Episode 535: Florence Burns and the Murder of Walter Brooks

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. Hey weirdos, I'm ash.

I'm Elena and this is morbid.

And this is Saltburn. Oh God, no, you can't say that because you haven't freaking watched it yet. I know here's the thing.

She said, Wait, no, she said she might. Yeah, because here's the thing, it's TikTok, TikTok. Well, it influences me. Can I tell you how heavily, heavily offended I am right now that I sat here?

OK, many a day, No. I think Mikey can get on board with the fact that you did not sell Saltburn.

No, but I recommended it to you multiple times, you did. How was I supposed to sell it to you? I don't know. Was I supposed to run around a mansion saying it's a murder on the town?

You didn't sell it, I think I had to. I'm still not sure if I'm going to watch it because it feels too long. No, you gotta, you didn't even sell it.

The second, when I said I was going to watch it, you were like, by the way, like half the movie, they're not even in Saltburn and it's kind of slow. Well, I just want you to know what you're in for. No, I appreciate that I'm an honest.

Gwirly, you are, you're an honest gal. you're not a salesman. No, I'm really not a salesman.

I don't, I'm not into that. None of us are sometimes on the ads. I feel like I do a good job, though you do.

I'm like, I have a code for you, babe, I have a code for you, babe, I have a code for you. It's TikTok that has made me think that I should watch it.

But then I'm also like, I think I've watched it now at this point, like all the things I need to see, I think I've seen. On TikTok, you haven't watched the movie until you've watched that movie. There are some movies that on TikTok. If you see certain scenes, it's like, Yeah, I watched that movie, pretty much Saltburn, you got to watch that movie.

Maybe I will, maybe I should just film my reactions to it. Please do so, because it seems all because that song is stuck in my head. It's murder on the dance floor.

I that one, precisely, you better not kill the groom, I thought for a while she was saying, You better not kill the groom. Ash has this awesome quirk about her and it's everybody's favorite. Like, I'm being dead serious that I love it.

That she always gets the lyrics wrong, but her lyrics are always more fun they are. And I'm like, I like, believe them. Oh, with her whole heart, like we were talking about it earlier, that Yoohoo song.

Like, yeah, from like, Jawbreaker, Yeah, Ash had a great version for that, OK, so it's the real things are like, she said, Yoohoo, and then it just says, Ah, yoohoo, ah yoohoo.

So I thought it said, Ice Queen, Ice Queen, she's so beautiful, but it doesn't at all. But I was singing those lyrics for weeks, yeah, because, like, isn't that what it says?

It says like, she said yoohoo, she said yoohoo, or like, I said, yoohoo, yeah, you're right.

And it says, like, Ah, yoohoo, yeah, yeah, your your lyrics are mine are better.

Primo, she's so beautiful and the way that's the Ice Queen like, it's so good, you're welcome.

That's what I say every time I hear it. Oh, and then hold on one more, Let me just do my own horn, beep, beep. Remember the OG, one that I think we realized it was walking on a dream?

Yes, by Empire of the Sun. And they say, like, is it real now when two people become one? Yeah, but I say, Is it grandma? Is she making pecan pie?

And she was so serious. Yeah, I didn't think those were the lyrics, but I was like, I don't know what you say, she knew it.

But, you know what, pecan pie or shmeegan pie? That's what I always say. We have a story to tell today. It's always hard when we have to transition out of our redonkulous speak in the beginning.

I mean, because we're, we speak silly, yeah, we just do, or redonkulous, if you will. We have silly existences, we have silly little things going on.

Silly little lives. And now we're going to be talking about some really intense murder. Yeah, I'm so getting serious. So you know this, this is a bonkers tale just because of, like, the people involved.

I'm going to be talking about Florence Burns and the murder of Walter Brooks, we're going to be talking about this little like. They're called, like the Bedford Avenue gang or something like that. But it's a bunch of like, rich kids in this gang who just are like, I'm bored with being rich. So I'm going to cause trouble. Who the fuck gets bored of being rich? Get out of here.

Like thing I've ever seen, like it's just it feels made up. Wait, what's the year? So the year of this is....

Sorry to stump you.

It's like the early 1900s, like 1901.

Oh, OK, around that time, it's always funny to hear the 1900s. I don't know why.

It's the early 1900s, remember? I can't think of the gang, but we were doing a crime countdown episode. And there was like another group of rich kids that got bored of being rich and made a gang. And it was like the White Bronco gang or something. You know what I'm talking about? We're going to have to look back on that.

Yeah, that's all I had right now. Oh, I miss Crime Countdown. I do, too. every single day of my life, I miss it.

Max Cutler You rock, Max Cutler is great. MM Hmm, yeah.

Bring back crime countdown. Sorry if you can hear my ice, but let's get into this with let's start off with who Florence Burns is, yeah.

So who is Florence, tell me now? At the dawn of the 20th century, the United States was definitely undergoing a pretty big social and cultural change. Mostly because, you know, there was major advances in technology and transportation. That's going to cause huge, like swooping changes all the way around. Because that's allowing Americans to travel outside of the relatively closed regions that they were living in. What is the space that you're making?

I'm just like in a silly, goofy mood. I'm like, what is going on? It's transportation, and then you said, Americans could, like, take it. All I could think of was the Charlie XCX song.

Where she goes, let's ride.

I don't even know what that is. Me and Mikey are just looking at each other. It's from the Barbie movie, isn't it? Maybe not, Mikey, became that shrug emoji.

Like, I don't know, I gotta play it for her, it's the beginning of the song, and she just goes, Let's ride. Because as I'm saying this, I'm like, what is happening? Because she's just like, I know I need to get out of this.

Throwing her head back, like, What's going on? I gotta get out of my silly, goofy mood. I apologize, hold on, I'll get it for you.

Put the elevator music, gotta get out of here.

I'm not even laughing at that, I'm laughing at you're laughing at that, I'm sobbing.

Wow, your brain is a midnight carnival. If I was still on dating apps, I would write that.

My brain is a midnight carnival.

All right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right.

Isn't that all of America just going? Let's ride? That's great, all of America.

Like, a switch just flips, the technology becomes available, and it's just like, what?

Please, please leave at least some of us. Oh man, oh shit. So, as Ash was saying, all of America said, Let's ride. But according to Virginia McConnell, whose book you should definitely pick up, we are linking in the show notes.

This quote gave teenagers and young adults access to places they might not have had earlier, particularly those living in cities like New York, for instance. This whole expansion of urban infrastructure like bridges, tunnels, public transportation. That all meant that people living in places like Brooklyn and Coney Island could now easily access the business and entertainment districts that were in what was once a faraway land of Manhattan. Until they were like, let's ride, let's ride.

And this opened up new opportunities for employment, but also for cultural engagement. So everybody's just being. Their worlds are opening up, basically for teenagers and young adults, particularly the wealthier, without financial responsibilities or really familial obligations. This expansion of transportation allowed them to escape what was usually the watchful eye of their parents. And gave them easy access to all the fun stuff. The dance halls, the speakeasies, the restaurants, all the other social spaces.

It's like riding in cars with boys, with Drew Barrymore, it's exactly like that. And this meant that, maybe for the first time, they could actually shed the societal expectations of responsibility and respectability that usually kids in those families had. And they were now free to be themselves without any of the adult supervision and judgment. Although the idea of teenagers, as we understand it today, wouldn't really emerge for many decades.

That's probably better, yeah, that's probably good, probably this early 20th century youth culture.

Youth culture, I like that. You said that it was still a big social shift from the previous generations, because that's the thing each generation of teen.

Gets wilier, and Wilier, gets more confusing. For the previous generation. Yeah, it just happens. Boomers look at Gen Z, like, what the fuck?

Oh yeah, they thought millennials, they hated. yeah, oh honey, man, oh honey.

Oh, honey. So this social shift from previous generations was really unlike anything Americans had seen to that point. For young people in New York, many of them from conservative immigrant families. The freedom of movement allowed them to shed the restrictive culture experienced in the home and experiment with sometimes new, often rebellious identities. Now, among those young people in New York, basically seeking to establish their own identity, their own rebellion. Outside of the home was Florence Burns. I knew it.

She was the daughter of strict German immigrant parents, born April 9th, 1882, in New York to Frederick and Henrietta Burns. Florence had a lot of advantages a lot, and she had a sense of stability that her peers could probably only dream of.

