Episode 548: The Lipstick Killer (Part 1)

I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at a high school in upstate New York. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast. What's the answer, and what do you do if they tell you it's all in your head?

Hysterical, a new podcast from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free on Wondery Plus.

Some very big news today. Weirdos. Are you ready? Of course, I am. So a year and a half ago, I released my very first little book, Baby.

They call it a debut, a day, a day, but it's a debut.

I'm going to die so close, we're so close to it, it's all right, it's ready to go.

Ready to go, It's going to be out there, so let me. So. The Butcher game picks up right where the Butcher and the Wren left off. So if you have not read the Butcher and the Wren yet, what are you doing? Oh my God.

Go get it, get it, go read it, go listen to it, go do something like that.

Ingest it. I'm going to spoil it, so so stop listening now. If you have not read that book, go read it and then come back to me, okay?

But also go get the sequel on September 17th, but this time we are going to some new territory. Ooh, we are headed to Massachusetts, baby, I love it there, we're headed to the Berkshires. Specifically, where our ruthless serial killer Jeremy Rose has now fled New Orleans and is on his way up to Massachusetts to evade capture.

Dr. Wren Muller Being astute as hell, you know her. She sees that there is a fresh trail of bodies that seem to be calling her back to the case. But by following that trail, is she going to walk right into Jeremy's trap? Maybe potentially, this one is a truly twisted cat and mouse game.

And I mean it, you've been warned. This one's twisted. And it's going to culminate in a violent clash of past and present, where Wren is prepared to sacrifice everything just to bring Jeremy to justice. I'm literally so excited this one that we got, it's longer, guys.

It's longer, it is twisted, I'm telling you. But what's really cool about this? Besides, you know, being really exciting, that there's a second one coming out? Our friends at Barnes Noble are offering exclusive signed copies for a limited time. So head to the links in the podcast episode show notes for more details and we'll share them out, too.

Um, there's also going to be a fun poster for this one too. We did that for the first book. Ooh, I can't wait to see it, I know I'm very excited about it.

So pre-order now wherever you like to buy books and receive a signed poster with your order. So head to thebutchergame..com to claim your free poster. While supplies last, there's not going to be an endless amount. As much as I would love for that to be, I can't thank you enough for being on this truly incredible author journey with me. You guys rule.

You made this happen and I hope you love all that's to come in the Dr. Wren Muller series. Yay, I said what I said.

A series, a series.

Hey weirdos, I'm Alayna, I'm Ash, and this is morbid.

It is, this is morbid, it's morbid in the afternoon, it's actually kind of like the late afternoon currently.

It is, it is mid afternoon, no like late afternoon, it's like mid to late afternoon.

It's laughter, noon woo, but that's not good because this isn't a show about laughing. Yeah, and also this case that I'm going to be telling you.

What do you have is we're going to be talking about the lipstick killer today?

Some people think of him as William Hirons wrong.

I am not sure.

That is very terrible, but I will get through it as best as we can here.

It's terrible and the aftermath of it. Them trying to figure out who actually did these murders and if they're connected, and which ones are connected. And all. That is the most mind-blowing extravaganza of stupidity you will ever witness. Fantastic, I love when that happens, it's infuriating.

It's infuriating and I don't think so. William Hirons is known popularly as the lipstick Killer. Yeah, um, I don't.

Who knows if you'll think that at the end, but the look in your eye tells me I won't. I don't think he did it really, and like, do.

I think he was like a great guy. Probably not, but he was arrested when he was 17. And again, we're going to get into all this. But he was arrested when he was 17, and he was kind of just like a little shit, it was like a little burglar.

You know, just a little shithead, yeah, um, like, vicious, violent child murder. Probably not, but let's get into it, shall we?

This is going to be a two parter, because, oh no, oh gosh.

So let us begin. We are going to be talking about three murders. Like I said, there are two murders of two women and one murder of a six year old young girl, which I know is horrific. I just want to prepare you ahead of time again, I'll go through it as best as we can.

And that's all in part one. That is going to be all in part one, and I think we will be getting more in part two is going to be more. The UM, when they arrested William Hirons and all of the wild aftermath of that, so it was the summer of 1945..

So we're in the mid 40s here. Josephine Ross was 43 years old. She was twice divorced at this point and now found herself a newly widowed mother living on Chicago's east side. Oh, that's so sad, yeah.

For over a decade, she had been a stay at home mom, raising her two daughters, Mary, Jane and Jacqueline. Oh, cute names. And she had spent all her time and energy on everyone else, you know, husband, daughters. But now that her daughters were grown and her third husband, Herbert Ross, had died, she kind of found herself like floating a little bit. Because, you know, she had little to occupy her time, to be honest. Because, like, it had all been spent all her energy on them, yeah.

And she spent most nights going to movies, she loved to visit psychics. She went on many, many dates now, like she was just out there in the dating world.

She attended parties. It was a simpler, you know, existence than the hustle and bustle of, like, being a wife and mother in the 40s, especially. But Josephine and her daughters, none of them found any fault in this lifestyle. That she was like her dating a lot or anything like that. Like, no one was concerned and no one was like, she's going out too much. Yeah, she's just living her fucking life.

And in fact, in early June, Josephine had visited a tarot card reader and this tarot card reader had told her that her future looked very promising and that she would likely be remarried by the end of the year. Oh, and the lawsuit over Herbert's life insurance claim, that was, that was like, really clouding over her. At this point, it was, I'll get into it a little more, but it was over. Like, medical, you know what, they, what they assumed was like medical fraud or something like that it was going to be.

She said it would be settled in her favor. OK, So that was all good news to her. She's like, great. And on the morning of June 5th, Marianne stood at the Marianne. One of her daughters stood at the bathroom sink, getting ready for work and listening as her mother told her. All about this tarot card reader's predictions. And the whole life insurance thing was that she'd been fighting this case for, like, a year since Herbert's death. Because they claimed that he had falsified medical records.

OK, she was going to be like, coming out on top on that, so she was happy because it was coming to an end. She was finally going to be paid out the insurance money. And as for the psychic's prediction of marriage, Josephine's boyfriend Oscar Nordmark had actually already proposed. Oh, shit.

But she had yet to formally accept she was mulling it over. Oh, what a Queen. And later, Mary Jane would remember how happy her mother seemed that morning as she saw both of her daughters off for work. Oh, no.

With her daughters out of the apartment for the day and really nothing on her calendar that day, Josephine was like, You know what, I'm going to have a Me day. So she changed back into her purple robe and decided to go back to bed and have, you know, a later morning.

So relatable, good for you, you know, self-care now. Jacqueline, one of her daughters, returned home for lunch around 1.30 p..m. that afternoon.

She unlocked the door she entered and she expected to find the apartment and her mother as she had left them earlier that morning. Jacqueline was absolutely stunned when she walked in and found that the apartment had been totally ransacked. Chairs, other furniture were all turned over, drawers were pulled completely out, Everything in the drawers was strewn across the room.

This may be reminding you a bit of the career girl girl murders that I covered in my last case. You literally took the words right out of my mouth. Yeah, there is a little bit of like. Obviously they are not connected in any way, but there's some weird similarities in, in some of the case, aspects, yeah.

Papers and other items were littered all over the floor. I mean, it was a mess, like a bomb had gone off, and Jacqueline was, obviously and understandably, immediately terrified. Oh yeah, so, but she was thinking of her mother.

So she ran into the bedroom she shared with her mother, and that's where she saw her. Oh my god. Josephine was lying across the bed. Jacqueline, her daughter's red skirt, was wrapped around her head.

