Crime Junkie - AUDIO EXTRA: Bizarre Crime History

Episode Date: December 18, 2020

Crime Junkie OFFICIALLY turns 3 today, and we decided to give ourselves and YOU a little birthday gift...we’re still the same pod, but with a NEW LOOK! And to celebrate we are giving you a very different kind of bonus episode! Join us as we take a look back at some of the most bizarre moments in criminal justice history - Crime Junkie style!In addition to a new logo, we have a few goodies to share with you here!We seriously can’t thank you enough for all of your support these past 3 years, we couldn't have done anything of this without you. Crime Junkie has grown into something much greater than we could’ve ever imagined, and that’s all thanks to YOU!So Happy Birthday Crime Junkies, we hope you LOVE your presents :) For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations, for a full list of sources please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/audio-extra-bizarre-crime-history/ 

Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm Ashley Flowers. And I'm Brett. And, uh, whose new Fly logo is that? Um, I think it's ours. I know. Today is a super special day because today, December 18, 2020, Crime Junkie officially turns three years old. Oh, my God. Isn't it weird? You guys, in the past three years, we have been able to do so much. Like,

this has become way bigger than we could have ever imagined. And it's all thanks to you guys. Yeah. Whether you've joined the fan club or bought merch or even just by listening to our episodes and the ads, you're giving us the ability to support causes that are important to us. Yeah. I mean, because of you guys, we have been able to tell, if you can believe it, we've heard 30 stories, heard over 500 million times with the goal to educate and advocate. And I know you guys are on board with us because together we have all been able to give over

$643,000 to charitable organizations. Which just blows my mind. I can't, I almost can't even comprehend that. I know. And this is just the beginning, you guys. I mean, I have been spending a lot of time in 2020 actually working to establish a nonprofit that will fund DNA testing in cold cases and provide resources to family members advocating for justice. And none of this could have been done without each and every one of you. I mean, I could literally cry, you guys. I am so proud of all of you. I am so proud of the whole audio check team. Like, we have done an awful lot together. And like I said, way more than Brit, like

we ever imagined was possible. Yeah. And I truly believe that this is just the beginning. And I, yes, I know that we are all going to make an even bigger impact over the next year or years to come. Yeah. And all of that is to say, this is more than we ever thought it would be. And we want to reflect all that we have done together with a brand new look. Now, not to worry. It is a new look, but we will still be the same podcast you know and love. We'll still be telling the same true crime stories every single Monday, just like we always have. And we're also sharing a few little extras with you guys, like a desktop and phone background.

And we even have social media stickers and gifts now. And you can find all those on our website at crimejunkiepodcast.com. Yeah. We'll link to them in the show notes as well. And it's not just a new look today. We actually have something for you guys, a little present of sorts, something totally different as a way to say, thank you for everything that you've helped us accomplish. So as we have been researching for the past three years for all these different cases, every once in a while, we come across these really weird, bizarre, like crime related history facts, right, Brett?

Yeah. And like, they don't really fit into any episode arc at all. Like, they're just kind of thing that we call each other about and be like, oh my God, did you know? Right. Yeah. And I always want to know. And I know that our listeners are just like us. So buckle up because we have some bizarre crime history to tell you about. Okay. So, Brett, the first one I have for you. So you know how sometimes when you're scrolling on like Pinterest or Instagram or whatever, you come across this like, did you know post that may or may not be total BS? I get sucked into them every single time.

Yeah. So I saw this one the other day about an invention from the late 1920s. And it sounded so bananas that I just had to Google it. And it actually turned out to be real. And I've been thinking of this thing as the crime skeleton ever since I learned about it. And honestly, I'm kind of obsessed with this whole idea and how it got started. So back in 1927, this woman out in Oakland, California named Helene Adelaide Shelby came up with this idea to not only get criminals to confess, but also to record their confession so they couldn't try and recant later, which on the surface sounds normal enough, right? Well, and you kind of see it happen like in a lot of different cases, we have audio from

confessions, audio from interrogations, even video sometimes. Yeah. Not this way. So Helene's invention is this booth type thing that is split into two. Like think of one of those that you would see in churches that people go to confess. Okay. Okay. The police officer doing the interrogation sits in one side while the suspect goes in the other. But in the little booth with the suspect is a megaphone, hidden cameras, and a skeleton, a real human skeleton. Okay. You had me until skeleton.

