Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore - SERIAL KILLER: Amy Archer-Gilligan

Episode Date: July 16, 2025

She ran a cozy nursing home and was beloved by her Connecticut town, but Amy Archer-Gilligan was hiding deadly secrets. Morgan and Kaelyn unpack the chilling story of a serial killer who poisoned her residents for profit, leaving behind clues like a pharmacist’s sales ledger, suspicious death certificates, and unsettling financial records. But the most fascinating part? This case was cracked wide open by an amateur sleuth with a surprising connection to one of our hosts. Episode Sponsor:Get up to 55% off at https://Babbel.com/CLUES. Stay sharp and fuel yourself with Ka’Chava. Go to https://kachava.com and use code CLUES for 15% your next order. Learn more and join using our link. The first 1,000 get a $100 credit toward their membership. Visit https://www.functionhealth.com/CLUES or use gift code CLUES100 at sign-up to own your health. Clues is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Don’t Miss out on all things Clues! YouTube: @CluesPod | @crimehousestudios Instagram: @cluespodcast | @Crimehouse TikTok: @Crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios X: @crimehousemedia Clues is hosted by Morgan Absher & Kaelyn Moore  Instagram: @morgsyabsher | @itskaelynmoore TikTok: @twohottakes | @heartstartspounding To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi there, it's Vanessa Richardson. Crime House is your go-to destination for the most gripping true crime shows. On my show, Killer Minds, join me and forensic psychologist Dr. Tristan Engels for two new episodes as we dive into the twisted story of the Dr. Death serial killer, Michael Swango. Craving more deep dives into the minds of the world's most dangerous killers, follow Killer Minds on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen. This is Crime House.

We are going to turn back the clock a little bit. Don't do this at home. Don't get any wonky ideas, people. Investigation is just in your blood. I know it really is. You're built for this. Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Clues.

I'm your host, Morgan Abshir. And I'm Kaylin Moore, and it's great to see you all here again today. One of your hosts, I should say. There's two of us. Oh. You didn't add. You're... I didn't even catch that you said, I'm your host.

Yeah. And I'm chop liver. Kailen Moore. And I'm your host, Kailen Moore. Come on. I'm excited for this one today. Yeah. Today we are going to turn back the clock a little bit and tell the story of a serial killer

that descended on a small Connecticut town in the early 1900s. Amy Archer Gilligan cultivated this really saintly reputation when she opened a nursing home in Windsor, Connecticut. She provided shelter, love, and care for those in need, or at least. It seemed that way, Morgan. We're going to get it to it. The cracks in Amy's image started to show when her residence began dying at an alarming rate. It took one sharp-eyed reporter to pull back the curtain. And what he uncovered was straight out of a horror movie.

He exposed a trail of suspicious deaths, hidden motives, and a killer hiding in plain sight. And the most interesting part of all is that one of us, obviously not me today, has a personal connection to him. Morgan, it was your dad. That's the reveal. But I'm really excited for you to tell us all this story. More on the case and the clues that defined it right after this quick break. One of this week's partners is Peloton. There's a specific kind of joy and freedom that comes from a truly great workout.

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This is going to be an interesting one because we're trying something kind of new where Morgan doesn't know this story at all. I'm just, I'm going to read you a story. I'm going blind, which is like not like anything I've ever done before. Like for my show, I know. I find every Reddit story basically. You are always very prepped for everything. I feel very uncomfortable right now. I'm not meant to not prepare.

This is going to be a good one. And so we're going to dive into a story today that is, it is like the incident from my hometown. And I feel like everyone has like the incident from their hometown or the date line episode that was made about their town. And so before we even dive into this story, I want everyone to comment wherever they're listening. Like what was that dark thing that happened in your town that wound up on date? line or national news. Do you have a story like that? There's one that's like close to where I'm from. It's, um, because I'm from Duluth, Minnesota. And there's a town like 15, 20 minutes away from my house in Hermantown in Moose Lake. And it's the case about Katie Poyer, who went missing from a gas station she

worked at. And so like my mom was kind of the same age as her, like a little older, um, had like recently had my brother and was living close to Moose Lake. So, like, my mom had gone to that store all the time. Whoa. And so that case, like, really hit home for her. Was it one of those things where, like, all the locals maybe kind of knew what happened? Minnesota. Yeah, Minnesota in general, I would say, is, like, very small town vibes. Like, the whole state, it's like, it's small world energy. So there's Katie Poyer's case. There's a case about Jacob Wetterling who went missing while riding his bike. Like, you kind of know all the Minnesota cases.

The Jacob Butterling case is really famous. Yeah. Because they just, they solved it only a few years ago. And like 27 years after his disappearance. Yeah, that's a really intense one. Wow. That's scary to have happen in your own backyard. I know.

One time I asked that to someone, because I'm always curious what it is for people, like the thing that happened in their town. And this girl told me that Elizabeth Smart was found on her property. Wow. After she went missing. Apparently, like, she owned this, like, her parents owned. this big piece of land and like in the back was the house where Elizabeth Smart was being held and no one knew. Oh my gosh. Which I can't even imagine. I have a family friend who she is amazing. She's from

France, moved to L.A. and has like worked as a hairdresser in L.A. in Beverly Hills for years. And she actually cut the Menendez brothers' hair like shortly after the murders and she would cut their hair at their house. Oh, like after the murders had taken place in the house would come. would come over. Yeah. And so she like, I remember her telling me a story about like one of the paintings like literally had blood on it still. Yeah, it was still a crime scene.

Yeah, she was like in there and she's like, oh. That is really intense. Yeah. Like I was like, wow, that's quite the thing. But I have seen a lot of comments from you guys too being like I lived next to so and so and all of this. So I'm very curious to see like what you guys comment and what case it is from your hometown.

That's a really... I know, maybe we'll pick some of the most shocking ones and read them in an episode once we like get the list from everyone. So our story today takes place in Windsor, Connecticut, in the early 1900s, just a few miles north of Hartford. I don't know if you're familiar with Connecticut at all. If you've ever flown into the airport, it's like right there. Okay. So at the time, Windsor was this really quiet agricultural town. It had a population of about 3,000 people.

And that's where a 34-year-old woman named Amy Duggan eventually. settled in 1907 with her 58-year-old husband, James Archer. At the time, the world was changing very quickly in the early 1900s. It was like a brand new world every couple years. A lot of people were flocking to bigger cities to find work rather than staying closer to their hometowns and taking care of people in their own family, which meant that nursing homes were kind of just starting to become a thing. People were like leaving home. They weren't taking care of their parents anymore. They were like flocking to the cities. So there was kind of this epidemic of like elderly people that had no one to take care of them. And so Amy, kind of being a business-minded woman,

really saw an opportunity in that. I found this so interesting too, because like we haven't gotten there in terms of like the wars yet. But after, you know, World War I and World War II, therapy and nursing homes became a big thing. But I was like, before this, as you said, like there wasn't really a need for them. There was more of that traditional, like you live in a multi-generational home and the family takes care of each other. Yeah, right. So I looked into this a bit more and you would assume like nursing home, you think these people have a lot of care needs. But in the early 20th century, like that was not the case. Like there was actually a lot of people still living in these homes that were super healthy, active. They would go about their day and like just come back to

the home at night to stay. Yeah. It seems more like a group residential living facility than like a true nursing home. And they weren't always that old either because right, they were sometimes like 30s to 50s. Right. Yeah. Which like we would be so geriatric. I'm literally like I'm 31 right now. You guys, I could go live in a nursing home back then. Like I could do it. Yeah. So we just got to like set the scene a little bit too. Like this is not your standard nursing home. This is more of like, I'm, it's giving like Cocoa Beach, Florida like just like senior living. Yeah, like a 55 plus community. Yeah. Which is where I. want to end up eventually. Yeah. Maybe a collata in hand. My grandma said that when she moved to a 55 plus

community, she had never drank so much in her entire life. Grandma. It's just a constant party. I mean, the bingo. Okay, I'm digressing. But yes, it seemed like people really came and went as they pleased and really were just living their lives and wanted that community aspect. Yes, absolutely. And Amy and James kind of come up with the idea of starting their own nursing home because there's none in Windsor at the time. And it's like we talked about a really new concept. So they save up $4,500, which today would be $150,000. And they buy this colonial style home. And they call it the Archer Home for elderly people and chronic invalids, which the name does not age.

