Criminal - The Fasting Cure

Episode Date: March 24, 2023

In 1911, two sisters traveled to Seattle to meet a "doctor" named Linda Hazzard. The sisters didn’t seem very sick, but when they arrived, Dr. Hazzard told them they didn’t have a moment to lose ��� they needed to begin her treatment right away.  A few months later, one of the sisters wrote a letter to her old governess. “I am wonderfully better in fact,” she said, “getting stronger by leaps.” But her handwriting was messier than usual, and her sentences ran together and overlapped. You can find Gregg Olsen’s book, Starvation Heights, here. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. Listen back through our archives at youtube.com/criminalpodcast.  We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Please use discretion. These two women, in their mid-30s, had been raised really in quite wealthy circumstances in the UK. They had money, they had diamonds, they had land holdings in Australia, and they had a place in London. In 1910, sisters Claire and Dorothea Williamson took a steamer across the Atlantic. They didn't tell anyone why they were going to America. There weren't any other siblings, neither had married, and they embarked along this trek across the world, really.

They had, you know, 13 trunks of stuff with them on this world tour they were on. Their parents had died young. The sisters had inherited a lot of money, more than a million dollars. Dorothea, who went by Dora, was four years older than Claire. When the Williamson sisters arrived in Canada, they went to Quebec first, then headed west, towards Vancouver. What were they seeking?

Does it seem like they didn't even know what they wanted? They were seeking perfect health. There definitely was a fattest kind of movement going on in America and other countries too, where people were really seeking alternative treatments, but they were mixing it with sort of a holiday aspect, like a little vacation or retreat. So these sanitariums sprang up all over, and some of them offered, you know, electroshock kind of therapy and water. Some offered regimens of different kinds of foods.

Kellogg was known in Michigan for his cereals that he was pushing as a way to change the way people ate and what their diets were. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg had invented cornflakes. His sanitarium was advertised as the largest and most elaborately equipped health resort in the world, a mecca for vacationists. Kellogg was known to wear a white suit and carry a white cockatoo on his shoulder. He instructed his patients to do things like chew each bite of food 40 times before swallowing, or sit in wooden cabinets lined with light bulbs. It's been reported that Dr. Kellogg also believed an electric current, applied directly to the eyeballs, could treat vision disorders.

Here's author Greg Olson. Everybody was kind of looking for something new, something that would make them feel better, maybe take more control of their lives. But what they were doing was turning it over to people, some of them charlatans, some of them that did not know and were not able to cure anybody. People flocked to the West for exposure to fresh mountain air.

Some Western cities had dozens of sanitariums, and when their beds filled up, patients pitched tents and slept in the open desert. When Claire and Dora Williamson checked into a hotel in Victoria, British Columbia, called The Empress, they saw an ad in a daily newspaper by a doctor named Linda Hazard. She was, you know, a self-professed fasting expert. Now, we don't know whether or not she had any training in the subject,

because unfortunately, when she was asked to produce her medical records, the place that she had gone to school purportedly had burned down. But she was a strong woman, a woman who really had this revolutionary idea, this idea that whatever ails you can be fixed. She felt that through a regimen of fasting and a kind of very rough massage, those two things taken together would eliminate all the toxins, all the reasons why you weren't feeling well or whatever your ailment was, from hair loss to maybe even a curved spine or something.

She felt all of those things could be fixed with this kind of a treatment. Linda Hazard had written a book called Fasting for the Cure of Disease. And after reading the ad in the paper, Claire and Dora requested a copy of the book and read it together. Linda Hazard wrote that whatever the manifestation, the only disease is impure blood and its sole cause, impaired digestion. Overeating is the vice of the whole human race. Inside the book, Claire and Dora found a brochure for a sanitarium run by Dr. Hazard.