Yeah. So basically the whole plan here was to make the suspect think that they are trapped in basically a haunted booth with a ghost. And since mysticism was really big at the time, like we're talking seances and stuff, you can kind of see maybe where she's coming from, like why this idea came to her at this time. Now, just stay with me here because I want to read you some of the features from Helene's patent application because she totally filed a patent for this thing. I mean, get it girl. I understand that. The patent got approved. So according to her specifications, the booth has to have a special

lighting setup on the ceiling and the floor has to quote, produce the appearance of an apparition having a translucent outer or astral body. There's also quote, diaphanous veiling. So which is basically like this thin, gauzy fabric to help like really build the creepy atmosphere. So it's like a very, very tiny haunted house. Like extra haunted because the skeleton is actually also supposed to have red lights in the eye sockets for a quote, unnatural and ghastly glow. Okay. At this point, I feel like we're on the Pirates of Caribbean ride at Disney.

Yeah. And I'm going to take you all the way to the ride because this is my absolute favorite part. The skeleton actually blinks. So can you imagine being stuffed in a booth with this thing that's like half Halloween decoration, half Terminator, all while the police officer on the other side, they're actually controlling the skeleton's movements and making it talk. That's what the megaphone's for. So it's like a puppet. Oh my God. Yes. Yes. So it's not even like they're just trying to spook you. I mean, it is like a whole operation.

According to Cara Guillermo's article in Atlas Obscura, it doesn't sound like Helene's invention was ever built, sadly. Like this was just the patent and like her big vision. And I think someone needs to take this thing and build it for at least for Halloween, like repurpose it for a haunted house or something. And you know, there's all these like weird facts about it. Like the back of the skull was supposed to be removed so that police could store the recording equipment in there. Like that's where the recording device would be, which is like, you couldn't think of, I don't know, nowhere else to put it.

Well, I mean, it's a skeleton. There's like nothing like the rib cage you can see through. The skull is like the only place you could kind of hide it in a skeleton. Like I just want to know how she came up with this idea because like she never patented anything else. There isn't much out there about her life. So we don't even know where this interest came from. It's not even like Helene was like a detective was like, I can't get people to confess. We didn't, she has no like history that we know of being of, you know, in forensics, in interrogation, in law enforcement even.

My only belief is she probably had to have been just like a very early crime junkie. Okay, Ashley, have you ever heard of phrenology? Um, like heard the word yes can tell you what it means no. Okay, so that's kind of where I was when I kind of stumbled into this. And it was so mind boggling to research. I absolutely had to bring it up when you brought up this episode. So according to the skeptics dictionary, phrenology is the study of the structure of a person's skull to determine a person's character and mental capacity. Okay, so I definitely know why I would have heard of it. Like I know that has come up

before, but I still don't know the ins and outs. Right, so basically like your skull shape contributes to who you are, your personality or your intelligence. And it was developed around this theory by a German doctor named Franz Josef Gaul, who decided that the brain had like multiple different organs or faculties, which obviously it has a million faculties, but specifically organs. And the strength or size of those organs basically determined who you are and what you're like. And he started in this theory back in 1796. So it's like ancient, but he's not the only one to use a sort of thinking when it comes to how people become the way they are. In fact, based

on my research, the number of organs that are supposedly in a human brain can even differ between what scientists who studied this practice like agree with. Some claimed that humans had almost 40 different quote, brain organs. Oh, okay. Yeah, you know, the brain is single organ, then has Yeah, sure. Multiple other organs inside of it. Guys, science is hard.

So the idea is considering these brain organs as almost personality trait muscles. So if your hope or friendship brain organ was used a lot, it would grow and then physically alter the shape of your skull, like almost in the same way we would think about a bicep altering the shape of an arm after sticking with like a new arm workout. Weird. So it's a good thing with quote, good personality organs to grow, but it works with negative personality traits in this same way. So if you utilized your destructiveness brain organ, then it would grow. And based on the shape of your skull, a phrenologist could in theory

determine that you're obviously a criminal because brain organs, duh, they don't lie. Basically like all of this is a total pseudoscience that isn't based on anything real. But something that I found really interesting about the practice of phrenology was how it was being used. And when I first started reading up on it, I immediately thought of how it's basically just an old tool that was used to profile people who looked bad. But I was really interested to learn that actually phrenology was used in more of a rehabilitative way. So under the belief system of phrenology, you could basically do physical therapy for your brain organs, starving out the bad brain organs like destructiveness

and strengthen the good brain organs like benevolence and basically cure a person from being a criminal just like you would go to the gym to get fits to lose weight for better mental health. Had that workout for them though. Yeah, in theory, it's not a terrible plan or idea. But again, the execution of it is not great. So at that point, I am deep in the rabbit hole of skull shape. And that brought me to Shazeray Lombroso.