But I wanted to show you a picture of the home. We'll have it up on the screen too. And we'll have images on our socials at Clues podcast. But, okay, this is what the house looks like. Can you describe it for the people who can't see? Okay. So it looks like a traditional. traditional craftsman kind of style, not as fancy, not as much molding, but beautiful wrap around porch, picket fence on the front. Looks very welcoming. I think it looks a little Bates Motel. So it's interesting hearing you think it looks like very welcoming. See, I love a good reno. I see the potential with it. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're very, you know, it's got good bones. Hands on person. So Amy has this great reputation around town like immediately when she moves to Windsor. And that is a big selling point for her opening this place. She is this. She is this.

this like devout Christian. She always wears these modest dresses. People in Windsor at the time are also very religious. So they like that she comes across as like very pious. She even walks around town with like a Bible tucked under her arm. And so people start calling her sister Amy. She's not a nun, but everyone like addresses her sister Amy whenever they see her. At the time, people loved a well-behaved woman. This is the early 1900s. And that's very much like what Amy came across as. So when the Archer Home opens, it's, stores in 1907, people really start flocking to it. Remember, this is, like we talked about, a time where there's, like, not options for, like, your ailing older loved ones. And so

people immediately start touring this place to see if, like, this is where their parents could live. And once I see the home, like, everyone's raving about how clean it is, how organized the inside is. The kitchen is always stocked. The bedding is always, like, fresh. It smells great. It's laundered. And not to mention sister Amy herself. is the primary caretaker of the whole facility, which makes people feel like really safe and comfortable. And before long, really immediately, the Archer Home is filled to capacity and it has like this super long waiting list for people to join. It only has room for about 20 residents at a time. I mean, you saw a picture of the house. There's a huge house, you guys. No. And even then it's like

there's multiple people in the rooms for 20 people to fit in there, which is kind of normal for like some older elderly facilities now. You're basically, it's kind of like a dorm. You live there and you maybe have like a roommate when you show up. And even though there's only 20 people that can stay in there at a time, Amy and James are making pretty good money on this business. They charge anywhere from $7 to $25 a week for a room. And there's, that includes meals and medical care if needed. And they offer another option, the choice of paying a one time $1,000 lifetime fee that will cover the patient until they pass away. And that's $34,000 today, which we were just talking about people were maybe in their 30s. Yeah. You could, if you're 35, you could live another 40 years.

Yeah, no, that's a pretty, I'm terrible math, but it seems like a pretty good buyout. It's a really good rate. Yeah. It's like a ridiculously good rate. And so right off the bat, which people don't necessarily notice at first, but there is something kind of question. questionable about the house. And that's that Amy is advertising herself as a registered nurse who can tend to your family members every need. But she's not a registered nurse. She's lying about this. But at the time, people are so eager to have their ailing parents taken care of that, like, nobody bothers to check. I don't even know if people would know how to check back then. You'd have to go look through records. 1900s. Yeah. You'd have to go to like Town Hall or like an association. So nobody checks this out. And it doesn't necessarily matter right away because all the tenants are telling their family members how happy they are with the house. They tell their friends and family that they feel super well cared for. They're like writing letters back home at the time. And we have like the letters that say they were happy. And it's largely thanks to Amy and James's in-house physician that also works there. This guy named Dr. Howard King. He is the real medical expert in the home. He doesn't live there full time, but he's always on call in case there's any. emergency, which is why people felt confident leaving their family members in the hands of the archers and Dr. King.

And he is a real doctor. He is a real doctor. Yeah. So this is, I didn't mention this at the beginning, but this is one of those cases, too, where, like, a lot of the information we have on this case comes from the book Devil's Ruming House, which was, like, written by this author, M. William Phelps, and it's like a whole overview of the case. Okay.

But it also is, when I was in high school, I went to, like, our town's historical society. Oh, my gosh, of course you did. And I did all the research myself. So I have all the primary sources on this. Let's go! Which I love a good, like, historical society. Yeah. Afternoon. It's on my list on my next trip home.

You should. I'm excited to go in. Yeah. Support your local historical society. It's really important. Basically, everyone was feeling like really comfortable and good with the situation until July of 1909. And that year, there was a woman named Lucy Durand who had been living in the Archer home. She had been there since it opened.

So like two years at that point. she paid the $1,000 lifetime fee. She plans on living there for the rest of her life. But she quickly regrets that decision. And we don't have a lot of details about this. But we know at some point that month, Lucy calls the Connecticut Humane Society. And back then, this was largely just a place that investigated child abuse claims. Okay.

But she doesn't know really who else to call. She's panicking. She feels like she needs help. They're the only people she can think of that would help her in this situation. But when she finally gets in contact with them, she tells them, that the house is actually incredibly unsanitary. That is kind of a front that this place is, like, really put together in Nice. She says it's not safe for people to be living in, especially not vulnerable people.

Like, some of the people in the house are sick and older. And not only that, but she tells them that Amy is physically abusing her. Oh. Elder abuse. And people from the Humane Society come to investigate this because it's a really serious claim. But when they get there, they don't find anything that backs up Lucy's claim. They walk in, they see this nice older woman clutching a Bible. She's wearing this conservative dress.

She's like 5-2, by the way. She's really tiny. So they're like, yeah, this woman's not physically abusing you, which we know in like elder abuse claims that like... That's not... Small people can still do things, yeah. Yeah, that you're just oftentimes, as an older person, like, not able to protect. protect yourself. Yeah, you're more frail, more vulnerable. But they end up walking away from the house just saying, oh, it could use better ventilation. We'll put that in our report.

Okay. Yeah. That's the only thing that they see. Amy, like, cleaned everything up beforehand. Yeah, it's not hard to fake clean. I call it fake cleaning. You shove everything in one room, and it looks nice, but it's not. We've all done it. My house is currently fake clean. And they eventually leave. And a few days later, Lucy disappears. Oh, my God. She completely vanishes. No one has any idea where she goes. It's like one day, the residents all woke up and she's just not there anymore. Days past other residents, they don't see her. They don't hear from her at all. This is also a time too where like, I mean, I talk about people wanting to leave their ailing parents somewhere that like will take

care of them. A lot of people were just like dumping their parents and like leaving and never contacting them ever again. So a lot of these people also didn't necessarily have advocates. And I don't think Lucy had anyone that even recognized that she had gone missing. Damn. So the residents finally ask Amy and James what happened because they're a little confused. And Amy basically says that, oh, Lucy had a mental health episode. And she needed more serious care than we can offer here at the Archer home. So we sent her away.

She basically says, like, we put her on the train at midnight, which really doesn't make any sense to the residents. And that's also why she wasn't able to say goodbye because she had to leave in the middle of the night. And so it was like this quick thing. She didn't say bye to anyone. But like, trust me, she's in a better place now. And because Amy is running a business, she has this open bed to fill now. And she's able to fill it immediately with this woman named Teresa McClintock. Teresa gets to the Amy Archer home sometime in 1909, just a few months after the incident with Lucy.

So she's coming in. She has no idea what's going on. And it's kind of the same thing where like Teresa and her daughter tore the place. It looks great. It's a great option for an elderly single woman who in the early 1900s has essentially no options. But Teresa is not there for very long when she starts writing letters to her daughter, Narcissa. And Narcissa, when she gets these letters, she basically like opens them and cannot believe what she's reading. This episode is brought to you by Quince.

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wash her clothes. Like she's just kind of like sitting in her own filth with like unable to be helped. And like working in OT, like I imagine you have to help people a lot. A lot. Like some of the patients. Yeah, depending on what their needs are for sure. I mean, it's it's clear too as this woman was going into this place. Daughter is very involved. making sure her mom's going to get the care she needs. Like it was probably advertised like, we'll help her get to the bathroom. Yeah, right. And do daily bathing and like sort of then have this experience.

This is crazy. That you're basically just like left to your own devices. No. She says that she's actually forced to relieve herself in basically a chamber pot that's in the corner of the room because there's not a private bathroom accessible to her. Yeah. But when Narcissa reads these letters, she doesn't necessarily think that she has to go save her room. mother, she actually thinks that her mom is maybe being ungrateful. Narcissa. I know, which is like a lot of these people just wanted to leave their parents somewhere and not have to worry about it. So she's,

she's worried that her mom is just like maybe making a big deal and being very like particular about stuff. Well, and I honestly do think too, like, I'm not sure how talked about elder abuse was even at this time, but like even now so, like there is a really hard time prosecuting elder abuse. Yeah. It's like, you know, we have a big shortage of nurses in a lot of our skilled nursing facilities across the U.S. So like someone's sitting in a soiled bed, like that still happens today. Absolutely. This is really, this is really bad. I feel like this is maybe the start of it getting worse because typically you were

being taken care of by your family members and now you're being taken care of by strangers who are in a facility where they don't really know you that well. And like the beds are like opening and people are coming. and going. And so that's basically what starts happening to Teresa. But Narcissa writes her this letter back and she reminds her mom that the Archer home is run by one of the most trustworthy, well-regarded women in the area. And then Teresa ends up begging Narcissa to come visit and see things for herself. She's like, once you get here, you'll see what I'm talking about and then you'll believe me. And Narcissa only lives like 10 miles away, so she decides to make the trip. And when she gets there,

she walks into the house and the first thing she notices is the house is freezing. It is like it's the end of the year at this point too And there's absolutely no way to heat this house Then she goes upstairs to her mom's room And she sees that her mom is not only being neglected She is like confined to her bed She like actual straps to her arms and legs Holding her to the bed frame somehow

How were they? I'm like thank God they were mailing her letters I'm surprised they even mailed her letters for her Well yeah we'll maybe get into that in a little bit Because the letters were coming in and out and then that eventually becomes a problem. Narcissa at that point is like, I have to confront Amy about this. And she kind of confronts Amy in a way

where she's like, I don't want to be a bother. Sorry to approach you like this. But is there maybe something you could do about my mother? It doesn't seem like she's very comfortable. And she reports that Amy comes off as like really cold and detached during this conversation. She's not the warm sisterly woman that she was portraying herself as. Clearly.

