After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Is This New York's Craziest Murder Case?

Episode Date: August 31, 2026

This week we're revisiting a favourite episode set in New York at the end of the 20th century.The year is 1897, and this murder case has it all: a villain, an incredibly useless police force, and a duck who saves the day.The incredible Dr Cat Byers (@heymorguegirl) joins Maddy and Anthony to tell this story.Edited by Tomos Delargy. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.After Dark is a History Hit podcast.History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards. Click to place your vote on the Spotify mobile app: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello After Dark listeners. It is I, Anthony Delaney, one of your co-hosts from, of course, After Dark. Now listen, we have some good news. We have been shortlisted for the top 20 in the Listeners Choice Award category for this year's British Podcast Awards. Now, we made the top, I think it was five last year. So we are greedy historians and we want to make that top five again. This year, things are slightly different though. You can only vote for us in this long list in the Spotify app. And you'll find a link in this week's episode that'll take you to vote for us. As a matter of fact, you can vote for us three times. So if you feel so inclined, please do that. We want to make that top five. We're going to smash it this year. I think we're going to take it, he said, with absolutely no confidence. But lend us your vote and we'll see how well we get on. Heading for the top five, I know we can do it. Hello and welcome to After Dark. Now, we're going to open this episode with a quote from our guest today, all about the case that we're going to be discussing. And the Quote is this. This 1897 murder in New York was one of those stories everyone in the city knew about,

as reporters battled it out to be the first to get the big scoop. It's got everything you could want in a salacious tabloid tale. Jealousylusy, love triangles, baby farms, bathhouses, and of course a violent murder. Oh, and a duck named Julia, accidentally leading the police to a vital clue. To set the scene, here's Anthony. The afternoon of Saturday, June 26, 1897, was hot and humid in New York City. All around Manhattan's many piers, children splashed about in the cool water. James McKenna and John McGuire had jumped into the river at the foot of East 11th Street when they saw something odd floating towards them, a large, brightly coloured package.

Dreaming of treasure fallen from a ship, they swam out to it and pulled it. back to the dock. Once retrieved, the boys could see that it was oddly bulky. A small crowd of onlookers gathered and one of them passed a knife to the boys in the water. They scored a tear in the thick, red and golden oilcloth, excited to discover what they'd found. Through the tear they made, they saw something white inside and drew out the blade, noting a sticky, tacky substance along its edge. Despite the humidity and the heat of the sun, a shiver passed through the boys. And the crowd realised what they had found. With urgency now, the package was hauled out of the water. Someone fetched a policeman. The parcel lay there for a while before anyone dared to peel back the

red and gold wrapping any further. When finally they did unwrap the floating package, their worst fears were realised. Inside was the mutilated torporated. or so of a human being, the chest and arms, but no head, no stomach or legs. Welcome to After Dark, where in this episode we aim to piece together the history of the Scattered Dutchman. Fantastic pun to start with. Yeah, absolutely. I've also never heard a more girl caption read back to me before.

It was quite fun. Well, there we go. you might have guessed that in today's episode we're joined back with Dr. Kat Byers, one of our all-time favorite guests. We've just done an episode with Kat about the Goufay murder case in Paris. And this is kind of a companion episode to that. But whereas France had in the 19th century a lot of very clever, very groundbreaking detectives, New York were about to find out was a little bit more chaotic. Some might even say a bit farcical.

Kat, welcome back to After Dark. Thank you. It's great to be back. It's so good to have you here. I am obsessed with this story. And obviously, the duck, most importantly of all. Julia. Julia, honestly. She's the star.