Frederick Burns was a very successful Manhattan insurance broker. He had, actually, he was, like, kind of. Locally famous as a popular announcer for the various events held by the Amateur Athletic Union as well. Oh, wow. Florence's mother, Henrietta, was also well respected she was the daughter of Wilhelm Frederick von der Bosch, one of the lead. You know that guy?

Of course, one of the lead engineers in the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. Oh, fuck, you know of it? I think I've heard of her.

Now, given her parents social status and respective pedigrees, it was baffling to friends and family that Florence seemed to be out of control from an early age. They said You're a rich girl and you've gone too far. She was, by most accounts, pretty lazy, She's fucking rich. She consistently did poorly in school, which is different because usually it was like they had, like, you know, standards to be held to.

Right, and Quote was more interested in boys than in her studies word. Despite her beauty, however, her vapid personality and general lack of curiosity did kind of little to win her over many friends or male suitors. Oh, shit.

Like, she was beautiful, she was, you know, but she just didn't have a lot of depth. Vapid I love the word vapid to describe somebody, and she seems like she was the definition of that at that time.

Like it just. She didn't really have a lot of ambition, she didn't really have a lot of substance happening, she didn't have chutzpah. Yeah, and as most people knew her, they thought she was like, pretty boring, to be honest.

Like, not a lot going on, you got a lot of money, that's about it. Also, Florence's behavior was occasionally extreme or inappropriate, especially when she didn't get her way. Oh.

For instance, when her first serious boyfriend, Harry, broke up with her after the initial, you know, like romance in the beginning wore off. Florence exhibited behavior that would today most likely be considered stalking. Oh, goody. And there were even rumors that she had threatened to kill him unless he married her, so she went too far.

Usually, I mean, at least in my experience, that doesn't work.

That doesn't work. Also, I was joking about my experience. Yeah, I was going to say, I don't think you've ever done that, No, but like in experiences that I've heard of, I don't think that works.

Yeah, I don't see ultimatums like that really working out. Marry me or I will kill you, especially in like, something like like Lerv. Yeah, I wonder if he Billywood worded her and was like, I'll think about it.

I'll think about it.

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Well, Florence's parents were equally at a loss as we are when it came to understanding Florence. They'd given her literally every opportunity in the world. Everyone she had anything at her fingertips, yet she seemed determined to defy them at every turn.

In fact, as far as Florence was concerned, her parents were more like jailers than parents. They were outdated disciplinarians who had no idea what it was like to be young. They just didn't get it, mom, dad.

Not a face. And in reaction to what she perceived as parents that were too rigid and overly restrictive, Florence acted out a lot. Getting kicked out of school, getting kicked out of local businesses. For smoking. At the time, it was illegal for women to smoke in public. Fake.

Which, like, nobody should smoke because it's bad for you. BEN Yeah, stupid law, but running away.

She would hang out with a bad crowd, she was just not, she was doing all kinds of things. It was the classic. This sounds like the beginning. Remember those old that old show on A&E, like Beyond Scared straight?

Yeah, doesn't it sound like the beginning? It honestly is like, that's true.

And now, in response to all this, Fred, the dad, disciplined his daughter in ways that would no longer be considered acceptable. Bruh, bruh. This included physical abuse, oh no, confining her to her bedroom.

And on more than one occasion, he would just enroll her in a boarding school outside of the city, including one in Montreal. Oh, goody, though, she always ran away and made her way back to Brooklyn on her own. Now, by the time she was 17 years old, Florence had dropped out of school. She hadn't gone further than eighth grade at this point.

And seemed just completely directionless. When she finally found a group of friends, she felt super comfortable, finally. And she felt like she was accepted by these people and they didn't want anything more of her than who she was. And this group was called the Bedford Avenue Gang.

Oh, no, so she joined a gang, so I'll give you a little more insight into this gang, okay? So, given her lack of interest in things like school or creative pursuits, it shouldn't come too much of a surprise that this is the kind of group that she fell in with.

It was in 1901 and this gang was mainly, I say, gang like quote, unquote. That's what they were called. Yeah, this gang was comprised of what her parents would almost certainly deem bad influences.

Yeah, I would think so. The Bedford Avenue gang, as they called themselves, was named for the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, where many of its members lived. And it was comprised of boys and young men, mostly from mostly well-off, if not affluent, families. Interesting now. According to McConnell, the gang's quote main goal was to get money from unsuspecting citizens, primarily shopkeepers.

But like, you don't need it. So yeah, they're just assholes, like, what the fuck, they're assholes who are like, we're bored. Our parents are mean. Because, like, we can't just like, lazily roll around all the time and just get money. So we're just going to steal it from people who work.

Yeah, let's steal money that we could already have. Yeah, that's good. Of course, this was not like we said, like Ash just pointed out, it wasn't for lack of having their own money to spend, right?

Because hello, or, you know, given to them by their parents. But instead, the shoplifting, petty robbery and pickpocketing were committed just for the thrill of it. They were bored, rich kids, wild. Their secondary interest, however, was women.

And for this group of wealthy, well-dressed bad boys, I gotta look them up, which, you know, they were like the bootleggest of bad boys. You know what I mean? Oh, 100%.

Because it's just like these kids are like coming from boarding schools and like, you know, they have all the everything in the world that they could ever want. And they're like, but they're like, rebelling against mommy and daddy. It's like that one kid that we always knew that had a rich dad in school, yes, and they, like, they thought they were rich because their dad was rich.

They're the kids that say, My dad's a lawyer. oh so, that's these kids the worst. My dad's a lawyer, so.

Which, like, it's fine if your dad is a lawyer. Like, Cool, that's awesome, but if you're flaunting it around, like 8th grade, no, I don't give a shit.

What your parents do like if you're walking into 8th grade? Like, my dad is a lawyer, if you're any human being and you're retort to something, somebody being mean to you, my dad is a lawyer. Walk away.

Walk the other way, walk the other way, toxic person, walk the other way. Sorry. What is this gang's name? There's been so much information.

The Bedford Avenue Gang, The Bedford Avenue Gang. Here's the thing, though. This is a bunch of, you know, rich boys who are rebelling. They get everything they want, and they're probably well coiffed, you know?

Coiffed like they're put together. And so they had no shortage of girls and young women who followed them around, like groupies, of course, of course.

Because it's like the it's like bad boy, light, you know? yeah, like diet, bad boy, so it's like diet, bad boy.

So if you're not ready for like the full, the full thing, you get the diet bad boy. And you can be like, well, everything will be fine. Because he'll pay the bail.

Which is like, do you want to see these other gangs that are that are different? you want to see these ones? they're different? But the thing is, McConnell notes. The Bedford Avenue Gang of boys was dedicated to seducing the groupie girls who followed them. And it gets worse and darker because this is all like, very fluffy and like, they're just little, shitty, rich boys.

Like, silly, you'll get yours, you know what I mean? Yeah, like you're stealing from people who work. But it got worse.

It got darker because they would, they were all about these groupie girls and they would keep them around. They were like, you know, it was like an actual like mafia style, you know, like the gals hanging around. Sure, sure, but if they didn't, weren't able to seduce them, they would turn to sexual assault. They would just they would like they were rapists as well.

Oh, Jesus Christ, it turns from this like, silly, so like, that's why this this gang is like, so gross in so many ways, because it's it's a bunch of shitheads who have everything in the world at their fingertips. Are doing all of this just for the thrill of it. And also taking advantage of women who, these young women who probably don't know any better. It's just like, the whole thing is so nasty, layers and layers.

They're just gross, yeah. So, despite the petty, shallow and criminal interests of this gang, they provided. Like, we were just talking about a pretty attractive lifestyle and kind of social outlet that appealed to rebellious young people like Florence, who were looking for just that. They were easily recognizable because they wore flamboyant outfits, which included diamond jewelry. The girls would wear corsets, brightly colored vests.

The boys would wear the vests and the spiked, tailed overcoats, like very over the top, and they also carried heavy canes and baseball bats with them. While definitely part of the overall outfit would also double as a weapon if they wanted to be violent, what a wily time to be alive. The Bedford Avenue gang would be comparable to something. And this is actually this is. Dave brought this up, and it's such a perfect comparison.

I had, like, brilliant comparison by Dave. They would be comparable to something like the fictional Droogs in Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel, A Clockwork Orange. They're very much like that gang, like it calls into, like you can think of that gang when you like, you should read it. It's crazy.