She does not seem to. care that her mom is not having a good time. And so Narcissa starts wondering if her mom is maybe telling the truth. And if she is, she has to get her out of this facility. So it takes some planning, but after a few months, Narcissa does get her mom relocated. And more importantly, this is a big deal at the time. She sues Amy and James for $5,000 for maltreatment. Wow. And that is $175,000 about, give or take today. And because of this, the story hits the local papers. And that's the story. And that's when a guy named Carlin Gosley, he's Amy and James's neighbor. He's like 22 years old, works at the paper as like a low level position. And so he sees like the article come into the paper. And it really like an alarm bell goes off in his head because he's like, oh my God, these are my neighbors. Like they just opened this home. And I will add here, Carlin is my great grandfather. Hey. There he is. That is the personal connection to it. So he basically is the first person to flag it at the newspaper and be like, something is going on. Yeah. So a little bit more on Carl. At the time he was working full-time as an

insurance agent. He also had this side gig as a freelance reporter for the Hartford Current, the same paper that was reporting the lawsuit against Amy. He mainly writes obituaries. That's kind of like the, he's like the lowest level. So that's what they tell him to do. They're like, you'll just write the obituaries for us. Which like, I guess back in the day, family members didn't write obituaries. It was like the paper would write the obituaries. Which is so interesting. saying. Yeah. And honestly, I kind of like it because that is like when you've lost someone, that's an added burden that you have to do and you're just like, oh my God. Absolutely. It's also, yeah, so that was his job was he would write these obituaries. And he also served as

treasurer of this thing called the Windsor Rogue Detecting Society, which is, quote, a quasi-detective agency that investigates burglary, suspicious fires, and the occasional murder. Investigation is just in your blood. I know it really is. You're built for this. Yeah. So, So anyone who listens to Hearts Hearts Founding knows that I use the term rogue detecting society all the time. It's like what I call people who belong to the Patreon and Apple's inscriptions. I need a patch. We have like stickers and stuff coming. But that's where it comes from. Like the idea that like back in the day there was just kind of this rag tag group of people before there were even cops in the area that would like go around solving crimes. Which there weren't really police in this area at the time, right?

No. No. Okay. Because I feel like you guys again, this is like 1909. Like what did police organizations even look like back then? Small towns, too. Like Windsor was a really small town. Only 3,000 people. Yeah, they didn't have like a force. Like a police.

That was for the cities. A sheriff? A constable? I don't even think there was a constable. Okay. I don't even think we had a sheriff. Okay. I think it was this rag tag group of guys.

Your great, great grandpa. How many greats? Two? Just great. Just one. Okay, your great grandpa running the detective agency. Yeah, really. At least like the treasury side.

But yeah, there were, it is interesting. interesting to think of a time before there were police officers and detectives. So another thing about Carl is he's actually known Amy and James for quite some time, basically since they moved into Windsor. And he has always had his really high opinion of them. He's also like a church going man. And so he sees them at church all the time. He really, that's like something, again, very important to people at the time. So it's hard for him when he reads this lawsuit, he's kind of like, whoa. like either this is not real and they're accusing these like wonderful people in town of this or everything I know about them is wrong and I have to kind of start like figuring out if something's going on. The fact too that like the paper he writes for decides to run this article, he's like, okay, there's definitely something to it if like the Hartford Current is going to run this article. So for the next year or so, he kind of like keeps that in the back of his mind. Like when he sees Amy around town, he's like, what's going on in your house? Like what is happening inside of there? He's side-eyeing her a little bit.

He's side eyeing her in the church pews. He's giving her that look. Like, what are you up to? You crazy lady. And Carl doesn't really see or hear anything else suspicious about the home. That's really, like, it kind of goes dark after that. Like, the patients aren't really complaining as much anymore. Other than the fact that at one point, the archers and Theresa McClintock's family settled their suit out of court.

But one day, in February of 1910, he's working at the paper on obituary due to, when all of a sudden he gets this death notice across his desk that kind of makes him do a double take. It's for Amy's husband, James. He passed away suddenly at the age of 61. And the cause of death is listed as something called Bright's disease, which was this catch-all term they used to use for kidney disease. And it was a pretty common cause of death back then. But it was like the suddenness of James' death that starts really raising red flags for Carlin. Because people who die of kidney disease, you don't die overnight from kidney disease.

No, there's a lot of symptoms you kind of observe, too. And it was pretty well known around town. Like, James was a healthy guy. He was fixing stuff at the house all the time. He was always out in the yard. Like, nothing about him ever struck anyone as like, oh, he's sick. Yeah, and only 61. Like, obviously people didn't live as long back then.

But, like, 61 is still pretty young for a relatively healthy guy. For a healthy guy, exactly. And so Carl thinks back to that first article that he read about the lawsuit. He has always kind of had these suspicions about the home in the back of his mind. And now he's really wondering, is something going on there? Like, what if the Archer home really is that unsanitary? Like, maybe James died of something else or maybe, like, he did have kidney disease and whatever. He started thinking that the house is maybe, like, really dirty on the inside or that, like, just something is going on.

He starts basically snooping around. And that's how we get to our very first clue in this case. Let's go. The death certificates. Remember, Carl writes obituaries, part of his job, is reading death certificates all day, which if you've ever looked at old-timey death certificates, they're like really funny. Just they have all the information and like the cause of death is always something like so random that doesn't exist today. And he starts fact-checking pretty important information that's listed on the death certificates. So he thinks maybe the ones from the Archer Home are going to reveal something about what you're going to.

goes on there behind closed doors. In June of 1911, Carl goes to the town hall and he just starts flipping through the documents that have come out of the Archer home in that time, all the death certificates, everything. Before long, he sees kind of a strange pattern in these. There's about two dozen death certificates from the time Amy's boarding house opened four years ago. They're running a nursing home. That makes sense. But even still, that seems like a high number of deaths in such a short time.

24 in four years. 24 and four years. Yeah, that sounds like a lot. Out of only 20 beds. And again, these people could be healthy. 30s to 50 year olds living in these nursing homes. Right. And also, like, Carl reads enough death certificates.

He kind of has, like, a feel for how often old people die. Like, it's like this weird thing where you kind of get a feel for how frequently death certificates come in. And so even he's like, that's a lot. Like for one place to have essentially an entire class of people die and turn over in just four years is like, feels really intense. Yeah. So he starts comparing how all the people died. And everyone's cause of death is really vague. And it's listed as something like kidney disease, heart problems, a lot of stomach problems.

But what's really worrisome is it seems like everyone died very suddenly on death certificates. you could sometimes talk about the symptoms leading up to the death. And most of these death certificates didn't have anything that indicated these people were suffering leading up to their death. It was like one day they just died from kidney disease. One day they died from a heart thing. One day they died from a stomachache. Just like really strange quick deaths. Oh my gosh.

They probably also all happened to be the ones that paid the $1,000 lifetime fee. Right, because then you're locked in. Because then you're locked in. Yes. Oh, my gosh. Okay. And Carl starts wondering if the Archer home is actually hiding something, especially since each death certificate is signed by Amy's in-house physician, Dr. King. Mm-mm.

Carl basically decides at this time he's not going to bring this to the public until he's sure that it's actually evidence. It would be a huge deal to kind of like lodge this accusation against someone in town without having like hard evidence. So he starts by pulling up death certificates from similar boarding homes in the area. And while the Archer home houses a lot more people than the other places do, he basically confirms that they are dying at a much higher rate. And that's when Carl knows that something is up. So he notifies the editor of the paper that he works at, Clifton Sherman. He tells him about his suspicions. But Sherman encourages Carl to keep this to himself.

He basically tells him like, hey, like you can poke around, like maybe, you know, like look into this, but do not tell anyone. We're not going to go there. What? Yeah. He says that they're not going to write anything like at the paper about this because they don't want to jeopardize the paper's integrity and maybe falsely accuse someone of doing something that they're not doing. Yeah, I've got to build that case a little bit more. You need to build the case and cases were harder to build back then. And plus, again, Amy's this huge staple in the community.

They don't want to go after an innocent woman. They would look horrible. Also at this time, she starts donating a lot of money. to the church. And the church is kind of like a political figure in town. Oh, yeah. As it was like in this era. Yeah, they don't want to bite the hand that feeds them. Yeah, exactly. Keeping the secret is not easy, though, especially because Carl and Amy are neighbors. He sees her all the time. They're in church together every Sunday. He can like walk out of his house and like see her home across the street. And Carl realizes, though, maybe he can actually use this to his advantage. He's like us. He's nosy.

And one day, so one day, when he bumps into Amy, he just starts conversing with her. He's having a little chat with her. And he asks her how the Archer Holmes been doing since James died. And Amy tells him something that really raises a red flag. Hey, before we jump back into the show, let's take a quick break. But not just any break. This is a refreshing break with Snapple. We all know about Snapple's iconic, real facts.

So let's take a minute to go over some of my favorites. Snapple Real Fact, 964, it is illegal in the United Kingdom to handle salmon in suspicious circumstances. Snapple Real Fact 1013, it is illegal to sing off-key in North Carolina. Snapple Real Fact 23, Americans consume 150 million hot dogs on July 4th. Snapple Real Fact 705. Every ton of recycled paper saves about 17 trees. So grab a Snapple, take a second, and enjoy the moment. Because let's be honest, this might be their most refreshing part of your day.

Snapple. Make your break more interesting. All right, now let's get back to Clues. You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you might not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressives save over $900 on average. They make it super simple. Pop over to progressive.com, answer some questions,

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Those sandals you can wear all day and all night. And you've had enough of shopping from your couch. Done hoping it looks anything like the picture when you tear up on that envelope. It's time for a little in-person spring treat. It's time for a trip to Ross. Work your magic. She says everything's been running smoothly, except for one problem they've been having. And that's that they've got bed bugs.