She really is. Okay, so I just want to give us a little bit of context before we dive into the story here. Because this is a really, really interesting moment for New York City, right? So we're in 1897. And this is a moment when the city, as we would recognize, recognize it today, it's starting to emerge. So in Manhattan, the skyscrapers are literally taking off and shooting into the air. And the American economy is absolutely booming in this moment. This is the time that's known as the Golden Age, right? There's huge wealth to be made and there's huge

levels of immigration as well. So arriving from Europe and further beyond are hundreds of thousands of people who are all coming into the city through Ellis Island. And if you look at old photos of this time. What is so fascinating is you see the streets of the city are absolutely teeming. So people are, I mean, really almost piled up on top of each other, right? This is an extraordinary moment of sort of busyness and bustle. The other thing that's happening in this moment is that in America there's a newly elected president, William McKinley, who is really famous for one thing, and that is being assassinated, which hasn't happened yet, to be fair, that will happen in 1901. So there we go. There's a little bit of a feel for what this time period in the city

might look like and sound like. But let's get to the story. Kat, we have a body. Part of a body. Yes, very importantly, part of a body that's been discovered. These boys find it in the water. What happens next? Where is it taken? So as with any pieces of bodies found in New York, it's taken to the morgue. And then a couple of days later, another part of what appears to be the same body is found just outside of New York by a poor man and his son, blueberry picking. Got these two pieces, they take them to the morgue. And obviously, as you would assume, police investigation starts. Now, are they assuming this is the same body, or are they like, oh, we're just finding loads of body parts, or are they connecting pretty quickly?

This one, they're connecting pretty quickly. I mean, they do find body parts fairly frequently, but these two, it's obvious that they're from the same body. So they're like, right, we've got two pieces. I mean, from just the one, you'd be quite clear that it was, you know, probably a suspicious situation. But having two, you're like, okay, someone's tried to hide this. So it's at the morgue. And obviously, trying to figure it out sort of begins.

The first instinct is maybe it's a medical cadaver. So obviously we've got this going. We talked previously about the New York morgue and body sales. So, you know, a lot of body part business is going on at the morgue anyway. So first, like, maybe this is someone used it for a medical cadaver and just threw it in the river afterwards, but then based on the way that the body's been cut, and they think, okay, this isn't from a medical scenario. But apart from that, they haven't got any clues whatsoever. It's a man who's quite muscular and well built, but he has really smooth hands and manicured nails. So there's this immediate confusion of like, okay, he's got a, that he looks like he maybe has a physical laboring job, but he's got these really smooth, sort of tidy hands. So at this point, they have absolutely nothing. like nothing to identify him beyond his torso on his hands. That is very confused. I mean, my mind can't come up with an explanation for that.

So I can totally, you know, we're saying like, oh, they can't solve this and this is blah, blah, blah. But actually, that's quite confusing. I'm confused by this. But the backdrop, of course, as you can well imagine, is that the police are involved, as we say, and as you say, Kat, they're connecting these threads pretty quickly. but then also the press starts to get involved.

So what does the combination of the police involvement and the press involvement, how does that stir things up at the time? So also very kind of you to be so generous to the police that not be able to figure this out. Thank you. I am an empath. What can I say? It's not their fault is their job when they can't figure out.

So essentially what's happening in this moment is that obviously this is announced in the press. And we're also at this moment where, as we talked about before, like the press in the 19th century is really like it's when you've got this real tab. blog press happening and like big selling salacious stories, selling murder, selling crime. And so the pretties about this and they are like, this is fantastic. So there's all these like massive stories. And you've got these big rivalries going on with massive newspapers as well of like who gets a scoop. So that's adding to all this.

And you've got reporters descending on the morgue trying to figure it out, asking the police questions. And then at the same time, the police themselves are not the most professional outfit at this point. So the New York Police is like a relatively young police force still. And it's also just incredibly corrupt. And, you know, I'm sure there's some people in the police who are like trying really hard and good at their job. But in general, it's a really corrupt institution. And this is in 1897 and literally two years before Theodore Roosevelt, who then goes on to be president, has become the sort of head of the police.

He's been brought in to try and sort out the police because it's so corrupt. And it's so embedded in all the different like institutions in the city. And this is also the year when all the morgue scandal stuff kicks off. So like, this is the set up we've got is not only the police and the morgue not very good at their jobs. Everybody also knows that they're not very good at their jobs. So these are coming together. So there's an element where the press are like, we want to solve this mostly because we want a scoop. But actually, we're probably going to be a bit more imaginative and a bit more focus on solving it than the police.

