to

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say with disproportionately long arms and hands. Okay, he would

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occasionally entertain his family by walking on his hands or

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lifting heavy objects with his teeth, thereby lending credence to

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a later moniker, which we will come back, and I

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think I think you'll understand the connection. Earl's documented criminal

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record began in nineteen fifteen, at age eighteen, when he

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was sentenced to two years at San Quentin State Prison

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for breaking into a cabin in rural plumous County, California.

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He would claim he believed the cabin had been abandoned

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because I guess for some reason he thought that would

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have made it okay, still my yours? Yeah, kind of

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a I feel like that's the important distinction, is that,

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uh yeah, still breaking an entering, you know, squatter's right. Yeah,

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I don't think that was really so much a thing

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At that point he was gonna champion that. He was

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parolled on September sixth, nineteen sixteen, and roughly six months later,

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on March ninth, nineteen seventeen, he was arrested again for

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petty larceny under the alias Clark and served another six

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month sentence.

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I'm Clark, I'm Clark. Now, got last name Clark? Nope,

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just Clark. Yeah.

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I don't know if that was supposed to have been

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his first or last name. I'm not really sure. He's

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just trying to pull a share.

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I like to picture it that way.

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Yeah, honestly, I prefer that it helps lighten the mood

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a little bit. Then, in late nineteen seventeen, Nelson enlisted

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in the US military, but he deserted mere weeks later. No,

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I know, I'm so surprised. That this guy is just

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not a stand up in rollie.

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I don't think his mental health could take it, like

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I think it would have broken him.

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Well, you know, it's interesting that you say that, because

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if he is not indeed already broken. Yeah, then in

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another seemingly compulsive pattern, which I will say, there's a

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lot of compulsive patterning in this, he would alternate between

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the Army and the Navy enlisting before again deserting duty

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a handful of weeks later. Why unclear.

223
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There's a lot of why.

224
00:15:35.360 --> 00:15:38.320
He was said to have done this four times, each

225
00:15:38.399 --> 00:15:44.759
time using a different alias. So Clark Clark, I mean

226
00:15:44.840 --> 00:15:49.360
it is okay, like brain injury stuff like you don't

227
00:15:49.879 --> 00:15:52.720
maybe always know why you're doing what you're doing, or

228
00:15:52.720 --> 00:15:56.480
you make do things that don't make sense, or Yeah,

229
00:15:57.399 --> 00:15:59.720
I feel like there's a lot of things in his

230
00:15:59.759 --> 00:16:06.879
back background that might lend to an explanation, not excusing

231
00:16:07.200 --> 00:16:12.240
any of his behavior, but might help us to understand

232
00:16:13.240 --> 00:16:17.320
why certain things occur. During a brief stint in the

233
00:16:17.440 --> 00:16:21.600
US Navy in nineteen eighteen, his erratic behavior led to

234
00:16:21.679 --> 00:16:26.120
being committed at the Napa State Mental Hospital, the first

235
00:16:26.120 --> 00:16:31.039
of several stays there. In fact, a Navy psychologist recorded

236
00:16:31.080 --> 00:16:36.320
that he was quote living in a constitutional psychotic state,

237
00:16:37.120 --> 00:16:39.399
which feels like a very loaded statement.

238
00:16:39.879 --> 00:16:41.519
Oh that didn't sound good.

239
00:16:42.039 --> 00:16:47.600
No, it turns out it's wildly negative. It's largely bad.

240
00:16:48.120 --> 00:16:48.639
Yeah.

241
00:16:49.240 --> 00:16:53.720
William Pritchard, a psychiatrist at the NAPA Hospital who conducted

242
00:16:53.799 --> 00:16:57.720
a preliminary interview in May of that year, wrote of

243
00:16:57.799 --> 00:17:02.480
him he had seen faces, heard music, believed people were

244
00:17:02.519 --> 00:17:07.240
poisoning him, and reported hearing voices whispering to him to

245
00:17:07.440 --> 00:17:08.440
kill himself.

246
00:17:09.640 --> 00:17:09.920
Shit.

247
00:17:11.480 --> 00:17:18.440
He also complained of occipital headaches like basically migraines. It

248
00:17:18.640 --> 00:17:24.480
like specifically refers to a type that happens when nerves

249
00:17:24.480 --> 00:17:27.039
are pinched or hurt, and it has like a very

250
00:17:27.039 --> 00:17:32.119
specific way of like traveling through your head and neck.

251
00:17:32.559 --> 00:17:36.400
It sounds not great, but also not entirely unfamiliar.

252
00:17:37.039 --> 00:17:40.279
Yeah, right, I think I could probably uh feel that.

253
00:17:40.279 --> 00:17:44.319
One, Yeah, you know, and then the fainting spells and

254
00:17:44.440 --> 00:17:49.279
dizziness not ideal, no, but you know, if you're having

255
00:17:49.319 --> 00:17:52.880
the occipital headaches, I feel like feeling like you're about

256
00:17:52.920 --> 00:17:56.319
to faint or that you're dizzy. That kind of tracks

257
00:17:57.039 --> 00:17:59.680
as if the hospital staff wasn't already dealing with enough

258
00:17:59.720 --> 00:18:03.480
stretch and strained between the influenza pandemic at the time

259
00:18:03.640 --> 00:18:08.000
and a whole ass world war because nineteen eighteen wor

260
00:18:08.119 --> 00:18:11.720
stuff World War One and then the flu pandemic.

261
00:18:12.240 --> 00:18:12.599
Damn.

262
00:18:12.920 --> 00:18:15.720
So it was. It was rough times. They were stretched

263
00:18:15.720 --> 00:18:20.440
a bit thin. Nelson escaped at least three times before

264
00:18:20.480 --> 00:18:24.079
hospital staff simply stopped attempting to locate him.

265
00:18:24.559 --> 00:18:25.319
Oh my god.

266
00:18:27.000 --> 00:18:30.279
Yeah, yeah, this is some old time. You should. They

267
00:18:30.319 --> 00:18:34.279
were likely a little bit overwhelmed at the time, after all,

268
00:18:34.519 --> 00:18:36.759
you know, kind of a few things going.

269
00:18:36.559 --> 00:18:39.000
On, like, we can't keep chasing this guy.

270
00:18:39.799 --> 00:18:45.000
No, like we simply we simply calmed. His frequent escapes

271
00:18:45.039 --> 00:18:50.000
earned him the nickname Hudni among the staff, which, honestly,

272
00:18:50.160 --> 00:18:53.240
it's far too whimsical a nickname for this very clearly

273
00:18:53.359 --> 00:18:54.640
on whimsical bitch.

274
00:18:55.319 --> 00:18:55.880
Yeah.

275
00:18:56.480 --> 00:19:00.440
At twenty one. In March of nineteen nineteen, he was

276
00:19:00.519 --> 00:19:05.519
arrested in Los Angeles for burglary under the name Ferrell,

277
00:19:05.680 --> 00:19:09.440
a slight respelling of his own birth surname. And this

278
00:19:09.599 --> 00:19:13.079
time I take personal offense because it is spelled my

279
00:19:13.279 --> 00:19:19.720
way and I'm not into it. It's also either the

280
00:19:19.880 --> 00:19:23.599
laziest alias in his career, thus far or an early

281
00:19:23.720 --> 00:19:26.480
sign of how carelessly he'd come to move through the

282
00:19:26.480 --> 00:19:29.799
world under different names, because it's like, it's not even

283
00:19:29.839 --> 00:19:33.680
that far off from what your actual original last name was.

284
00:19:34.359 --> 00:19:37.160
Yeah, and you change like one letter or.

285
00:19:37.759 --> 00:19:42.880
Right, like come on, man. This time he apparently had

286
00:19:42.960 --> 00:19:46.920
no intention of serving his time. He spent approximately five

287
00:19:47.000 --> 00:19:51.319
months in Los Angeles County jail before escaping from custody

288
00:19:51.359 --> 00:19:52.240
there as well.

289
00:19:53.079 --> 00:19:56.799
So Houdini, yeah.

290
00:19:56.480 --> 00:20:00.160
I mean concerning that, not only is he escaped being

291
00:20:00.240 --> 00:20:03.720
from mental health facilities and listen, it was a very

292
00:20:03.759 --> 00:20:10.519
different time, but also from jail. Yeah, so I mean

293
00:20:10.680 --> 00:20:14.119
certainly not the only dude that was, you know, doing

294
00:20:14.200 --> 00:20:21.039
that do but come on, uh, he was a slippery one.

295
00:20:21.079 --> 00:20:25.319
He was formally discharged from the Navy in absentia in

296
00:20:25.400 --> 00:20:29.599
May nineteen nineteen, roughly a year after his original commitment

297
00:20:29.680 --> 00:20:33.400
to the mental health hospital that came about due to

298
00:20:33.400 --> 00:20:38.000
his service. So they were like, yeah, I guess I

299
00:20:38.000 --> 00:20:39.400
think he's done now.

300
00:20:39.599 --> 00:20:41.599
Yeah bye.