It was on a peninsula across the Puget Sound from Seattle, in a village called Olala. Claire wrote to Dr. Hazard. Claire, she was the leader. She was the one who really led the idea that this was going to be something they would do wholeheartedly. And Dora went along with it. Dora wasn't exactly smitten with the idea of getting the treatment from Dr. Hazard, but she did absolutely love the idea of being out in the country. However, when they started corresponding with the doctor, they found out that the Olala Sanitarium hadn't yet been constructed and that they would need to come, if they wanted to,

to an apartment that she set up in downtown Seattle. The women agreed. Claire and Dora didn't tell their family about their plans, writing in a letter to Dr. Hazard, we are not mentioning it to anyone. When they finally met with Dr. Hazard in person, she told them they didn't have a moment to lose. She said, look, we need to get you under treatment right away.

You are on death's door. This kind of shocked and surprised the sisters. They didn't really seem to be sick. But Dr. Hazard said, you know, you are, and I know best. And that's really where it all began for them. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is criminal. When Claire and Dora Williamson arrived in Seattle, Dr. Linda Hazard did not examine them.

She told them there was no need. Their bodies were full of poison, she said. And she immediately began the sisters on her fasting cure. They would get, you know, multiple times a day a liquid of some kind. It could be orange juice in the morning, maybe five ounces. Later in the day, they would have a tomato broth, or maybe it would be a heated broth made of asparagus. And when I say a broth, that really oversells what it is. What we're looking at here is basically a tomato dipped in hot water for like two seconds. It was not, you know, when you're thinking of tomato broth, you might be imagining, you know, the old grilled cheese sandwich and the tomato soup combination.

But it wasn't that. It was a clear liquid, just barely pink. And that's it? That's it. Between meals, Dr. Hazard administered the other parts of her treatment. She would just, I don't know, she did this kind of a pummeling massage that was brutal. And she would lay them down and push really hard, almost like beating them. And the women would just lay there and, you know,

gasp and writhe in pain. And then she would go on to the next treatment, which was the enema, or as doctor called it, the internal bath. And what would that consist of? That was probably like anybody's worst nightmare, I'm sure. hooked up to that enema tube cleansing for that long of a time. And that is, you know, exhausting and I think horrific, but that was part of the treatment.

It's like you have to clean the outside and the inside. How long does it take for the women to start feeling the effects? I think after about a week, they both started feeling weaker and weaker and kind of wondering about, you know, what was happening to them and were they going to get better or not. And Dr. Hazard kept assuring them each day, she would say, tomorrow you'll have perfect health. She claimed to have cured people of cancer, tuberculosis, epilepsy, and insanity. She told Dora and Claire about her former patients.

Once, a 28-year-old woman with depression came to her from Sweden. Dr. Hazard put her on a liquid diet with daily enemas. Two weeks in, the woman started feeling better. That day, she walked four miles round trip to Linda Hazard's home for her enema. Each day after that, she would again walk four miles or more. After fasting for 42 days, the woman completed her treatment and returned to Sweden. Dr. Hazard said she received a final letter from her, a most interesting letter that shows in every way that she is sane and rational and happy. Linda Hazard had a commanding voice.

She had a pet cocker spaniel and more a fox stole that was the same color as the dog. Claire and Dora believed in her and believed that they could turn a corner any day. She knows she's got a couple of live ones there. She's got some people who have money. I mean, these were not poor, destitute women. They were actually a good mark for somebody who wanted to take advantage of them. So they're in this apartment in Seattle. Is anyone seeing them? Is Linda Hazard living with them? Is she just showing up to do the treatments? Linda comes and goes and checks on the women

as they are under her treatment. But at the same time, she also had a nurse or two on staff that was advised to watch them and see how they were doing. One of the nurses confided in the neighborhood grocer, quote,

they would not take a glass of water unless Dr. Hazard said so. You would think she had hypnotized them. She could see that they were fading, that these two women were getting weaker and weaker, and she was emptying out the enema can one time, and she noticed white particles that she later told people she thought were parts of their intestines. She thought that they were basically being starved to death. The nurse took her worries to a doctor, who told her to give the women more food.