I will, but they're also. And these two are also similar to what we would modernly probably think of young, middle class white men who engage in rioting and looting after certain sporting events. You know what I mean? Yeah, like that kind of thing where it has no purpose whatsoever.

Just for the hell of it, yeah. Now. Their behavior and engagement in violence and destruction, it's not a matter of survival or necessity, or even purpose, right? You know what I mean?

Like, there's nothing to back it up at all. Bored, rich kids. It's just a thrilling outburst of bad or criminal behavior. Because they know they're not going to be punished for it. Because of where they sit in the class system, because their dad's a lawyer, because my dad's a lawyer.

He'll sue you. That's why now. When it came to the Bedford Avenue gang, there wasn't exactly a hierarchy or organizational structure per se, but there was a kind of like informal leader. I feel like that always happens, yeah.

And this informal leader was Theodore, or Ted Burris, and his best friend, Walter Brooks. Uh-oh, now. Burris was the son, the only son of a millionaire stockbroker. And after graduating from high school in 1898. Using his generous allowance given to him by his mother to fund his flashy lifestyle and petty criminal escapades. Like the others in the gang, he was known to lash out violently anytime he felt the urge. Targeting anyone, from a random pedestrian on the street to the police.

But Ted's criminal activities weren't confined only to violence. Burris was a well-known thief and cheat. He stole everything from money, cars, jewelry, and even once stole a prized French bulldog worth $1,000. He does not deserve that fucking dog, he stole a dog.

That's.

Like, what did you do with the dog? I want to helga Pataki him right to the face. That's exactly what I want to do now. Although he came from a family far less wealthy than that of Ted Burris, Walter Brooks did fit in with the gang, nonetheless.

Walter was born in Brooklyn in the summer of 1881 and grew up in a very stable household, where his father was a typesetter with one of the New York newspapers. As a child, Walter was smart, he was attractive, very popular athlete, very good student. But he was known as, quote, something of a wild young man, rather fast addicted to fine clothes, alcohol and pretty women. Now, following his graduation from high school, Walter chose not to pursue a college education, which usually at this time, young men of his social standing would definitely pursue college education.

So this was different. But instead, he went into business with two friends as commission merchants. And though Walter shared many interests with Ted Burris, the informal leader there. He was less interested in acts of violence and destruction, and he was more inclined to move towards schemes and scams. He liked that part of it.

He's a con man, he wanted to earn money, and he wanted attention, and he wanted adoration from young women. That's what he was looking for. He wasn't looking to beat the shit out of someone, he just wanted girls to fall over them for him.

He thought scams and scheming were going to do it for him. There's other ways to go about that. Absolutely many. Walter was incredibly popular with women.

Really, but much to their dismay, he wasn't really into commitment, he wasn't a one girl kind of guy. In fact, the year before his death, Walter was engaged to a young woman named Lottie Eaton. I love the name Lottie.

I do, too. It makes me think of the Princess and the Frog, which we watched recently because my youngest wanted to watch it for the first time. And I think her name is Charlotte and it's the best friend, but they call her Lottie. I like Lottie just as a name.

Lottie is so cute, so cute guys. I love Princess and the frog. Oh, such a fucking bop it is.

No, but Walter was engaged to a young woman named Lottie Eaton, but just a few months later, Lottie called off the engagement because she cited Walter's quote Moral lapses as a reason. Also, can we just take a second for the name Lottie Eaton, Lottie Eaton?

That's the richest girl in the fucking world like you. None of us should. We can't be in the room with Lottie Eaton, Lottie Eaton, like, I don't.

Eat your fucking heart out. I don't belong in the same room as Lottie Eaton. No, like, who do I think I am? I don't hold a. What do they say?

I don't hold a a candle. a candle to Lottie Eaton. Yeah, who holds a candle to Lottie Eaton? I don't know.

Not me, that's crazy, not I now. Our girl Lottie Eaton. She wasn't specific about what those moral lapses were. But we can kind of.

He's a cheat. Think with the thing between our ears. yeah, he's a philanderer. I'm thinking infidelities and other troubles, probably.

Yeah, he's a fuckboy. Yeah, it's not good. So there was also a lot of rumors about him being part of many secretive pregnancies. Oh God, and you know, like, secret abortions, all kinds of things going on.

He was very much being irresponsible with his, with his affections. Oh goody, spreading it too much now and again. You're engaged, don't be engaged.

Right, exactly, do whatever the fuck you want, if you're not engaged, don't be engaged.

If ever there was a woman that was perfect for Walter Brooks, it was Florence Burns. Was it? Both were young, they were impetuous, they were shallow.

They were reckless when it came to the emotions and wants of others. And, according to Virginia McConnell. Even the gang's leader, Ted Burris quote, made a conscious decision to stay away from Florence Burns because he knew she would cause him trouble. Fuck, that's Ted Burris who's like hitting people on the street, He's like the most reckless, and he's like, I don't fuck with you.

Yeah, like, that's a lot so. While Ted and the other gang members may have been smart enough to steer clear of Florence, Walter saw something of an irresistible kindred spirit in her. And his desire would ultimately lead to deadly consequences. Yeah, I felt that way. So in 1900, around the time Florence started hanging around the Bedford Avenue gang, the base of operations for the group, was a Coney Island dance hall. Obsessed?

Which, I gotta say, this does have. The vibes are right, the substance is off, yeah, the vibes are right in. Like the setting, like thinking of, like a Coney Island dance Hall gang. Like, that's that's fun. And then you get into the substance of it and you say, no, no, no.

No, no, Coney Island Queen, but this Coney Island Dance Hall was called Bader's Roadhouse. I love that name. Do better.

That took away the vibe, like, Oh, a dance hall in Coney Island. What, Bader's what?

Bader's Dance, No, Bader's Roadhouse, Bader's Roadhouse, like in Coney Island, are you sure?

Are you sure what? It was only a half hour commute from their homes. So that's good. And it, honestly, may as well have been in another country when it came to the freedom it offered the young clientele. I mean, they were totally on their own there.

Yeah, it was a wild, very anonymous place. Oh, away from judgmental eyes and expectations of anyone, including their parents. The members of the Bedford Avenue gang. There would smoke, they would drink.

They shed the Victorian-era protocols because, remember, we're in a specific era here, right? And those protocols would have kept young men and women separate at all times. Wow, like this was different.

That's crazy to think about. And it would require very elaborate courtship rituals before they could even think of getting to the more intimate parts of a romantic relationship before they would even look at each other. But it was at Bader's Roadhouse, Bader's Roadhouse.

That Walter and Florence met for the first time, and Walter immediately found her irresistible. Oh God. The two became romantically involved very soon after, and things became physically intimate very quickly. No Victorian-era protocols here, none of that.

All I'm picturing in my head is the guy on TikTok that runs around with the red flag that's literally him, right? He should run out and just be like, no to both of you, to be honest, like, no.

So, unlike most of the other girls in the neighborhood, who either appreciated Walter from afar or were put off by his reputation as a member of this gang, Florence liked that diet bad boy image and his rebellious attitude. She was like, Oh my goodness, this is exactly what I've been looking for my whole life. And before long, Florence was claiming that she had fallen in love with Walter and she loved him. Quote Even more than my mother and father. Uh-oh. And he generally returned these bold declarations of love.

Damn, Florence had been in love before Walter, or at least something that resembled it. I remember she said she was going to kill the guy, I'm going to kill you.

A year before they met, she had been in a relationship with at least three members of the Bedford Avenue gang before Walter. We got a groupie, all of them burned. Very hot, very bright, you know, you know how these go. I love that.

She was able to, like, stick around after that, Yeah, she just. They were like, That's fine. Didn't last very long, mostly due to their inability or, you know, disinterest in any kind of commitment. They were all just living. And so it was with Florence and Walter, who met and quickly fell in love in August 1901..

Um, they were already having relationship troubles by October, so they're kind of following right in the right, in the footsteps of those previous relationships. It's the same kind of thing. There were rumors going around the group that Walter had been chasing after another young woman who hung out on the fringes of the gang. And when Florence found out, she made her displeasure known, saying If it were true, Walter would quote suffer for it.

She scares me. Yeah, she's got a latch, She scares me a lot. Uh, yeah, that's not good. Never one to worry much about what others thought, though.