And that kind of leads us to clue number two, which is that according to Amy, she says she's had bedbugs for a while, especially because there's new people always moving in. Yeah. But lately, it's been exceptionally bad. But fortunately, some of her healthier residents have been running errands for her. And she's been sending them to W.H. Mason's drugstore to buy the cure for bedbugs at the time, which was arsenic. Yeah, because arsenic was often used for pesticides, which is like crazy. I think some of the old stuff, like what we used to lead for. And like it's just like, I think they just didn't know what we were doing. There's still cyanide in some ant treatments. At least there was like up until recently. Like really heavy duty poisons. Okay. So they were.

mixing it with what, some water and just painting it on their bed frames, like to kill these bugs. That's what it seems like it was. Yeah, it was like a mixture of water. They would paint it on like bed frames and door frames and just wherever the bugs were. Yeah. The bugs would eat it and they would die. Probably not aware of all the health risks that were coming along with this arsenic. Yeah, that you're also maybe like touching it and ingesting it. And this can cause like a bunch of symptoms if it does cross-contaminate with your food or if you're accidentally touching it with your hands and then putting your hands in your mouth, like fatigue, nausea, stomach cramps, intense vomiting, maybe like kidney and stomach disease might, some would say. And if someone's been poisoned badly enough, it can

act very fast. So when Carlin hears this, he immediately flags it because arsenic poisoning does seem a lot like the illnesses that were listed on the Archer death certificates. Yeah, and he's going through them all. And he's going through them all. And he's like, okay, this is very strange. Yeah, no, she's clearly telling him this to cover her tracks. Yeah. Acute abdominal pain. People getting sick very fast. People dying really quickly. So after this, Carlin actually goes over to the W.H. Mason's drugstore. And once he's there, he asks the pharmacist to see the Black Book. Which have you ever heard about this? No. So back in the day, anywhere that sold poison, which was like so many places, you could just buy poison everywhere. Or like cocaine, you can just buy all the, everything.

Cocaine used to be in Coca-Cola. Yeah. It was the Wild West back then. It was absolutely insane. But to try to curb it, to try to make sure people weren't buying just like a ton of Coke to do recreationally, you would have to sign a black book. Okay. When you, and you would write your name, the date, how much you bought. And that way they could kind of keep track.

I don't think anyone really cared or enforced it. Yeah. They were like, if you're buying, we're selling. But they at least had this record, if anything happened. That's what Carl wants to see because this ledger goes back a really long time. They've been keeping records forever at this place. And when Carl flips to the pages, he discovers that the Archer Home has been purchasing a ton of arsenic pretty much from the time the home opened. Oh, my God.

Pretty much immediately. Day one. Day one. So Carl starts writing down notes about like how much was bought for the Archer Home, the dates of all the purchases. And as he looks closer at each entry, he realizes. that most of the arsenic that was sold at this location was going to Amy and her residence. But also, someone else was buying a lot of the arsenic. Oh, I have a hunch.

Is it King? Dr. King. No, come on. Dr. King, the guy signing all the death certificates was like the second most common name on the ledger. So he's in on it too. So it starts making the deaths seem a lot more complicated. And Carl is now really trying to figure out what to do. Because mind you, he's also like 23 years old.

Yeah. And he's lowest level at the newspaper. So he's like, I have all this information. And my boss won't let me do anything with it. Yeah, he's just like sleuthing at this point. Yes, he's sleuthing. And now he has sort of evidence for a potential killing method, especially because on one occasion, Amy purchased two ounces of arsenic.

Which, okay, two ounces. Like for me, I'm like, it sounds like a lot. But like, how much do you actually need to kill someone? I looked into it a little bit. So on average, it. takes roughly 0.0035 ounces to kill a pretty healthy adult. Which is like 0.0. I'm like already, that's like nothing. That's like hundreds of people that you could kill it two ounces.

That's insane. Quick math. Yeah. Yeah. That's insane. It's a lot. If you're, you can buy it in a couple different forms too. It seems like at the time they were buying it in powder form. So it's like the easiest to mix and stuff. Really not hard to mix into things. No, just drop it in a little water. It's tasteless. It's odorless. It is dissolvable. Yeah. So you could put it in water. Don't try this. Don't do this at home. Don't get any wonky ideas, people. I'm going to say something because it's no longer available. But do you remember when the Colorado dentist poisoned his wife with arsenic in 2023? I did hear about this. Yes. He, like, medical assistant is the one that discovered like and was like, why is he ordering this? Yes. Yeah. So she caught it. She caught the cyanide in the office that he was ordering.

Do you know where he purchased the arsenic that he bought to poison his wife? No, but I'm going to assume some plant store or something weird. Amazon.com. Shut up. Jeff Bezos is Amazon. And when the story broke, I couldn't believe it. So I was like, surely you can't buy. This has to be wrong.

And I went on Amazon and you could buy it. I wonder if you can still. I looked it up. It seems like they've taken it off because I did check a little bit more recently because I was like, how long is this going to be up for? Oh, God. But yeah, you could just buy it. It was in rock form and he like grated it.

Pestled it or whatever. Yeah, like old timey, like made his own little concoction out of it. And then just would dump it in her smoothies. Crazy. Really, really crazy. But the same kind of thing where the amount that he was ordering because it was this big rock form was way more than you would ever need to kill someone. But even then, it took multiple doses for her to get sick enough to die. Wow.

So things get even weirder later on when Carlin's. at home comparing his notes from the black book to the notes that he has on the death certificates. He starts creating this timeline. He basically has this like cork board and he's like doing the timeline and the string and all of this in his basement. And in this timeline, he discovers that just two days after that big two ounce arsenic purchase, a man died in the Archer Home. And we don't have his name. I don't have his, I wasn't able to find his exact death certificate, but we know that like Carl made a note of this. The details of this death raise major flags for Carl, though, because apparently out of nowhere, it says on this death certificate that the man started vomiting profusely and then drop dead. And eventually, Carl notices a pattern for years. People have been dying at the Archer Home just a few days or the day after someone bought arsenic. Someone related to the Archer Home bought arsenic.

And to Carl, it just doesn't seem like a coincidence. Mm-mm. Windsor, remember, at the time is a very small town. People start hearing about Carl's visit to W.H. Mason's drugstore and rumors about what he was doing there, looking at the little black book, start circulating around town. Suddenly, people are catching onto the fact that Carl is eyeing the archer home and maybe is, like, suspicious of her for something. Stop gossiping people. He lives across the street. He's a reporter. Amy herself actually hears about this. Word gets back to Amy because people tell her everything. And she's furious. She tries to get ahead of the story. Actually, she goes on this like PR campaign for herself and she's like playing victim around town at church on her errands. She tells people out in the street that she's this widow who's struggling to get by and she is doing this nursing home because she cares so much about her community. And she's just a woman business owner who's like trying to get by. She also has a daughter at this time too. She's a young daughter. so she's like really playing up that card. She can't understand why there's a quote, witch hunt against her. Her pity campaign starts working. A lot of people in town start sympathizing with her, including this guy named Franklin Andrews. So Franklin is 59 years old.

Again, not very old. He's worked on a farm his whole life. But now he's starting to develop arthritis and he can't really work on the farm as much as he could anymore. Despite being in pain from the arthurance. arthritis, though, he's in, like, great shape. He can do basic chores on his own. He can run his own errands. He doesn't really have any other health issues. He just needs a little bit of help with mobility. While he's been living with his family for some time, he wants them to have their own space. He doesn't want to feel like a burden of his family. So he hears about the Archer home and he thinks that it could be a

great fit for him, especially because they, Amy on this like PR campaign was basically saying she like needs help around the house. And he's like, I can do chores. Like maybe we can strike some sort of deal. In September of 1912, he moves in with Amy and he pays her the $1,000 lifetime fee, which, mind you, he's 59 years old at the time. You could, in theory, live. 31, 30 years. 30 years. 40 years. Who knows?

Which you're basically paying $1,000 for 30 years of care is crazy. 33 a year? $33 a year. Divide that by 365 days. This is that business mindset that Morgan has. $0.0.0.0.0. That's crazy. And like obviously inflation, it's more than that because what was it like $34,000 today. But still, you're paying $1,000 for room and board. No, that's insane. It's bad business is what it is. Yeah. She just wanted the quick cash and then she was taking people out. She maybe needed the upfront cash. It's like a big part of it. But since Franklin is healthy and offering to help her out, she actually cuts him a deal on this. This already deal. She's like, I can actually do you better. If you. choose to move out at any point, I'll actually pay you back a portion of what you paid me. And so he

takes this deal. Great, maybe he'll be there for a few years, help out around the house, and when he leaves, she'll give him a couple hundred bucks back. So a month later, in October of 1912, another man who kind of has a similar situation to Franklin moves in. And his name is Charles Smith. Like Franklin, Charles is also in good health, even though he's much older. He's in his mid-80s. He moves into the Archer home, and at first it seems like he's paying. the weekly fee, but he enjoys it so much he can see himself living there until he passes away. And in the spring of 1913, he actually tells Amy that he would rather pay the $1,000 lifetime fee. And Amy's really excited when she hears this.