301
00:20:42.119 --> 00:20:46.720
Yeah, everybody was just like bye. His hospital file was

302
00:20:46.759 --> 00:20:50.279
closed with a no indicating he had and this is

303
00:20:50.480 --> 00:20:55.279
a quote improved. I guess improvement is something we should

304
00:20:55.319 --> 00:21:01.400
always consider in relative terms, but literally what improved.

305
00:21:01.440 --> 00:21:03.759
How they said he had improved.

306
00:21:04.279 --> 00:21:08.400
Yeah, yeah, oh I improved you mean escapade?

307
00:21:08.960 --> 00:21:13.240
Yeah, then sure, but like just change up the wording

308
00:21:13.359 --> 00:21:18.039
so it sounds good, right, right. We don't have we

309
00:21:18.680 --> 00:21:19.519
can't get him back.

310
00:21:20.440 --> 00:21:23.160
Yeah, and that's better for us, so we view that

311
00:21:23.240 --> 00:21:23.920
as an improved.

312
00:21:24.039 --> 00:21:25.359
Yeah, he improved.

313
00:21:25.400 --> 00:21:32.440
He's it's much improved for us around here, that is true. Okay.

314
00:21:34.000 --> 00:21:39.000
Under yet another alias Evan Lewis Fuller, he took a

315
00:21:39.119 --> 00:21:43.200
job as a janitor at Saint Mary's Hospital in San Francisco.

316
00:21:43.839 --> 00:21:49.440
There he met Mary Martin. And the density of Mary's

317
00:21:49.480 --> 00:21:51.880
in this section is a little rough, so let me

318
00:21:51.960 --> 00:21:55.400
know if you need me to to repeat or explain.

319
00:21:56.279 --> 00:21:56.680
Okay.

320
00:21:57.079 --> 00:22:01.440
There he met Mary Martin, an administrative worker reportedly decades

321
00:22:01.519 --> 00:22:06.000
his senior, old enough to be his grandmother. They married

322
00:22:06.079 --> 00:22:12.359
in August nineteen nineteen, only lasting though this marriage mere

323
00:22:12.480 --> 00:22:13.880
months of cohabitation.

324
00:22:14.359 --> 00:22:16.640
Weird, been there. I can't imagine why.

325
00:22:17.160 --> 00:22:20.039
Yeah, I mean, sometimes you're in a relationship and it

326
00:22:20.119 --> 00:22:22.759
turns out as soon as you move in together, everything

327
00:22:22.880 --> 00:22:25.119
just implodes. Yeah, I get it.

328
00:22:26.200 --> 00:22:30.680
Like, man, she's not baking me those cookies, no more, right,

329
00:22:31.599 --> 00:22:32.400
I'm just I was.

330
00:22:32.319 --> 00:22:34.559
Trying to think of other old lady things, right.

331
00:22:35.119 --> 00:22:39.359
Very like grandma things. And she saw knitting my socks, right,

332
00:22:40.039 --> 00:22:41.160
darning my socks.

333
00:22:42.119 --> 00:22:43.720
I don't know why it's all on her. I'm just

334
00:22:43.799 --> 00:22:46.519
being no, but you know what, it's the misogyny.

335
00:22:47.720 --> 00:22:52.279
Well it's not even that though, because I think without

336
00:22:52.319 --> 00:22:55.839
even realizing it, you might be sort of glomming onto

337
00:22:57.359 --> 00:23:00.160
what is going to become like a really significant and

338
00:23:00.880 --> 00:23:04.200
peace I don't even know how to explain it without

339
00:23:04.279 --> 00:23:10.880
just saying his issues, whatever they might precisely be with

340
00:23:11.599 --> 00:23:16.400
older women, that's going to be a significant factor in

341
00:23:17.279 --> 00:23:21.799
the rest of this story. Oh no, okay, oh no,

342
00:23:22.839 --> 00:23:29.440
yeah yeah. M Martin later testified that he had subjected

343
00:23:29.480 --> 00:23:35.599
her to jealous rages, religious delusions, bizarre sexual demands, and

344
00:23:35.640 --> 00:23:39.799
that he engaged in strange behaviors such as prolonged disappearances

345
00:23:39.839 --> 00:23:42.759
from the home. And also he did this thing where

346
00:23:42.759 --> 00:23:46.200
he would pour glasses of water over his toes like

347
00:23:46.480 --> 00:23:47.799
it was a form of bathing.

348
00:23:48.759 --> 00:23:51.200
Was he what's that? What's the thing that they do

349
00:23:51.480 --> 00:23:52.240
the baptism?

350
00:23:52.359 --> 00:23:56.400
He's baptizing right, yeah, and washing the feet of Christ

351
00:23:56.640 --> 00:24:00.599
like that's sort of a biblical thing as well.

352
00:24:00.839 --> 00:24:01.640
How did I don't.

353
00:24:01.480 --> 00:24:04.039
Even get to the point of marrying him, is like,

354
00:24:04.079 --> 00:24:08.119
how did he pretend to be normal enough to get married?

355
00:24:08.920 --> 00:24:11.119
I don't know. I mean, the thing is is that

356
00:24:11.160 --> 00:24:14.000
people got married a lot quicker then, and it was

357
00:24:14.039 --> 00:24:18.559
a lot easier. I think in these very short term

358
00:24:18.799 --> 00:24:20.839
like courtships to hyde crazy.

359
00:24:21.640 --> 00:24:24.839
It's just it's hard for me to picture him doing that.

360
00:24:24.920 --> 00:24:27.799
But I mean, obviously he did well enough.

361
00:24:27.640 --> 00:24:33.000
Right, yeah, somehow to some degree. But I mean pouring

362
00:24:33.079 --> 00:24:36.240
glasses of water over your toes as a form of bathing,

363
00:24:37.079 --> 00:24:40.319
I just sir, this is a Wendy's Like.

364
00:24:40.519 --> 00:24:42.880
At least he didn't have dirty feet.

365
00:24:43.480 --> 00:24:48.079
I well, I don't know. It's debatable. I feel like

366
00:24:48.079 --> 00:24:50.160
we can't really pull it that thread anymore.

367
00:24:50.279 --> 00:24:53.799
But I'm okay with it, you know, babe. He bathe

368
00:24:53.839 --> 00:24:54.920
as often as you need.

369
00:24:55.839 --> 00:24:58.839
I you know. I just worry though that based on

370
00:24:58.880 --> 00:25:02.799
the description, like are the toes the only thing being bathed?

371
00:25:03.279 --> 00:25:05.200
I just clean?

372
00:25:06.319 --> 00:25:08.799
Yeah, I just I have follow up questions. I don't

373
00:25:09.279 --> 00:25:12.079
know that I want the answers to them, but they're

374
00:25:12.279 --> 00:25:18.440
they're rattling around in there, so for what that's worth.

375
00:25:20.200 --> 00:25:24.200
On May nineteenth, nineteen twenty one, Nelson posed as a

376
00:25:24.240 --> 00:25:28.000
Plumber to enter the home of twelve year old Mary

377
00:25:28.200 --> 00:25:35.279
Summers at fifteen nineteen Pacific Avenue in San Francisco. Once inside,

378
00:25:35.359 --> 00:25:38.759
he attempted to sexually assault the young girl in the basement.

379
00:25:40.160 --> 00:25:43.799
Fortunately for her, when she screamed, her younger brother came

380
00:25:43.839 --> 00:25:49.559
to her aid, oh, I know, and she's only twelve,

381
00:25:50.359 --> 00:25:54.240
so I don't know what these young brother I know,

382
00:25:55.440 --> 00:25:58.279
I'm not sure exactly how old he was, but either way,

383
00:25:58.319 --> 00:26:03.960
I'm like, oh, he probably saved her life.

384
00:26:03.200 --> 00:26:07.480
Yeah, or saved its some trauma at least at minimum.

385
00:26:07.640 --> 00:26:11.799
But yeah, I mean, I don't think that it was

386
00:26:12.000 --> 00:26:14.480
going to end well, and I don't think that she

387
00:26:14.680 --> 00:26:20.279
was intended to survive that encounter. So he was arrested

388
00:26:20.400 --> 00:26:24.559
hours later. While writing the trolley because you know the

389
00:26:24.599 --> 00:26:28.440
San Francisco dy have the trolley. It's again. It just

390
00:26:28.519 --> 00:26:32.680
really it sounds so whimsical and old, tiny and cues,

391
00:26:33.519 --> 00:26:39.319
and then the backstory is just so not that but.

392
00:26:39.640 --> 00:26:42.240
Just Houdini on a trolley. I didn't just try to

393
00:26:42.599 --> 00:26:44.480
murder a twelve year old girl.

394
00:26:44.839 --> 00:26:50.200
Right exactly? Yeah, pay no attention to the man behind

395
00:26:50.319 --> 00:26:56.920
the curtain. Following this offense, a competency hearing found him dangerous.

396
00:26:57.400 --> 00:27:01.480
M h no dah. He was then recommitted to the

397
00:27:01.559 --> 00:27:05.480
NAPA State Mental Hospital. I'm sure, much to the chagrin

398
00:27:05.559 --> 00:27:08.680
of any of the current staff familiar with his previous antics.

399
00:27:09.079 --> 00:27:12.160
They sent him back to the same place he kept

400
00:27:12.359 --> 00:27:13.400
escaping from.