Oh my god. And a pair of silk stockings was wrapped around her neck. Nearly every surface around her mother's body, the bed, the floor, the walls, the drapes soaked with blood. What? And Jacqueline knew her mother was dead.

What a fucking like. That sounds like something out of a horror film. There are many times, in this case, where you're like, This is a horror movie like this. This can't be real life. How do you ever move on from that?

Like, how do you ever recover? Yeah, how do you ever? And it's her skirt over her head, like the daughter's skirt, like.

That's something about that, just like, Oh no, that's so visual now. Jacqueline called the police and they arrived at the apartment a short time later. And as far as Mary, Jane and Jacqueline could tell, the apartment had obviously been ransacked and trashed. But aside from a few dollars taken from Josephine's purse, nothing seemed to be missing, just like the career girl murder.

Oh, and that's so weird, like just a couple like, What it? what was it? like? 20 bucks?

It was like, just a few dollars. Oh, that's weird. So detectives were able to rule out robbery as the motive, and logically, just like in the career Girl Murders assumed the murder was personal. That was a theory that grew some legs.

When the coroner briefly examined Josephine's body at the scene and discovered that while the area around her body had been, I mean, completely saturated and soaked with blood. The body itself looked like it had been washed at some point between the killing and when the killer left the apartment, what she had been washed down. When they went to the bathroom and searched, detectives found that yes, the bathtub was partially, partly filled with garments and bloody water. What the fuck?

Yeah, now. When they removed the skirt from her head and stockings from around Josephine's head and neck. Investigators discovered the actual cause of death. In addition to severe bruising on her head and face, which indicated that she'd been hit repeatedly with a heavy object. There were deep slashes on her face and four knife wounds on her neck, where the killer had stabbed her. One of them severed her jugular vein. Oh, wow.

You're going to bleed a lot, yeah. Aside from the sheer brutality of this entire thing, detectives found another piece of the puzzle that was strange and unsettling, too. The killer had placed adhesive tape across the wounds on the face and neck, as though they were trying to undo the damage caused by the knife. Wait, what?

Like scotch tape. Oh, I don't know, I have yet to hear anything this strange and brutal that's.

I don't even know how to react to that like literally.

This seems frenzied, yes, a frenzied killing, yes, because the ransacking, I assume, happened probably afterwards, to stage, you know, or to confuse, or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, who knows? This seems like a very frenzied killing. I mean, stabbing in the face and neck and hitting with some object repeatedly. That's very frenzied, very aggressive, very wild animal-esque.

And then to wash her, but not the surrounding area. Just her, just her. And to tape up her wounds, and to tape up the wounds, and then to wrap her head. So not to see them, that's just very telling.

Yeah, and then the thing is like, immediately, you want to say? And I felt this way last time when we were talking about the career girl murders. You want to say this has got to be personal, it's got to be personal, yeah.

But I feel like from that case, that previous one that we just did. I don't want to say that this time. No, but this, like you really would think so. I can understand why. They went in there and said like, this has got to be someone she knows, of course.

Because, like, what else is there like? And remember, this is the 40s. The idea of a serial killer was not something that they understood or knew, or even was brought up. They weren't even talking about it at Quantico. The idea that somebody was could have just came in here with the sheer want to just terrorize. And, like, mutilate, this woman was just beyond the scope of, like, their thought process at the time.

This also reminds me a little bit of like. And we haven't covered him yet, but we will. The weepy voiced killer. We have covered him. We did cover him, didn't we? OK, I thought.

So I was going to say, Did we? I was like, wait, and like, way earlier, I was going to say it was way early on.

It was in the laundry room pod. Yes, now I remember, and it just reminds me of it. Like how he was like he would do that weeping thing afterwards, but he was so brutal.

Yeah, he was super brutal, but that would like really come down from it. But then, like, be sobbing and weeping about it and stuff. And it's like, this gives similar vibes of somebody who's in this frenzied state and is just like a beast monster. And then immediately, like, shoots back into, like, what have I done? Human body for a second?

And it's like, What have I done? And just tries to take it back. No, it's so true. So, along with the evidence discovered in the bathtub, investigators strongly believed Josephine's killer had been known to her and the murder was intensely personal. Like you were saying.

And the killer obviously immediately regretted their actions because they were looking at someone that they knew, and possibly had, quote unquote, cared about at some point in their life. To be honest, like, like, we were just saying, I can understand why they thought that, like, that's looking back on this part of it, you're like, yeah, I get that well. And I feel like the face too, like the the face one, like slashing the face up that much and then covering the face and the washing. It does feel personal.

But I mean, people are fucking lunatics. So, and especially in the 40s, these kind of things would have been like, ding, ding, ding. This is definitely a personal murder in the 40s. Because they hadn't seen all of the things that we have now seen in 2024. And so now we know, yeah, lots of them do weird shit and like, wash a body.

That they have no connection to other than just having brutally murdering them. So it's like, we know now that that's like, needs to be considered as a possibility. That this is just a stranger who came in and is a monster and has some kind of psychological thing. Where he regrets it immediately and has to try to pretend it didn't happen in his own mind or something. Or get the, you know, cover her face so that she can't look at him or she doesn't. He doesn't want the judgment. We've seen all these now.

But in the 40s, they had not, they had, so this is just like this has to be personal and the whole thing of like, I feel like.

Sometimes we feel like something is personal and then we look back on it and we're like, Well, it was for the killer, because this person was like this other person, personified for them. Do you know what I mean? They can be connected to another person in their life, right? They've become a symbol as kind of thing.

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I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like, at my locker and she came up to me and she was like, stuttering, super bad. I'm like, stop around, She's like, I can't.

A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast, like doubling and tripling. And it's all these girls with a diagnosis. The state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back.

Well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, now it's hysteria, it's all in your head, it's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating.

Is this the largest mass hysteria since the Witches of Salem, or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here, something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline, and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios.

Hysterical Follow Hysterical. On the Wondery app, or wherever you get your podcasts, you can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

Now, based on their theory that Josephine knew her killer, police immediately started looking around into her personal life. You know, I said she was going on dates, she was, she was almost engaged at this point. And they were quickly identifying the most likely suspects that they at least wanted to talk to her would-be fiance Oscar and her on and off again.

Boyfriend Chester Rice were the first two that they looked at. Of course, Oscar Nordmark had an airtight alibi for the afternoon of the murder, and that's the would-be fiance, yeah.

OK, and his alibi was that he was with another woman. Oh, well, you know, I guess, yeah, so he hadn't got a solid yes.

And she also had, Yeah, so what are you going to do? And this other woman, Frances Saran, was able to say, Yes. He was with me at the estimated time of death, all right.

Besides, while Josephine's daughters had never really liked Oscar, they also said they could not envision him ever hurting their mother or murdering her. Like they were like, No, we might not like him, but he's not that guy, OK. Chester Rice, on the other hand, seemed like he could be a more likely suspect. Was he violent?

Chester Rice was an ex-convict who'd served several years in state prison for a series of grocery store robberies. Oh, he had unfortunately been a presence in Josephine's life for more than two decades. At this point, they were on and off again. And although the two had carried on an affair at various points since first meeting, and Josephine and Mary Jane had even had even lived with Rice for a short period of time. Josephine had never really taken their relationship that seriously, or was ever really willing to commit to him, despite him really trying to lock her down a few times.

She was like, Oh, no, thank you, like it was just kind of like a convenient thing, like, whatever, yeah. The casual rejections, though, had been a point of contention between them for years, particularly in recent weeks.