I'm sure she is. Yeah, because she needs the money. She needs a thousand books. But she tells Charles something else. And it's something that she hasn't really told any of the other residents in the past. And she says that if he wants to live at the Archer home for the rest of his life, she's going to need. an additional payment. But she doesn't really explain why. She just says that she's going to need a little bit more money. And she asks for an additional $1,300. So more than double what he was

going to pay initially. So this deal is going to cost Charles $2,300. She's basically asking for another $40,000. Yeah, it's a bit of a bait and switch, too. Yes, $40,000 by today's money. So, like, that's a lot to have to scrounge together to give to someone. Yeah, and kind of an odd amount, like the 1,300 versus like just another thousand. Seems like she had bills in her mind that she knew she had to pay. Something's up. But he is like surprisingly fine with this. And his sister Emily is not fine with it though.

He doesn't tell her about this additional fee. He just like goes ahead and pays it. But Emily's like watching his bank account. She's like a little bit of control over his finances. And she notices this huge withdrawal from his bank account. And so she goes to the Archer home and asks. Charles where his money is going. And he tells her and she's furious.

So she goes and she confronts Amy. She thinks that her brother is being taken advantage of. But at that point, the money's already been spent. So there's nothing that she can do about it right now, except for kind of complain about it around town and see if anyone will listen to her. Yeah, go vent. Which also means, though, that the Charles situation starts spreading around town.

And of course, Carl catches wind of this. And he realizes that he might have. found a motive, but he needs to dig a little bit more into Amy's finances. So he contacts his brother who works for the town government. They're kind of like all in cahoots on stuff. They're like all working around town. So they're able to like ask each other stuff. He asks his brother to pull some records. And one night his brother comes to him and is like, you're not going to believe what I found. And that brings us to clue number four, the unpaid bills. James had about $5,000 in unpaid bills when he died and that's $175,000 today, that is like medical school debt. Yeah, that's a lot of money.

About my grad school debt, actually, yeah. Yeah, it's intense. Yeah, it's a lot of money. And if you're not able to pay your grad school debt, who do, they don't just say like, oh, sorry, okay, we tried. No, Nellnet actually. They're going to like call Justin. Nellnet called me on my way here today, actually. Oh my gosh. Yeah. No, they hunt you down for that money. And so now that, like, James is dead. but that doesn't change anything. So now Amy's just on the hook for this money. Yeah. And according to all of these related documents, she's been avoiding paying them for two years ever since James died. So what is she doing with all the money from the people she's already killed, though? Great question. I know that there is still to this day like a stained glass window in the church

that she dedicated to James. So I don't know if she's like just buying frivolous stuff or like she's donating it to the church or what. She's not paying these bills. And I'm sure you know when you don't pay bills, they call and they call and they call and they call and they keep coming. So the debt collectors have literally been knocking on her door. And that's when things start to click for Carl that Amy is an extreme debt. She's clearly draining her tenants finances and perhaps killing off her tenants who've paid the $1,000 for a lifetime fee to get them out sooner and basically to get the next person in. Yeah. You called it. You figured it out. I mean, you're a business-minded woman. Well, I'm just like you're not going to take out the person that's paying you 25 a day because then they're

gone or honestly I wouldn't put a pastor to take out some of them too so then she had a bed for someone she could get a thousand from and kill them off. It's like when landlords like try to get you out so they can raise the rent too. It's like well if I but the only way to get a person you can't evict these people. No. So the only way to get them out is to kill them. But the thing is this is still just a theory. It makes a ton of sense. It totally adds up. It I feel like by today's standards would be something that you could fully arrest someone for. But at the time, there was just like not much that he could do about it. So he needed, like Carl needed to collect hard proof, basically. And since he's the only one working on this investigation, his newspaper

is not interested in helping him with this. The progress is very slow. But eventually, someone besides Carl starts to notice that the death rate at Amy's home is unusually high. And it's Franklin Andrews, one of the residents who's lived at the house. for about a year now because he's with it. He's 60 years old at that point. And he has seen how in one year, a home that holds 20 residents has had 18 of those residents died during that time. Okay.

How are more people not getting on board with this that something is off? The turnover is so crazy. Well, that was part of the thing too. So the train, if you like are in town, the train basically goes right behind Amy's house. So what they would do is when someone died, back in the day, you could literally put postage on a body. What? So they would put postage on the body, stick it on the train, and mail it to the coroner's office. Because there's this one horrible story about how one night a body came back because they didn't put enough postage on it. Oh my God. They're like, you need another stamp.

We can't send it unless you have another stamp. But yeah, so you could, you could clear out bodies really quickly. But like, don't, I mean, Franklin's getting it. I mean, the guy's just got arthritis. So he's, you know, not any cognitive impairments, but it's like, doesn't anyone else look around like 18 in a year? Wow. Like, there's a whole new resident field, basically. Like, even for some of the other ones that live there, wouldn't you be like, I need to get out of here? I think it also comes down to the fact that people's family just didn't care anymore. Like, a lot of these people just didn't have family to notify.

And then we have poor Teresa at the beginning who, like, she was early on. And she was getting handcuffed, strapped to the bed, basically. Yeah. So, God, these poor people probably couldn't leave even if they wanted to. Right. No, absolutely. I mean, that's, like, always the issue with elder abuse stuff, too. Like, a lot of these people can't advocate for themselves.

No. And then maybe she's also, like, specifically approving people to move in that are, like, in a position where they can't take care of themselves. I mean, absolutely could see that. And, again, like, it's worth repeating. Like, Franklin is, like, it's not like these. 18 people were sick and getting sicker and then slowly passed away. It's like these 18 people were completely fine. And then one night they would like some some people would like stand up after dinner clutch their stomach start vomiting and then like drop dead. Like people were dying like very

violently and dramatically within the house. And every time it was like the same song and dance. Dr. King would come by. He would say he would look at the body and say something like kidney disease, sign the death certificate and then he would be on his way. But in the summer of 1913, Franklin's suspicion start to heighten even further when this 57-year-old guy named Michael Gilligan comes by to fix some stuff around the house. Michael is divorced. He has adult children that are all grown up and living elsewhere. He becomes fast friends with Franklin and Charles, actually. But Michael gets more than just friends at the house because basically the moment he meets 40-year-old Amy, they just hit it off.

He's initially there to fix lights and paint the house and stuff, but they start essentially like courting each other. And in November of 1913, they get married. Three months after their wedding, they're newlyweds at that point. Okay. Amy approaches Michael, and she slides this piece of paper in front of his face. And she's like, hey, can you just sign this for me? And he looks at it and it says last will and testament. It's like big gothic letters at the top.

and she had gone up and written one for him. Also, mind you, he's 59 years old. He has adult children. He already has a will that's been like signed by lawyer. But she drafts up this new one and she puts it in front of him. And what's weird is at the time, Michael is like very dizzy. Like earlier that day, he started feeling super dizzy. Oh, yeah.

So he's like, can we do this later? Like, I actually don't feel that good. No. And Amy is like, no, I actually think. this is the perfect time. I think you should sign this. And so he signs it. He's probably just wanting to get to bed because he's like really starting to sweat. Wait, he signs it? He signs it. I leave everything to Amy. I don't even think he read it, but yes. No. Yeah. He just wants to go to bed. Signs it. I mean, he has adult children. He signed everything to her. Like nothing for his children.

Which I doubt he would have done. Like what? I know. The next day he wakes up and he like still can't get his balance. Like something is wrong. He's still lopsided as he's walking. He's trying to fix things around the house. Like he does not feel well. And as the day goes on, he starts feeling really nauseous, really fatigued. So that next night, Amy, he's like really starting to suffer. She's like, let me get you something that'll help you. And she goes over and she pours in this glass of whiskey. Back in the time, it had medicinal value. I mean, some people still use it medicinally. But basically, she gives him the whiskey, he drinks it. He's like, thank you. He goes to bed. And that entire night, he is tossing and turning. He's sweating. Residents can hear him, like, groaning and clutching his

stomach, basically from his bedroom. Eventually, people were reporting that he was, like, vomiting profusely by the morning. And early the next morning, Michael is dead. And it's the same song and dance. Dr. King comes over to the house. Amy tells him about Michael's symptoms. It's so weird. He just was dizzy. Oh my God. He's clutching the stomach. He's throwing up. And so they list on his death certificate, get this, acute bilious attack, which basically means indigestion. Sure. Death by indigestion. Yeah. Which somehow was allowed to be written as like an actual on death certificates. This is so insane. Your great grandpa's got to be going crazy at this point. Three months after the wedding, new husband's dead. Yeah, because Carl hears about Michael's death writer. I mean, he's the one that gets the death certificate to his office and has to write the obituary. And he's like, you're kidding me.

No. So he, at this point, he's like, I have to kick this into high gear. Another husband died. We have to, like, this is, we have to get this investigation going. Like, people have to know. So he ends up going back to the town hall. He wants to look at some more death certificates. And he finds that in the last three years, 53 people have died at the house.

Like it has ramped up a lot. Because she's gotten comfortable. She's getting away with it. She's got the town and all of its people in her pocket. Yes, exactly. Yeah. So he's kind of like, okay, let me just double check again to make sure that the rise and deaths also correlates with arsenic purchases. He goes back to the drugstore.

He knows that everyone in town is going to talk about it. He goes through the blackbook entries and he discovers that Amy had recently bought 10 more ounces of arsenic. Holy. We already talked about two ounces being enough for like a hundred people. And all you need is 0.005. Three, three, whatever. Like, insane.