401
00:27:13.799 --> 00:27:17.759
Yeah, can you imagine he's just gonna do it again.

402
00:27:18.920 --> 00:27:22.039
This guy's dangerous. I know what to do with him.

403
00:27:22.759 --> 00:27:25.440
Yeah, let's send him back to the place that he

404
00:27:25.559 --> 00:27:29.039
kept escaping from, famously kept escaping from.

405
00:27:29.160 --> 00:27:33.680
He already knows how to get out. Yeah, oh my god. Okay.

406
00:27:34.400 --> 00:27:38.319
Before his eventual discharge in nineteen twenty five, he would

407
00:27:38.400 --> 00:27:39.720
escape twice more from the.

408
00:27:39.720 --> 00:27:41.759
Hospital only twice.

409
00:27:42.480 --> 00:27:46.759
Only twice. You know, that's an improvement over his previous

410
00:27:46.960 --> 00:27:48.160
escape record.

411
00:27:48.440 --> 00:27:49.119
He was tired.

412
00:27:49.359 --> 00:27:52.920
I guess The following year would mark the beginning of

413
00:27:52.960 --> 00:27:56.920
his known killing spree. So everything up to this point

414
00:27:57.079 --> 00:28:02.160
is really kind of like his low key background. It's

415
00:28:02.240 --> 00:28:06.119
really just like the years when he was I would say,

416
00:28:06.799 --> 00:28:10.400
more of a nuisance than anything.

417
00:28:10.880 --> 00:28:14.480
Yeah, but definitely like his escalation.

418
00:28:15.359 --> 00:28:19.440
Yes, as we go through, I think escalation is so

419
00:28:19.680 --> 00:28:23.960
interesting to kind of examine in the context of all

420
00:28:24.000 --> 00:28:27.200
of his crimes and the story because you can really

421
00:28:27.319 --> 00:28:30.559
see it laid out. It's very interesting and I'll try to,

422
00:28:30.640 --> 00:28:34.039
you know, kind of touch on it throughout. But Nelson's

423
00:28:34.119 --> 00:28:40.480
victims were overwhelmingly middle aged women. Apparently, I'm like, is

424
00:28:40.480 --> 00:28:44.720
that mommy issues, grandma issues, ex wife issues, all of

425
00:28:44.759 --> 00:28:49.759
the above. He frequently targeted female landlords or women operating

426
00:28:49.839 --> 00:28:52.799
boarding houses, as well as women that were showing their

427
00:28:52.839 --> 00:28:56.599
own properties currently on the market for sale. He'd scanned

428
00:28:56.599 --> 00:29:00.000
the classified section for room rental and houses for sale

429
00:29:00.200 --> 00:29:05.920
to locate victims. Arriving well dressed, carrying a clearly worn

430
00:29:06.039 --> 00:29:11.799
Bible exhibiting a polite, relatively calm demeanor hardly made him

431
00:29:11.839 --> 00:29:15.799
seem like much of a threat, effectively disarming his victims,

432
00:29:16.720 --> 00:29:18.720
or most of them.

433
00:29:18.720 --> 00:29:19.799
That Bible man.

434
00:29:20.079 --> 00:29:24.480
I know, not the Bible man couldn't be him. Witnesses

435
00:29:24.519 --> 00:29:28.319
from multiple cities where he would eventually strike described him

436
00:29:28.440 --> 00:29:33.400
as mild mannered, charming, soft spoken on first impression, and

437
00:29:33.880 --> 00:29:40.160
chillingly unusually well versed in scripture and all of it's terrible.

438
00:29:40.240 --> 00:29:44.240
But for some reason that part really unsettles me. Yeah,

439
00:29:44.319 --> 00:29:49.160
it does, because it's like so clearly at odds with

440
00:29:50.160 --> 00:29:53.920
what he actually is. I think, Yeah, that's why it's

441
00:29:55.279 --> 00:30:00.359
it's uncomfy. Once alone with the victim inside the home,

442
00:30:00.920 --> 00:30:04.759
Nelson would strangle her, typically with an item from her

443
00:30:04.799 --> 00:30:10.519
own environment a cord rag scarf for another article of clothing.

444
00:30:11.880 --> 00:30:16.240
He then sexually assaulted the corpse before concealing the victim's

445
00:30:16.279 --> 00:30:20.440
body and stealing small items from the victims, such as cash, clothing,

446
00:30:20.599 --> 00:30:25.400
or jewelry. In some cases, among them victims in Portland.

447
00:30:25.799 --> 00:30:29.079
He went to unusual lengths to conceal the victim's body,

448
00:30:30.039 --> 00:30:33.279
like using steamer trunks or putting them in the attic.

449
00:30:34.279 --> 00:30:37.519
He would then travel, often hitchhiking or stowing away on

450
00:30:37.640 --> 00:30:41.680
freight trains, sometimes hundreds or even thousands of miles before

451
00:30:41.759 --> 00:30:42.440
killing again.

452
00:30:43.119 --> 00:30:45.279
I just have had a horrified look on my face

453
00:30:45.319 --> 00:30:46.000
this whole time.

454
00:30:46.640 --> 00:30:51.559
Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't always translate for audio, but sometimes

455
00:30:51.599 --> 00:30:54.359
you can feel the weight of silence, and so hopefully

456
00:30:54.400 --> 00:30:56.119
that's what everyone is.

457
00:30:56.480 --> 00:30:56.960
Yeah.

458
00:30:57.240 --> 00:31:00.039
I'm also going to say here that even as a

459
00:31:00.200 --> 00:31:04.119
true crime podcaster, one truly can hit the limit with

460
00:31:04.200 --> 00:31:07.880
certain words, and in this case specifically, I'm referring to

461
00:31:09.400 --> 00:31:13.519
rape or sexual assault. The descriptions of the crimes committed

462
00:31:13.559 --> 00:31:18.119
against individual victims, by and large, do not deviate from

463
00:31:18.200 --> 00:31:22.480
the MO I've just described. As I was drafting, if

464
00:31:22.559 --> 00:31:27.400
I had not sort of agreed amongst me, myself and

465
00:31:27.519 --> 00:31:33.440
I that we didn't need to repeatedly list off all

466
00:31:33.519 --> 00:31:36.240
of the different aspects of his EMO, I was like,

467
00:31:36.319 --> 00:31:39.759
we're just going to be saying rape or sexual assault

468
00:31:40.240 --> 00:31:42.200
like dozens of times.

469
00:31:42.599 --> 00:31:43.559
Yeah, I'm okay with that.

470
00:31:44.200 --> 00:31:48.799
So aside from one victim who completely breaks the mold

471
00:31:48.839 --> 00:31:52.200
on his m you can assume that, even if I

472
00:31:52.319 --> 00:31:57.119
don't specifically state it, Unfortunately, his victims were, with almost

473
00:31:57.279 --> 00:32:03.079
zero exception, violated it this way after death. It's so ikey,

474
00:32:03.680 --> 00:32:09.400
and the after death part is particularly yes, icky, But

475
00:32:09.559 --> 00:32:12.599
in a way, I'm like, God, at least maybe they

476
00:32:13.440 --> 00:32:15.240
weren't experiencing that.

477
00:32:16.000 --> 00:32:18.240
Yeah, Yeah, that's true.

478
00:32:18.480 --> 00:32:21.559
That is the only thing that I find that I

479
00:32:21.599 --> 00:32:28.279
can sort of try to grasp that as Okay, it's

480
00:32:28.319 --> 00:32:32.440
not great, but it helps me feel a little bit better.

481
00:32:32.640 --> 00:32:37.079
Like one thing didn't add to the horrific murder they experienced,

482
00:32:37.200 --> 00:32:39.039
like the things they went through already.

483
00:32:39.319 --> 00:32:41.000
Yeah yeah.

484
00:32:41.400 --> 00:32:46.759
Physical descriptions from witnesses were consistent enough that newspapers had

485
00:32:46.759 --> 00:32:50.640
a working sketch of him well before capture. A dark

486
00:32:50.920 --> 00:32:56.079
stocky man with a receding hairline, protruding lips, long arms,

487
00:32:56.160 --> 00:33:01.799
and unusually large hands. These features led the San Francisco

488
00:33:01.920 --> 00:33:06.319
Press to nickname him the gorilla Man and gorilla killer.

489
00:33:07.440 --> 00:33:07.960
Oh.

490
00:33:08.599 --> 00:33:12.880
Others tracking his westward then eastward migration called him the

491
00:33:13.000 --> 00:33:13.960
dark strangler.

492
00:33:15.240 --> 00:33:16.920
I like gorilla man, better.

493
00:33:19.359 --> 00:33:21.720
Put a pin in that you might not love it.

494
00:33:23.480 --> 00:33:27.279
Witnesses who had brief encounters with him repeatedly sighted his

495
00:33:27.480 --> 00:33:34.839
dark piercing eyes as his most memorable feature. So the

496
00:33:34.960 --> 00:33:38.279
racism of it all am I right?

497
00:33:38.599 --> 00:33:40.599
Oh yeah, I guess.