Oh, no, since Josephine had announced her intention to possibly marry Oscar, Oh no. This all moved Chester up to the top of the suspect list, now a friend of Chester's though. Louis Breitsprecher I think. It is told police that he'd been with Chester at several different taverns on the morning of the murder and had been in a car with Chester. Rice at the time of Josephine's death. Effectively ruling him out as a suspect, which was unfortunate because they thought they had, like, a clear suspect.

I guess fortunate and unfortunate. Now, aside from the two cleared suspects, investigators really had little to go on. But the janitor did report having seen a dark haired and well-dressed man in his 20s or 30s leave the building by way of the fire escape. Oh, sometime between 12 and 1 p...m. Also, to think of this man as a well-dressed man, like a Patrick Bateman kind of situation like doing this.

That's really terrifying. Apparently he was wearing a white sweater with what appeared to be blood stains on the front, according to the janitor. Another neighbor also saw this man and confirmed the physical description, though they had nothing really to add to the description. They just said, Yeah, that's what he looked like. Later that afternoon, FBI agents in Chicago arrested 32 year old Lawrence Gates.

Lawrence was a fugitive from California who'd fled the state to avoid prosecution on a burglary charge. O.K. While Gates was in custody, FBI agents believed he closely matched the description of Josephine's killer. And given that he was staying just a few doors down from the Ross's apartment, they contacted Captain Frank Reynolds to notify him of the potential suspect. Got it?

Unfortunately, it was quickly determined that Lawrence Gates was not responsible for Josephine's murder, and within a couple of months, investigators had exhausted all their leads. Like, as soon as they brought him in, they figured out he had an alibi. Everything was checked out, so they're just back at Square One.

And without any new evidence or suspects in the Ross case. The press quickly lost interest in the story, which is, I'm sorry, what? and they moved on to more sensational news items. The press, in this case, will have your head exploding.

They usually do, yeah. I'm also just like, what the fuck is more sensational than this? Like for the press, you know what I mean?

Like, when you're looking at it from that view, well, news moves fast in a city like Chicago. And by the winter of 1945, most people had unfortunately forgotten about the murder of Josephine Ross. It had just kind of been pushed aside for newer things that were happening. So crazy that that really is how like it works, how the media works.

Yeah, but her story would finally return to the front pages in December after yet another murder, this time of 33 year old Frances Brown. Although she was born in Indiana, Frances had moved to Chicago in 1934 and she was working steadily as a stenographer when the U.S entered World War Two in 1942. Now, like many young women at the time, she was very eager to support the war effort.

And so that summer, she signed up for the Waves, which is women accepted for voluntary emergency services. What a Badass, which was a federal program that trained women in non-combat skills like radar technician and mapping, like mapping to assist Navy fighters. Like, awesome shit, yeah, very like Rosie, the riveter kind of stuff.

Very much, and it's like, and they're like important positions that they were volunteering to do. And Frances's position with the waves required her to travel for training. And first, she headed to naval station Great Lakes, outside Chicago, and then to Washington, D.C. When the war ended, in the fall of 1945, she returned home to Chicago and happily settled back into her old stenographer job with A..B.

Dick and company, and resumed the life she'd been living before she volunteered for service. She's a badass like. She just literally came to Chicago quickly, got a stenographer job and then was like, Oh, we're entering the war. What the fuck can I do?

Jumped in, went to training, traveled all over the place, helping the war effort. And then, once it was done, she was like, All right, I'll just go back to my stenographer job. I'm like, you're a badass, truly. On the evening of December 10th, she returned home to the apartment she shared with her roommate, Viola Butler, around 9.30 p.m.

When she got into her building, the doorman stopped her and let her know that a man had stopped by looking for her a few hours earlier. But he didn't give a name or say whether he would return. So she was like, all right, so later, the doorman would tell police that it seemed quote she was expecting the call, so she was like, Okay, like she, like, she knew who this person was.

Okay, once upstairs, Francis called her mother to discuss her travel plans that she had made for an upcoming holiday. And then she went into the bathroom to wash her hair and got ready for bed. Very normal evening, totally normal.

The next morning, the cleaning woman, Martha Engels, arrived at the apartment. She was immediately concerned because she found the front door of the apartment slightly ajar. And there was very loud music coming from a radio inside. At a time when both Francis Brown and Viola Butler would normally be at work, right? So when Engels went inside, she discovered the apartment was completely ransacked.

Just like Josephine Ross, Oh no. It was a large trail of blood on the floor leading to the bathroom, and it looked like someone had attempted to very poorly soak up the blood with towels. Like clean up. When she reached the bathroom, though, she found Francis.

Oh, no. Francis's lifeless body was draped over the side of the bathtub, with her head wrapped in towels and resting on the floor of the tub. Her pajama top had been removed and looped around her neck, while her bloody pajama bottoms had been pulled down and were tangled around her feet. That's so just like all of this is so gruesome. There was also a very large bread knife thrust through her neck.

It's point and handle protruding beneath each ear.

Straight through her neck and a bread knife, a giant like one of those big serrated bread knives. Those aren't even like crazy sharp, either. You're like, what?

Oh my God, through and through, like handle under this ear, blade under this ear. oh my God, the image that that conjures up in my brain.

It makes you, like, have to take a deep breath. I am like those that woman, Martha Ingalls. Walking into that, you'll never be the same, never. It's like, how do you just go back to cleaning apartments after that?

That's such a fucking horrific image. And just the like, the brute force that would have to take to drive a bread knife through. Somebody's like, neck through their neck. And it's like, if you're looking at this, all the similarities are here. Same area, an apartment ransacked. In the bathroom, the clothes used to go around the neck, towels on the head tried to clean up.

We have stab wounds to the neck again. Oh wow, it's all the same. wow, now, panic and very likely severely traumatized by what you were seeing.

Martha Ingalls called the police, who arrived very quickly to detectives at the scene. They thought immediately what we thought this is very reminiscent to the Ross case, like almost to a T. Just going back for a second. It's so sad that, like therapy didn't exist like it exists today. Because that poor woman, I'm like, how did she do after that?

How do you, just like nobody, like nobody, would have even sent her to a therapist or to talk to somebody? I'm like, Oh my God, she just had to deal with it. Wow, I can't even imagine.

Like, how do you? Even that's the thing, like, I don't know how you go about this kind of thing. You always think of these people who stumble upon this stuff, like, Right, how were they doing?

Like, I don't know how they how people go through that now, like with therapy available, but then you go back all the way of psychology, you know? Like, Yeah, sorry, I just had to say that no, it's true.

Cause in the Forties, like, what the fuck did we know about what was going on, you know, PTSD, what did we know about any of that stuff? That was probably something that, like, was just so buried, yeah, like, she probably just buried that down and was like, I can't really ever talk about that again.

It's true. Oh my God. So detectives were like, Wow, this is very reminiscent of the Josephine Ross murder. The apartment was ransacked, but nothing was stolen again. Weird.

Which, again, that's weird, um, the victim's head had been wrapped, like we said. And as as though the killer didn't want to see her face and didn't want to see what she had done. And the body had been washed of blood, like completely washed again, so strange. And despite being found nude in the bathroom, or partially nude, at least Francis, like Josephine, had not been sexually assaulted.

Interesting, even though, like, the pajama pants are down by her ankles. And do you think that was like a staging thing, possibly? But then you think of how frenzied this person must've been.

And it's like, But they weren't, they weren't frenzied all the way through, not all the way through. They took time to wash this person, they took time to wrap their head, they took time to put them somewhere.

But it almost seems like they're doing all those things like wrapping the head because they can't bear what they've done, and washing them because they can't bear what they've done. So why pull her pajama bottoms down after that? Maybe to just confuse, Yeah, or very likely in my thought process, and I don't know if anyone will agree. When Martha Engle said she walked in, there was a trail leading to the bathroom of blood.