But when she tried, they refused. They would not eat unless Dr. Hazard ordered it. Claire and Dora would often faint. About two months after they had arrived in Seattle, Dr. Hazard's sanitarium was finally ready. She prepared to transfer Claire and Dora there. Dora's face and hands were wrapped in bandages. The women couldn't stand up by themselves and were loaded onto stretchers.

A pair of ambulances came to take them to the harbor, where they would leave on a boat for the sanitarium in Olala. They were so weak. They willingly did anything the doctor told them to do. And at the dock, an attorney came, and they changed Claire and Dora's will. We'll be right back. I'm sorry. month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even

psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. you ultimately watch out for. And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So, tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. At the dock, Claire Williamson was barely conscious. Under the supervision of Dr. Linda Hazard's attorney,

Claire wrote that in the event of her death, 25 sterling pounds per year should go to the Hazard Institute of Natural Therapeutics. After the papers were signed, Linda Hazard and the Williamson sisters left for Olalla. Linda Hazard did not want anyone to know that they were coming to Olalla, so she basically snuck them in and took them up to her home, which was a bungalow-style home in the middle of the woods and not a sanitarium at all.

It was her personal residence. The sanitarium Claire and Dora had seen advertised had charming cabins and manicured grounds. But when they got there, it wasn't that at all. Nothing had really happened. Nothing had been built. It was a country home. Had a upstairs sort of a loft attic space and a fairly decent-sized living room with a big stone fireplace, which would become really where they would spend

a lot of their time in front of that fire, taking baths or having the enema done. Claire wrote in a letter, I am wonderfully better, in fact, getting stronger by leaps. She wrote that no one could have given her such genuine love and care as Dr. Hazard, but her handwriting was messier than usual, and her sentences ran together and overlapped.

You know, you have to know that Linda Hazard had a charisma. She had an authoritative way of talking to people. You know, she was a woman who persevered in a time where men ruled medicine. There were very few women who really endeavored to be more than a nurse. But here she was, a doctor. And she had the personality, the kind of really stoic, authoritative, sure-of-herself kind of personality that whatever she said to you was it. There was like no argument. She was absolutely right and unyielding. Linda Hazard was born in the late 1860s. She grew up in Minnesota in a two-story farmhouse. She was the oldest of seven children. Her parents were interested in food and exercise.

They ate a mostly vegetarian diet, which was rare at the time. When Linda Hazard was young, a doctor told her father that his children were suffering from intestinal parasites. The doctor prescribed them what were called blue mass pills. Nineteenth-century recipes for these blue mass pills called for mercury, licorice root, and dead rose petals. Abraham Lincoln reportedly started taking blue mass pills for melancholia after a breakup. He stopped after a few years, early in his presidency, telling his former law partner the pills were putting him in a bad mood. Experts today believe he may have suffered from temporary mercury poisoning. The blue mass pills gave the then-young Linda Hazard

bouts of vomiting and diarrhea. She nearly died. She did recover, but at that moment, I think she had this idea that health and fitness was going to be her calling. She kept having stomach problems. Other doctors tried to treat her with calomel, another form of mercury. She lost many of her upper teeth. Linda Hazard was exhausted. She was underweight. She began training as a nurse and looking for a cure for herself.

Meanwhile, on the East Coast, fasting specialists were making headlines. In Manhattan, one doctor fasted for 40 days. The New York Times began publishing daily updates on his health. They reported that at least 2,000 people bought tickets to see him. He broke his fast for a crowd with watermelon, a steak, and a glass of milk. Another doctor in Pennsylvania named Edward Dewey became a fasting believer after treating a young girl who seemed to be dying.

She couldn't keep food or medicine down, only water. None of the drugs Dr. Dewey tried helped her. But after 35 days without food, Dr. Dewey announced that she began to recover. Later, when Edward Dewey's own baby got sick, he refused to give the baby medicine. He said he stopped feeding the child altogether, and that the baby recovered. Edward Dewey read in a physiology textbook that starvation only influenced the body. It left the brain unharmed and able to fight off illness. He swore off man-made medicine and began to teach fasting as a natural cure for any disease.