498
00:33:40.720 --> 00:33:45.240
Because these gorilla comparisons weren't invented for white men like

499
00:33:45.319 --> 00:33:49.759
Earl Nelson, but could be used to dehumanize him very

500
00:33:49.799 --> 00:33:56.880
effectively all the same. And while there's a large part

501
00:33:56.920 --> 00:34:01.119
of me that is okay with dehumanizing a violent, sexual

502
00:34:01.240 --> 00:34:05.759
serial killer, these racist tropes that had been used against

503
00:34:05.839 --> 00:34:09.800
black men for decades, if hundreds of years, really were

504
00:34:09.880 --> 00:34:13.960
simply being repurposed because his behavior didn't match up with

505
00:34:14.440 --> 00:34:19.559
white society's own self image. So by committing the crimes

506
00:34:19.599 --> 00:34:22.719
that he did, it was like he gave up his

507
00:34:23.079 --> 00:34:24.719
whiteness in a way.

508
00:34:25.280 --> 00:34:29.719
Ew yeah, interesting, I was just like he's got big

509
00:34:29.719 --> 00:34:31.519
hands and these, Harry, I get it.

510
00:34:31.519 --> 00:34:36.760
Right, right, And in that sense, yes, if it weren't

511
00:34:36.800 --> 00:34:40.599
for some of like kind of the very pointed language

512
00:34:41.119 --> 00:34:44.960
that was like it. They were clearly drawing parallels to

513
00:34:46.039 --> 00:34:51.239
how this type of like racist charged language was applied

514
00:34:51.280 --> 00:34:55.559
in other situations. I would say, oh, great, yeah, it's

515
00:34:55.960 --> 00:34:59.800
just but it's very rarely that simple and certainly not

516
00:35:00.079 --> 00:35:03.880
in this era. It it's a little ichy, and by

517
00:35:03.880 --> 00:35:07.480
that I mean a lot ichy actually. But at the

518
00:35:07.519 --> 00:35:11.480
peak of his spree, Nelson averaged one murder roughly every

519
00:35:11.559 --> 00:35:15.280
three weeks. In the ten days between June first and

520
00:35:15.400 --> 00:35:18.519
June tenth of nineteen twenty seven, he killed at least

521
00:35:18.559 --> 00:35:22.199
five women across three cities and one international border.

522
00:35:23.079 --> 00:35:26.760
Not so many, I know, you know.

523
00:35:26.880 --> 00:35:29.199
And the other thing, it's just occurring to me too,

524
00:35:29.360 --> 00:35:31.079
because I was like, I feel like I have to

525
00:35:31.159 --> 00:35:33.800
caution you, like no, you don't like the gorilla thing.

526
00:35:34.239 --> 00:35:37.599
And I'm like, it's so telling that like through a

527
00:35:37.639 --> 00:35:42.000
more modern lens and like not really thinking about it

528
00:35:42.199 --> 00:35:46.000
in those like you're not having the mindset of like, oh,

529
00:35:46.119 --> 00:35:49.280
I'm drawing this parallel to him being like, you know,

530
00:35:49.320 --> 00:35:54.199
an African American man making them into like an animal.

531
00:35:54.960 --> 00:35:55.519
Yeah.

532
00:35:56.239 --> 00:35:59.519
So it's like because I don't know, it's just that

533
00:35:59.719 --> 00:36:02.320
just sucks. It just sucks. Yeah.

534
00:36:04.239 --> 00:36:07.519
I mean his other nickname though, too was like what

535
00:36:07.679 --> 00:36:08.800
the dark Strangler?

536
00:36:08.840 --> 00:36:10.199
That too cool?

537
00:36:11.199 --> 00:36:14.360
Right, exactly? Yeah, I don't want to give him the

538
00:36:14.400 --> 00:36:19.840
cool factor. I know. Yeah, there's you know, honestly, there's

539
00:36:20.039 --> 00:36:24.960
just there's kind of no winning with giving them sort

540
00:36:24.960 --> 00:36:28.199
of a moniker. It feels like, but can we just

541
00:36:28.239 --> 00:36:32.519
call them all shithead? Right? Shithead number one, shit right

542
00:36:32.599 --> 00:36:36.960
number ten? Yeah, shithead number or you know, shithead of

543
00:36:37.119 --> 00:36:44.119
Cincinnati or you know. Yeah. Nelson's first known murder took

544
00:36:44.159 --> 00:36:48.880
place in San Francisco at twenty thirty seven Pierre Street,

545
00:36:49.119 --> 00:36:52.920
where he murdered sixty year old Clara B. Newman on

546
00:36:53.280 --> 00:36:57.599
February twentieth of nineteen twenty six. To gain entry, he

547
00:36:57.679 --> 00:37:01.719
posed as a prospective tenant using the name Roger Wilson

548
00:37:01.920 --> 00:37:07.000
before strangling and sexually assaulting her. Post mortem, he hid

549
00:37:07.039 --> 00:37:11.480
her body in a vacant apartment within the house her nephew,

550
00:37:12.119 --> 00:37:16.000
Merton Newman, who I'm surprised I got that out on

551
00:37:16.039 --> 00:37:18.920
the first take. Merton Newman feels like a little bit

552
00:37:18.960 --> 00:37:23.000
of a tongue twister. I don't know why. Merton Newman Senior,

553
00:37:23.760 --> 00:37:26.119
who lived on the second floor of the boarding house,

554
00:37:26.400 --> 00:37:29.280
saw Nelson as he was leaving through the front door

555
00:37:29.719 --> 00:37:33.840
and would later positively identify him, making him the only

556
00:37:33.920 --> 00:37:38.480
person to see Nelson within literal moments of any of

557
00:37:38.519 --> 00:37:43.400
his crimes. Wow, most people, because there are a number

558
00:37:43.400 --> 00:37:46.280
of people that were able to identify him. Most people

559
00:37:46.320 --> 00:37:49.920
were called seeing him in the area or seeing him

560
00:37:50.000 --> 00:37:54.119
talking to a victim. But it was like in within

561
00:37:54.159 --> 00:37:57.519
a period of like days or hours leading up to

562
00:37:58.000 --> 00:38:02.639
a murder. It was never like right before or right after.

563
00:38:04.239 --> 00:38:08.360
So it was just a very direct connection to that

564
00:38:08.440 --> 00:38:09.920
particular murder.

565
00:38:10.719 --> 00:38:13.079
That is so sad for him to have seen it,

566
00:38:13.280 --> 00:38:15.840
not in like how long did it take for anyone

567
00:38:15.920 --> 00:38:18.599
to notice that she was like something was wrong with her?

568
00:38:19.079 --> 00:38:21.639
I mean, I have to imagine, since he lived in

569
00:38:21.639 --> 00:38:25.360
that same building and you know that's a family member,

570
00:38:26.000 --> 00:38:30.239
she ironically was probably identified as you know, being like

571
00:38:30.360 --> 00:38:34.159
missing or that something was off, maybe quicker than some

572
00:38:34.239 --> 00:38:39.000
of the others. Over the next handful of months, Nelson

573
00:38:39.000 --> 00:38:43.800
went on to kill four additional women in California. March second,

574
00:38:43.960 --> 00:38:48.000
nineteen twenty six in San Jose. He strangled sixty three

575
00:38:48.039 --> 00:38:52.079
year old Laura Bale with a silken cord whilend so

576
00:38:52.320 --> 00:38:56.239
tightly it actually embedded in the skin of her neck.

577
00:38:57.559 --> 00:38:58.440
That terrific.

578
00:38:59.480 --> 00:39:04.440
Yeah, acting suspiciously while similarly dressed to the real killer

579
00:39:04.760 --> 00:39:10.159
got another man, Joe Casssek I'm guessing on the pronunciation

580
00:39:10.239 --> 00:39:14.480
of the last name. It got him arrested for the crime. Initially,

581
00:39:15.079 --> 00:39:19.679
whoa I know, But the Austrian native was eventually cleared.

582
00:39:19.719 --> 00:39:20.679
Thank goodness.

583
00:39:21.280 --> 00:39:24.719
I know that was far from being a guarantee at

584
00:39:24.719 --> 00:39:27.960
that point in history. It's kind of hard to reverse

585
00:39:28.039 --> 00:39:32.599
the tide on something like that. Back in his stomping

586
00:39:32.639 --> 00:39:36.679
grounds on June tenth of nineteen twenty six, he claimed

587
00:39:36.679 --> 00:39:41.800
his next victim, Lillian Saint Mary, also sixty three, before

588
00:39:41.840 --> 00:39:46.199
moving on to Santa Barbara. That's where he carried out

589
00:39:46.199 --> 00:39:50.719
the murder of Olie Russell on June twenty fourth, nineteen

590
00:39:50.840 --> 00:39:56.599
twenty six, who was also strangled with a cord. Still,

591
00:39:57.119 --> 00:39:59.320
this case was different as it was the first that

592
00:39:59.440 --> 00:40:04.400
police explicitly connected to the earlier murders. And we are

593
00:40:04.400 --> 00:40:08.519
going to talk about this again because it is wild

594
00:40:08.840 --> 00:40:14.840
the synchronicity of like that particular case and like how

595
00:40:14.880 --> 00:40:19.079
it just how it plays out. Okay, So Allie Russell,

596
00:40:19.920 --> 00:40:21.599
that's a name that we're going to come back to.