Go on. So this guy is considered the Italian father of criminology, which what a title. Can I say that? Yeah. Yeah. He began to blend these elements of phrenology with another practice called physiognomy, which is the study of personality based on facial features. And I'm just going to tell you right up front, this was not used as kindly as the practice of phrenology alone when it

came to practicing it. Oh boy. Rehabilitation was not really on the table. Lombroso was pretty into the idea that some people were just born criminals. They were lower in the evolutionary phase than non-criminals were. And he believed that that basically determined who you were based on how a person looked. And according to his book, The Criminal Man, Lombroso believed that, quote, nearly all criminals have jug ears, thick hair, thin beards, pronounced sinuses, protruding chins,

and broad cheekbones, which like, I'm sorry, I have like half of those things. Yes. And also to be clear, like, as a woman, I don't have a full beard, but so like, I'll never be a criminal. Like, it sounds like he's like also like it's just men. Right. And here's the thing. Law enforcement would actually consult with Lombroso, seriously. Oh my God. And he even claimed he had successfully picked out a sex offender from a lineup. Based on his features. Based solely on the offender's appearance.

Which. She. Okay. And believe me, I get that all of this sounds not only cuckoo bananas, but the practice of both phrenology and physiognomy were wildly racist and anti-Semitic in their very nature. Like, even though they were both officially debunked as legitimate ways to measure the guilt or innocence or quote unquote predetermined qualities of a human back in the 19th century, we also still see elements of both these practices kind of pop up here and there in true crime conversations.

Like think about everyone's favorite. He didn't even look like a monster, monster Ted Bundy. Like he looked innocent. He had a baby face. He looked kind. Or on the other end of the spectrum, are there facial features on a person that you feel creeped out by at a store? It's kind of the rudimentary version of that. And even terms like high brow, low brow, thick headed, they all stem from these ideologies. And obviously, these two practices were pretty influential, though obviously not super healthy to the evolution of criminal anthropology. But get this, Lombrosso actually started a museum devoted to his work in this field. And you can visit his entire collection of skulls and diagrams and wait for it, even

his own preserved head. Very on par for his study at the Museum of Criminal Anthropology in Turin, Italy, which is now like on my top list of places to go. Yeah, yeah. Like obviously this is all bananas and BS and led to a ton of terrible stuff. But I don't know, there might be something to like, I think I grew my crime junkie brain muscle and look at it. Brain organ. Yeah. Our little crime junkie brain organs are growing today, you guys. They're thriving. Oh man. So I came across this entire school of research into the severed heads of criminals. Like the whole research is basically whether or not these heads are actually dead, or are they

still able to feel things, I guess. Okay. So we're kind of still on like the skull thing. Cool. Yeah. Right. So decapitation has been a thing for centuries. And there have been a ton of reports about heads still doing things. According to how stuff works, people in the UK claim they saw Anne Boleyn and King Charles the first head trying to talk after they got cut off. So I've totally heard that about Anne Boleyn. Yeah. Yeah. So there's definitely a precedent for this, but the idea didn't really get a lot of traction until the French Revolution. And let me tell you, things got weird then. When we think of the French Revolution, we

think of the reign of terror and the guillotine, right? So in 1793, this young woman named Charlotte Corday is sentenced to die by the guillotine. And afterwards, the executioner lifts up her head as part of this whole like pageantry of it because, you know, these were big public events. So he lifts up her head to show the crowd, and he actually slaps her face. Now, that on its own isn't weird. I mean, it's not great, obviously, but it was a common thing at the time. Except this time, the crowd sees Charlotte's cheeks flush, which in theory, she shouldn't be able to do because there's no blood from her heart coming to it. Right. And it's not just the one that got

slapped. Like you could think like maybe there's a little, I don't even know what you're thinking, but like both cheeks are flushing. Not only that, but according to Richard Zach's book, an underground education, the look on her face even changes. Some eyewitnesses say her lip curls in disgust, basically like a how dare you kind of look like reacting to the situation. Now, this kicks up a big fuss right away because the guillotine was supposed to be this really humane way of executing people. Like, yeah, it was supposed to be like sophisticated, quick, easy, painless, quote unquote. Right. They would die right away. There was no suffering. But now, I mean, with this, if Charlotte could

somehow still have a physical reaction afterwards, then didn't that undermine the whole point? So this German scientist named ST Summary, who was super against the guillotine gets involved and he starts pointing to evidence or quote unquote evidence about severed heads still gnashing their teeth and things like that after decapitation. He claims that yes, the heads do feel things, especially what he calls an after pain in the neck, which I mean, okay, yeah, like outside of everything we know about modern science, there might be like some logic here, right. But then about a century later in France in like the late 1870s, scientists decide to start experimenting. And this is where things get really bizarre.