He wrote two books, and Linda Hazard read them both. She wrote Dr. Dewey and became his student. She tried the fasting cure herself and became obsessed with physical fitness. She would pose naked for photographs. Sort of a physical culture kind of pose where her arms were, you know, up and she was making a muscle.

I mean, she was really a proponent of fitness and body and mind and spirit, all of those things coming together. And I think that early childhood experience with her illness was part of that. Claire Williamson also suffered from stomach issues as a child. Doctors said she suffered from, quote, morbid cravings for food. They prescribed her small meals every two hours and a full meal before bed. Later, when Claire went to see a doctor in London for her stomach problems, she was told she had a tilted uterus and that her ovaries were inflamed.

She believed Dr. Hazard could help her, and Dora was willing to do whatever her sister wanted. At the sanitarium, Dr. Hazard told the sisters they were too weak to see each other. She started keeping them apart. Claire started to question the fasting cure. Claire was getting wise to all of it. She was the one thinking that this isn't working out.

This is not going to be something that's going to save us. I don't know if we're going to get out of here. Claire had, up to that point, several attempts to escape, actually, where she tried to crawl out of that space because she couldn't walk anymore. So she tried to crawl down the stairs at one point. I'm going to get help. I've got to get you out of here. So Claire was, at least had her wits about her, about how serious things were. Dora, she was thinking, you know, that her sister was fading.

She was finally getting a clue that something was really wrong. Claire couldn't speak much. And Dora, finally the light goes on. And she thinks, wow, we're in trouble too. So that night, Dr. Hazard separates them. She takes Dora, she carries her down the stairs. Her sister's upstairs and all that Dora can hear is a bunch of scraping and moving around of floorboards or something's happening, maybe furniture's being moved. She couldn't quite determine what was happening up there. And then later, Dr. Hazard comes down the stairs, stomps down the stairs in that way that she did, and told her that her

sister had gone. Do we know how Dora reacted? Was she too sick to really react? In the moment that it happened, she was so weak and so dazed. I mean, think about this. You have no food. You are just running on basically oxygen and hope, and your brain is rattled. And she was really confused and upset and worried and then compliant. Linda Hazard wouldn't allow Dora to attend her sister's funeral. She said she was too weak. She needed to stay at Olala. Dr. Hazard told her that her sister's last wish was that she remain at Olala for the rest of her life.

And Dora sort of accepted that. But before Claire died, she sent a telegram. We'll be right back. I'll see you next time. New year, new me? How about same year, new me? You just need a different approach. According to Noom, losing weight has less to do with discipline and more to do with psychology. Noom is the weight loss management program that focuses on the science behind food cravings and building sustainable eating habits. Noom wants to help you stay focused on what's important to you with their psychology and biology-based approach. Noom takes into account your unique biological factors, which also affect weight loss success. The program can also help you understand the science behind your eating choices and why you have those specific cravings, and it can help you build new habits for a healthier lifestyle. And since everyone's journey is

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That's stripe.com to learn more. Stripe.com to learn more. Stripe. Make progress. Claire and Dora had been orphaned as teenagers. When their mother died, their nanny, Margaret Conway, became their primary guardian. In 1910, while Dora and Claire made their way to America, Margaret Conway was in Australia, visiting her family. But she stayed in close touch with the sisters, keeping track of how the trip was going.

One day, she gets a cable sent from Malala, Washington, in a place she's never heard of, that says, Come at once. The telegram was from Claire. Margaret Conway boarded the SS Merrimah in Sydney. The journey to Seattle took her almost a month. She arrived in Olala in June.