597
00:40:23.000 --> 00:40:25.719
As the summer drew to a close, he claimed another

598
00:40:25.760 --> 00:40:31.599
California victim on August sixteenth, nineteen twenty six. It's a

599
00:40:31.639 --> 00:40:32.679
week from today.

600
00:40:33.320 --> 00:40:36.199
Yea, yeah.

601
00:40:36.280 --> 00:40:41.039
Mary c nesbit in Oakland before heading north. She had

602
00:40:41.079 --> 00:40:44.119
been strangled with a towel and raped in the bathroom

603
00:40:44.280 --> 00:40:49.400
of a vacant apartment, where her husband, Stephen discovered her body.

604
00:40:50.119 --> 00:40:51.880
Oh god.

605
00:40:52.599 --> 00:40:57.199
Unfortunately, it feels like the overwhelming majority of these victims

606
00:40:57.239 --> 00:41:02.440
were discovered by people that have been uniquely scarred by

607
00:41:02.519 --> 00:41:09.360
that experience, like family members. And I cannot even fathom.

608
00:41:09.800 --> 00:41:12.960
I just I and I refuse to imagine.

609
00:41:13.119 --> 00:41:15.400
No one should have to see that. That's no.

610
00:41:16.639 --> 00:41:21.039
Witnesses reported having seen a stranger with a peculiar smile

611
00:41:21.199 --> 00:41:25.400
outside the building. The mail carrier had taken note of

612
00:41:25.440 --> 00:41:30.440
seeing that same weird smiling. Weirdo, man, I.

613
00:41:30.400 --> 00:41:33.280
Don't like that description at all.

614
00:41:33.719 --> 00:41:38.480
Nope, No, how did you put it? He's a stranger

615
00:41:38.559 --> 00:41:40.119
with a peculiar smile.

616
00:41:41.199 --> 00:41:43.079
What's a peculiar smile?

617
00:41:43.440 --> 00:41:49.039
Like I I think that it's all in the eyes.

618
00:41:49.079 --> 00:41:50.639
In that case, I think he.

619
00:41:50.679 --> 00:41:54.920
Had like I can't you do it because I'm.

620
00:41:54.800 --> 00:41:58.360
Not, Because you can't it's hard to replicate.

621
00:41:58.840 --> 00:41:59.519
Oh my god.

622
00:42:00.599 --> 00:42:03.360
Yeah, the mail carrier had taken note of seeing him

623
00:42:03.440 --> 00:42:04.719
lingering for about a.

624
00:42:04.719 --> 00:42:06.360
Week just smiling.

625
00:42:06.760 --> 00:42:12.519
Yeah, just hanging out, smiling creepily. Mary's husband, stephen Nesbitt,

626
00:42:12.559 --> 00:42:15.960
was held in jail for two days before being cleared.

627
00:42:16.760 --> 00:42:19.119
So that seems to be kind of a pattern as well.

628
00:42:19.400 --> 00:42:22.519
It's like family members are finding them and then also

629
00:42:22.719 --> 00:42:28.079
of other individuals, oftentimes the husband or another man for

630
00:42:28.199 --> 00:42:32.159
whatever reason that is unfortunately falsely accused.

631
00:42:32.840 --> 00:42:33.760
That's so sad.

632
00:42:34.599 --> 00:42:37.159
I know, and I get why, but it's still like, right,

633
00:42:37.199 --> 00:42:41.639
you had to find her and then also get like accused. Right,

634
00:42:41.920 --> 00:42:44.280
was this the same guy that found his wife?

635
00:42:44.920 --> 00:42:50.320
Yeah, okay, he found her and then was initially believed

636
00:42:50.400 --> 00:42:54.159
to be the perpetrator, which again, like statistically, we like

637
00:42:54.239 --> 00:42:57.159
we understand that, like that is so often the case,

638
00:42:57.199 --> 00:43:02.519
but yikes. By mid October of nineteen twenty six, Nelson

639
00:43:02.559 --> 00:43:05.159
had made his way to Portland, where the killing of

640
00:43:05.280 --> 00:43:08.679
his first victim in the state, thirty five year old

641
00:43:09.280 --> 00:43:14.239
Beta B. Withers, marked multiple slight deviations from his normal

642
00:43:14.519 --> 00:43:18.360
mo o. To start, she was obviously much younger than

643
00:43:18.400 --> 00:43:21.079
a lot of the other women that he had previously killed,

644
00:43:22.159 --> 00:43:26.039
but he also seemingly went to greater lengths to conceal

645
00:43:26.199 --> 00:43:31.360
her body after the murder than he frequently did. It's

646
00:43:31.400 --> 00:43:35.159
not the only time, but he's certainly not going to

647
00:43:35.239 --> 00:43:38.599
this much trouble every time. He had stuffed her into

648
00:43:38.639 --> 00:43:41.840
a steamer trunk in the attic of her home, beneath

649
00:43:41.840 --> 00:43:43.639
the clothing stored inside.

650
00:43:45.079 --> 00:43:46.239
Oh my god.

651
00:43:47.960 --> 00:43:51.800
Sadly, these measures of concealment did not prevent the discovery

652
00:43:51.840 --> 00:43:56.000
of her body by her fifteen year old son. No, no,

653
00:43:57.159 --> 00:44:01.840
I know, I know. On the date of her murder,

654
00:44:01.920 --> 00:44:04.800
October nineteenth, she had met with her beau at the

655
00:44:04.840 --> 00:44:10.280
time and her son for lunch. Witnesses established that she

656
00:44:10.320 --> 00:44:12.960
had seemed cheerful as she worked in her flower beds

657
00:44:12.960 --> 00:44:17.559
after returning from lunch that afternoon, likely because she believed

658
00:44:17.920 --> 00:44:21.719
the room she'd been advertising for rent for weeks finally

659
00:44:21.800 --> 00:44:23.679
had a take her and it was.

660
00:44:23.679 --> 00:44:26.360
The wrong person, it sure was.

661
00:44:26.880 --> 00:44:30.119
Her son had been concerned when he returned home only

662
00:44:30.159 --> 00:44:32.519
to find that his mother didn't seem to be there.

663
00:44:33.639 --> 00:44:37.159
Even in some fashion, expressing concern that she may have

664
00:44:37.199 --> 00:44:40.880
taken her own life so prior to the promise of

665
00:44:40.960 --> 00:44:45.400
renting the room, her finances had actually begun to look

666
00:44:45.480 --> 00:44:48.960
quite dire, so he thought, Wow, maybe things are so

667
00:44:49.239 --> 00:44:52.960
bad that she killed herself. It was only after a

668
00:44:53.039 --> 00:44:56.760
thorough search that her body had been recovered, appearing as

669
00:44:56.760 --> 00:45:00.360
though she might have been smothered to death, the least

670
00:45:00.400 --> 00:45:03.679
referring to it as an I shit you not the

671
00:45:03.719 --> 00:45:06.119
strangest suicide they had ever seen.

672
00:45:07.079 --> 00:45:10.559
No, because it's not.

673
00:45:12.000 --> 00:45:12.199
Right.

674
00:45:12.760 --> 00:45:15.400
Clearly, she didn't put herself.

675
00:45:15.519 --> 00:45:19.159
Oh my god, she didn't put herself in a trunk

676
00:45:19.440 --> 00:45:24.159
in the attic. Okay, but okay, we're going to spend

677
00:45:24.199 --> 00:45:26.719
a little bit more time on this than a lot

678
00:45:26.719 --> 00:45:31.559
of I couldn't, I couldn't not. So here we are

679
00:45:32.199 --> 00:45:36.519
far from the ppb's proudest moment, but with a caveat admittedly.

680
00:45:37.159 --> 00:45:41.000
Two days after the murder occurred, a story titled in

681
00:45:41.679 --> 00:45:48.599
all caps, poetry Inspires Suicide in Trunk appeared on the

682
00:45:48.599 --> 00:45:52.480
front page of The Oregonian that confirms some of the

683
00:45:52.519 --> 00:45:58.599
most bizarre details of the suicide theory. Police initially believed

684
00:45:58.800 --> 00:46:02.800
suicide because Withers had a motto or poem on her

685
00:46:02.840 --> 00:46:10.360
wall about putting troubles in a strong box, which is

686
00:46:10.840 --> 00:46:15.320
very eerie. The police literally interpreted this as her taking

687
00:46:15.360 --> 00:46:18.119
the phrase to mean she should stuff herself into a

688
00:46:18.159 --> 00:46:23.559
trunk to die. We might need to talk about symbolism,

689
00:46:24.000 --> 00:46:27.039
metaphor simile, you know, give them a little bit of

690
00:46:27.760 --> 00:46:31.119
a toolbox for understanding those things.

691
00:46:32.199 --> 00:46:33.880
Man, I need to like look around my room and

692
00:46:33.920 --> 00:46:36.199
see what's on my walls because someone might interpret it

693
00:46:36.320 --> 00:46:37.440
is if I die.