So Florence made no attempts to keep her relationship with Walter a secret, and the two were anything but discreet when it came to physical displays of affection. Oh, I hate that, I hate that so much, it's so not for me.

That's usually to me, that's a that's a red flag right there. Yeah, you're making up for something. When word of the relationship made its way to Fred and Henrietta Burns, you know, mom and dad, who she does not love, were outraged. Not only was their daughter, uh, being very inappropriate, sexually active in a time when this was just not okay, they said. Our daughter is a harlot.

She's a hussy, but also she was once again. According to them, they what they're thinking, a source of embarrassment. And she was going to be a source of potentially scandalous rumors about that family, right? In response, Fred and Henrietta took yet another hard line with their daughter, making it clear, in no uncertain terms, that she. They disapproved of this relationship and they kicked her out of the house.

Oh shit. They told her she couldn't return unless she was married to Walter. Oh man, yeah. So now she's got a new goal.

Yeah, so Fred and Henrietta's reaction likely seems pretty harsh, um? But the Burnses had already endured a lot of embarrassments from their point of view. Yeah, everybody's got a line, you know, as a result of Florence's behavior, and they didn't think they could stand for another.

Um, and also, as Virginia McConnell points out quote, Possibly there was a pregnancy involved, as it seems to have been a drastic action on their part. Yeah, and they had not drawn such a hard line with Florence under like similar circumstances before. So they think there must have been something else in here. I could see that, but I could also see it just being like, so many things leading up to this. Yeah, that they, just that this was just the final one.

And remember, they had a different style of parenting? Yeah, you know, so, oh yeah, I forgot about that. So the possibility of a pregnancy would also explain why Florence began pressuring Walter to marry her.

That fall, mm-hmm, uh. Something that everyone, from everyone, from the other gang members to his parents, strongly discouraged. Oh wow. So his parents were like, No, no, and the other gang members were like, no, Walter.

They were, like, Not Florence now. Walter might not have been interested in marrying Florence, but that didn't stop him from continuing his relationship with her. Throughout the better part of November. Florence lived in a boarding house in Brooklyn, but that didn't stop her from being a near constant presence in the Brooks household. Uh, she would take long lunches with Walter, she would lunch with his mother sometimes.

Huh? Even attended church services with them on Sundays. It's interesting that she really, like, became part of their lives, and even still they were like, Fuck that that should tell you, yeah.

Uh, but by the end of November, she had moved in with the Brooks family after coming down with some vague illness. That many speculated could have been the unexpected consequences of a self-induced miscarriage or abortion. Oh, that's really sad. Rather than insist, Florence returned home to her parents care, Walter's father, Thomas Brooks, simply paid for Florence's medical care. And he was like, You know what, I, I'm pretty accustomed to taking care of my my, you know, Walter's stuff. That goes on.

Yeah, so I'm just going to take care of whatever you need as well. I mean, which is like, all right. And it seems likely that Florence was actually pretty ill for a short time. But the fact remains that she definitely used the opportunity to force her way into the Brooks home and stake a further claim on Walter.

By early December, when she had finally recovered from whatever was ailing her. Because there's no actual like medical records here. Florence had all but formally moved into the house and once again started pressuring Walter to marry her. Each conversation became more and more desperate at this point, and later, after Walter's death, Mrs.

Brooks would recall the ways in which Florence would attempt to manipulate and control Walter. Uh-oh. She would claim that she would shoot him with her father's pistol if he didn't agree to marry her. That's again not the way to go about that. Mama, and this is his mother saying this.

Later being like, Yeah, like, I witnessed that, Oh my God, yeah.

So I can see why they were like, I'd rather you not marry her. And this is even. This is such a wild thing that happened. Oh God, so very frustrated and very exhausted with Florence's childish behavior. Walter's mother. Eventually, one time, when she was like, I'm going to shoot you with my father's pistol, she just looked at her and said, Why don't you just shoot yourself with it?

And it's like, Oh, burn. And Florence responded, Because I love Walter too much, so I'm going to kill him instead. Like, what?

That doesn't even make any sense, and it's like, What the fuck, my girl? And also like, Mrs Brooks, damn.

She said, Get out me house, she said. That's some Mama Bear energy right there, like, Damn boy, mom.

That's boy mom energy, that's a boy mom for sure. damn, that's just a mama jokies.

But fuck Mrs Brooks, really, she had enough, holy shit.

So that'll tell you how, how at the end of their rope, everyone was with Florence. That they're just like, why don't you just take the pistol and shoot yourself? Like, when you're saying, that shit has gone awry, that's bad, because that's a rough thing to say, yeah.

You shouldn't say that to anybody ever, don't say that to people. No, like Mrs. Brooks, come on.

Come on, girl, get some decorum, you're a rich girl. But also Florence don't be threatening to kill her son, yeah.

Bad on both ends, lots of things happening. I don't want to be in that house. Get me out of here, I gotta get out of here.

Exactly really okay.

I'll be your escape. Oh, good, now. As the year came to a close, the arguments between Walter and Florence continued to escalate to the point that Thomas Brooks, Walter's father, hid. His pistol, went to Fred Burns, Florence's father, and begged him to allow Florence to come home. He was like, please.

He's like, get her the fuck out of me house. And he told him that she had become a major disruption in their household. He was like, you gotta take your kid back, and her dad is like, Yeah, she's a major disruption in our house, too, that's why we got rid of her.

Florence's father was like, no, telling Brooks he wouldn't allow her back until the couple had married. And Thomas literally was like, that will never happen. He was like, Well, then she's never coming back, and he was like, Then she's never coming back.

And they were like, we're at a standstill here now. While the Brookses may not have been successful at convincing Florence's parents to take her back, they were finally able to rid themselves of her constant presence when she moved to a new boarding house at the end of December.

And after only a few weeks at this boarding house, she did get her own parents to agree to let her back in. Oh wow, so she was able to convince them. I'm actually very surprised by that news. It doesn't last.

I had a feeling it wouldn't. It turned out that Fred and Henrietta Burns had only agreed to let Florence move back in because she said she and Walter were getting married. Yeah, I had a feeling I knew she was doing stunts and shows out here. Yeah, it definitely came to a surprise to Walter that he was getting married.

He agreed to no such thing, so he didn't understand this. But regardless of all that, the lie had put Walter in a difficult position as well. He either had to agree to marry Florence or be responsible for her getting kicked out of her house again. Oh man.

Either way, he would be responsible for taking care of her. She is the wiliest witch, like, I got to marry her and take care of her. Or she's going to get kicked out of her house and I'm going to have to take care of her. Because it's my fault, right?

So that's a catch-22 if I ever heard one for some reason, whatever reason it is. Just before the year ended. Walter agreed to marry Florence, and the two went to the Church of the Good Shepherd in Brooklyn, where Florence insisted that Reverend Robert Rogers marry them. Immediately. Perhaps sensing something was amiss, Reverend Rogers said, Nah, and he said, There's no witnesses here, that's, that's a no for me.

Right, so that was it. They didn't get married, having once again failed to manipulate Walter to marry her. Florence returned home and told her parents the truth, and they promptly kicked her out of the house for a second time.

That's kind of sad. We tried to get married and we couldn't, and we couldn't. Now he doesn't want to marry me.

It's your fault. Pack your bags, I don't get that. Once again, Walter feared Florence would worm her way back into his household, but fortunately, a friend of his recommended a boarding house on West 144th Street where she could stay for $10 a week, which now would be a little over $300 in the present.

Oh wow, that's a lot of money now. After nearly a month at the new boarding house, Florence was allowed to move back into her parents house again. Likely with the understanding that she and Walter were now engaged and would eventually be married. Oh man. Despite that promise, however, Florence found herself in the same position she had already been in twice either convince Walter to marry her or find herself out on the street again.

More importantly, at least in the long term. There was a growing chance that if she continued to defy them, that her parents would cut her off, like financially as well. They hadn't done that yet. Okay, so she was worried that was the big.

That was going to be the big hammer. Basically, putting an end to her life of excess and luxury, which she was just not willing to do. Of course, not. Virginia McConnell points out that, given Florence and her father's desperation for her to be married. Quote There must have been a baby on the way. So everybody keeps pointing out that there, there had to have been something here.

That's like, much more over the top. I don't know. Yeah, I'm not convinced, I'm not convinced of that either. That's just what a lot of people thought.