She was dragged, she was dragged and her pajama pants pulled down, sure as she was dragged, that does make sense.

Yeah, so it does seem like maybe that's a possibility and maybe that's not supposed to be posed at all. And he just didn't want to touch her anymore, it just happened now. The knife through Francis's neck obviously would have been enough to cause her death.

However, when the coroner removed the several towels wrapped around her head, they discovered the actual cause of death to be a large hole in her head. Caused by a 38 caliber bullet fired at close range, What? And she lived in an apartment building. Oh, yeah.

Don't worry, people heard what? Yeah? In addition to the head and neck wound, Francis had also been shot in the right shoulder and stabbed in the chest with the same knife that the killer had put through her neck.

Oh my God. And there were small cuts on her hands and the webbing between her fingers, oh God, indicating that she had fought her attacker. Now always desperate for a story.

The press arrived at Brown's apartment right behind the police, and reporters just freely roamed the apartment, Jesus Christ, mingling with detectives taking photos. It was one of those reporters who, after entering Brown's bedroom, called out to everyone that there was something they needed to see. Oh, no.

In the bedroom, written on the wall in red lipstick was a message that anybody who knows about the lipstick killer case has seen this message. Several photos existed. You can look them up, they're not great, you don't see.

Crime scene I already saw it. Yeah, you just see the message it is.

It says, For heaven's sake, catch me before I kill more. I cannot control myself, which, again, is so similar to the weepy voice killer. Yes, and it's, and it's so chilling.

Yeah, and as for in the Ross murder, a window was found to be open when police arrived, which they determined was maybe the killer's point of entry. But all prints appeared to have been wiped away, so they cleaned up, they made sure they didn't leave anything. A few days later, when technicians returned to finish processing the scene, a single smudged, bloody fingerprint on the back of the bathroom door jam.

That's all they could find one single smudged fingerprint, but aside from the single print, there was no additional evidence left behind. That's crazy. Now. A canvas of the neighboring apartments proved a little more fruitful.

A tenant on the second floor said they heard gunshots somewhere in the night between three and 4am and did. What about it? And the night that just I heard him, Are you kidding?

I mean, I don't live in Chicago, I don't know how this is this rules, but I'm like, damn like, I mean, I'm sure you hear gunshots in Chicago quite often. Possibly you would think that within the apartment building, that's the thing.

Those have to be pretty close range that you're hearing. I would be a little concerned, yeah, but I don't. Again. I don't know how big this apartment building is or anything like that, but wow. But like, you hear gunshots in your apartment, like, call someone.

Definitely call the police. The night clerk said he saw a man leave the building around 4am. Oh wow. The night clerk said. He came down the automatic elevator at 4am. He was a stranger.

He fumbled at the front door, not realizing at first it was locked. He turned towards me once he left, he seemed very nervous. And the clerk described the man as being 35 to 40 years old, five and a half feet tall and weighing about 140 pounds and wearing, quote a dark overcoat and a dark hat. Okay?

Now, like the investigation into the Ross murder, the Brown case was stalled almost as soon as they started. Francis had many friends, but most of them, if not all, had alibis. None of them had reason to even be upset with her right. So they were immediately ruled out, and investigators did find some love letters tucked away among her things.

But unlike Josephine Ross, Francis's love life was pretty simple, uncomplicated. Yeah, there weren't many potential people that she was dating, or, you know, potential suitors or spurned lovers to be questioned. Sure. Simply put, there wasn't a single piece of evidence to provide even the slightest hint of who this killer was.

Now, given the similarities to the Ross murder and the message sprawled on the wall in lipstick, the press seized on the story and quickly dubbed the murderer the lipstick killer. Oh, yeah. The next day, at a press conference, Captain Reynolds told the press Whoever the killer was, he's a maniac and we must get him now. Which, like, Yeah, we agree. Interestingly, Reynolds was also clear about the fact that investigators had not ruled out the possibility that the killer could be a woman.

Expanding on that possibility, Reynolds pointed out the note left on the wall having been written in lipstick. And having even included the feminine phrase For heaven's sake, Are you kidding me? That's real? Oh, I don't know the feminine phrase.

For heaven's sake, I feel like I've heard a lot of people say that, including men. And also it's the Forties. Yeah, I know there's some dudes with a button up shirt and a sweater vest on, and the Forties being like, for heaven's sake.

Yeah, you know that that's not a feminine phrase. what the fuck is a feminine phrase? And it kind of feels like he's just saying, because it was written in lipstick, and it's like, Yeah, I'm sure Francis had a pen, yeah.

Or Violet had lipstick, right? like one of those women probably had lipstick in that apartment. I mean, it's I. I don't put anything out of the realm of possibility, obviously, anymore, with everything we've heard, but nothing about this screams female killer to me, No.

And they also pointed out the fact that Francis and Josephine had not been sexually assaulted either. And they were trying to say, like, that's why it potentially could be a woman. Yeah, that was part of the like, I mean, you never know, I mean, even if it was a woman, they still, you know, like.

Now they. At first, everybody was just kind of like, Okay, sure, yeah, why not? But now, knowing what we know? After you can read about this case, it turned out that there were some romantic love letters found among Francis's belongings that were written by a woman. And that might be why they were.

So that's why they were saying that, Okay, that's what I think was, and they were like, Wow, how scandalous, scandalous.

So dumb now. Within days of the press conference, the theories about the killer and the motive began to fall apart. Like, that whole thing was just like, all right, that's not it. As soon as reporters began to question the possibility that the killer was a woman, Reynolds quote admitted that the evidence to support such a theory was purely speculative. Based on the phrasing of the message. Left behind on the wall, Yeah.

People also pointed out that the theory that this killer was just on some unhinged raving madman was unlikely as well. Because they had the presence of mind to not only sneak in and out of the building successfully, but also they thought to wipe down any surfaces they might've touched to make sure they didn't leave behind fingerprints. That's cunning, at the very least. Also, all the eyewitnesses are seeing a man leaf, right, exactly.

The truth was, Chicago detectives had literally no idea who killed Francis Brown or why. It doesn't sound like it, but they did know, or at least strongly suspected, that the Brown case was connected to the murder of Josephine Ross six months earlier. Definitely, um. Although they didn't have the language or frame of reference at the time, investigators on the case suspected they had a serial killer operating within the city. Again, they weren't calling him, that they didn't have that language back then.

Yeah, um, but basically just someone compelled to kill for deeply psychological reasons. That would most likely only make sense to the killer, this Jack the Ripper type of slayer, as they called him, which doesn't roll off the tongue quite as long as well as serial killer. No, it sure doesn't.

Um, Jack the Ripper type of slayer is what they were. Imagine if we just had to say that every time we talked about a serial killer type of slayer, that'd be a lot. I mean, there's aren't there, like podcasts called like serial killers, it would have to be called Jack the Ripper type slayer of killers.

That doesn't sound as easy to say no, um, so. They said that he had a lust for bloody killings and reasoning that defied the conventional beliefs about murder at the time. However, while they believe this individual to have been the man who'd called on Francis earlier that evening, they were still no closer to identifying him. Which is interesting that they immediately thought it must be that guy that stopped by looking for Francis. Which I'm like, I get it, I get why you're thinking like, you at least want to talk to that guy.

Right? But I'm like, I wouldn't like totally pin it on him yet that could just be like a friend, yeah.

No, while investigators struggled to make literally any progress in this case, the press weren't as quick to let the story go as they had been in. The Josephine's murder, well, especially now that it's happened twice, yeah. Unlike the Josephine Ross killing, which everyone assumed at the time was a one-time murder. This case now suggested that there would, or could be more brutal deaths until the killer was caught.