And you've got, yeah, so all these people start coming to the morgue. You've got palm readers, you've got occultists, you've got a cultist, You've got people being like, I'm a fortune to have I can communicate with the spirit. You've got a phrenologist, even though there's no head. Like, you've got all these people coming and reporting who they think it might be. You've got all these women who are looking for a missing husband or a missing lover. All these people are sending on the morgue, but as of yet, they have not been able to figure it out. It's such an interesting contrast, isn't it?

It's from the previous episode that we've just done about the Goufé case in Paris, where the police are key to solving what's the case. happening and it's their incredibly detailed and groundbreaking forensic work that actually catches the two killers in that story. And if you haven't listened to that episode, listeners, do go back and listen to that. I have here a quote from a New York detective, presumably about this case, and it gives a real flavor of where the police are at and what the tone of policing in New York is, right? It's quite a long quote, but I'm going to read it, says, I believe that this most atrocious murder was committed by a foreigner.

In the whole history of crime in this country, murders which were done with like ferocity as this have always been committed by foreigners, usually those of a warmer climate than ours. All right. I should judge, from what I've heard of this case, that the murderer is Sicilian, or possibly a Spaniard or a Cuban. Maybe a Spanish spy has been put out of the way by Cubans. I mean, it's just, it goes on and on. I suppose on the one hand this speaks to what a diverse place New York already was at the end of the 19th century

and something of those class and racial tensions that were going on, and particularly those clashes therefore with the police. But presumably then, as well as now, this was an astonishing thing to say, surely. I think it was astonishing in the sense of, is that really all you've got to go on is there's a red and gold oil cloth. maybe Spaniards love red and gold that'll be who did it so I think in that sense

it's kind of astonishing but it's also they just didn't have anything and it's interesting if we think about it compared to the last case we talked about where you had this incredible friend that doctor who was able to be like even based on a body that is so far decomposed I can figure out who it is

in this case it was like yeah we don't we don't we don't really have the ability of the skill of the technique to do that here yet so we just don't know it is but unfortunately some intrepid reporters step up. So they start pulling the clues together.

And one of those clues, I've been really struck by the description of the oil cloth the whole way through. I've been kind of going, we're talking about this oil cloth an awful lot here. We're talking about the colours, we're talking about the blah, blah, blah. But actually it turns out to be quite a key clue, right?

Yeah, so obviously it's quite a distinctive thing. And again, like the Goufay case, if you've got at least a material object, you're like, we can go with this. And they figure out where it was purchased. So they find this little shopmastoria and this woman says, oh, I sold it to a German housewife named Augusta Nack. That sounds like a character's name.

I know. It does, it does. But she's German, so she's foreign. So immediately we're not trusting her in the context of this world. She is foreign, although there's a lot of Germans in New York at this period. But yes, so she's, this woman called Augusta Nack. And so they have this clue. So they start to be a bit like, okay, what was the situation with this woman called Augusta?

And then they also have another reporter who has been thinking a lot about the body and about this idea of it being really muscular about having these smooth hands. And he's like, this reminds me something. What does this remind me of? And he often goes to one of the bathhouses to get like a scrub. And he's like, wait a second. This is like the guys at the bathhouse who obviously have very muscular. Yeah. That's the gayest thing I've ever heard.

He just goes for fun. He's definitely a super straight guy. He just goes there after work. Anyway, he goes to his bath house like five times a week. And so he goes and he questions all these different bathhouses. And then at one of them, they're like, oh, yeah, actually we have this guy called William Goldenstock, this Dutch guy, who hasn't turned up for work recently because he went off to see this country house

with his girlfriend and so we haven't seen him. And so then they get him, like some employees in the bathhouse, to come to the morgue and see if they recognize the body. Well, that's kind of clever. Well, I guess it's not really clever. It's just they so, they happen by that information. don't they really? I mean, it's clever on behalf of the reporters.

Yes. I mean, the police are like, great. Thanks, guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, thanks so much for doing our work. Yeah. Okay, so the press digs up this woman, Augustinac, and we know that she bought the red and gold oil cloth.

That's got to be suspicious right away. I mean, she must be in our frame as a suspect, right? Yeah, because, I mean, the body part was obviously wrapped in this, and it's not the most common thing in the world to be wrapped in. so this is when they start we're looking closely into Augusta. And I have a picture of Augusta here, which I'm going to describe to you, because it's quite telling, I think, of how people were perceiving her. This is very clearly a newspaper sort of sketch of her.