By the time she got there, Claire had died. She found Dr. Hazard in her office, and she produces a little bag of basically organs from Claire's body, she says. And she points to a little bit here and a little bit there, indicating that Claire had died of cirrhosis of the liver, and there was nothing to be done to save her. And then a little bit later that day, she takes Margaret down to see Claire's body at a chapel. And Margaret Conway looks at that body laying in that little casket there, and she tells herself, this isn't Claire. What did the body look like? She said that the body was, the head was shaped differently than Claire's,

and that the skin on it was smooth, almost wax-like looking. It didn't look emaciated at all. It definitely had some characteristics that looked like Claire's, but it was an imposter. She was sure of it. By this point, Dora had been moved to a small, barely furnished cabin on the property. Dr. Hazard called it Cabin Claire. Dr. Hazard had a lock on her. I mean, she kept Dora under surveillance the entire time after Claire had died. When Margaret Conway first saw Dora,

she was shocked at how small she was. It was ghastly, she said. I was looking at a death's head. A skull with skin drawn tightly over the bones. Over it all was a bluish tint. There was one meal where Dr. Hazard had put out some food for Dora to eat, and Margaret Conway was there, and there was fresh peas served.

The peas had been cooked, so they were soft, but nothing but trouble for Dora to even try to eat that. She couldn't even grind that pea down because she was too weak. Dora told Margaret Conway the treatment was working. She said she was getting better every day. Margaret Conway knew something was wrong, but Dora seemed too weak to be moved.

She decided to stay in Olala, and she tried to get Dora to eat more. Once, she snuck cream into Dora's vegetable broth, but it just made her sick. A few weeks passed. Margaret Conway noticed a brass lock on the mailbox

that hadn't been there before. She noticed that she and Dora hadn't gotten any letters. She decided she had to do something. It was the 4th of July, 1911. Margaret and Dora were standing out looking at the fireworks that Dr. Hazard had displayed. And by then there were two or three other patients on the property. And those patients said, please take us. Get us out of here too.

And Margaret said, you know, basically, she said, we're getting out of here and we're going to make sure this doesn't happen to anybody else. A middle-aged man from Seattle, two young women, and the child of Dr. Hazard's cook were also patients at the sanitarium. Margaret Conway told Linda Hazard she and Dora would be leaving the next day. But Dr. Hazard said she wouldn't permit it. Dr. Hazard had told her that, no, I'm her guardian. Dora is an imbecile.

She's been a verified imbecile, so I'm going to be taking care of her for the rest of her life, which was her sister's wish. Dr. Hazard had convinced county authorities to declare Dora insane and appoint herself as Dora's legal guardian. She said Dora's mental troubles were the result of early menopause.

Margaret Conway drafted a telegram and snuck to a local store to send it. She got Dora's family involved, and an uncle paid Dr. Hazard $500 to let Dora go. When Margaret Conway and Dora left Olala, Dora had been there for three months. They took a steamboat to Tacoma, where they checked into a hotel, and did everything they could to help Dora recover. There were photographs in the paper of Dora sitting by Lake Steilacoom and American Lake. Her eyes are dark and filled in almost like a

skeleton. And her little dress that she's wearing looks like it's ten sizes too big. It's just hanging on her wrists or just little twigs. But she was alive, and she was alive because her nanny, her governess, had come all that way to save her. Dora and Margaret wanted to press criminal charges against Dr. Hazard for murder. They went to the British Vice Consulate and convinced him to take on Dora's case. His first step was to find out who this so-called Dr. Hazard was. As he digs deeper and looks at her background, the Vice Consulate sees there is a pattern here.

There are wealthy people who have died under her care. And he digs even deeper than that, and he finds out that there's one case in Minnesota where a bunch of this woman's assets had disappeared. So is this a financial crime, or is this, you know, a charlatan practicing a cure, or what's really going on here. He also found out that eight days before Claire had died, another patient had died under Dr. Hazard's care. He was a former state legislator staying in a Seattle hotel. And there were other patients who had died during Linda Hazard's treatment. They included a 24-year-old civil engineer,

a prominent magazine publisher, and a lawyer. So the vice consulate was really building that case for the prosecution in Kitsap County, interviewing, talking to people who knew somebody who had died under her care. Of course, all of the deaths, and there were at least 10 at that time, all of the deaths had been marked, you know, an organic cause or a catastrophic illness. None of them had indicated starvation. But he gathered up all this material. He went to the prosecution and said, look, we have got to do something and stop this woman. And they did agree. They said, okay, well, we're going to charge her with the murder of Claire Williamson. When does this become public knowledge about what Linda Hazard has done and the charges against her? Is she still treating people at this point? Yeah, she's out on bond. She gets arrested. She makes a big deal about it, you know, that she is being persecuted because she's a woman.