Right, in fact, the press really did it, really didn't help the matter or do anything to ease the feelings of helpless felt by the women of Chicago at the time. Because they published an interview with Francis's roommate, Viola Butler, who insisted Francis had no enemies, and Butler said quote You just couldn't be jealous of Francis. She never gave anyone reason to be, and the portrait of Francis that Viola painted with reporters was one of a Chaste, much loved and deeply respectable woman.

Right, she said. Quote Francis was not much on going out. She knitted and did fancy work, she was self effacing, hardworking and cooperative. And if someone like Francis Brown, who by all accounts sounds like this fucking ideal, like amazing human being, friend, human worker, woman, everything, just everything.

If she could meet her end this way, like some brutal, evil, evil stranger could come in and kill her this way, then no one's safe in Chicago at this point, no way. So that's when we get into my least favorite thing to talk about, which is the murder of a child, yeah.

Uh, just want to warn you, that's what we're going to talk about next now. The unsolved murders of Josephine Ross and Francis Butler had everyone in Chicago on edge, obviously, with a growing demand for police to show some evidence of progress. It was really one of those where a lot of pressure was put on them, obviously, to catch this killer, but they were not taking it as a one of the best instances. I think personally of. Like, so much pressure being put on a police force and them handling it completely, perfectly and not sinking to the pressure to just nail someone. Is the Delphi murder case? Yes.

Yes, as frustrating as it was to wait for so long and how everything was kept as a family member or anything like that. I can't imagine how they felt, but everything was kept so close to the chest in that investigation. And they, they bided their time and they built a case, and they took care.

Like, I think that was a very good example of like. I know there's a lot of pressure here and I know everyone wants all this information. But we cannot trickle it out. Like, you got to just wait until we are able to give it to you. And I think that's such a good way to end it. The results spoke for themselves.

They were able to close it, so this, though, was the exact opposite. They could not handle the pressure, they could not handle the criticism, they couldn't handle any of it.

And it wasn't even that long. They just couldn't handle it right. But unfortunately, there was a very growing demand for them to show any kind of progress at all. And little did they know, however, that the recent rash of violence was going to reach a pretty fucking horrifying peak here.

On the evening of January 6th, 1946, less than a month after the Brown murder. Helen Degnan tucked her six-year-old daughter Suzanne into bed and kissed her goodnight before saying goodbye to her husband, Jim, who was headed to awake that evening with plans to return home later that night, when Jim Degnan returned home around 11 p.m. He took the neighbor's dogs out for a walk, which I was like, that was really nice of him, then returned home and got ready for bed. And he mentioned later that at this time, Suzanne, who was six again, was going through a phase of having accidents, you know, wetting the bed. So Jim and Helen had gotten into a habit of checking on her before they. The last one of them went to bed just to try to avoid any accidents. Bring her to the bathroom, let her go. They just kind of, like, woke her up.

Right, and he said quote She awakened that night and we were talking and fooling and joking with her. Oh, Jim later recalled of the last time he saw his daughter, he said, with Suzanne having gone to the bathroom and sent back to bed. He and Helen also retired for the evening, but were awoken a short time later. When Helen said she heard what she said, she can't be sure, but she thinks she heard her daughter crying.

Okay, she said she didn't want to disturb her daughter's sleep. And then she kind of rationalized that. It was probably just the upstairs dogs that she was hearing, cause, she said, she was like, out of it, yeah.

So she went back to sleep, okay, it almost kind of sounds like she thought her daughter was like crying in her sleep, like having a weird dream, yeah, and then she was like, Actually, you know what?

I think that the dogs like, so I don't want to wake her up.

She struck him with her motor vehicle, she had been under the influence, and then she left him there. In January 2022, local woman Karen Reed was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe. It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel and route to the next location. What happens next depends on who you ask.

Was it a crime of passion? If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling, this was clearly an intentional act. In his cause of death was blunt force, trauma with hypothermia or a corrupt police coverup, if you believe the defense theory. However, this was all a coverup to prevent one of their own from going down.

Everyone had an opinion and after the 10 week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision to end in a mistrial. It's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is. Law and Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of the sensational case. In Karen. You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondery Plus.

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So Jim woke up the next morning around 6 30 a.m. and began starting getting ready for the day. And he finished shaving and went down the hall to Suzanne's room and found the door closed. Um, he assumed, you know, she was still asleep, so he opened the door and he was very surprised because he didn't find her, his daughter in bed, right?

Um, and he said, what was more alarming was that the window, which had only been open a crack the night before, was now wide open. Hoping their daughter was just playing some trick, Jim and Helen sent their other daughter, Betty, upstairs to their neighbor's apartment to search. While they checked each room on the floor of their house. Together with the neighbors, the flins. The family searched the entire house, but Suzanne was nowhere to be found and Jim wasted no time.

He called the police right away. In 1945, things were different. A missing child quote unquote wouldn't have raised the kinds of alarms that it raises now. A lot of police precincts at that time would just be like, Oh, they're probably playing a trick, right?

They probably just run away, they'll probably be back by supper time, don't worry about it. Like it was very weirdly normal for them to just not be alarmed by this.

Right, and they'd be like, Oh, don't worry about it, they'll be back by dinner. But Jim Degnan was a person people respected and he had some renown because he was an executive with the Office of Price Administration. Oh, okay.

Wow, so he used this influence to call in a favor with local law enforcement and the FBI. I mean, I would, too, I absolutely would you pull that shit.

So soon after the call was placed, the Degnan home was crawling, with detectives and FBI agents, all very eager to solve this case and find this little girl. Before. The press was able to make a big story out of this whole thing now, despite their best efforts to keep the press at bay. That day, by 10 a.m. The house and sidewalk up front were crawling with reporters and photographers just trying to break the story. That's so fucked up because of the intense public scrutiny over how investigators were handling the Ross and Brown murders. Already. Among other recent crimes, like It's not like those were the only two, there were other crimes that they were bumbling and not handling.

Right? Investigators were intent on taking their time to comb every inch of the scene and avoid any further blunders or criticism. They were like, let's do this right now. Outside the house, just below Suzanne's window or bedroom window, investigators found a wooden ladder that appeared to be the means by which the kidnapper had entered the home. It reminds me of, Like, the Lindbergh baby.

I was just going to say that, yeah. So they were able to get through it by the open window, is what they assumed. A cursory search of the girl's bedroom turned up.

Really, nothing unusual. At first, there was no sign of any blood. It didn't appear that there was like a giant struggle, nothing was broken. Felt like falling over, right?

But on the floor beside the bed, detectives found a handwritten note on a thin piece of paper resembling a discarded tissue. And when it was unfolded, the note was discovered to be a ransom note. But it said, Get $20,000 ready and wait for word. Don't not notify FBI or police. Bills and fives and tens, okay?

But it's like, it doesn't say where, when, how I deliver this money, right? Just wait, just get the money and wait. The note was covered in an oily substance.

And on the back, the kidnapper had written a postscript that said, Burn this for her safety. What now? It was obviously too late to avoid contacting the police or FBI. But Jim Degnan nonetheless proceeded to gather the money because he was like, I'm going to meet these demands. The problem, though, is, like I said, there was no information to contact the kidnapper, where to deliver the money, any information to cooperate.

Just sit around and wait, so without any other options, and he's not just going to sit around. He was like, Fuck this, no, my six year old is missing. Jim Degnan went on a local radio station, WMAQ, to indicate his willingness to cooperate with the kidnapper and plead for his daughter's safe return.