And she looks very severe. She's, I suppose, a middle-aged woman. She's got white dark hair with these sort of, that very late 19th century curly fringe that's kind of in like two little curtains either side of your forehead. And she's got quite a sort of ugly, elaborate. hat on her head with some feathers and quite a lot of ribbon. And I don't know if it's maybe a fur coat or something, some kind of collar that's puffed out or something, but she just,

she looks quite, not exactly overdressed, but like she's trying to look more respectable than she maybe is. And she's also very severe. She's got this very high, kind of dark brow that's, yeah, kind of looming over these quite sad looking eyes and this very sort of sharp, severe face and nose. And then, on the other hand, we have a little illustration of William, the Dutchman who's missing. And this is interesting considering there's no head to this body, but the newspapers have given it a go anyway. And he, unlike Augusta is, I would say, good looking. He's got this lovely, neat sort of central parting with his hair combed down the side. He looks very respectable. He's got a nice cravat right up under his neck. And he's got the most fantastic.

mustache, quite fancy and late 19th century mustache, so I'm quite into that. But it's interesting already the betrayal of some of the people involved in the case by the media. Not only are they kind of picking up these clues and following the trail, I suppose, but in some ways actually

sort of rewriting or making assumptions about the story as they go along as well. I mean, I think a little bit, and I think there was definitely a lot of that in the 19th century of kind of like looking like a criminal versus not looking like a criminal. I think in a case of Augustin Arc, it might have just been quite accurate.

They described her at one point as pleasant yet repellent. And she seemed to be very seductive, and she did have various sort of men circling around her. But I think that maybe she also was only in her 30s, and I think she looked pretty hard worn for her 30s, no offence to her. The impression I get is that she was quite terrifying woman. And so she, basically they trace that Golden Sup had been,

you know, that had been his girlfriend. And so they go in the interview her, and then they track down her husband because they think, oh, maybe her, maybe it's like a jealous husband situation, and her husband who's this baker called Herman, is like, we broke up a year and a half ago, she was cheating on me, I have nothing to do with her.

Please keep me away from Augusta. This is Augusta's husband. Augusta's actual husband. She does have an actual husband. Yeah. And it turns out that William had moved in with him as a lodger and then she'd just taken up with William. Oh.

Yeah. He sounds like a bit of a ride. and he has a girlfriend. Then we have this picture of Augusta who I'd be like, I know like, yeah, I don't want to cast down his brain. She must have been very funny. Put it that way.

She must have had a great personality. Look, I think the charisma doesn't necessarily come off the page. Yeah, no. But let's not doubt that it was there. It was there. Like Augusta was, well, she literally had men fighting over her. Yes. So this is how they're connected.

William and Augusta and Augusta are in knocking boots. Yeah. And they're like, okay, this is waiting. She's like, oh, no, it was nothing to do with me. Nothing to do with me. And then there's a third man that's involved. Because it turns out that after Augusta left her husband to be a bill, they got another lodger.

This is like a whole theme called Martin. And then Martin and Augusta start getting together. Go on, Augusta. Yeah. You know, New York, there you go. And then William finds out beats Martin up. And Martin's in the hospital for all. a while and then he gets fired from his job as a barber because he comes in with two black eyes.

So now the police are learning about all this and they're like, okay, there's this whole set up going on with this Augusta woman in the middle. And then all these rumours start swarling that Augusta's not in fact a midwife and it's actually an illegal abortionist. And so we have all of this going on. And it's the newspapers that are picking all this stuff up and they're like running around interviewing people. They're like running after Herman's like Baker's truck and he's like please leave me phone. I left that woman. I'm already a cook old. He took up with a Lodger in my house, like, leave me alone. Yeah, I feel bad for Herman.

Wow, okay. Wow. So, presumably, this was not an untypical situation for a lot of people living in the city, right? You know, we think of the 19th century as adhering to very strict sort of, you know, marital boundaries and all that. Stop for a second. Wait. People chasing around trucks. A lover with no head and no arms and whatever it is.