She's being persecuted because she is teaching things that the regular medical profession does not want taught, that you can cure yourself by what you eat or what you don't eat. So she was controversial and she got a lot of attention. So when she was arrested, that was the first time that it appeared in the papers that something was happening at a place called Starvation Heights. Newspapers around the world follow the case with headlines like, Starvation Doctor Charged, Woman Doctor is Arrested, and Rich Men Victims. In January of 1912, almost six months after Dora left Olala, Linda Hazard's trial began. In the courtroom, Dora sat next to an empty chair.

It was Margaret Conway's idea of a tribute to Claire. Against the advice of her lawyers, Linda Hazard testified. One reporter wrote that she talked so fast that the court stenographer threw up his hands in despair. Who are the most important witnesses at the trial? Well, Dora was the star witness. I mean, she really was the one who laid it all out there about what had happened to her. But I think one of the most compelling witnesses was Essie Cameron, who was a young nurse from Portland who had worked there on the property and had been witness to the autopsy. What did she say? She had gone into the bathroom area and she saw Claire's body laying on this little ironing board. And Dr. Hazard was cutting her apart.

And it was horrific. It was a sight she could never forget. And she made her plan right there. I'm not going to do this anymore. There's something wrong here. Why is she doing this? And then she found out that Dr. Hazard had been pulling the gold teeth out of her victims

and selling them to a dentist. The trial went on for nearly three weeks. Many doctors took the stand. One testified that Claire's diet had been less than one-fifth of the food required to live. Dr. Hazard's defense called a list of over 60 witnesses. Among them was a doctor who testified that Claire could not have died of starvation.

He told the jury that Claire suffered from intestinal lesions that made her unable to digest food. He testified that no one could have prevented Claire's death. After the jury reached a decision, the light suddenly went out. The bailiff struck a match for the clerk to read the verdict. Linda Hazard was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to two to twenty years. It was reported that she burst into a storm of denunciation outside the courthouse. That night, at the Home for Women Prisoners in the county, she collapsed.

Linda Hazard appealed her conviction. She insisted she had done nothing wrong. And people around the world supported her. One well-known doctor proposed that he would fast for 40 days under Dr. Hazard's supervision. If he lived through it, he demanded, she should get another trial. People who saw her name in the papers continued to attempt to fast. One woman hired a nurse who was a follower of Dr. Hazard's. The nurse put her newborn baby on a diet and gave the baby mud baths outside. The baby died. Then the mother tried the cure herself and starved to death in a hotel room.

The court rejected Linda Hazard's appeal, and she went to prison in Walla Walla, Washington. What happens to Dora? Does she come back to health well? Yes. In fact, it's noted in the newspapers at the time that, you know how the press is, the little English rose is beaming in the courtroom or, you know, things like that about how lovely she was and how healthy she looked. And then you could flip back and look at those photographs that were just horrific of her sitting there in a little chair with that dress so big and so wrong. I mean, she really did transform back to what she had been before. Because nothing had really ever been wrong with her to start.

She was perfectly healthy. Nothing was wrong with her except for, I don't know, her belief in an idea that, you know, it happens to people all the time, even today. I mean, when you think about it, a strong person, a person with charisma and presence can really convince you. And I think it took a while for Dora to be unconvinced. It took the death of her sister. In 1914, a Tacoma newspaper reported that Dora had gotten engaged to an English clergyman. She married him and settled in England, but a few months later, he drowned. In Walla Walla, Linda Hazard became editor of the prison newspaper.