Yeah, he said. If you have any sympathy or understanding in your heart, you will return the child to the family, he said. Please let me know what I can do, how I can contact you. I'll give you the money, I'll do anything to get my child back.

If you harm her, God will repay you. please, please do not harm her. Oh, God. Which, like, honestly, makes me have a ball in my throat of, like, oh.

So the press coverage in Degnan's radio broadcast prompted a wave of responses. So some people were reporting tips. And, of course, there were other pieces of absolute fucking garbage claiming to be the kidnapper, wanting to get the money. That's so gross, you have to be the lowest fucking form of human being to do that shit.

I say it every time, but you got to be the lowest fucking form. No, it's so true, like, congratulations, cause you're going to claim that you kidnapped a six year old and you didn't. But none of them proved credible, even the tips.

So just assholes. And honestly, unfortunately, none of it would matter by the end of the day. Later that evening, around 7 p.m. And this is very gruesome. Two detectives were searching the area around the Degnan home when they noticed that notice that the dirt around a nearby manhole cover looked disturbed.

Uh, it looked like somebody had recently tried to access the sewer, yeah. When they removed the cover, they shined their flashlights down into the sewer. And they saw what they first thought was a doll's head floating on top of some debris in the water below. However, when they got a closer look, they realized, to their abject horror, that they had discovered Suzanne Degnan's severed head in a sewer. Oh my God.

She was sick and taken out of her bed, and they thought it was a doll's. Oh my god, it's awful. Oh, that makes me want to throw up.

Just because, like that picture of Susan, she's just she's so cute. Investigators and volunteers combed the sewers and streets above and eventually found a ton of other dismembered body parts. Oh my God, so she had been completely dismembered, which is truly unthinkable, like, truly unthinkable. I don't even have words.

I don't even have words. Nothing about this reminds you of the Ross, not at all, and Brown Case not at all.

Nothing, not the victim type, not the way in which she was, not the yeah, the fact that she was abducted, not the way in which she was killed. Nothing. The ransom note and also, like, it's like, Did you even look at the handwriting between the ransom note and the message left on the wall?

No, oh my God. yeah, oh my God, that poor family.

I can't even fathom, I can't even fathom. That's her six year old. And for the parents to be like, Oh yeah, like, we woke her up, or, you know, a little after 11, just take her to the bathroom. We were joking with her, laughing, having a great time.

And you had no idea that was the last time you ever saw her. Like, Oh, that's gut wrenching. And you're just putting her in her bed in your home. You're supposed to be safe there, her bed is supposed to be safe.

And like you live in an apartment building, you never suspect that. And up, that's a ladder, exactly.

I was just going to say, Oh God. So the discovery that Suzanne Degden had been murdered was obviously the worst possible outcome imaginable. Um, to everyone, yeah, and including investigators.

For very obvious reasons, obviously, but also because it gave the press another sensational story. That would quickly they were going to tie it back to, like, even with us. Like, even just using their failure to solve the case, right? Tying it back to Ross and Brown murders. Like, even if there was no similarities, they were going to be like, See, they can't do anything, yeah. And in fact, the next, which this is. What's so frustrating is, at first it's like the press didn't even give investigators time to do good police work.

No, and it's like, yeah, the police should have an investigator, should have been able to handle the pressure and just ignored it. And should have been able to just put their nose to the grindstone and do good police work and catch the actual people 100, that's on them. But the press has to take a little bit of this brunt here for putting a shit ton of undue pressure on them and not allowing them to solve these cases.

They are both equal parts of the shit recipe where no one gets any justice. So, in fact, the next morning, the gruesome, horrific discovery dominated the headlines of all five major Chicago papers, with each giving a very detailed account of the discovery. Oh wow. Referring to the murder as quote even too horrible for a maniac, and referring to the killer as quote. The mad butcher of Ken Ken Moore Avenue, among other things. Whether they were simply doing their duty by reporting the news. Which, of course, we can all say like, you know, an informed public is a, you know, it's a good thing.

Sure, or whether they were riling up the public when sensational coverage of the awful case, which is also what was happening, yeah. The reporting elicited a remarkable response. Just hours after the news broke, two citizens called the Chicago Tribune to separately offer $500 rewards for the arrest, conviction, and execution of Suzanne's killer.

Wow, now people were like, ready for blood like people, which I would also be that way. You just remember a six year old. I mean, yeah, you got to go.

Yeah, you got it, that's what I'm like, go for it. That's a you gotta go like, I don't, I don't, I'm going to turn my back, but you got to go like this.

Whoever did this to Suzanne Degnan on the site now, immediately I would be thinking, this is a totally unrelated case, though. Like, that's the thing, a hundred percent like, you're nothing about.

This is is related, not one thing totally outside of them. But as far as the Chicago police and administration were concerned, the brutal, seemingly ritualistic murders of Josephine Ross and Francis Brown were bad enough, obviously. But the kidnapping and murder of a child whose dismembered body was then dumped in the sewer raised public alarm to new heights. Whether they were connected or not.

Oh, definitely, like. It was just like people are going to throw this all at us together. And anticipating a major public outcry and demand that the killer be brought to justice immediately. Investigators and patrol officers fanned right out across the neighborhood, searching for any clues they could, which is good at first. The most compelling lead at the time was that, and this, just like hurts. My heart was that coal dust had been discovered on the bottom of bottoms of Suzanne's feet.

Oh, her little like bare feet, yeah, leading detectives to assume she'd at least been in, if not been killed, in one of the cellars in the neighborhood. Oh, cause that's where you will find coal dust, oh God.

Taken out of her bed in the middle of the night and killed in a cellar. Like, no, I genuinely can't like this doesn't? it doesn't get worse, my brain can't, I can't even like. But assuming her abductor had been known to her and lived nearby, that's what they were going off of, because.

Who else climbs into a child's window at night and takes them out of their bed? Yeah, they were assuming that there had to, and they didn't seem like there was a huge struggle. And like they knew where the bedroom was. It seemed like, or like, right? because there was another. It just seemed like there was some familiarity, right? Because she had a sister, too.

Like she did so, it seems like there was a little familiarity. I understand why they were going off of that, yeah.

Um, officers began a house to house search of the coal sellers and the houses around the Degnan house. Oh, that's just so, so sad. Oh, it's awful. it's awful, horrible.

And in the basement of a house on Winthrop Street, just one block from the Degnan House, investigators found what they believe to be quote the murder room. Really now. Among the discoveries made in this particular basement were four large tubs, bloodstains on the coal bin, a bloody push cart, and several lockers that held residents belongings. One of which had been broken open and had contained a hacksaw and several garment bags that matched those in which the body parts had been wrapped in a floor drain. Investigators also found pieces of flesh and strands of blonde hair that matched Suzanne's Oh God, this gets worse and worse.

Yeah, oh my God, this is me giving you as.

As not detailed of an overview as I can now obviously certain that they had found the scene of the murder. Detectives sent for the building superintendent because this is a building, so this is a shared space. Yeah, those lockers that they found those things in are residents lockers where, like everyone, puts stuff.

Yeah, so finding this great. But now you have to talk to everyone in this building and who had access here, it might not even just be tenants who had access.

Yeah, it could be workers, it could be anybody they taught. Sent for the building Superintendent Hector Verberg, a Belgian immigrant, widely known and well liked around the neighborhood, Okay?

Hector said that he knew Suzanne only by sight, and he'd ever only spoken to her just to say, maybe hello, but that he was. But he did say I'm friendly with all the neighborhood children. And he would often find and fix toys for the ones whose families couldn't afford to buy them toys. Wow, so he's literally like the neighborhood Santa Claus. Yeah, he would literally like find toys, fix them up and hand them out to kids who couldn't afford them.