694
00:46:38.000 --> 00:46:42.800
Right. Continuing on the train of taking everything very literally,

695
00:46:43.360 --> 00:46:47.079
they reconstructed the scene by having someone else get into

696
00:46:47.119 --> 00:46:52.239
the trunk to demonstrate that self inflicted smothering was physically possible.

697
00:46:52.840 --> 00:46:56.519
So there was some due diligence on that piece of things.

698
00:46:57.320 --> 00:47:00.679
A corner's jury was convened on October TI, twenty eighth,

699
00:47:00.760 --> 00:47:04.679
resulting in an even split. Half believed her death was

700
00:47:04.719 --> 00:47:09.880
a suicide, albeit certainly strange, and the other half were

701
00:47:10.079 --> 00:47:14.320
equally certain it was a homicide. Before you know, a

702
00:47:14.360 --> 00:47:18.760
pattern sort of becomes clear emerges if you will. So

703
00:47:18.840 --> 00:47:21.000
to be fair, it wasn't just the cops that were

704
00:47:21.000 --> 00:47:25.320
tricked into considering the theory of suicide. And here's the

705
00:47:25.679 --> 00:47:29.719
part that kind of it bugs me in a way

706
00:47:29.719 --> 00:47:33.760
about this. It's I wonder whether that was Nelson's intent.

707
00:47:34.320 --> 00:47:37.239
That's perhaps a little bit harder to say, Like did

708
00:47:37.280 --> 00:47:42.000
he see that on her wall and go, oh, I know,

709
00:47:42.719 --> 00:47:45.079
I'll stuffer in a trunk and they'll think it's suicide.

710
00:47:45.519 --> 00:47:46.719
Maybe that's far fetched.

711
00:47:46.960 --> 00:47:50.400
I don't know. I don't think. I don't. I think maybe,

712
00:47:50.440 --> 00:47:51.760
if anything, he saw.

713
00:47:51.599 --> 00:47:55.480
That on the wall and inspired him, inspired him to

714
00:47:55.559 --> 00:47:55.960
do that.

715
00:47:56.159 --> 00:47:59.800
Maybe, But I think it was just a coincidence.

716
00:48:00.239 --> 00:48:02.960
I kind of yeah, I kind of leaned that direction

717
00:48:03.079 --> 00:48:06.239
as well. But something about that is just like, ugh,

718
00:48:06.480 --> 00:48:10.880
this is so weird. It's given all of my hebes

719
00:48:10.920 --> 00:48:15.239
the GBS. Nelson hadn't waited long to seek out his

720
00:48:15.440 --> 00:48:19.599
next victim while in Portland. He followed up Beta's murder

721
00:48:20.000 --> 00:48:24.079
the very next day, October twentieth, with another heinus crime,

722
00:48:24.119 --> 00:48:28.400
when he attacked fifty nine year old Virginia Ada Gray

723
00:48:28.599 --> 00:48:32.840
Grant of East twenty second Street in a vacant property

724
00:48:33.039 --> 00:48:36.559
that she owned. Can we just take a moment to

725
00:48:37.199 --> 00:48:43.280
respect I love the four names. Yeah, Virginia Ada Gray Grant.

726
00:48:43.639 --> 00:48:48.199
Her body was discovered behind the homes basement furnace and

727
00:48:49.199 --> 00:48:53.960
her death was initially misattributed to heart failure. She did

728
00:48:54.039 --> 00:48:58.119
have a known health like a heart condition, and it

729
00:48:58.159 --> 00:49:00.400
did seem like, you know, maybe she hadn't been the

730
00:49:00.440 --> 00:49:05.000
most well. So I feel like in some of these cases,

731
00:49:05.119 --> 00:49:09.920
it's not totally unreasonable. It's just unfortunate that there were

732
00:49:09.960 --> 00:49:15.400
like sort of extenuating circumstances or other factors that sort

733
00:49:15.440 --> 00:49:21.280
of maybe led people astray at first, is all. Also, though,

734
00:49:21.320 --> 00:49:23.800
it was noted that some of her valuable jewelry she

735
00:49:23.880 --> 00:49:26.920
always wore was missing, so that that tips scale, I

736
00:49:26.920 --> 00:49:27.559
think as well.

737
00:49:27.920 --> 00:49:28.559
For sure.

738
00:49:28.800 --> 00:49:33.039
Yeah, they're like, well, she didn't die and then steal

739
00:49:33.159 --> 00:49:39.639
her own jewelry. Now it's unclear which crime occurred first,

740
00:49:39.960 --> 00:49:43.960
but that very same day, Missus M. D Lewis of

741
00:49:44.000 --> 00:49:49.360
the Selwood neighborhood became a survivor of the Dark Strangler,

742
00:49:50.159 --> 00:49:55.760
WHOA Nelson arrived at the home that she was showing,

743
00:49:56.079 --> 00:49:58.599
muttering house for sale as he.

744
00:49:58.599 --> 00:49:59.639
Brushed past her.

745
00:50:00.320 --> 00:50:05.280
Okay, very weird and it's only going to get weirder,

746
00:50:05.880 --> 00:50:10.119
and I can totally see why she was like, uh, nah,

747
00:50:10.199 --> 00:50:11.199
I don't want none of that.

748
00:50:12.199 --> 00:50:15.480
So he like wasn't being chill and like nah, tricking

749
00:50:15.519 --> 00:50:17.639
people like he usually does.

750
00:50:17.880 --> 00:50:21.760
Not super chill. Yeah, which is interesting because I think,

751
00:50:22.239 --> 00:50:25.760
you know, if he made his way to uh, our

752
00:50:25.800 --> 00:50:29.519
good friend Virginia first, and this is him just kind

753
00:50:29.559 --> 00:50:34.000
of becoming unhinged and the escalation ramping up, then maybe

754
00:50:34.000 --> 00:50:36.880
it makes sense that he didn't have any chill, or

755
00:50:37.719 --> 00:50:41.480
you know, maybe he went to missus M. D Lewis

756
00:50:41.559 --> 00:50:44.800
first and he realized he was getting a little sloppy,

757
00:50:45.199 --> 00:50:48.559
and so that's why he you know, got back in

758
00:50:48.679 --> 00:50:53.440
line before he approached Virginia. I don't know, it's hard

759
00:50:53.440 --> 00:50:56.440
to say. It's just an interesting aspect of it, with

760
00:50:56.719 --> 00:51:01.199
you know, not knowing which one occurred. First, he shouted

761
00:51:01.280 --> 00:51:04.519
from upstairs for her to come look at what's wrong

762
00:51:04.559 --> 00:51:09.320
with this door? Then when she refused from the basement,

763
00:51:09.760 --> 00:51:14.400
he called her, look what's wrong with this furnace? No, dude,

764
00:51:14.760 --> 00:51:16.719
why do you keep trying to get me to go

765
00:51:16.760 --> 00:51:20.159
to other rooms that are more isolated in the house

766
00:51:20.280 --> 00:51:23.320
and point out things that are wrong, Like just make

767
00:51:23.360 --> 00:51:26.440
a note. I'm not gonna follow you.

768
00:51:26.480 --> 00:51:28.800
No, your penis is gonna be out or some shit.

769
00:51:29.000 --> 00:51:33.119
Yeah, like you're already acting odd. Come look at this phoenix,

770
00:51:33.599 --> 00:51:37.559
don't look at the Oh my God, that's so scary.

771
00:51:38.480 --> 00:51:42.159
Missus Lewis retreated outside and called for him to come

772
00:51:42.239 --> 00:51:44.719
see the flowers she'd planted. She's like, oh, do you

773
00:51:44.800 --> 00:51:47.760
can play this game? Come see this shit that's outside

774
00:51:47.760 --> 00:51:49.320
where everybody can see us.

775
00:51:50.039 --> 00:51:52.719
Get out of my house. Yeah, yeah, smart.

776
00:51:52.920 --> 00:51:56.679
He responded to hell with your flowers as he left.

777
00:51:57.000 --> 00:52:00.639
She survived by refusing to enter the rooms he directed

778
00:52:00.639 --> 00:52:06.079
her too. I mean, just because she trusted her gut. Really. Unfortunately,

779
00:52:06.400 --> 00:52:10.280
just a few blocks away, Mabel H. Fluke thirty seven

780
00:52:10.840 --> 00:52:14.159
would not be so lucky. She was holding an open

781
00:52:14.199 --> 00:52:16.760
house for the home she and her husband had previously

782
00:52:16.840 --> 00:52:21.519
shared before his passing two years prior. Ever, since she

783
00:52:21.599 --> 00:52:24.360
had been living with her parents in Saint John's and

784
00:52:24.440 --> 00:52:28.000
renting out the home where they had lived. She wanted

785
00:52:28.000 --> 00:52:31.480
to visit her brother in Independence, Oregon, and was hoping

786
00:52:31.519 --> 00:52:35.360
to find a new tenant before making the trip. Seemingly

787
00:52:35.440 --> 00:52:39.760
aware of her plans, her parents weren't initially concerned when

788
00:52:39.800 --> 00:52:43.239
she did not return home. She was gone overnight and

789
00:52:43.280 --> 00:52:46.519
they were like, that's fine. She's trying to fix up

790
00:52:46.559 --> 00:52:48.519
the house and get it ready and get a new

791
00:52:48.519 --> 00:52:52.360
renter in there. When her father did search the marital

792
00:52:52.559 --> 00:52:56.880
turned rental property. Finding no trace of her, he phoned

793
00:52:56.920 --> 00:53:00.639
the police to report her missing. Police discovered her body

794
00:53:00.679 --> 00:53:03.039
in a dark corner of the attic at the rental

795
00:53:03.039 --> 00:53:06.519
property two days later, on October twenty third.