Murder aside. Run of the mill. Run of the mill stuff here. normalized 19th century throuples, guys. This is the story that people aren't getting. Oh, my God. This is what's happening. Okay, fine.

There's, look, let's just take the headless guy out of the equation for a second. But I do think that, you know, people had affairs all the time. People broke up with their spouses and had strange and unusual living arrangements all the time. And I think that's, I mean, we often talk about, you know, this is why true crime is so useful and interesting to historians. Because it gives you a way into and a reference. of the lives of people who might otherwise have disappeared from the written archive, right? And I think this is exactly that. This is just, we're sort of laughing. It's quite a sort of hilarious set up. And yeah, kind of Victorian thruple. But the only reason we know about this is because one of them turns up

dead. And I think that's, it's just so amazing that we have that information. Now, Kat, let's get to the important stuff here because where does this duck come in? There's a duck in this case. Come on. What's going on? Where does a duck come in? Rather to what you've, just said, I think that's so true. And I think that we always have this idea of the 19th century is like people living these really prim lives. And obviously, there is this very strong kind of moral and social ideology of what appropriate and inappropriate ways to live. But it doesn't mean that most people were actually living that way or that people really cared that much when you got down to it. Because I think the idea of like, turns out your neighbours having

a fair or part of some word thruropel, like it just don't think people would care that much. And I think these things are normalized. And I always find it sort of frustrating when you read things and people assume that everyone around that person would have behaved a certain way to an affair, to an unword pregnancy, whatever it was when you're like, I think a lot of people were just kind of getting by. And like maybe there would have been some external judgment or like some illusion of judgment, but also people who just sort of lived their lives. But anyway, yes, the duck, the vital part of the story. So all this stuff is going on and the police are now are now actually involved and they're investigating and they're interviewing people. And then

we have, like, I think it's before all this. So Martin, it's, also just not the smartest guy in the world. And he just cannot stop my thing off. And he goes to his barbershop. So also for like months leading up to this, he kept going to the barbershop and being like, hey, random question guys. Like, do you know what you about poison? Like, hey, do you know where I can get like a massive knife? So he's been doing this for like for ages. And also everybody knows that he hates this guy, William because of the whole situation and that William obviously beat him up. And he's kind of like feeling a little, he's like sort of threatened by him. He's like, oh, I can't believe this guy. I should get rid of him. So he's literally going to

around time being like, you know, making it known that he hates William the handsome Dutch masseuse guy. And then police don't have the crime scenes. They've got all the stuff. It seems really really suspicious. They also go to Augusta's apartment and search it. They find a pistol. All the stuff's coming together. They haven't got a crime scene. But then the duck comes into the story. So what happened is that they had rented a house, Gissette's out in New York in political woodside and Augusta had said to William who I think she was still involved with this.

This is also very murky like I think she was still involved with both of them and they set up this plan and so she says to William like oh I'm thinking of starting this baby farm do you want to come up and see the house with me like we could live there and run it together

she's also telling Martin like oh you could run a baby farm with me and you can have a barbershop slash baby farms and she's like playing them off and Kat just for our listeners who haven't heard her episode on Amelia Dyer and baby farms can you just tell us briefly what And baby farm is in the 19th century.

So it's basically somewhere where if you couldn't afford to take care of your child, you would pay a woman running a, quote, baby farm to take care of that child. Maybe ongoing or maybe just you'd give the child totally to them for a lump sum of money. And obviously, a lot of people running these farms had no incentive to take care of the children, and then we just take the money and so let the children die or in some cases murder them. So that's the kind of setup we've got going over here. It's also like, Augusta's like, she's not a great girl. Like, she's got a lot of terrible criminal activity going on.

Anyway, so she, they lure William up to this house and shakes him upstairs and Martin is hiding in a cupboard and he leapsed out and shoots William stabs him and then like cuts him up. So like really just very much kills him. And then they dismember the body pack it up in these oil skins. And then to clear out the house, Mark, Martin turns the taps on because he doesn't really know much about cleaning, leaves the tap running and it's like that'll just sweep all the blood out of the house. Go down the drain, it'll be great. But he doesn't realize is that this actually just creates a puddle outside the house for days and days of this kind of like bloody water. And nearby this house is a farm.