Wow. When asked about how someone could have accessed the basement, Hector said, I don't know anything about it. Anybody could get in, Oh. According to Hector, only he and the tenants in the building had keys to the basement. But, he said, But the windows were always open.

Anybody could get in, and especially if this asshole broke into a window through an open window to get this this young girl right. They would have easily went through another window to do something like, they're not opposed to going through open windows where they don't belong, right?

Now, given his access to the building, police became immediately suspicious of Hector. I don't know about that, and escorted him back to the part, his apartment, where they discovered a standard size saw and hatchet with nothing on them. A lot of people have saws which were taken into evidence.

They had, they showed no signs of having been used in a crime at all. Yeah, um, at the station, detectives began interrogating Hector, who was initially very cooperative, but then became decidedly less so as the night wore on. And it became very clear that they were trying to make him a suspect. Meanwhile, patrol officers were still canvassing the neighborhood and started speaking to neighbors about Hector, all of whom were shocked to hear that he was even being considered a suspect. Yeah.

By all accounts, Hector was quoted quote an indulgent parent and grandfather, and hardly seemed the killer type, one neighbor told the press later that day. Quote He just couldn't be the murderer. Why? He loves children? He has seven grandchildren of his own, and he'd spent every minute with him that the with them, that he could. He couldn't have killed that little girl.

No, like, they were just like, No, no, it doesn't sound like it at all. The more investigators learned about Hector, the less likely it seemed that he was a sadistic killer of a six-year-old girl. He was very actively involved in his community, engaged regularly with friends and neighbors, and, according to those who knew him best, he was, quote harmless as a fly. Wow.

Now, more importantly, though, Hector's wife told police her husband always went to bed at 10 p.m. and he had indeed been in bed around that time. On the night, Suzanne was taken from her room. Yeah, and also many other people in the neighborhood reported seeing a suspicious, bareheaded, heavyset man either parked or driving slowly through the neighborhood in a gray car around 2 a.m. A description that didn't match Hector.

That's such a creepy description, I know, I don't know what, it's, just like you put it all together. At 2 a.m. Old Heavyset man driving a gray car slowly through a neighborhood. And you have to think like, this person climbed up a ladder and took a child out of their bed and then went right back down.

That letter let ladder like, Yeah, a six year old is like a pretty grown child, you know? Absolutely like, I don't think. I just don't think an older man did this. No, I don't think so either.

Again, I don't know what shape Hector is in, or anything like that, but but he's like a grandfather, seven grandkids, I don't know. It just doesn't feel right.

But then you hear that description and you're like, I feel like that could be him. Yeah, it seems a little right now. A coroner's inquest was held on January 9th, where it was established that Suzanne's cause of death had been strangulation. And the disarticulation had been done with a large, sharp knife post-mortem.

It had not been done by a hacksaw or a hatchet, which are the two things that were taken from Hector's house. The coroner told the Press Quote. It was a very clean job, with absolutely no signs of hacking, as would be evident if a dull instrument was used. Also, several medical experts testified at the inquest, saying the killer was definitely someone that was familiar with anatomy and demonstrated expertise. That one might have if there were a butcher or a hunter. Oh, wow. And Jerry Kearns, from the coroner's office, said Quote The killer had to be an expert at cutting meat because the body was separated at the joints.

Oh God, not even the average doctor could be so skillful. It has to be a meat cutter, so these medical experts are like, it is a meat cutter. Well, that's so.

Even just to think about that detail, it really is horrible to think of it that way. Oh God, this is like, this is a lot, I know. That's why I had to separate this into two parts. Because even though the second part is mostly about, you know what happened in the investigation, it's like, this is a lot. I'm like, freaking out over here.

Now, despite the evidence pointing very much away from Hector, detectives remained solely focused on him as their prime suspect after interviewing all those people. And he has an alibi, he's not a butcher, he's not a butcher.

And he has an alibi, he has an alibi, he has character witnesses that are all like, Nah, and it's like his alibi is just as good as one of the first guys. In one of those murders that his girlfriend was like, No, he was with me, It's like his wife was like, No, he went to bed.

Oh, this gets worse, No. As if to justify their focus, Detective Jack Hanrahan told reporters Quote in the furnace at Hector's apartment building. Several small bones were also found, which might have been from the arms of little Suzanne. What literally told reporters that a detective said to reporters We found little bones in this man's furnace.

They might be this murder victims, little arm bones. On what fucking grounds do you have to say that? Because, guess what, no, they're not what?

Upon analysis, the bones were fucking animal bones and the. But that fact when it came out didn't receive any attention because Detective Jack there had already been. Like, by the way, guys, maybe these are tiny little baby arm bones. You think, think about that, like, that's him literally being like, Wow, isn't that fucked up?

Like, you have no fucking basis to sit here and suggest that these bones are from her arms. Who the fuck are you? You're a detective, you don't know shit, name one of those bones.

Name a bone in the arm, Detective Jack, I get fucking guarantee you you can't do you think to that, like, obviously.

It infuriates me. Yeah, obviously, there's media pressure here, but you also said this man is an immigrant. I'm sure racism played a part in this. Thank you for saying that because that does play into it.

A hundred percent yes, exactly. It is infuriating, infuriating to think that this man went to reporters and said, we found bones in the furnace. Which, like before having any information about that.

You're not supposed to say that shit, you idiot, like bones at all. But then to insinuate and then to just be like, I don't know, maybe they're baby arm bones. Who's to say, like, it's just like, what? Where the fuck did that come from?

Like, who even says that that's insane, like you're an idiot. I want to like junk punch this man. Honestly, I don't know where he is.

JACK HANRAHAN Like, I'm going to junk punch you someday, but you were from the Forties. I was like, I think he's probably dead. You've probably been junk punched, but either way, already, I think you got junk punched. Exactly so life.

Junk punched you, I'm sure, but they were animal bones. But again, no one, no one got that in the press. no, no one wanted to hear that. No, they're all just sitting there being like, Oh, my God, did you hear?

Did you hear about Hector? They found arm bones in his furnace. Like, that's, you know, that's what everybody's saying, Oh my god, this poor man, yeah.

So, for their part, the press did little to exercise any objectivity or practice responsible journalism at all at all. Frequently mixing the gruesome details of the case with statements about Hector and emphasizing his immigrant status. Of course, I knew that was coming, his limited English language skills.

Are you fucking like, what? What the fuck does that have to do with anything? If the man has good English skills or not, doesn't matter. That everyone around him thinks he's a great guy and that he has seven grandchildren, has an alibi, has a wife that's willing to corroborate his alibi. Look, English is our first language, and we just stumbled. Yeah, exactly.

Are you fucking kidding me? And collects toys, fixes them up, and gives them to children whose families cannot afford them. Yeah, let's forget all that and just be like, Well, he's an immigrant.

What the fuck? Okay, yeah, that definitely that thank you totally that's helpful.

But isn't that, like, genuinely, so insane that some people's minds think like that? Like they will completely ignore that chunk of information and just look at, well, he's an immigrant. well, he's an immigrant. It's like, okay, and it's like, Okay, literally nothing to do with this, but thank you so much for playing.

And in the days after the murder, James Frutell, a neighbor of Hector's, recalls how some people began to turn on Hector. No, he said. Quote One of the tenants in our building came rushing up to me, red faced and wild eyed, declaring that they should have lynched him. Oh my God, Jesus Christ.

And this is, this is the detectives and the press's fault. Yeah, absolutely 100, and racist fault. Although he hadn't been charged with any crime whatsoever, investigators continued to question and harass Hector and his wife, demanding that he consent to a polygraph examination.