So I wanted to make sure I mentioned it. Yeah, I also am not as convinced. I think this is just respectability, I agree.

Victorian era respectability. I can see why people would think that, but I agree with you, yeah, and I think I think what she, what Virginia McConnell is pointing out, and what many people thought, too.

So she is going off of, like, a lot of other things. Is that if it was a pregnancy, it would become obvious to everyone shortly. Yeah, she was pregnant. And that would be another scandal, another moral failing for that family if she was unwed and pregnant and living with them, right?

And presumably she had already maybe performed an abortion, so she didn't want to go through that, so they didn't want to go through that again. But despite Florence's obvious desperation and, you know, Walter continuing to be attracted to her, Walter remained uninterested in getting married. He didn't want to tie himself to someone for the rest of his life.

He was noncommittal, he was part of this gang. At this point, it's like, you're really not noncommittal. Because like, she lives with you half the time, she's always showing up at your doorstep. You might as well just fucking marry her and call it a day.

I don't think he's, I think he's having many affairs, I'm sure there there's no. Yeah, and it's like, you're going to continue to do that.

It's like, if you want to live, that's fine, right? And also she was just relentlessly demanding. So I think he was like, I'm, yeah, I'm attracted to you, but this is a lot like.

I don't want to do this for the rest of my life. I don't want this to be the only thing for the rest of my life. So by February 1902, it seemed Walter had avoided yet another one of Florence's meltdowns. And, you know, crises. Damn, this is like two years of this, yeah.

His vague half promises to Fred Burns and his willingness to at least go see a priest about marriage had kept Florence living in her parents home. Rather than, you know, a boarding house or the Brooks house. So there's a lot of, just like, dishonesty here on everyone's part, it's everyone's so false. Like this is all just such a facade, you know? Because it's like, Fred is like demanding that they get married, not caring whether they're in love or not.

Walter is like, I like her, I'm attracted to her, sometimes, we have a nice time. I don't want to marry her, though. And then he, but he's just trying to keep everybody satiated by being like, Okay, I'll just fake it, I guess.

I'll just talk to this priest about it, I guess, and I'm like, none of this is good, but and this is not like this is not. You know, talking about getting married should be like, you know what life is supposed to be? No? But as far as he was concerned, he had exceeded the expectations of his responsibility.

And he was like, You know what, I've given it my all. I talked to a priest. We almost got married once he was ready to end things with Florence.

Finally, without feeling guilt, he was that was the whole thing. He didn't want to end it with her and have her end up on the street, yeah.

And it be his, which is honorable. And then he was worried that he was going to have to take her in if that happens. So he was like, I'm going to be in this endless cycle, yeah.

So he's like, now I feel like I've done my duty, I've tried, it's not working, and he's so.

In fact, by the time the attempted wedding had fallen through, Walter was actually already dating a new girl. He was just out of there. This girl was 17 year old Ruth Dunn and she. And he was looking for the easiest way to end things with Florence. And kind of avoid her wrath as well, because, remember, she threatened to shoot him with Fred's pistol?

How did he think he was going to avoid her? Wrath, though, I don't know, I think dating another girl would be like the wrathiest of wraths. That's going to inspire a lot of wrath, I'm going to be honest.

I think that would pack a punch. Speaking from someone who has dated, someone who also started dating another girl while we were dating. It inspires a lot of wrath. I would think a lot of wrath, I would certainly think so.

So much wrath, all the wrath, the most wrath one could have. I became wrath in that moment, so I imagine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I always just think of the America's next top model shoot where they did all the sins. I literally thought of that as we were saying that.

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So to lep, lep. So. Walter's relationship with Ruth began quietly and subtly at the beginning of the New year, and he'd spent weeks assuring Ruth that he was going to end things with Florence. He was like, I just gotta figure out how to go about it without you being in danger, and me being in danger like this was actually like a little scary. He was like, I'm scared to do this, so like, I do want to be with you and I'm trying.

Oh man, this is a wreck. So, by the second week of February, Walter seemed to be taking the matter more seriously. And had started talking with his friends in the Bedford Avenue gang about it. All of whom, quote, assured him it was a good move on his part. Now, given the gang's penchant for drama and hijinks, it's very likely that Florence had some idea of Walter's and Temtem, their relationship. I'm sure one of the other gang members was like, he's going to break up with you, girl, like.

I'm sure one of them was like, he's already dating someone. I bet there was hot gossip, they loved that shit. And she almost certainly noticed his absence and distance in the recent weeks. Beginning Monday, February 10th, she began showing up at Walter's office every day, demanding to see Walter, but he was typically out of the office at this time.

Girl, this isn't appealing behavior. Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't.

And each time she asked Walter's office boy, 15 year old Joseph Cribbins, this poor kid? found a way to insinuate that Walter had received. Many female visitors at the office, likely intending to irritate her. Okay, I was this poor boy. I was like, Joseph, you gotta chill.

You don't know who you're dealing with now. While this may seem trivial, like, you know, it's just like him being a little 15 year old. Shit, yeah. Walter had in fact never received any other woman other than Florence in his office.

Oh, wow, I feel like that was the truth. But by the end of the week, Florence would come to believe that he was cheating on her. With countless anonymous women, like anonymous women were showing up all over the place, it's like, No, he was only cheating with one woman. And whether he was like having other things outside, you know, they weren't coming to his office.

That could be said now. On the morning of February 14th, Valentine's Day, Walter and his business partner Harry Cohen had a business meeting with a man in Patterson, New Jersey. And after that they all had lunch in Newark. At this lunch, they met two young women at the lunch side, eyes downward.

Yep, and after chatting with the girls for a short time, they all went to a nearby hotel. They all had sex and they all went their separate ways. They just live the flashiest lifestyle, they're just the flashiest.

It's like the it's like the party scene in Gatsby. That's all I could think of. Now. Look at us, we're right on it.

That's literally all I could think of. I was like, Oh my God, like, that's, that's it, that's literally it.

That's it. Meanwhile, Florence, while this is going on, had stopped by Walter's office yet again. Oh no, you gotta stop going there, mama. She left a note saying she was leaving for Detroit that afternoon and had only stopped to say goodbye.

Florence said she actually returned three more times that day, hoping to catch Walter Girl, I thought you were going to Detroit, and she finally caught him. On the last visit, around 530 p...m. Walter seemed unsurprised to see Florence in his office. And they made plans to go out after he closed up the office for the day.

And Walter was intending to give Florence a proper sendoff before she left for Detroit. I don't know if he was like, I guess we'll just fuck one more time like that seems like the vibe here, according to McConnell. Walter's partner, Harry Cohen quote, begged Walter not to go with Florence that night and to come out to dinner with him instead. Oh, but not wanting to do anything to upset Florence just as he was about to, you know, end things.

Walter dismissed Cohen's concerns and promised to meet him later that night. Instead. Even Cohen was like, I don't know, man. Like. It sounds like he knew obviously what she was like, but it sounds like he also had some kind of like bad feeling.

He was like, I just don't feel good about this now. That evening, Walter and Florence checked into the Glen Island hotel. So you can see why I think what I think. Yeah, of course.

They checked in as John Williamson and wife of Brooklyn. Oh, just adding insult to injury. And they were shown to their room by a bellhop named George Washington. Shut the fuck up. His name was George Washington.

Icon. And after setting down the couple's bag, Washington lit the pilot lights on the gas heater. Then asked Florence whether they would need anything else, and she said, No, thank you, OK. Later around midnight, Washington noticed the smell of gas coming from Florence and Walter's room.

Oh, God. And when he entered to search the area, he discovered Walter passed out on the bed and Florence nowhere to be found. A doctor was called and they attempted to rouse Walter, who was alive but only barely conscious at the time. Oh man, now this is wild.

This doctor, I'm like, Are you OK, sir? Despite the presence of blood on the pillowcase, it took Dr. John Sweeney much longer than it should have. To notice that there was a giant wound on Walter's head, what? And even when he did finally notice it, he assumed it had been from a fall. And he was like, Oh, it's nothing serious.

And at this time, neither hospital staff or Dr. Sweeney were interested in Quote causing a fuss. So they aired out the room and washed the area around Walter's head wound, then left the room and assumed he would sleep it off and be fine in the morning.

Yeah, what? So they came in and they were like, Wow, it's weird. There's gas in this room and he's unconscious and there's blood on the pillow and he's like, not awake. And they were like, Oh, weird.