796
00:53:07.159 --> 00:53:11.840
The attics. Yeah, like, how do you even get like that?

797
00:53:12.119 --> 00:53:16.000
Seemed so hard to get a body up in an attic.

798
00:53:16.000 --> 00:53:18.960
And I just don't you know, in some of these cases,

799
00:53:19.239 --> 00:53:21.519
like it's impossible for us to really.

800
00:53:21.360 --> 00:53:25.760
Know, Like maybe he lured her up lied.

801
00:53:25.880 --> 00:53:29.639
Yeah, exactly, I mean it's possible. That seems to be

802
00:53:29.840 --> 00:53:32.639
kind of part of his mo is, sort of luring

803
00:53:32.719 --> 00:53:35.159
people where he wants them so that he can get

804
00:53:35.239 --> 00:53:37.760
them from the right angle. That has a lot to

805
00:53:37.760 --> 00:53:41.079
do with it because of the strangulation of it all.

806
00:53:42.000 --> 00:53:45.960
She had been strangled with a dresser scarf and her

807
00:53:46.039 --> 00:53:50.239
jewelry had been stolen. Thankfully, these facts of the case

808
00:53:50.559 --> 00:53:55.840
helped investigators to quickly determine this was not yet another

809
00:53:55.960 --> 00:54:00.519
bizarre suicide in the city of Roses. So you know

810
00:54:01.199 --> 00:54:08.960
they got one they fingered it out, Yeah, and dresser scarf.

811
00:54:09.519 --> 00:54:11.320
I was like, what is that?

812
00:54:11.800 --> 00:54:15.440
Essentially it just looks like a table runner, but people

813
00:54:15.559 --> 00:54:19.440
used to put them on their dressers in their bedrooms

814
00:54:19.480 --> 00:54:22.880
and stuff that would protect it from like if you

815
00:54:22.960 --> 00:54:24.960
have a cup of coffee or a glass of water.

816
00:54:25.599 --> 00:54:28.639
It protected it from all kinds of things, because, of

817
00:54:28.679 --> 00:54:31.639
course all of the furniture was made of wood. In fact,

818
00:54:31.800 --> 00:54:35.760
according to local historian J. D. Chandler, it was the

819
00:54:35.880 --> 00:54:40.360
day after the discovery of Mabel's body that Patrolman Russell

820
00:54:40.960 --> 00:54:44.639
of the Portland Police Bureau became the first to suggest

821
00:54:44.719 --> 00:54:48.039
that the recent spate of murders in the city might

822
00:54:48.119 --> 00:54:51.119
be the work of the Dark Strangler, who had been

823
00:54:51.199 --> 00:54:55.119
tormenting Californians along the coast for months.

824
00:54:55.559 --> 00:54:57.519
So they put it together even though it was a

825
00:54:57.559 --> 00:54:58.280
different state.

826
00:54:58.639 --> 00:55:02.000
Mm hmm. Well, and here's how I told you this

827
00:55:02.079 --> 00:55:05.760
was going to come back. This shit is wild. He'd

828
00:55:05.800 --> 00:55:10.320
received a letter from his cousin, George Russell, living in

829
00:55:10.360 --> 00:55:17.400
Santa Barbara at that time, whose wife, Allie Russell, had

830
00:55:17.440 --> 00:55:21.760
herself met her dreadful end at the hands of the strangler.

831
00:55:22.599 --> 00:55:26.360
Oh no, oh my god. So otherwise they might not

832
00:55:26.440 --> 00:55:26.920
have known.

833
00:55:27.639 --> 00:55:32.119
Yeah, they might not have fully made that connection. It's

834
00:55:32.119 --> 00:55:37.280
hard to say, whoa because you could have an awareness

835
00:55:37.320 --> 00:55:41.000
of these crimes occurring in California and think like, well,

836
00:55:41.079 --> 00:55:45.000
that's especially back then, it's like, oh well that's that's

837
00:55:45.039 --> 00:55:46.320
not here, you know.

838
00:55:47.079 --> 00:55:47.480
Yeah.

839
00:55:48.559 --> 00:55:51.679
Nelson would then return to his home state once more

840
00:55:51.840 --> 00:55:56.639
and strike again. On November eighteenth, nineteen twenty six, A

841
00:55:56.679 --> 00:55:59.599
friend who had visited the victim, fifty six year old

842
00:55:59.639 --> 00:56:04.159
Anna Edmunds of San Francisco, recalled seeing her speaking to

843
00:56:04.239 --> 00:56:07.960
a strange man in her parlor regarding a business deal

844
00:56:08.639 --> 00:56:13.280
related to her home, so assuming that she was probably

845
00:56:13.320 --> 00:56:16.039
trying to sell it or like maybe rent on a room.

846
00:56:16.800 --> 00:56:22.039
The following day, missus H. C. Murray, a pregnant twenty

847
00:56:22.079 --> 00:56:26.320
eight year old woman of Burlingame, California, was attacked by

848
00:56:26.360 --> 00:56:30.039
a man posing as a potential buyer while showing her home.

849
00:56:30.599 --> 00:56:34.039
But perhaps Nelson was getting a little bit sloppy, because

850
00:56:34.599 --> 00:56:41.239
she too survived. I mean, thank goodness, pregnant, she later

851
00:56:41.360 --> 00:56:44.960
told reporters, I realize now that he was trying to

852
00:56:44.960 --> 00:56:47.599
get me to look up towards the ceiling so that

853
00:56:47.679 --> 00:56:51.519
he could get behind me and grab my throat. Ugh,

854
00:56:52.239 --> 00:56:53.360
absolutely chilling.

855
00:56:54.280 --> 00:56:56.840
Mama bearer instinct in her right.

856
00:56:58.000 --> 00:57:01.480
Well, and I will say, if you're pregnant, And I

857
00:57:01.480 --> 00:57:04.440
don't know how far along she was, but she's probably

858
00:57:04.519 --> 00:57:07.599
just like, you know what, I am so sick of

859
00:57:07.800 --> 00:57:11.800
men and they're just so entitled. And he's like, look

860
00:57:11.840 --> 00:57:14.639
over here, look at this, and she's like, you know,

861
00:57:14.679 --> 00:57:16.599
at the last time that I listened to a man,

862
00:57:17.239 --> 00:57:23.480
that's how this happened, as she points to her belly.

863
00:57:25.119 --> 00:57:27.159
Oh my god, it's like that movie trope of like

864
00:57:27.239 --> 00:57:32.320
you did this, don't worry about what's going on back here, right,

865
00:57:32.880 --> 00:57:33.800
pay no attention.

866
00:57:34.159 --> 00:57:37.960
Yeah, oh man, that's so scary though.

867
00:57:38.320 --> 00:57:43.880
I know. As the holidays approached, Nelson showed absolutely no

868
00:57:44.000 --> 00:57:47.880
sign of slowing down, and he'd made his way back

869
00:57:47.920 --> 00:57:52.679
to the Pacific Northwest again. Oh okay, yep, he's a

870
00:57:53.559 --> 00:57:58.920
rambling man. On November twenty third, nineteen twenty six, just

871
00:57:59.000 --> 00:58:02.599
two days before Thanksgiving, he struck down forty eight year

872
00:58:02.639 --> 00:58:08.800
old wealthy widowed Seattleite Florence Fifthian Monks inside her home.

873
00:58:09.679 --> 00:58:14.679
What a name I know, I mean, And she sounds

874
00:58:14.719 --> 00:58:19.719
like seatite, my god, or and like definitely also sounds

875
00:58:19.719 --> 00:58:21.320
like a wealthy widow, doesn't she.

876
00:58:21.719 --> 00:58:22.320
Yeah.

877
00:58:23.039 --> 00:58:26.760
Her body was discovered stuffed behind the basement furnace by

878
00:58:26.760 --> 00:58:33.159
the Holmes caretaker. Oh I know, in Portland, Oregon, just

879
00:58:33.239 --> 00:58:37.840
a few short hours away, her stolen jewelry would resurface.

880
00:58:38.760 --> 00:58:44.199
Oh yeah, cat, you know how they liked to take

881
00:58:44.280 --> 00:58:48.000
trophies Like that's kind of I mean not all of them,

882
00:58:48.039 --> 00:58:50.880
but most of them, and probably secretly all of them.

883
00:58:52.920 --> 00:58:57.239
In late November, still in Portland, Nelson rented a room

884
00:58:57.400 --> 00:59:02.199
at Sophia Yates's lodging house on Third Avenue, using the

885
00:59:02.239 --> 00:59:07.639
alias Adrian Harris. He spent Thanksgiving with Yates and her

886
00:59:07.679 --> 00:59:11.519
other lodgers, offering to pay for the entire holiday dinner

887
00:59:11.880 --> 00:59:16.639
and impressing them as polite, soft spoken and intelligent, but

888
00:59:16.760 --> 00:59:22.039
also something of a religious fanatic. You don't say.