It's enough to kill like a small army. She got to kill the whole town. The whole town, basically. She's clearly not killing bad bugs. I mean, that goes without saying. But Carlin goes back to his editor, Clifton Sherman. And he has all these details. He has like, receipts.

timelines, everything. And it's been a few years. Carl's actually almost 30 at this point because, like, so much time has passed. No one's been taking this seriously. He has like a little bit more status at the paper. He's hoping that he can finally just start writing the story and like getting people involved in an investigation. But his editor, Clifton Sherman, tells him it's still not enough info. Oh, he's been paid. And it's starting to feel like, yeah, there's a bigger institution at play here. There's like maybe some sort of cover of happening. And it's really around this time, too, where the usually healthy Franklin Andrews also starts feeling sick. No, not Franklin. He had actually gone a long time without getting ill. Yeah. Because I think he was like helping out around the house. He's like building fences and stuff.

Over the last couple weeks, he's had a couple like dizzy spells where he'd get really tired and really dizzy and have to stop what he was doing. He says it comes and it goes and he thinks actually it's maybe a cold. And his friend Charles, the one that was conned out of $1,300, actually starts coming down with the same thing. So Franklin's like, maybe we both got the same thing at the same time. The two wonder if something's going around. Well, Charles's sister Emily, the one who got into a fight with Amy over the money, wants to come and check on him. She hears that he's not doing very well. So she plans a visit to the Archer home.

And on April 8, 1914, Emily is waiting for Charles in the home's drawing room. And when she sees Charles come down the stairs, she is, you know, in shock. He does not have a cold. He looks horrible. Like, dark circles under his eyes, gone. Just, like, really looks like he's in rough condition. He can't even walk on his own. Two nurses are helping him come down the stairs. So Emily rushes to him and asks, like, what's happening? How did he get so sick so quickly? But Charles can't even really talk to her. He's that weak. Emily goes and confronts Amy. She's like, what is going on? Why did you not? tell me my brother was this sick. And Amy just doesn't have any answers regarding Charles's

health. She like dodges the question. She's like, that's not my responsibility. Emily leaves that day planning to get Charles out of the Archer home as soon as possible. But the next night after Emily leaves, she gets word that Charles had passed away suddenly in his sleep. When she asks what happened to Charles, her brother who had called her to tell her about the death, says that Amy claimed it was, quote, shock. She just kind of like pulled that out of nowhere. She's like, I was just shock. He died from shock. And on Charles's death certificate, shock is not written down. Dr. King actually writes that he died of quote old age, which you can't write on death certificates anymore. It's kind of the olden version of natural causes, which I know even that nowadays is kind of like,

there's a lot of question surrounding that, but that's kind of the same energy we're getting. Yeah, but it feels like even more of a catch-all, old age. How old was Charles at this point? Okay, he was murdered, but he was old. Like what? At that point, Charles was in his 80s. Okay. So Emily thinks that there's absolutely no way that her brother just died of old age. Something was definitely going on. And she figures that at that point, there's probably nothing she can do about it. But someone else inside of the house is getting very suspicious of things, and that's Franklin. Despite walking with a limp, he's still in good health. On May 29th, just a few weeks after Charles dies, Franklin paints a fence at the Archer Home. But that night, after he paints the fence,

he starts having these really intense stomach cramps. And then he starts throwing up. And on the evening of May 30th, Dr. King comes by and he gives Franklin a tablet for indigestion. Do not know exactly what that means. Why? Franklin. More arsenic. After that, Franklin's health continues to get worse and worse.

And in fact, he actually doesn't even survive the evening. When Franklin's sister, Nellie, receives a call from Amy alerting her that Franklin was in really bad condition. She was given an even more ridiculous reason for his illness than indigestion. Amy actually tells Franklin's sister that Franklin is suffering from boils on his neck. What? Like, I don't even know to date what that would be. But she tells her that, like, he has these boils on his neck and it's actually this infection

and it's spreading throughout his entire body and we don't really know what's going on. And Nellie hears this. And she also is like, what is that? What do you mean boils on his neck? And she doesn't believe Amy at all. No, I wouldn't either. And she eventually gets word that Franklin passes away. She is incredibly suspicious of this whole thing.

So she arrives the next day to start collecting Franklin's things. And that's when she finds another clue. It's a letter to Franklin from Amy. And it's dated January 6, 1914, which is just a few months earlier. And in it, Amy actually wrote out this whole sob story about how her late husband Michael had actually drained all of her finances. Oh my God. She asks if Franklin can lend her $1,000, which $34,000 today.

She says she would need it by the next day or she might lose the home. Unfortunately, we're not sure exactly how Franklin responded to the letter or if he ever gave Amy the money, even though my gut says that he didn't. I feel like I think I came across that in my research that he didn't. give her the money. Probably why she took him out. Maybe why she was so mad at him. But regardless, to Nellie, it doesn't even matter if he gave her the money or not. As far as she's concerned, she's holding evidence of Amy Archer Gilligan's motive in her hand. And Nellie goes straight to the offices of the Hartford Current to speak with Clifton Sherman, the guy who is not wanted to talk about this story. She doesn't know that Carlin's been working on the story and has been doing so in

secret and has kind of like been working on Clifton. But she goes into his office. She gives Clifton Sherman everything. She has to have. this letter and he basically decides that, okay, something is going on. Carl, you were right. We have to start investigating this. Wow. I think he probably was scared that more people were going to talk about it around town now that it was like becoming such a big thing. Also, I made a note here. I'm like, this is like the first time in history that like a woman has come in with evidence and has gotten an investigation started. Like especially in the early 1900s, the fact that it was a woman who was like, I think something's going on. And they're really.

like, I believe you. Really impressive. It is quite surprising. Really impressive. And so this basically means that it's time for the investigation to move forward. Wow. I'm actually shocked that he's getting on board even still. But I know. I know. It feels like there's a lot at stake and there are big powers at play. Wow. But he's finally like, okay, we can look into this. I think too, sometimes people want to be the one to break the story or they want to be the one to like take credit for breaking something. So maybe something flipped in his mind where he's like, well, if we can't pacify everyone, then I want to be the one that's like the guy who broke the story in the Hartford Current. That makes sense. So with this letter in hand, Clifton Sherman contacts the state attorney, Hugh Alcorn. And Alcorn agrees that they have grounds to officially investigate Amy. And to do that, they enlist the help of this other full-time reporter, this guy named Robert Thayer. In early June of 1914, a few days after Franklin passed away, Robert goes to the Archer Home to interview. you, Amy. He makes it seem like he's writing a profile on her. He approaches her like,

you're this great religious woman, like sister Amy. We want to do this whole profile on you. We're going to write about you in the Hartford Current. She ate it up. And she ate it up. She's like, absolutely come into my house, write whatever you want about me. Eventually in this like profile he's writing on Amy, he asks about Franklin because Franklin was really popular around town. was also seen at church a lot, had friends around town. So he just kind of casually asks about Franklin's death. And Amy kind of goes on this whole thing about how much he was helping around the house and how hard things are going to be without him now that he's gone.

She says she actually doesn't know how they're going to manage. And then before the interview is over, this part always kind of makes me laugh. Robert just straight up asks Amy to respond to the rumors that she killed Franklin. Just point blank is like, well, what do you have to say about the fact you maybe killed him. Oh. And she is totally cornered. She gets very flustered and very defensive. She keeps repeating herself. She keeps saying that Franklin had been fine that morning and he was painting the fence. I don't know how he died that day. He had seemed to be like completely fine. He got sick out of nowhere. And of course, Robert knows about like the arsenic purchases, Amy's debt.

But he doesn't say anything about that to her just yet because he doesn't want to tip his hand. And that same week, Robert Thayer visits Dr. King at his office for an interview. And when he brings up Franklin's death, like even just kind of like asking about it, Dr. King immediately loses it on him. He starts yelling about how there was nothing weird about it. And Robert Thayer's like, I didn't say there was anything weird. And Dr. King's like, it's not weird. Like old people die. And so Robert kind of keeps pressing him on this. He asks Dr. King if he thinks it was possible that Franklin was poisoned. And King is like, like, absolutely not. How could you possibly say that? That's ridiculous. And Robert actually has to leave because things start getting like pretty heated in the review. Based on the way that like Dr. King was responding to the questions, Robert starts thinking that like Dr. King was in on this or at least knows what's up. Yeah. Because at that point it could, the connection could be a little bit unclear. Like maybe he is just in the dark about it. Right. Absolutely. And all of this. Granted, there were records of him buying arsenic as well, but like, yeah. You know.

Right, right. But like maybe he was just a bad doctor and showed up and like wrote the wrong thing on the death certificates and wasn't necessarily part of it. Yeah. But like that. But his reaction is kind of the reaction. The reaction. Giving the tablets is so weird. Like he was giving them this tablet and then they were dying. Yeah. Arsenic tablets. These little arsenic tablets. So at that point, Clifton Sherman says that it's time to turn things over to the superintendent of the Connecticut State Police, this guy named Thomas Egan. To do this, basically, they just have to put. together all of the evidence that they have and show their findings to him. And then this part is so cool. You're going to really love this part. So Thomas Egan contacts this woman named Zola Bennett. Zola is this total badass. She's an undercover investigator for the Connecticut State Police. And Egan wants her to check out the Amy Archer home. Oh, she's not going to move in, is she?

Well, at the time, at the time, Zola is in her 50s, maybe early 60s. And so she is the age that someone would be. So she's able to go to Amy's house and like play the role of prospective tenant, basically. And she puts on this whole act. She tells Amy, she like knows what Amy's going to want to hear. So she's like, oh, I'm this wealthy widow. I have no friends. I have no family.