Let's air the room out. It's silly that that happened, open a window, I guess. And then they were just like, boop, bop, a doop. Using some antiseptic gonna wash your wound but not pick your head up, they literally just washed the area around the wound.

What the fuck didn't actually look at it? And he was like, you know what you should do with head wounds, you should sleep them off. That's what you should do in a gas filled room.

The gas filled room, the head wound of it all. Also the fact that the wife is quote unquote wife is missing. And this man is sitting in a gas filled room with a fucking wound in his head. And we don't think it's a little suspish that the wife is gone, or the presumed wife, no.

Doctor, This is fine, Dr. Sweeney, everybody. The next morning, when hotel staff went back to check on the man with the head wound in the gas filled room with the missing wife.

They found Walter unresponsive on the bed, which by then had become saturated with blood from a hole in his head. The fact that it sounds like they probably could have saved this kid's life, yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's really fucked up.

Dr. Sweeney was called back to the room and in the light of day, realized that what he had thought was a wound from a fall was actually a gunshot wound to his head. This man was shot in the head, was alive and just left to bleed out. Oh my God, they could have saved him.

Absolutely, or at least given a shot, I shouldn't say they could have saved him, they could have at least given any kind of shot. Well, just the fact that he was still alive.

When they left him to bleed overnight, there was an actual opportunity to save him. Or try to wow, and how awful. He just lay there with a bullet in his head, left there, not able to move or call anyone and just lay there.

Wow, now. Dr. Sweeney insisted someone call an ambulance, which like, Oh, the doctor, everybody. But it still hadn't occurred to anyone to call the actual fucking police. Because there was another person in this room with him and he has a bullet hole in his head and no one's worried about that.

Instead, after searching Walter's pockets and learning his real identity, someone from the hotel called his office and talked to Harry Cohen, his business partner. Oh, poor Harry, who in turn called Walter's father. And the two rushed to the Glen Island and up to room 12, Oh, poor dad, where Thomas Brooks found his son alive, but in very bad condition.

So he was still alive, unresponsive, but alive, while the two men waited two hours for the ambulance to arrive, two hours. Why did it? This is New York, correct?

Cohen and Brooks searched the room. They picked up all of Walter's belongings, as well as a hair comb that both men recognized as belonging to Florence Burns. Oh, we knew. When the ambulance had finally arrived and taken Walter to the hospital, Thomas Brooks made the following statement to police. Quote. I've expected this for a long time. My boy has been in scrapes with girls before this and I expected this would happen.

A girl named Florence Burns made threats against my son. Oh man, now. The ambulance transported Walter to the hospital. He was rushed into emergency surgery and the 32 caliber slug was removed from his head, but he never regained consciousness and was pronounced dead at 1115 a.m. Wow.

Now, like Thomas Brooks, Harry Cohen also told police you should question Florence Burns. He was like, she was with Walter and was, you know, they were supposed that's where they were supposed to be that night together. Like this all adds up and now she's missing. And also Harry was like, they've had a very long, complicated and tumultuous relationship.

When officers arrived at the Burns apartment in Flatbush, Florence didn't seem very surprised to see them. She told them that yes, she did know Walter Brooks and she had seen him the previous day. But, she said, after I spoke to him at his office, we parted ways and I hadn't seen him since then. Liar. If the officers were suspicious by her initial reaction, they were double suspicious. When after informing her that Walter had been shot, her response was, I wonder who could have done it? Have they found the pistol?

Girl what, girl what? The officers took Florence into custody immediately and brought her to the Church Street station, escorting her directly into the office of Captain Halpin.

Now, she had been informed that she was under arrest and was being charged with a felony. But the police neglected or refused to inform Florence what the charge was or that Walter was in fact dead. They didn't tell her that, oh wow. Instead, they asked her to see her hair combs, which she handed over. But one of them, she appeared to be missing the back comb, which was precisely the comb that had been discovered in the room at Glen Island Hotel.

Remember, she said she saw him at the office and never saw him again. Imagine that. When she was finally informed of the charge against her, Florence insisted she knew nothing about the shooting. She said How could I shoot him? I've not seen him since six o'clock.

When I left his office, I came right home and arrived at 730 o'clock. My father and mother were at the theater. I saw no one and went to bed, I saw no one.

No one saw me and I saw no one. I love that you had to make sure to be like no one. Absolutely not one person on planet Earth can confirm this alibi and that I went to sleep. Thank you and good night, thank you and good night.

Other than her insistence that she had nothing to do with the shooting, Florence was generally uncooperative in an effort to get more. What do you mean? I'm shocked I know Florence, excuse me. In an effort to get more information or to catch her in a lie, the interviewing detective told Florence that Walter had been robbed.

And in response, Florence, with one hand balled into a fist, pounded the desk and said that the bellhop George Washington must have done it. Wow, that little bitch. She also used like racist language to describe him when she did it. So like, why did I know that? why did I didn't? you just know that?

I felt that as soon as you said she blamed it on the bellhop, I was like, Oh, she's being racist, yep, she said. Obviously George Washington had, you know, he did it. what a coont, But obviously George Washington hadn't taken the money. But he did, however, when they talked to him. Remember Florence?

And when he was brought into the station that day and asked whether she was the one woman who had checked into the hotel. With Walter Brooks, he emphatically confirmed that Yes, that bitch was the woman who was in the room with Brooks. He's like, I remember her, she was a pain in the ass. Certain that she was responsible for the shooting and confident that they weren't going to get much more out of her. Being very uncooperative and a dick.

Detectives escorted her out of the captain's office and took her to a cell in the Center Street station. It was at this point that the press got their first look at Florence Burns, and now she was being called an accused murderer. You know, she was getting like the femme fatale shit, yep.

And you know, this is the first time that she wasn't really liking the attention. Strangely enough, imagine that at one point, she screamed to her father, Father, father, help me, they're trying to take my picture.

Honey, no one's going to help you now, your dad front page news is not a good guy, yeah, now. On the morning of February 16th, Florence appeared before a judge at the Center Street Court, and she was wearing a dark veil to indicate the chosen morning. Of course, speaking on Florence's behalf was her defense attorney, Foster Backus, a former Kings County district attorney who'd gone into private practice after leaving public office.

Now, as a former D.

A.

Backus was intimately familiar with the ins and outs of the system and knew very well that his clients. His client wouldn't be in court that morning if the authorities didn't have a strong case against her. Because of this, he quickly developed a strategy where he would attempt to delay any sentencing or formal charges, giving him time to evaluate the evidence that was against Florence. Okay, in the days that followed, the evidence against Florence came out in multiple pretrial hearings, and it was likely kind of encouraging to Backus. Aside from her hair comb discovered in the room, and George Washington's identification of Florence as the woman with Walter, the night he checked in the case against Florence was pretty like, circumstantial.

It's true. The bullet taken from Walter's head was a match for the caliber of pistol owned by Fred Burns. But neither the gun used in the shooting or the gun owned by Burns could be found. Okay, so that was a problem, so there was nothing for the slug to be compared to, right?

And I also love that. Like, the fact that that gun was suddenly missing isn't considered SUS pretty good proof here, like, where did it go exactly now? At the same time, George Washington's identification had also kind of become a problem for the district attorney, William Jerome.

Why? Although Washington was, and always would be adamant that Florence was the woman who checked into the hotel with Walter Brooks, he'd looked her in the face multiple times. It was pointed out that Florence had been the only woman seen in the hotel that day. And, more importantly, Washington had made the identification after being brought to the police station, where he saw Florence being questioned. Oh, okay, you can't do that.

Yeah, that's wrong. It gave the impression that she was a suspect, if not guilty. The problem with this type of identification is that by asking him to identify Florence under those circumstances, he could have naturally assumed her to be guilty. And that can taint the identification. Like in the little things, exactly.

That movie, precisely now it started out as a strong case against Florence, was kind of unraveling a little bit. Although Jerome could have gone to a grand jury to get an indictment. He was aware that his already shaky case could be completely undone by the unwritten law, causing him to lose the case. According to Virginia McConnell, the unwritten law emerged in the American South in the mid-19th century. And it, quote, started out as a permission for a man to kill a man who had dishonored, raped, seduced, or even ruined the reputation of a woman they were related to, or intimately connected with?