And this farm is a duck called Julia. Are you making off that she's called Julia? No, genuinely she's called Julia. This is part of the narrative. She is a big part of the story. Her name is actually Julia. She's a great name for a duck. Anyway, I imagine perhaps that she hadn't been named prior to this case happening,

and then when it all blew up her neighbours, the guy who owns was probably like, she's my favourite duck, this is her name, it's his moment for the spotlight. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He may have just been calling her like the duck beforehand. Anyway, Julia, like, goes on a little walk as he did in the countryside, and then comes back and her owner notices that she's, like, covered in what looks like blood. Julia, what have you been doing? So Julia has been committing crimes in the countryside.

He inspects her and finds that there's no injury. So he is like, obviously in my imagination, he's like, Julia, leave me to the crime. I think he probably just like follows like she waddles off. Exactly. She's like, come with me. And then he finds this pool of blood and goes into the house and it's like, oh my God, there seems to have been a murder here because they haven't cleaned up properly. And then contacts the police.

And then the police obviously tie this all together. And they're like, right, well, now we've got the scene of. the crime and we've got some murder weapons and we've got two people who clearly did this or were absolutely involved in this and we can prove that they knew him and they both had a motive because it also comes out from Martin and also from ex-husband Herman that Augusta was nervous about William giving away her whole baby farm illegal abortion business things and she was maybe being blackmailed by him so she definitely had a reason to want him killed. And Panny, he also tried to get someone to murder her ex-husband, but that obviously didn't work. And so then they are put on trial.

Now, one thing I just want to inject here while we're going through this is this is a message for producer Freddie, producer Stu and senior producer Charlotte. The next time we have cat on, can somebody vet her stories that they're actually true? Because I think she is making shit up just to come on this podcast. This is the most bizarre thing. I have her. heard some stories over the last two years on this podcast. But a duck genuinely kind of helping to solve a murder has to be right up there with some of the best material we've had. You're welcome after Dark listeners. You're very, very welcome. Yeah, Julia the Duck. And I think she just hasn't had the recognition that she deserves for this case. She hasn't had the mini series. Being played by Saran Jones. So he'd do so well. Yeah, duck solving crimes. Yeah. And I think it is one those things. Obviously they had all the other pieces and they probably would have found the house eventually but it's a great way to get to the house. But I mean, I'm sure you guys have

experienced this because of all the episodes you've done that sometimes there's stuff that is absolutely stranger in fiction and that if something you read about it in a fiction book, she'd be like, that's a bit on the nose. That wouldn't happen like that. We can't put that in. Yeah, yeah. They won't buy that. Yeah. There's no way they would buy this woman with her illegal baby farm luring one of her lovers and her thruffle up to this house to murder him. If you submitted this as a novel to your editor and the big twist was a duck, found the blood, and therefore the crime was solved, the editor would be like, we have a bit of a plotting issue here. Like this, no, we're not doing this. Did you lose interest in the last third of the book?

Did you give up and just thought what could possibly solve this? It's interesting for me because I think when we started this conversation, I was thinking this would be, it was kind of picturing like the set of something like, I know it's set up earlier, but like sort of gangs of New York. style like, you know, kind of gritty city streets and poverty and lots of immigrants kind of living cheap by jowl in this very tense environment and the police kind of being on the exterior of that and sort of brushed up against it in terms of that tension. But actually, we're looking at this place on Long Island just outside of New York, but also like, it's so bucolic. There's a farm next door. And it's so, I suppose it would have been so shocking at the time to think that in this respectable, at least semi-rural setting,

where there are lovely named ducks that are beloved by their owners flopping around in puddles, that there would be a couple who, A, were plotting and capable of carrying out a murder, but also that planned to move into that neighbourhood to run a baby farm and possibly provide illegal abortions.