My husband left me all this money. and Amy is just like, when can you move in? This is fantastic. And so Zola moves in basically like that week. No, she actually, she moves in? She moves in. Which is crazy because, like, think about it. They know that a lot of people are dying in this house.

They know that they're being poisoned, but like, you could be poisoned in so many million different ways. Like, Zola doesn't know exactly how these people are being killed. Yeah. And she still moves in. Zola better have brought her own food and beverages because you can't eat or drink anything there. Anything.

You have to be so careful. Like I would be scared to like touch stuff or like sleep in the beds. I'd be scared someone's going to come in my room at night and smother me. Literally like locking the door at night. And she's like such this badass. She is brave. And while she's there, she starts befriending a lot of the residents. So she befriends this couple.

They're the gouties. They've been living there like for some time. And on the afternoon of November 26, 1914, something strange happens at Zola notices. Amy goes to Alice Gowdy, the wife's room, and tells her that she needs to take some medicine. And Alice is very confused because Alice feels fine. And she's not on any meds. She doesn't have to take any meds. And Amy's like, no, I have medicine for you.

Like you take medicine now. During dinner, Alice starts feeling like pretty weak and lethargic. And after finishing her meal, she says to the group that she's like having these like severe stomach cramps. And then Amy calls Dr. King. and he comes over and he's like, hey, I heard you have indigestion. I have a tablet for that. And he gives her this tablet. And she doesn't die that night.

But over the next few days, her husband starts needing to take care of her because her symptoms are getting a lot worse. This is interesting, too. After Dr. King gave her the tablet and her symptoms start getting worse, like he never comes back. He's not like, oh, your symptoms are getting worse. So let's see if we let's try something else. Yeah, no, he's not coming back because he already super dosed her. He superdosed her, which obviously just like underscores the fact that he knew exactly what was going on. And then on December 3rd, Alice passes away.

Oh, my God. Her cause of death is listed as digestive issues. Crazy, you could write that on a death certificate. Yeah, and it's just so like this little couple, they're just trying to enjoy retirement. She only killed the one of them. Well, because how suspicious would it look if you killed off the whole couple? Yeah, that's also true. You're going to go for the one.

But like, and then, oh, to just be like, here, you take medicine now. Yeah. This is getting insane. Like, I wish you guys could. I'm like, I can't sit still this episode. I'm so uncomfortable. I'm so stressed. And Zola is in the middle of all of this.

And she sees this happen. So she starts kind of like conducting interviews with the other residents. And she's like, like, hey, how are you? It's good to see you. So like, what do you think about all of these deaths? Like a lot of people die here, right? And it's like, I mean, think about it at the time. People are, people don't want to stir the pot.

They want to seem grateful. They're maybe like pious people. But it's like once Zola starts asking them, the floodgates open. Like everyone is like, oh my God, it's weird, right? Like it's the deaths are weird. Oh, I just got the chills. And a lot of the residents kind of start confiding in her that they don't want to say anything because they don't have anywhere else to go.

And so that ultimately is the thing. So they're like, it's weird, but like, I don't really want to say anything because, like, I can't leave here. I'm going to live on the street. Zola keeps doing these interviews. She keeps investigating. And ultimately, when Amy's not around one day, she goes into Amy's room and she starts snooping through her personal things. And that's where she finds another clue, clue number six, which at this point, do we need any more clues? But, like, Zola is still, like, gathering these clues up.

She finds Amy's bank account statements and she finds all of the resident contracts. And Zola discovers that Amy has been requiring residents to give her access to their bank accounts, their whole accounts. Zola doesn't know how Amy has persuaded so many people to do this, but at this point, it doesn't really matter. She, like, grabs all of these. She writes a bunch of stuff down and she goes straight to Thomas Egan with all of this information. And over the next year, investigators start really building their case and they speak to a lot of. lot of the family members of the deceased, they start hearing about how strange it was that their loved one died so fast about like maybe the money that was taken out of their accounts. And as they

gain all of this information, they actually increase the number of suspicious deaths to about 60, which is on the very conservative side. Holy. Wow. Wow. Which is crazy, Morgan, because we've talked about serial killers on this show and what? Zodiac was five Golden State. killer was, I can't remember the exact amount, but like, these people are not getting up to 60 people. The more they learn, the more they realize that it probably would have been hard for Amy to pull this all off on her own. She's like this middle-aged tiny woman. And they have the same thought that Carl had way back when he first looked through the Black Book. And that's that Dr. King signed off on the vast majority of these deaths.

And now when the detectives finally go and talk to him more, they really fully believe that he's involved somehow. But ultimately, you know, they don't have the tablets he was giving people. They're not able to find them. They're also not able to, like, really test stuff. So they don't have enough on him to, like, say he was directly involved. And they can't charge him with anything because of that. And he... Hell no.

Ultimately, in this case, is never charged with any wrongdoing and continued being a doctor. So they really decide, like, we have to focus all of our attention on Amy and we have to really go after her and we have to, like, make sure we get her. There's not a clear course of action right away. It takes kind of a long time to go through the whole process to like go through the evidence and to make sure that everything's like an order. So it ends up being early May 1916 when they finally obtain a warrant to exume the body of Franklin Andrew and test it for arsenic because they feel like they have to like actually get that evidence. So like, okay, the body does have arsenic. And so they contact this local medical examiner to help them with the examination. And And if you're a listener of Harzars Prounding or you're someone who is into like morbid cemetery in the middle of the night shenanigans, this is like absolutely your jam. Okay. Because they, Franklin has a crit. And like exhuming bodies to do autopsies is like not really a thing in the early 1900s.

Think about it. Like these people are all religious too. There's like a lot of stigma against like digging up bodies that have been buried. Especially like autopsies and stuff because you want to be in like the condition. like when Jesus raises you. So you don't want to be tampered with. But they go down to Franklin's crypt. They have these lanterns and they exume his body.

It's just like a small group of them. And the first thing that the medical examiner notices is that, first of all, there's no signs of boils anywhere on his body. Like that was just a total lie. But what is very strange about Franklin's body has been years since he died. There's this layer of sludge on him that if they literally like, like move the sludge off his body and they can see that he is in perfect condition. And this is before preserving bodies and formaldehyde embalming all of that.

Was not so much a thing. And that is like the real telltale sign of arsenic poisoning is when you are dosed with high amounts of arsenic, your body stays in like near perfect condition for a long time. It's like a natural preservative. Wow. So they're like, okay, we don't even really have to test this body. We kind of know what happened. But they still do the Marsh test. The Marsh test is this test that was developed in 1836, which is how you test bodies for arsenic.

And they find evidence that he was like undoubtedly poisoned, but also like enough poison to kill an elephant essentially. It was like way more poison than you would ever need to kill a person in his system. And that same week, they're able to exhume Alice Gowdy's body. They run the same test. They find that she was also poisoned with arsenic. And over the next few weeks, they perform autopsies on charge. Carl Smith and Michael Gilligan, and both of those bodies show poisoning as well. I mean, obviously, we like know this at this point. Yeah, everyone's like at the gym, at home vacuuming and in their car, like screaming. Like, yeah, both time. Obviously. So in May of 1916, nine years after the nursing home opened and basically nine years after they started being suspicious that something was going on there. Yeah. Police finally arrest Amy Archer Gilligan. She's 43 years old at the time. She's held without bail. A few days. A few days.

later they actually interrogate her. She does admit that she sent people to buy arsenic, but she says that she never gave it to any of her residence. She wouldn't have done that. She's a nice little religious lady. She's crazy is what she is. Obviously, they don't buy it. They have all of the evidence. And while they know that 60 people have most likely died in the Archer Home from poisoning at that point, at least, Amy's only charged with five deaths because those are the ones that they could exhume. Yeah. And all that. Ultimately, she only goes to trial for Franklin Andrews. They're only able to send her to trial for one person.

What? Amy also, I have here, she was never tried for any financial crimes. She was only tried for murder. The trial began in 1917. Prosecutors had laid out this financial scheme that she was running as evidence. And in the end, the jury did side with the prosecution. They convicted her a first-degree murder of Franklin Andrews, and they sentenced her to death. which back in the day, not a lot of women being sentenced to death.

This was like a really big deal. She was able to appeal, though. Her lawyer was able to appeal. And in 1919, she actually went on trial again. And she pleaded insanity this time. So what she would do actually, I read about this. When she was in jail, she would, she was like an organist. She could play the organ.

And she would like play and sing. And just she really tried to make herself look like she was insane. So she could plead insanity. Yeah. Yeah. And I know it was like all just the stuff she would do on the organ, like playing loud music and stuff that like to make people think she was insane. And actually during the trial when she was pleading insanity, she brought her own drugstore records to the trial. And she was like, look, I'm insane.

Look at how much morphine I've bought over the last few years. She bought 20,500 morphine tablets in three years between 1912 and 1915, all for herself. That doesn't make you look better. No. That doesn't. Yeah, she tried to do it like, oh, this is proof that, like, my mental health is bad. It's like, no, it just makes it look like you were doing a lot of morphine, which doesn't... You have more so a drug problem.

Yeah. Yeah. Not an insanity issue. No. Her whole argument basically was that the morphine was influencing her mental health, that she was taking the morphine maybe for her mental health. It was like a very unclear argument that she was trying to go for. Yeah. But the jury bought it.