Okay, let me say that one more time, so you guys can get that because this is an unwritten law. It was permission for a man to kill another man who had dishonored, raped, seduced or even ruined the reputation of a woman they were related to, or intimately connected with. That's wild, and basically what they're trying to say is that they're going to pin this on Fred Burns.

That they could actually, and that he could get away with it because of that law, that they could actually. Like, say that her reputation was dishonored in some way, so that exactly like that, this killing was done in her name.

Now in time, it was extended to women accused of murder as well, and was considered a viable defense. So now it can be like, you dishonored me, so I killed you. And it was as long as they had committed the crime to protect their decency. Isn't this wild?

Mama Burns doesn't have any decency. Although it wasn't really a law in the formal legal sense, the unwritten law was more like a temporary insanity claim. Okay?

And could reasonably be used to achieve an acquittal on the grounds of self-defense. Cuckoo nuts, bananas, isn't this?

Bananas. Knowing that his case was already somewhat precarious at this time. Jerome agreed to Backus request for a special sessions hearing where a judge would determine whether the evidence was strong enough. If at any point he changed his mind or wanted to go to a grand jury, Backus assured Jerome the DA could go to the grand jury and get an indictment. In reality, this was just an attempt for Backus to stall Jerome's investigation and give himself time to put critical evidence. Or witnesses like Fred and Henrietta burns out of the prosecution reach.

Now agreeing to the special sessions hearing, the first for a woman in New York. By the way, Jerome effectively put the responsibility for determining Florence's guilt in the hands of the newly appointed judge, Julius Mayer. Mayer's job was to interview witnesses and evaluate the evidence to determine whether she was responsible for Walter's death. Which meant he had to determine the following one means.

So we're going to need means, motive, and opportunity means. Walter Brooks was shot in the head with a .32 caliber pistol. So Mayer needed to confirm that not only did Florence Burns have access to a .32 caliber pistol, but also that she knew how to use one. Ah.

Motive Although motive cannot always be arrived at conclusively in order to determine guilt. Mayer needed to be convinced, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Florence had a reason to kill the man. She frequently and passionately and outwardly, exclaimed to be in love with mm-hmm and opportunity. Walter was shot in the middle of the night in a room at the Glen Island hotel.

Under those circumstances, Mayer needed to be confident that either Florence or someone acting on Florence's behalf had been in the hotel room with Walter at the time of the shooting. Okay, now, given what needed to be established, Judge Mayer had a difficult task ahead of him. Yeah, the gun used to kill Walter was never recovered, so there was no way to connect it back to Florence.

Still, it was a well-established fact that Frederick Burns owned a handgun of that same caliber, so it was possible that Florence could have used that gun. Yeah, and then she threw it off grandpa's bridge as far as the ability to use it, the grandpa's bridge.

Yeah, as far as the ability to use it. The coroner had examined the wound on Walter's head and found that while there was burn marks around the wound, there was no powder marks indicating that the barrel had been placed against his head when the gun was fired, that's horrific, given that the prosecution could easily and convincingly argue that one needn't any firearms training to have committed this murder. Because it was right up against it, right?

Like, it's not like she had a game. You don't need to aim or anything, right? The biggest issue was to be the idea, and to me, that would also mean that you were intimately near this man.

Yes, if you maybe he was asleep, you were able to get by close, that's what I think. He was asleep, and she just pressed it to his head.

Damn.

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, 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 the biggest issue was going to be the identification, placing Florence at the hotel with Walter. After all, if she couldn't be placed at the scene of the crime, how are you going to convince a jury that she was the shooter? In his testimony, George Washington not only described Florence perfectly for the judge, he also described the exact outfit she had been wearing when Harry Cohen saw her at the office that morning. Come on. Throughout the interviewing process, Washington's story remained consistent and he appeared to take the process very seriously.

But as a Black man, he was already suspect in the eyes of many, and considered at that time by these people to be lower intelligence than his white peers. That's the most fucked up thing. Backus used this to his advantage, taking every opportunity to remind the judge and the press of Washington's race, referring to him as different terms. Very loaded and sometimes aggressively racist terms, so disgusting. After hearing Washington's testimony and the arguments against it, Judge Mayer decided the identification and the circumstances under which it was obtained were too questionable. And he was unwilling to consider it.

It's also like, why put this poor man through this if you're just going to sit there and pick him apart and exactly humiliate him? George Washington looked this woman in the face several times. He asked her if she needed anything else. She turned and looked right at him and said, No, right, he knew who this, he described her outfit exactly.

And Harry Cohen said, Yes, that is the outfit I saw her in that day at the office. So he didn't just pull that out of thin air. Yeah, he wouldn't know that. There were others who had seen Florence with Walter on the evening. They checked into the hotel, including John Earl, the other Glen Island employee on duty that evening.

Unfortunately, Earl was frequently maligned in the press and described as not as astute as the Bellboy. So if the Bellboy is so astute, then why are we publicly humiliating him now? Also, I'm paraphrasing that sentence because I'm avoiding saying racist terms out loud. By the way, they just went all in in the press.

So his testimony and identification were equally unhelpful in the prosecution's case. They just threw them all out. These two men saw this, like, could identify her, and they were like, No, we're racist, so it's no now, finally, as the question of motive. There was a great deal of hearsay and circumstantial testimony. That supported the widely held belief that Walter and Florence had a difficult relationship and that Florence was generally a difficult person. Walter's mother, Mary, testified at length about her interactions.

Remember Mrs Brooks, why don't you use that pistol on yourself?

She testified at length about her interactions with Florence during the time she lived with them, telling Mayer that not only did Florence regularly threaten to kill Walter. But she said. Quote It seemed to happen every time they met, every single day. But when pressed for clarification, Mrs Brooks acknowledged that she had been exaggerating when she said the threats were a daily occurrence and that it wasn't as often as that. I mean, just the fact that she said it at all. Yeah, exactly the fact that she felt confident enough to say that in front of his parents is fucked up.

Yeah, and Mary also had to acknowledge that, despite the frequency with which Florence had threatened her son, she had never done it in front of anyone else. So there was no one else who could corroborate it. The final piece of testimony on which Jerome's case rested was the hair comb discovered in the room. Although the comb matched those worn by Florence on the day of her arrest and would have accounted for the missing back comb combs of that type were ubiquitous at the time of the murder. And there was no way to prove that the comb in the room belonged to Florence, even though she was missing that exact comb.

Did anybody also ever ask her, like, where'd you go in the middle of the night? Yeah, no. Or is she just trying to say, like, I was never there? I think she was just like I wasn't there.

Well, that's what she's saying, she's like, I met with him at his office. I left him at six. I was home by 730, No one saw me, but I went right to sleep.

And then the next morning, she was home, so as far as anyone was concerned, she was asleep. Wow, they had to tie this comb directly to her. And other than that, it wasn't really valued. Because they couldn't use. Like, it's not like they were using hair and shit at this point, so it's like.

And even still, that's like, tough, that comb. Even though she was missing that exact comb that she was wearing in her hair when they interviewed her, they still couldn't use it. After considering the evidence and testimony, Judge Mayer came to the following conclusions one. Threats Florence had hurled regarding shooting Walter were irrelevant because they had happened too long before the murder. And were set under a specific context to a specific person and were never heard by anyone else.

She said that she was going to shoot him. He ended up shot dead. Yeah, she'd also threatened to kill another boyfriend of hers, and other people had heard that, right?

So it's like, pattern wow number two. The discovery and identification of the hair comb found in the room at the Granite Glen Island was irrelevant because it matched the combs of thousands of women in New York. I guess I have to, like, accept that one, but it's so frustrating. But she was missing that one comb in her hair. It's like, come on.

I know it's circumstantial, I know that I believe that it was her, obviously, but it's just like, Oh yeah, it's like, so frustrating. Number three, George Washington's identification of Florence was valueless because the lineup and identification process was so deeply flawed that it couldn't be trusted. That really sucks that.

They fucked up on that. And number four. The statements made by Florence to detectives that were incriminating or suggested she knew more than she was saying were also thrown out because of the circumstances under which they were taken. Detectives lied and withheld various facts about the case, like not telling her what felony she was being charged with, or that Walter was dead. Yeah, that's right. So the comments could not be taken as a factual statement.

So it was botched, so everybody fucked up here now, on this last point. McConnell notes that there is no law prohibiting investigators from using deception to obtain a statement or confession from a suspect. So the statements made by Florence to police could very well have been used against her. This wasn't the law.