So in 1879, after a convicted rapist and necrophiliac is guillotine, the executioner hands his head over to a group of doctors. And according to an underground education, this is what they do to it. They yell right in its ears. They pinch it. They give it ammonia and smelling salts and they hold a lit candle up to its eyeballs, all trying to get some kind of reaction out of this severed head. I mean, I'm imagining doing this and getting the same reaction out of like a watermelon of just nothing. Exactly. Well, and none of this works. But when they shock the head with electricity, the eyelids move and the teeth start chattering, which you're filling an inanimate object with energy electricity. Right. Now they also

shock the headless body and apparently the spasms made the dead man's fingers grab on to one of the researchers, which is like three feet as freaking thing. I'll never forget this is such an aside, but my fifth grade teachers, like husband, like worked at a morgue or something, something very bizarre. And I'll never forget him telling me a story about how dead bodies do have like spasms or something. Right. And how he's like alone in the basement working at this body. And it just like straight up sits up. And I was like, no, that's how I would feel about this. If these fingers grabbed onto me, I would be done. Now, okay, all this is weird enough, but a year after that, this is 1880, the research gets again, if I can

say it, even more bizarre. Oh God. Another French doctor gets a three hour old severed head this time from a convicted murderer and decides to pump dogs blood into the head. What? Now from this, he reported that the lips and the eyelids moved for two whole seconds. And he takes this somehow as proof that the brain was thinking during those two seconds. I have a question that I don't want you to answer. Where is he getting this dog blood? I like to think very humanely. And it's just like he's like just withdrawing a little bit because you don't need a lot for a head. Like that's what I had to believe. It's like a red cross, but for medieval gods, got it. So the next research that happens is in 1905, yet

another French doctor, I know the French are so obsessed with this of all people, but another French doctor manages to get a freshly guillotine head, which girl, I didn't even know the guillotine was still being used in 1905. But yeah, seems kind of late, right? Yeah. He claims that when he shouted at the head's face, which okay, I'd camper, that the head actually looked at him. He says, quote, I was not then dealing with the sort of vague dole look without any expression that can be observed any day in dying people to whom one speaks. I was dealing with undeniably living eyes, which were looking at me. End quote. According to Mark Hodge's article in the Sun newspaper, a French government study in the 1950s concludes that death by

guillotine isn't instantaneous. Now, the debate about exactly how long the brain survives after decapitation is even to this day, still ongoing. Okay, so my last topic is public humiliation, which I experienced, I feel like regularly when I was like seven, I was getting an award at the Girl Scouts and my sister pants me. So like same. So I think a lot of us think about it probably a lot. And when you think of it as a form of punishment, it's usually like the scarlet letter or standing in like stocks in the town square and all the villagers throw rotten food at you. But we also see it happen in lethal ways going back for centuries, public executions, whether or not by being beheaded like you had talked

about earlier, or even stonings and crucifixions. Public humiliation has existed as a punishment basically forever. And I kind of find it as a really interesting concept of punishment, especially in the non lethal ways, the ones you live through like stocks or crime badges like the scarlet letter, because it's not only a form of punishment that is endured by the offender, but the humiliation should also be creating a sense of like, I'll never offend again. So I never have to go through this again. But there's also this form of like corporate fear that's being instilled by the onlookers who are, yes, sometimes participating in the humiliating thing the offender is being tortured with. But they're also being shown

what can happen to them. So as an official administering this kind of punishment, you're kind of getting two for the price of one, you're reprimanding the offender and threatening the public with a similar fate. And like I said, this has been going on for centuries in hundreds of cultures and countries. And we do not have time for me to start listing all of the ways people have found to humiliate each other through the years. But I think when it comes to who exactly made things the worst for the offenders, it has to be like no contest the middle ages. Okay, why? Well, there's a little device called a shame mask. A shame mask? Yeah. And it's pretty much exactly what it sounds like. But they came

in varieties, which I thought was a fun addition. So they're always kind of metal. They kind of look like a small thick bird cage and would literally get locked onto your head and face. And these were all designed with different crimes in mind. So I was reading on ancient origins how for lazy people, the mask would be designed to look like a cow, or maybe a pig for gluttony caught eavesdropping, perhaps you would get a mask designed to look like a rabbit with those big long ears. And they didn't even just stick with animals. There was also like exaggerated facial features like long tongues or noses for those convicted of lying. And this all kind of seems silly, but publicly being punished was one thing.