That must have been so salacious for the 19th century reader coming across this story. This is the thing about the countryside. This is why I'm scared of the countryside because you just don't know what people are up to. But I think there is that. And I think at the time, like,

I don't know if people would have been shocked at this happening. Because also, I mean, like, so many cases in the 19th century, you know, ones that didn't really make it out of the local area and ones that were a massive deal were scenarios of like a, you know, a murder happening somewhere where people didn't expect. Or, you know, the tiny town. You know, that's that classic trope and it's a trope for a reason of like, you know, in this tiny, beautiful town, something dark.

was lurking. It's like the entire like David Lynch filmography. Like, I think there's an element of, obviously the story was surprising. There's a reason why they said sort of trial of century, although they say that like every other year. But it also, I think just, I don't know, there was very much this gritty life in New York at the time, like you're saying this kind of gangs of New York thing

that really was a reality that people lived incredibly hard, incredibly difficult, brutal lives. Not everybody, but it was like a really brutal time. And so I think that, you know, obviously something's this is an extreme example, but I also don't think that people would have been shocked at what other people around them were capable of in that way. And again, these stories are drummed up. They're made bigger by the tabloids and it's huge full-page spreads and people get really obsessed with it. And the duck really adds a whole other dimension. But I don't think it would have been really shocking in that way.

It's so interesting to think about the ordinariness of murder, and that's an odd phrase, and I don't mean it to sound glib, but actually it's a very interesting thought exercise to think about the ordinariness of murder. That's really, really interesting. Yeah, and it's something that I think with the morgues, like I come across obviously all the time that, you know, you have these big cases and again, some of them are massively blown up, but the vast majority of cases, even the ones are blown up, are about like a domestic dispute. ultimately. You know what I mean? They're like a romantic entanglement. They're about money. They're about jealousy. They're about all these different things. Even, you know, the one that we did last time I was on about the Gouffey case is it's financially motivated. It's three people in this, they've caught up in these circumstances. So I think there's that as well as that like murder, it's not ordinary, but it is most of the scenarios are like human interactions and like human complexities that end up just being pushed to the extreme or like absolutely blowing up. But again, I think it's one of the reasons we're all fascinated by your crime is because

it's like what happens when humans are pushed past the limit, or when they break the social code, which says you don't do that, even if you have been betrayed, blackmailed on these other things. And that's why, as well, I suppose, we're so obsessed with detective stories of this era and later because those are the people who come by and put that order back together again and say, no, no, that was a blip. Everything is fine. You don't need to look beneath the surface of other people's lives. It's all good. You know, which is very, very. of Agatha Christie, right, this idea that in every, again, like you were saying, Kat, you know, every picturesque village in England, there's someone waiting to shoot their husband

or poison the housekeeper or whatever it is, that everyone has the capability, I suppose, within them to do that. So obviously, thanks to Julia, the crime is solved. And you mentioned that Augusta and Martin are arrested. So presumably they're taken to trial, what happens at that trial and is it a big sensation, considering it's such a big story in the press? The trial is a massive sensation, and obviously is reported on all day, every day, and also internationally. So again, like, you see with all these kind of cases, there's, you know, they're reporting on in the UK, they're reporting on wherever, and everyone is, like, absolutely gripped. And I think especially it's another case where everyone fits into, like,

really great stereotypes. And so, obviously, the more that people fit into a stereotype, the more people are like, this feels like reading detective fiction. So they have this trial, and they both kind of turn on each other. So Augusta also has been really, she's just kept her cool the whole time. There was this one moment before the trial when they, so they found some legs as well at some point. They found some other part of the body.

They never found the head, but they found some legs. And they like present her with the legs. And she's like, I'm not bothered that I'm not having any reaction to these. And I think apparently she also starts charging people in prison to come see her. She's like, oh, you can come see me like 25 cents.

And then she like refuses to say anything. And then Martin kind of gives his whole version of the story, which is that she made him do it. And then her story is like, he was all his idea and she was an accessory. So obviously it's that kind of classic thing of being like, you know, whose fault is it going to be? And he gets this amazing lawyer who I really wish someone would write a book about this guy, but he destroyed all his own records, obviously, because he was a crooked lawyer. And he was like this really flamboying guy at the time who was famous for defending like all the like, sort of quote low lives of New York.

And apparently once managed to get this woman acquitted who'd shot her lover four times because he said that she pulled the trigger accidentally four times, like every single time was an accident. So this guy is like so good. So Martin, I think he thinks he's going to go out. He sounds like who's the lawyer in Chicago in the 1920s. Like the time he's Flynn, yeah, that exact.