So him saying they used deception against her so that those weren't factual statements, No, that's not the law, and it wasn't the law then, yeah, it would be different. If they said, like, they bullied her into a confession or something like that, yeah, like if they beat the shit out of her or something. Or said, we're going to kill you if you don't confess.

But they were like, they just didn't tell her they were keeping it close to the chest. Or, you know, like they said certain things that could be deemed deceptive. There's no law that says they can't do that. So that that being thrown out of the trial is not right because legally it should have been let back in.

But McConnell suggests Quote the judge needed something to hang his hat on from a legal standpoint in order to apply the unwritten law. Even though the Burns case didn't fit the typical narrative of a naive young woman seduced and abused by a scheming man. They were going to use it anyway, given Walter's history as a member of the Bedford Avenue gang and the number of times he'd been arrested for fraud schemes. It was very easy for any defense attorney to use the unwritten law as a self-defense claim, especially when the evidence against the accused was flimsy and circumstantial. It's not that flimsy, it's really not.

It's circumstantial, sure, yeah, flimsy. Not so much now. Without new evidence, there would have been little point in indicating and trying Florence for Walter's murder.

And Jerome knew it, Jerome told the press. I still believe that Florence Burns killed Walter Brooks, but I have not got the evidence to prove it. We presented every bit of evidence we had. Jerome signaled his intent to keep the case open and seek additional evidence. Saying quote. To bring the one who did the killing to account is still one of the unfulfilled duties of this office. We will try to get more evidence.

Now, despite his insistence that they were going to continue pursuing this justice for Walter Brooks, Judge Mayer's decision in the special session essentially brought the case to an end. A coroner's inquest followed a few weeks after the hearing, during which the coroner and jury heard more or less the same testimony presented in the special session. And after reviewing the evidence and testimony, the jury concluded that the said. Walter Brooks came to his death on the 15th day of February 1902 at Hudson Street Hospital by a penetrating pistol shot wound of the head inflicted on the 14th day of February 1902 at the Glen Island Hotel by a revolver in the hands of some person unknown to the jury. Following the outcome of the inquest, William Jerome gave a statement to the press, saying For the present at least, the case is closed. Of course, no murder case is actually closed.

I shall be on the lookout for new developments all the time. And the slayer of young Brooks may yet be found now. Although the hearings had come to an end, the public's interest in Florence and the Burns family continued We bet Fred and Henrietta Burns were mortified.

They thought she had shamed them before. I was gonna say they were mortified by the attention and furious with Florence for once again bringing shame to their family. And for her part, Florence hardly ever left the house. And rather than take any responsibility for her situation, she just grew resentful of everyone else she believed was to blame for everything that had happened to her. Like, girl, you shot a man.

As far as she was concerned if her parents hadn't been so strict, or if the Bedford Avenue gang hadn't been such scoundrels. Or if Harry Cohen hadn't tried to interfere with her relationship with Walter, none of this would have happened. The fuck did Harry Cohen do? He tried to get it, he tried to get Walter to, like, not meet with her, yeah.

And she was pissed about it. And he shouldn't have, exactly. By the fall of 1902, Florence had grown tired of being a prisoner in her own home. And she had eloped with Charles Wildrick, a man ten years older than her. How'd that go?

Like the members of the Bedford Avenue gang, Wildrick came from a prominent family. But rather than take advantage of the opportunities afforded to him, he chose a life of leisure and petty crime. Oh God. A year before the marriage, Wildrick had been arrested for passing bad checks at hotels. It's like you had the money.

A gem, you literally come from a rich family. After hearing testimony from Wildrick's friends and girlfriend, all of whom lied for him, the judge dismissed the charges, deeming him a gentleman in hard luck who'd fallen among bad associates. Oh, please. A few months later, in an attempt to capitalize on her notoriety, Florence accepted an offer from a Vaudeville company willing to pay her $1,500 to appear on stage.

Damn, that was a lot of money, McConnell points out. Most people believed Florence had killed Walter Brooks. Yeah, and most did not mind that she got away with it.

But making money off of it was crossing the line. It surely didn't help that the theater company billed her as the most persecuted and most beautiful woman in America. I don't know about that. Not surprisingly, Florence's debut on the stage was a disaster. Oh God.

She had no talent, she had no determination, She refused to rehearse and was generally very unpleasant to everybody around her. Critics called her a dismal and pitiable failure. What'd she even do?

And they called her ungraceful in her movements. I believe that she would dance, but she wouldn't rehearse. So she just fucking went up there and winked at everybody. She was just a dick to everybody, so she, just everybody hated her.

They probably were like, go break a leg, literally, literally break a leg. Florence's stage career ended after three years, just around the time her marriage to Wilderick began falling apart, in December 1906. I'm sorry, the fact that it lasted three years is bonkers to me. In January 1907, she moved back in with her parents, claiming that he, you know, her husband had been unfaithful.

Then she began sending postcards to his employer, claiming, among other things, that he was a morphine fiend, hoping the accusations would ruin his career. Jesus Christ, she just she doesn't stop. After the collapse of her marriage, Florence's life continued a downward spiral. Living mostly on money sent to her by her father. She began drinking heavily, frequently caused drunken scenes in public.

Whenever she was recognized around town, people were often surprised that she was no longer what they had seen in the papers. But instead, she was in shambles. At this point, Karma's a bitch. She was wearing dirty, rumpled clothing, just not taking care of herself. In the fall of 1910, Florence and her boyfriend Edward Brooks, which is no relation, were arrested for running a scheme known as a badger game in which a woman tricks an unsuspecting person into a compromising position, then extorts money from them in exchange for their silence.

The fuck? The victim in this case was a man named Charles Hurlburt, and he had for months been giving Florence money under the assumption they were involved in a romantic relationship. Oh, that's so sad. Eventually, Burns and Brooks forced Hurlburt to sign a declaration admitting quote. He had been guilty on various occasions of degrading practices with women. Wow.

Now, Florence and Brooks were both arrested and put on trial, after which it took a jury only 12 minutes to find both guilty. 12 minutes. And each were sentenced to 7 to 14 years in prison. Florence was released from prison in August 1918 and continued that downward spiral in 1922. She pleaded guilty to violating the Sullivan Act, which required New York gun owners to carry a license, and was sent back to prison.

How the fuck did this woman get a gun? And was paroled two years later, in March 1944? Firefighters 1944. Wow, I know.

Firefighters responded to a house fire at the home of Florence and her fourth husband, John Stankovich. After forcing their way into the home. They found Florence unconscious on the kitchen floor and dragged her out of the house and to a hospital, where she was revived and sent on her way. This was the last time Florence's name appeared in the newspaper until her death in August 1949. No cause of death is given, and she's described only as loving wife of John. What?

And that is Florence Burns and the murder of Walter Brooks. Wow, what? I think I said, Wow, at least 49 times throughout that. So, 1944. There's just a fire at her house.

They find Florence unconscious on the kitchen floor. They drag her ass out, bring her to a hospital, revive her, send her on her way, and no one hears from her again until she dies. That's so eerie, like, what, like, five years later or four years later? yeah.

And nobody even knows how she died. No, no cause of death is given. That's chilling, isn't that?

Bonkers chilling. What a woman question mark, what a woman, what a woman question mark.

Truly damn, that was a crazy case, that was very captivating. It's a wild case.

It's just got a lot of like, what the hell's going on here? Yeah, I feel so bad for for his family, I know.

That's just the fact that they could see it coming and that they were trying to, you know, kind of save him from it. Yeah, and all of his friends and everything, yeah.

Just I don't, I feel it's. It's not like any of the Bedford Avenue gang were like good individuals. No one deserves to die, though. And it's like, Well, and it sounds like he wasn't really. It looks like he was trying to get away from this situation.

Yeah, you know, right, and it's just like, damn.

That's crazy. That could be a movie, it really could. yeah, like it really could.

You could see this being like such a visually wild movie to watch. Absolutely, she really got away with it, man, she sure did well, that's crazy.

Yeah, and we hope you keep listening, and we hope you keep it weird, weird.

But not so weird that you do anything that Florence did in this case, because wowie cuzowie, wow, wow, yeah, yeah bye.

I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know.

I didn't know you hit the button, how was I supposed to know?

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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 en 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. And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia. Or a corrupt police cover-up, if you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a cover-up 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 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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