They buy this insanity plea. What? And they resentenced her, so she was charged. which was second-degree murder. And instead, she was sentenced to life in prison, but eventually was transferred to the Connecticut General Hospital for the insane in 1924. And she remained there for 38 years until her death in 1962.

And she was 89 years old when she died. Well, at least she didn't get back out. But, like, justice was not served in the way it should have been. No. It's also interesting, too, that the jury did buy that. Because it's like, if someone was actually having a mental health crisis, I don't think they would have the ability to keep a tidy record of their morphine purchases. Absolutely.

Like that's, I can barely keep a Google spreadsheet. Yeah. And I'm mostly with it most days. There was a lot of like really interesting theories about like women and crime back then too because a lot of like criminology was kind of this like it was new. It was new. Yeah. And a lot of people believed that like think of phrenology and stuff like, oh, the way someone's skull is like is proof that they're smart or dumb whatever and they did that a lot with women and

they thought that like tiny petite women were way less capable of murder and that like big bulking like they bring up lizzie boredin a lot because lizzie boredon was like this big woman and they tried to use that as proof that she was capable of murder because only like a woman with like a square jaw and like a big head and amy was this really tiny woman so i could also see them being like a woman like that would never she was so religious she was so tiny very Unassuming. Very unassuming. Yeah. Like maybe she was put in a bad position and she needed money and so we get it. I don't know what it was. But it is insane. The amount of money she took from residence, the estates. I'm sure she had from her second husband and the will. I just like don't understand. Like church window aside, like where did it all go? Yeah. I think that's still something that's like very unclear. A lot of it did go to the church. which is like kind of surprising. I don't know why she's giving so much to the church

if she wasn't paying her bills. Maybe it was like a weird tax write-off thing. But this brings up a question I've always had about this case, which I'm curious what you think. Do you think she was a serial killer in the sense that she killed for the thrill? Or do you think she killed for the utility of like, I need money and this is how I get money

and I don't care that I'm killing people or was it like the enjoyment of killing? I honestly think it probably. started as I'm in a really bad position and I'm going to take a couple of people out. But I think once she realized how easy it was, because I don't think you kill, I don't think you kill that many people because you get to a certain point where it's like, I've got enough. My bills are covered. I'm good.

So I think she did keep killing because she did enjoy the thrill of it. Yeah. I do think she is like she went into the full serial killer. There probably was a way at some point to redevelop the business strategy so that she could get out a debt a little bit. Reinvest. Open a second house. Keep reinvesting. Open a third house. Change the fees. Like, yeah. There's clearly a need for this. Get rid of the $1,000 lifetime care because clearly that's not working. But she kept it, even though it wasn't working. Because she knew she was going to kill him. Having that excuse. Yeah, no, I think she,

and she kept upping the ante. Like, she kept escalating in the way that a lot of the serial killers we talk about do. Yeah. She got comfortable. She, you know, started doing it right after marriage. And here sign the will up you're dead the next day like there was she got comfortable she didn't really care about the risk anymore she needed to up the ante yes yes yeah the thrill of it the thrill do you think james was in on it her first husband no i actually think james was first i don't think she killed anyone before she killed her there's a little bit of evidence so before she opened the home in windsor she actually was working for just one man in like a few towns over with james and they were just caretakers for this man. And he passed away and then they came to Connecticut or to Windsor

and opened the old folks home. So some people believe that she actually, she and James together poisoned the other man, used some of that money that they maybe got from him to open the home. In which case James would be in on it. But I think he would be a little bit too privy to be poisoned if he was that in on it. You wonder if he started like discovering and that's why she took him out to be like, Yeah. You're not going to get in the way of my stuff. Like, I'll just take you out too. Right, right.

It is interesting. I know, so I don't know. Gosh, yeah. It's a wild one. No, she, wow, that is a lot. Yeah. A lot of people to take out and hurt in that way. And the families and just like, I know some of them didn't have families, but the ones that did, it's very tragic.

I know. It's heartbreaking. It's a crazy story. It's, wow. I mean, at this point, over 100 years old. Yeah. We still see a lot of this stuff today with like the elder abuse and all of that. Elder abuse is big.

Medicare fraud and like killing people and then collecting social security checks is big. I mean, there's so many things like this still happening. But I'm curious about your great grandpa. Did he become an official, like big reporter, sleuth detective? Yeah, he worked for the paper for the rest of his life. Okay. That was like always his thing was he always was a reporter for the paper. He actually didn't love talking about the case in his life.

He was a very soft-spoken, humble man. He had like six kids. And there's actually one of my favorite stories about him is the guy that lived next to him in Windsor was Gary Merrill, who moved to Hollywood and became an actor and producer and actually married Betty Davis. What? And dated Rita Hareworth. Like, they had this crazy life. So one day he brought Betty Davis to my great-grandfather's. house for dinner. And my great-grandfather didn't think she dressed very modestly. And that was

like his only thought about Betty Davis. Oh my gosh. But that was just kind of the guy he was. Like he's not into like the flashy, the show of it. He always rode a bike. He never drove a car. Like, do you think he had any, you know, because it seems like he fought really tooth and nail from the beginning to like, let's talk about this. Let's get this out there. And like it's a different methodology too, even in that time. Like it's more so done by the reporters versus just like, hey, I have a hunch, let's go to the police. Right, yeah. They had to do so much legwork to even get this rolling.

Yeah, that's a good point. And, like, I'm just curious, too, like, he didn't like to talk about it. You wonder if because of how many people then from the time he discovered it to the time something actually happened, if he in some way felt guilty. And it's like he should not have. That you could have saved so many people. Yeah, like he definitely. If they just moved faster, it's really interesting how slowly they had to move in this investigation.

Like years and years and years. So that is all we have on Amy Archer. But we did want to do a new segment today. Yes, we do want to do a new segment. This is something Kailen and I have talked about. And, you know, when coming up with clues and really determining like what we wanted our true crime show to be, we really want to grow a community that can make a difference. That we can highlight cases that are either botched and less. you know, investigators learn from those mistakes or bring awareness to cases, especially those of

people of color and missing murdered indigenous women. Like, we want this show to really grow and become something. And so something we are going to start doing is highlighting a missing person each week. Get the word out, create awareness, and who knows where it could lead us. So we are going to be highlighting Shaylyn McAllister today. She was 20 years old when she disappeared. a member of the Horse Lake First Nation disappeared on July 4th, 2019, in Fairview, Alberta. Shailin is described as the following. Indigenous female, brown hair, brown eyes,

five feet, eight inches tall, 145 pounds. The RCMP says that Shailen left her place of employment on July 4th, 2019, at 1035 p.m. And she was last known to be at the Fairview Shell Station the same night at 1122 p.m. She has not been heard from since then. RCMP now believe that she is unlikely to be found alive, but they are hopeful that a new billboard they put up and a $10,000 reward will help them generate some leads. Shailin McAllister was a mother of two.

Family is keeping her memory alive through photos and stories. They call her the kids' guardian angel. RCMP believes someone in Fairview knows what happened and just hasn't come forward yet. There are similar awareness efforts that have occurred in northern BC along the highway of tears, which is a foreign. 447 mile or 719 kilometer, quarter of Highway 16 between Prince George and Prince Rupert in British Columbia, Canada. This has been a location of crimes against many women, particularly indigenous women. So if you have any information on Shay Lynn, you can call the RCMP at 780-509-3400.

They're actively taking calls and tips on this case. And that's all we have for this episode of clues today. You hope you guys enjoyed getting into this case with us. Yeah. Obviously, this one hits close to home. It does. This is just a crazy story, crazy connection. I want to hear about the ones that hit home for you guys, because maybe that's something,

maybe we'll pick one of those cases for an episode one day. I'm always curious what's been going on in your dark little weird towns. Yeah, absolutely. Along with our new missing person segment, if there's any cases you know about, like, this is going to be a boots on the ground effort, you guys. So be sure to comment. share. I was even thinking like Morgan and I are going to keep like a running list of everyone. Absolutely.

But if someone in the community also wants to help like as we, if we get updates on something, or like we'll just, well, maybe this is kind of like a community thing. Absolutely. I think we could do like a Google sheet. I know like Google has alerts. We can sign up for updates in relation to like are missing people's names and see if we get any updates we can kind of keep track of. But this is something we're very passionate about and want to have the show do something. We want to be different and just make this something. I totally agree. Yeah. All right. That's all we have for you guys today. Thank you so much for joining us on another episode. I'm going to be taking the lead on a case here soon. I can't wait. It's stressful.

I'm going to tell you right now. You better prepare yourself. It's stressful not knowing what's happening. Oof. Okay. Wish you look. Yeah. All right. We will see you guys next week. Bye guys. Bye. Capture your favorite summer feeling with Pandora jewelry. Discover a collection. inspired by the sunshine, freedom, and moments that make the season unforgettable. From sun-kissed metals to personalized pieces, ready to be engraved with your summer mantra. Each design moves with you, from beach days to golden nights and every memory in between. Shop Pandora Jewelry's new summer collection, in store or online at pandora.net and let your summer unfold.

When someone goes missing, the headlines focus on what happened. but the truth often lives in the smallest details. I'm Sarah Turney. After my sister disappeared, I learned how those final hours, the last conversations, the last decisions can haunt families forever. And I'm Courtney Nicole.

After seeing crime impact my own family, I've learned how overlooked moments, missed red flags, and unanswered questions can change everything. Together, we're bringing those lived experiences into the work. This is the final. hours, a crimehouse original powered by Pave Studios, a podcast that puts the moments before a

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