But wearing the physical embodiment of your crime just continues to add to that humiliation. How long did people have to wear it for? Well, here's the thing, you weren't just wearing the mask for a couple of hours or days or whatever, and you could hide in your house with this heavy iron bird cage on your head. You were paraded down the streets. This is like, I'm getting like very Game of Thrones vibe. And I didn't even watch Game of Thrones, but like walking naked through the town, ringing the bell, shame. Exactly. And you think you're done after that walk? Some masks even had little bells on top. So for the duration of the time you had to wear it, everyone drew attention. Everyone knew when you were nearby.

And the one thing that I saw more than anything when I was researching public humiliation as a punishment, especially these shame masks were kind of how sexist and misogynistic they were in practice. How so? There was a specific addition to some shame masks called the scolds bridle. So it was designed to punish a nagging wife or gossip. I grew up riding horses, so I had no problem imagining this torture device, but it's basically just like the mask, a heavy cage around your head, but the scolds bridle would be inside of it and had a bit. So like a piece of metal that was inserted to a woman's mouth to kind of press on the woman's tongue, whether it was down behind her bottom teeth, pushing her tongue down or even under her

tongue, pushing the tongue up against the roof of her mouth. And these bits would obviously prevent a woman from speaking, eating, drinking. And since her mouth was constantly sort of being pried or propped open, she would be drooling a lot as well. And get this, if that did not make you flip a table. Some of the bits even had spikes on them that would tear into the woman's tongue and mouth. How dare she tell her husband to pick up his underwear off the floor? So close to the hamper, but never in it. I don't understand. Holy heck. 2020 isn't a great year, but at least it's not the Middle Ages. Truly. And according to bustle in the 16th and 17th century, there was another form of punishment usually reserved

just for women called the ducking stool. What's that? The woman in question would be tied to this little chair or stool, but that stool was attached to a super long pole that would extend the woman over a body of water like a lake or a river. And she would just get dunked in over and over and over again. And the same article that I was reading about shame masks from in ancient origins, they also referenced this, but in a way that was used for coral, some married couples. So again, back to the underwear, so close to the hamper. Instead of just the woman being tied to the stool, the couple would be tied together back to back and dunk into the water repeatedly. So I guess like gay equality. I'm not sure.

What's the whole point? Like we're just going to keep dunking you till you figure out how to like work it out and be friends. I guess so. I don't know how you can convict a couple of being quarrelsome and then punish them for it. Yeah, what a weird form of marriage counseling. Truly. It's like marriage counseling meets survivor. So what you're saying is like the amazing race. Yeah. And again, I could talk about this for hours and I definitely only scratch the surface on public humiliation as a bizarre form of punishment throughout time. But I do want to mention one last one that I kind of just didn't see coming much like the same masks. There was a device called the flute of shame. I don't even know what

that means. So it was this large flute shaped piece of metal with a neck shackle at the top and a row of finger clamps all along the front of this flute, essentially, but like a giant flute, like it was strapped to your neck and would go down like to your waist or even further. Then your fingers would be clamped into place in the finger clamps on top of it. And my favorite part of this bizarre torture shame device is what it was used for when it came to convictions. Okay. It was used for bad musicians. Oh my God, are you serious? So like if you were just like real crappy and no one liked your they're like you need to learn a lesson. Your bad music wasn't humiliation up for you. Here is the

flute of shame. Honestly, like again, not to like have a personal story for every crime when we tell, but I would have had to fully wear the flute of shame when I was in fifth grade band at our like private middle school. Obviously, my teacher was not very good because she taught me saxophone just fine. Thank you very much. Then she gave up on me because I got through the entire class with my flute. I didn't play a single note. I would just well, I mean, it's fifth grade, everyone sounds awful, but I would just blow and move my fingers. It was terrible of shame for you, Ashley flowers.

Shame, shame, shame. Crime junkie is an audio Chuck production. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? Yeah.