Called How. Anyway, so he's the lawyer. But at the end of the day, the evidence is just too strong against the fact that like Martin did it. Like Augusta was definitely involved. Martin did it. And then he's sentenced to the, I think it's the electric chair. So he's executed for it.

And she gets 20 years in prison. And obviously it's on those trials where they bring in all these different witnesses. They bring in her husband. They bring in the morgue keeper, like all these other people are involved. But in the end, it's Martin that is executed for the crime. And then she gets out of prison after, I want to say, 15 years. And then for a bit she tries to get a job as a prison warden. so she's like...

She really enjoyed her time there. But literally she was like, I really understand how this whole business works. Like I should be a prison warrant and no, but she doesn't get a job as that. And then she changes her name and like sets up a shop. But she stays in New York. So we think she'll leave and she's like,

no, no, I'm staying. It's interesting, Kat, because I've got a picture of her here. And, you know, often when we have, you know, we're talking about the illustration earlier and we're like, oh, you know, often when we were faced with these things, we have to take them with a pinch of salt. But this is a photograph.

And it ain't, a million miles off what the drawing shows, to be perfectly honest. She seems like a serious, a serious woman, actually, but I suppose a woman of a certain age. Yeah, she's a, she's a really interesting character. And another, another person who seems to have a savviness about her position in this, it almost seems sometimes, I'm going to say this, and I'll just be interested to know what both do you think, actually, but sometimes it seems that even contemporary minds, as much as they maligned women, and God did they, they sometimes couldn't quite get to the ends of the thing of going and she was monstrous. And she potentially was somebody who is capable of murder, is capable of

manipulation. It was almost like their misogyny extended so far that they couldn't possibly put women in some of the most extreme situations that they are capable of going to. Do you think that's fair or do you think that's a bit of an odd. reading. Oh, no, I absolutely agree. And I think there is that extent to which it's like, it's like a weirdly protective misogyny or something. And it's this idea of like they can't be an entire person, which extends to them not being able to be evil. But it's like real feminism is women can also be evil. Go off queen. Welcome to 2025, guys. Yeah, queen, cow boss. But his lawyer, as a martyr's lawyer at the trial,

described to his Lady McBeth and the Borgias all rolled into one. Oh, wow. And I was like, I mean, obviously he was, you know, he had a reason for saying that because he was Martin's lawyer, but I told, I think there is. And I think there's, it's interesting with this case as well because they do, you know, like we said, there was a massive amount of misogy at the time. And I'm sure there was more complexity to her and her relationships and all of that. But like, there's basically nothing redeeming about her whatsoever. I mean, even the fact that her side business was like, I'm going to set up a baby farm. And the whole thing with the illegal abortions was that she also wasn't, she trained as a midwife in Germany and failed her training. So she also was like literally just killing people. She wasn't even like capable of giving abortions. And there's all these other things that came out about her that may or may not have been true. But yeah, there's definitely a sense of like people almost couldn't believe how terrible she was. But also we're so fascinated because they're like, this woman is stone cold. You know, there was a bit where just before the trial she was like, oh, I found God. I'm really remorseful now. I'm really, really sorry. Again, maybe she had. But maybe the

timing was that she was trying to not get the same sentence. Savvy. Yeah. It's interesting as well that she, all the way through, she's making a life for herself that is kind of on the periphery in terms of how she makes her money. And even when she's done in prison, she wants to be a prison warden because I suppose there's not any other option available to her possibly, that she can't go out and just find herself a job. No one's going to employ her in their home. She can't resume the service of abortions that she's offering, because who would go to her for that, you know. And yeah, I kind of think it's so interesting that she just exists on the periphery in so many ways. And often she's sort of put herself there as well, which is fascinating.

If you've enjoyed this episode, then get in touch with us. Hashtag Justice for Julia, please. And let us know your thoughts. If you want to go back and check out the other episodes that we've done with Kat, we have done the Paris morgue, the New York morgue, and as we've mentioned in this episode, the Gouffe case as well last week. So you can check that out ASAP. If you have ideas for topics that you would like us to discuss on the show, then you can email us afterdark at historyhit.com. See you next time.