When he refused and continued to protest cause, he's like, what the fuck, I didn't do anything. Their tactics became more aggressive and they attempted to beat. A confession out of this grandfather, my God.

However, when even a literal vicious beating failed to elicit a confession. Cause he was like, I'm not admitting to killing a child, beat the shit out of him, still wouldn't confess, cause he's like, I didn't kill a child. I'm not going to agree to it.

Good for him to. Detectives released Hector and declared him to no longer be a suspect. Reasoning that if he still denied any involvement after, and this is what they said, by the way, they said, if he denied any involvement still, after suffering such abuse, he must be innocent. That's what the detective so they were literally like after we, like, fucked him up. If he didn't say anything, I guess he's innocent.

Oh my God, and it's like, Cool, wow, what great police were. The trauma just inflicted on this man and then you sent him back into a community that you've now tainted?

Oh, and it gets worse. No, no, how? So? James Fertel, that neighbor, later told reporters Quote I heard what they did to Hector. He had a shoulder separated that left him permanently disabled.

Are you fucking kidding me? Following his release from custody, he went straight to the hospital for treatment for his injuries that they inflicted upon him, where he told a nurse. And this is a quote, No, I don't even want to know. Oh, they hanged me up, they blindfolded me.

I can't put up my arms, they are so sore. They had handcuffs on me for hours and hours. They threw me in a cell and blindfolded me. They handcuffed my hands behind my back and pulled me up on bars until my toes touched the floor.

I didn't eat, I go right to the hospital. Oh, I am so sick anymore and I would have confessed to anything. So what you're saying is that they tortured this man like fucking medieval style, medieval style.

And even he said, So he went through all that and still was like, I did not kill this little girl. Like, I'm not admitting to it, but even he said anymore, and I would have confessed to anything. And that's what they were aiming for.

They didn't want to catch. You actually stole this baby out of their bed in the middle of the fucking night, strangled her in a dank basement and dismembered her and threw her body parts into a fucking sewer. They just wanted everybody to stop being mean to them.

By wrongfully detaining, beating and trying to. They were going to, like this guy was going to go to kill him. Yeah, like that guy was going to get the death penalty. And it's like they were going to kill this grandfather. He was either going to get the death penalty or any of those treatments to an elderly man could have killed him.

And this should tell you that, admittedly, I'm like, how much they care about actually closing the case with the real person who did it? And how much they care about? Just having someone get the fall for it so that everybody stops being mean to them. I'm like, Are we nearing the end of part one? because this has truly been the most, We are nearing the end, so holy shit.

The Chicago Police Department denied that any abuse had occurred. Of course, but the But. Hector and his wife and another suspect, who was briefly detained during this time, filed a civil suit against seven members of the department. If you tell me that they didn't win this fucking suit, I'm leaving. Alleging physical abuse, false arrest and unlawful search. And they won. The night before the civil trial was set to begin, the Chicago Police Department settled for $20,000..

So bada boo, you know exactly what that means? That's called hush money, that's called yup.

We did it now, shut the fuck up, $20,000. Obviously, I know that was like a lot more back then.

And it's $20,000 dollars for what happened. But that's split amongst two people, first of all, and they've medieval tortured this man. Are you fucking kidding me now?

The flagrant abuse of suspects and reckless release of information to the press, cause they were just leaking. Everything reflected the absolute desperation and frustration by the investigators as the public outcry grew, grew louder. The Ross and Brown murders had been horrible and terrified. The women of Chicago. But the murder of Suzanne Dagnon not only intensified local outrage, but it also made a story, the story national interest. At this point, yeah.

Under increasing pressure to solve the case, detectives began speculating and grasping at literally anything that even remotely resembled a clue. To make it appear as though they were making headway in the case. Good police, yikes. When the Hector Verberg theory fell through, they began theorizing that. At 74 pounds, Suzanne would have been too heavy for one person to carry. So there must've been two kidnappers now.

So that's after they beat the shit out of an old band, they said. Actually, now that I think about it, they're like, Oops, I guess there's two. And not this grandfather, who we just beat near his death is so dark now. In the meantime, they continued arresting and questioning various suspects, including a man recently released from a psychiatric hospital and a local Black man who was subjected to a polygraph exam but was ruled out when he passed the test, they also had, like, no evidence to the rest of him, which, yeah, this police force is racist as fuck. Despite their best efforts and the massive amount of resources directed at the investigation.

Cause there was so many resources. That's the other really sad thing about that is they had all the resources and they were using them very poorly. Um, after spending five months chasing down more than 3000 tips, conducting over 300 interviews, performing 170 polygraph examinations, detectives were no closer to finding who killed Suzanne Degnans. And out of the lead, out of, completely out of leads at this point, and with no suspects to question. Investigators were desperate for any opportunity to close the case, even if the opportunity really wasn't a good fit.

And that's where we're going to end for part one. That has truly been one of the most gruesome stories I think you've ever told. Yeah, obviously, so important to tell, like, no matter what, because it's terrifying, holy shit.

But the fact that at the end of this, I just I have the feeling in my gut based on like, your looks when you say certain things. That justice is absolutely not going to get served here. I'm so irate. Yeah, it's right now like, this is, wow, I need you to cover a case where people don't get brutalized.

I'll try to give you, I'll try to give you. I know. I think I said last time I was going to do some kind of palate cleanser. Sorry, that's okay. I mean, it's morbid. People are expecting it.

I'll do something a little, uh, haunted, haunted. we need a haunted. I'll give you a haunted for my next one. I'll take a moment after part two, that is.

Yeah, no, but the way you put this together is interesting and compelling. What's fascinating? And like Dave said this too, we both, we went into this thinking one thing, and I had no idea really.

The ins and outs of this, like the politics of this and everything that ended up shaking out in the wash. Yeah, it's very. You're like, Oh, I thought I knew who the lipstick killer was, and you don't? Yeah, I don't.

The maybe I do, but I. But I thought I knew someone else as the lipstick killer. Okay, I've always heard of the lipstick killer, but I never knew any of the details like whatsoever. Brutal for I actually thought there was like lipstick messages at every scene.

Like, I think I just assumed that throughout hearing about it, wait until we kind of touch on that message again. In part two, part two has a lot of shit that you're going to be like, I'm sorry, what? I get to the point where I don't even know what to say. Sometimes with, like, the complete no, no.

It's like me and the Lizzie Borden Test again. No, I get to the point where I don't know what to say, though, because of the complete. Just like, it's so asinine sometimes that you're just like, I don't have words for that. We're going to be talking about a lot of of mishandling and a lot of shady ass investigative work, if you can even call it that. That makes us so angry. I feel like there's a myriad of things that make us angry in a case. But like the mishandling and the level to which some people mishandle a case is just you sit there, like, how did you even feel good about this?

Yeah, like, how, like, how do you rest your head at night and how do you go? Like, pose for the pictures? Like we caught them boys like, fuck off into the sun.

It always reminds me of West Memphis Three, because that is so infuriating. When they just fucking patted themselves on the back and were like, we got them, and it's like three kids to prison, yeah.

Um, but actually, I forgot Mikey just let me know, cause I never know our schedule that, um, we do have a. There is a palate cleanser in between these two cases. So you, you heard the one, two girls, one ghost? Lizzie Borden Oh my God. So it was like a nice little preview. I forgot that that's between.

So like, Okay, so you hand me a gun? No, so no, all right.

Well, with all of that being said, and you're welcome for the palate cleanser. We hope that you keep listening, and we hope you keep it. Weird, but not so weird as the Chicago Police Department when all this shit was going down, because we, oh hell, no, oh my God.

If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus and the Wondery app, or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondery.com Slash Survey.