She received mail from supporters around the world, and she would reply, although some countries, like Australia, banned its citizens from writing her back. One of her supporters in New Zealand wrote to the governor of Washington. He included a petition for her freedom. Of the people that signed it, he wrote, The widow of one patient who died under Linda Hazard's care, sent a letter to the state. I am not an intimate friend of Dr. Hazard's. In fact, she possesses some personal qualities which irritate and antagonize me.

However, she wrote, she did not have anything like a fair trial. The mayor of Seattle signed a petition on Dr. Hazard's behalf. Four years after she was sentenced, the governor issued Linda Hazard a pardon. When the governor pardons her, he says, you know, you have to leave the country, and you can never come back.

And also, you're going to surrender your medical license. Linda Hazard did not intend to quit anything. She moved to New Zealand and started practicing again. She published another book about fasting. But she didn't stay long. Linda Hazard comes back to Alala maybe five years later and starts building that sanitarium, that one that was going to be funded by the diamonds

from Claire Williamson or whoever. But she builds a sanitarium. She opens it up, though not as a fasting clinic and not as a doctor. She's now an instructor. And she calls her place Wilderness Heights Center for Natural Therapeutics. And she's teaching people how to get well. Did people come? People came, but really not many.

I mean, her time sort of had passed, and the sanitarium ran maybe five or ten years into about the 1930s, and then it sort of switched over to a kind of old folks' home and what I think an abortion clinic, because a lot of women would come just spend the day or a night. And I think that's what was happening there. She was providing abortions for people, but she wasn't able to really do her full regimen of being a doctor and a curer. Does she spend the rest of her life there? She does. Linda Hazard, you know, she becomes really part of the community in a weird way.

But she, you know, she wasn't herself anymore. She wasn't the queen bee of the medical establishment like she had wanted to be. Linda Hazard was almost 70 years old when her sanitarium in Olala caught fire. A neighbor remembered watching her wander outside the burning building. Everything I worked for, Dr. Hazard said, it's all gone. A year after the fire, the police found a man in a cabin on her property who had been reported missing by his insurance company. He was alive, and one newspaper said he was trembling in a heavily blanketed bed.

He weighed 107 pounds. Dr. Hazard was arrested. She called her arrest ridiculous. So she really, Linda Hazard, did she actually believe that this treatment worked, do you think? I think she totally believed it. she came to the Seattle area, you know, studying and practicing and working on trying to make the fasting cure be something that's a part of mainstream life. But she also understood that she was a scientist and she was in a field of the medical breakthrough. She was trying to do something no one else was doing. So I think she allowed herself to accept that, you know, like you have to break a few eggs

to make an omelet. She decided that, you know, if a few people had to die along the way, then it was fine because she was learning and she was going to save so many other people. By 1938,

only a few of Linda Hazard's supporters remained in Olala. That year, she became very sick. As she gets older and she becomes ill, she announces to the press that she's going to do something that's going to surprise them, that she's going to take the cure herself. And when she takes the cure, she says,

I'm going to live even longer. And then about 40 days later, she died. She starved to death. She starved herself to death. Thank you. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sajico, Libby Foster, Lily Clark, Lena Sillison, and Megan Kinane. Our technical director is Rob Byers. Engineering by Russ Henry. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com.

Greg Olson's book is called Starvation Heights, a true story of murder and malice in the woods of the Pacific Northwest. You can find a link in the show notes. We're on Facebook and Twitter at Criminal Show and Instagram at criminal underscore podcast. And we're also on YouTube, where you can go back and take a listen to some of our favorite past episodes. That's at youtube.com slash criminal podcast.

Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. The number one selling product of its kind with over 20 years of research and innovation. Botox Cosmetic, Adabotulinum Toxin A, is a prescription medicine used to temporarily make moderate to severe frown lines, crow's feet, and forehead lines look better in adults. Effects of Botox Cosmetic may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems,

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