889
00:59:22.000 --> 00:59:24.920
Yes, yeah, it didn't go yet, right.

890
00:59:26.440 --> 00:59:31.239
He gave Yates and another lodger, Emily Crawford, pieces of

891
00:59:31.320 --> 00:59:37.039
jewelry as gifts, later identified as items stolen from Florence

892
00:59:37.480 --> 00:59:38.760
monks in Seattle.

893
00:59:39.800 --> 00:59:42.599
That is, it's like gross to think about him giving

894
00:59:42.639 --> 00:59:46.000
away like a dead woman's jewelry, but like, why are

895
00:59:46.039 --> 00:59:49.719
you even giving jewelry to these women that you just met?

896
00:59:50.000 --> 00:59:52.639
Well, and you know what I got to say, Normally

897
00:59:52.679 --> 00:59:56.119
I'd be like, these women are trash because they are

898
00:59:56.159 --> 01:00:00.920
going to live to make him regret whatever that was

899
01:00:01.280 --> 01:00:04.119
like I don't know why he did this, but he does,

900
01:00:04.320 --> 01:00:08.519
like he certainly comes to regret it. This is so

901
01:00:08.760 --> 01:00:16.079
fucking funny. It's like Jerry Jerry Yates received nicer gifts

902
01:00:16.119 --> 01:00:19.880
than Crawford. The two women argued about it, and Harris

903
01:00:20.480 --> 01:00:24.199
quote unquote burst into the room and said, I'm going

904
01:00:24.239 --> 01:00:27.119
to beat it. You two will have the police up next,

905
01:00:27.480 --> 01:00:30.840
then fled, leaving two days rent unused.

906
01:00:31.400 --> 01:00:31.800
Huh.

907
01:00:31.920 --> 01:00:35.480
They were arguing about who got nicer gifts from him,

908
01:00:35.760 --> 01:00:38.039
and He's like, that is weird.

909
01:00:40.559 --> 01:00:40.760
Much.

910
01:00:41.039 --> 01:00:44.079
Yeah. I was like, okay, weird behavior on their part,

911
01:00:44.239 --> 01:00:47.360
but at the same time, like there is a not

912
01:00:47.559 --> 01:00:50.880
insignificant chance that like it might have saved one or

913
01:00:50.960 --> 01:00:54.679
both of their lives. So yeah, like stay petty.

914
01:00:54.719 --> 01:00:59.400
I guess he was. I just can't like, what was

915
01:00:59.440 --> 01:01:03.000
he trying to do that don't know, I don't they

916
01:01:03.039 --> 01:01:03.960
don't understand.

917
01:01:04.719 --> 01:01:08.320
I don't get it. By the end of the holiday weekend,

918
01:01:08.599 --> 01:01:12.760
Nelson was right back at it. That Monday, November twenty ninth,

919
01:01:13.000 --> 01:01:20.280
Blanche Myers forty eight, was apparently immediately uneasy upon meeting Nelson,

920
01:01:20.880 --> 01:01:24.679
telling the landlady just prior to the attack, I didn't

921
01:01:24.760 --> 01:01:28.840
like his looks very much. His looks, apparently off putting

922
01:01:28.960 --> 01:01:32.239
enough for her to question him about his drinking habits.

923
01:01:32.440 --> 01:01:35.440
His weird dead eyes and right peculiar smile.

924
01:01:35.920 --> 01:01:41.760
Yeah, of course she was right to be suspicious. At

925
01:01:41.760 --> 01:01:44.559
the time, she was having lunch with a gentleman friend,

926
01:01:44.760 --> 01:01:47.800
but she closed the deal, returning to her midday meal

927
01:01:48.199 --> 01:01:51.519
with four dollars in rent paid by Nelson for the

928
01:01:51.599 --> 01:01:59.800
room and unfortunately fatal transaction. Later, she was strangled with

929
01:01:59.800 --> 01:02:06.119
a handkerchief while showing him an upstairs room. Sadly, in

930
01:02:07.840 --> 01:02:11.960
I just I hate it. Sadly, her son was the

931
01:02:11.960 --> 01:02:16.960
one to discover her body stuffed under the bed. That

932
01:02:17.119 --> 01:02:21.280
bed became significant as police were able to recover fingerprints

933
01:02:21.280 --> 01:02:26.159
from the iron bedpost, marking the first significant physical evidence

934
01:02:26.519 --> 01:02:27.199
in the case.

935
01:02:28.679 --> 01:02:30.760
That's great that.

936
01:02:30.239 --> 01:02:34.159
That piece is that rocks that keep touching stuff?

937
01:02:34.559 --> 01:02:34.719
Right?

938
01:02:35.039 --> 01:02:41.519
Yeah, ideally just like stop touching ladies, you know, but like, please,

939
01:02:42.159 --> 01:02:45.559
while we're here in this situation, at least there's that.

940
01:02:47.079 --> 01:02:50.840
The Oregonian reported the third floor of the Portland Police

941
01:02:50.880 --> 01:02:55.880
Bureau became a and this is a quote veritable madhouse

942
01:02:56.400 --> 01:03:00.440
of citizen tips. During this time, the Portland Police Bureau

943
01:03:00.599 --> 01:03:05.800
issued a public warning cautioning landladies against showing rooms unaccompanied.

944
01:03:06.760 --> 01:03:12.599
Their acknowledgment of the situation was blunt. The statement said,

945
01:03:12.960 --> 01:03:16.199
I do not wish to unduly alarm the people of Portland,

946
01:03:16.639 --> 01:03:21.239
but there is no denying the situation is grave. This

947
01:03:21.360 --> 01:03:24.599
marked the end of his time in the Pacific Northwest,

948
01:03:24.880 --> 01:03:28.159
but he remained a free man as he traveled on

949
01:03:28.519 --> 01:03:29.840
to the Midwest.

950
01:03:30.599 --> 01:03:33.039
Oh, he finally got out of there. He's like, gosh, shit,

951
01:03:33.239 --> 01:03:34.199
they're catching.

952
01:03:33.960 --> 01:03:38.199
On right exactly now. If you've made it this far,

953
01:03:38.360 --> 01:03:43.880
you're probably thinking, holy shit, I am about like chest

954
01:03:43.880 --> 01:03:49.880
height deep into this story. And that's true, but there's

955
01:03:49.880 --> 01:03:52.599
still a lot left to go. And then also a

956
01:03:52.599 --> 01:03:55.760
tarot reading. So it turns out this one's a two parter.

957
01:03:56.960 --> 01:03:57.519
It's long.

958
01:03:57.800 --> 01:04:00.760
Yeah, we're just finding that out for ourselves for certain

959
01:04:01.320 --> 01:04:05.400
now in this moment as we record it. So, uh, surprise.

960
01:04:06.599 --> 01:04:08.159
So we kind of lied to at the beginning when

961
01:04:08.199 --> 01:04:10.719
we said there's a tarot read in every episode.

962
01:04:10.960 --> 01:04:15.880
I kind of intended that this might be a single episode,

963
01:04:16.360 --> 01:04:18.440
Like more often than not we just do like a

964
01:04:18.480 --> 01:04:22.519
single taro reading in that case, but this is just

965
01:04:22.679 --> 01:04:26.559
it's so massive and it'll only make it that much

966
01:04:26.599 --> 01:04:30.679
more massive to do two separate tarot readings. So we're

967
01:04:30.719 --> 01:04:34.280
gon we're gonna cut it there, and then we'll come

968
01:04:34.360 --> 01:04:37.960
back in part two and do the tarot reading. Maybe

969
01:04:38.000 --> 01:04:45.000
I will just do my own private, little personal reading

970
01:04:45.519 --> 01:04:48.840
and we won't do the full like interpretation in the episode,

971
01:04:48.880 --> 01:04:52.119
but maybe I'll share that so we can throw them

972
01:04:52.119 --> 01:04:55.639
off the scent. We can still post a tarot reading

973
01:04:55.719 --> 01:04:58.719
to the socials, but they'll have no idea what's coming.

974
01:05:00.159 --> 01:05:01.920
Yeah, okay, I'm down for that.

975
01:05:02.320 --> 01:05:04.079
Should we say goodbye to the creepy people?

976
01:05:04.639 --> 01:05:07.039
Yeah, let's let's leave them hang in here?

977
01:05:07.599 --> 01:05:11.440
Yeah, you got this, guys. We'll see you in a week.

978
01:05:12.480 --> 01:05:14.199
In there exactly.

979
01:05:14.280 --> 01:05:18.559
That's what I was thinking of, how creepy day. We'll

980
01:05:18.559 --> 01:05:21.239
see you next Thursday.

981
01:05:21.039 --> 01:05:23.559
Unless you have weird eyes and a peculiar smile.

982
01:05:24.840 --> 01:05:28.400
Well, I mean actually that that definitely means we will

983
01:05:28.440 --> 01:05:36.719
see him again next next Thursday. Oh no, I thought

984
01:05:36.719 --> 01:05:41.159
we were okay, all right, yeah,