Here's Where It Gets Interesting - An Assassin in Utopia with Susan Wels

Episode Date: February 24, 2023

Joining Sharon on Here’s Where It Gets Interesting is Susan Wels, whose new true crime book, An Assassin in Utopia, proves that real life really is stranger than fiction. Stay tuned as we dive into the intimacies of the utopian Oneida cult community–its famous members, its principles, and the unthinkable murder that tarnished its reputation… but not its silverware. Please note that this episode contains mature content and may not be suitable for young children. Thank you to our guest, Susan Wels. Hosted by: Sharon McMahon Guest: Susan Wels Executive Producer: Heather Jackson Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder Researcher: Valerie Hoback Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. 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

Hello, friends. Welcome. I, first of all, today's episode, oh my gosh, I think you're going to love it. I guarantee you there will be things in this episode that you are like, what? I just couldn't stop laughing. It made me, it just really tickled me. I do need to give you a content warning though. We do refer to some subjects that are not going to be super appropriate for younger children, but I really hope you'll stick around because my conversation with author Susan Wells is fascinating. Let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. I'm really excited to be chatting with author Susan Wells today.

Your book was on my radar of like, I need to read that. Even before we ever connected, I was fascinated by this topic. First of all, tell us about how you became interested in Charles Guiteau and the Oneida cult. How did this even get on your radar? Well, I went back to school to get a master's in history when I was about 40, 41. And in one of my classes, I learned about the Oneida community. And I was absolutely gobsmacked because this was taking place in Victorian America. And it was more like what was happening in the 1960s in the United States in terms of these experimental new communities and utopian societies that broke all of the social rules. back of my head that I would love to write something about the Oneida community. And I thought if I could find a crime committed by somebody in the Oneida community, I might have

a book. The problem was that the Oneida community was incredibly well thought of by all their neighbors. Nobody committed any crimes that I could unearth. And then finally, the New York Times put their archives online. And I thought, well, there's a small chance that if a crime was committed in upstate New York, that the New York Times might report on it. So as a last gasp effort, I typed in Oneida community crime, and whoa, I got an absolute avalanche of hits. And when I was able to focus on it, it was a presidential assassination. So I thought, I've got a book. And I spent the next 12 years researching every single aspect of it. 12 years? 12 years. 12 years? My goodness, that is dedication. People in my community are always very interested in how

writers research their book. And 12 years, I'm just going to keep like exclaiming that over and over. What were you doing for 12 years? I mean, like, those are some deep dives, Susan. Yes. Well, you know, when I got into the book, you know, I knew that there was a presidential assassination. And I knew that there was the Oneida community. And literally, it was like opening up a cabinet of curiosities, because there were so many sub-stories and famous people who linked into this story. And I had to research every one of them, because there wasn't very much known about them in our environment. And I was so entertained by what I was finding that I just kept following all these threads as I found them. Wow. Most people cannot maintain an interest in a topic for 12 years. So if you think about like, what were you really into 12 years ago? Perhaps it

was like canning jam, but you have not spent dedicated your life to researching that for 12 years. It's what floats my boat. What can I say? That's off to you. So I mean, you're this concept of a utopian society, like a prototypical utopian society, so to speak. And the involvement of somebody who goes on to assassinate a president. I think it's just such an inherently interesting premise. And your book is called An Assassin in Utopia, the true story of a 19th century sex cult and a president's murder. I can almost promise you most people are going to arrive at this book and be like, say what now? You know, like, I have never heard of any of these things. So let's start at the beginning of the Oneida community. First of all, how did it start? And what was it?

Well, it started by a man named John Humphrey Noyes. And the funny thing was, he was so incredibly shy, he couldn't even be in the company of women. And so, what he did was, he had a religious conversion in around 1831, and then he went on to theological school. And he decided that the only way he could really control his environment and avoid being judged is to tell everybody that he was perfect. And he got thrown out of the theology school and he lost his license to preach, but he went on and he drew audiences and converts, and he created this community that was all centered around him as God's messenger on earth. And because he was so shy, he made it a community where there would be no shame in human relationships. And that it would be a focal point of the community. So that's how it all got started. It was very strange, but it was the most successful

utopian community in American history. It lasted for more than 30 years. And then, of course, it became the Oneida Silverware Company. When I first learned about this community a number of years ago, I was like, it's another one of those like, say what now? Oneida Silverware is related to a sex cult? Say what now? Oneida silverware is related to a sex cult? And that's related to the presidential assassination? My goodness, everything's related. This is where I always say truth is much stranger than fiction. Absolutely. Can't make this stuff up. So he decides, you know, he has a religious conversion experience. And he decides he's going to start his own community where there will be no judgment. There'll be no judgment from outsiders because it's going to be a very insulated

community. And it's not going to have all of the prying eyes of your next door neighbors. Everybody who's in the community is going to be accepting of the primary premise of the community, want to be a part of it, and that's going to free him from the sort of prying eyes, so to speak. Do I have that right? Pretty much. I think it would free him from the judgment of other people. As far as prying eyes go, they publicized what they were doing. They published a newspaper. They were very frank about it. And he published annual reports that went into great detail about all their practices. And people knew. And they also invited the public to come and visit.

They had Sunday picnics in fine weather. And so many people came that they had to build a special railroad spur to the Oneida community. And people would come for strawberries and cream and beer and concerts. And of course, everybody knew, wink, wink, what was going on. But they were very successful business people. They had all kinds of products that they made. They employed a lot of people from the community. So it was a very interesting time, honestly.

There were at least 70 utopian communities that were created before the Civil War. And it was just a time of incredible social ferment, like the 1960s. And I think people were, I'm not sure they were completely open to everything, but they were slightly tolerant of other ways of approaching life. Okay. What is a utopian community? For those of us who are not in the know, what does that even mean? It's a model community of sort of a perfect way to create a society. And in the case of the Oneida community, John Humphrey Noyes said that it was a miniature model of the kingdom of heaven.

So what was happening in the Oneida community, he believed was actually happening up there in heaven. Was he mostly recruiting adults from the outside? Or did this community grow and thrive because people were born into it? People were kind of breaking down the doors to get in, to tell you the truth. There were a lot of oddballs who wanted to take advantage of the opportunities that the Oneida community presented. And one of those oddballs was Charles Gatteau, who became the assassin of James Garfield. He joined the community at 19, and he was not a very successful member.

They were very happy when he left for a year, actually a few months, and then he came back and stayed for another year or so. I don't think they had any problem attracting members. They had problems screening members and trying to keep the really crazy folks out. And just to be transparent, one of the reasons they had a difficult time screening members, like one of the reasons everybody wanted to join or so many people wanted to join was because of the types of activities that they were involved in. And people who are listening to this can read between the lines when I say, in air quotes, activities. Activities. All pretty much controlled by John Humphrey noise, but it was controlled promiscuity. Controlled promiscuity. We're talking about like group relationships, training young boys to be with older women. What other

kinds of quote unquote activities are we talking about here? Well, they had their normal industrious activities. They ran a farm, they ran factories. As I said, they were extremely prosperous business people. But sex was their form of worship. And the partnering was controlled by John Humphrey Noyes. Was he like making a list of like, Bob, tonight you're with Emily? Like, what are we talking? What is happening? As a member of, I'm not a member of a cult, so I need inside intel with your 12 years of

research. What exactly are we talking about here? Yes, it did get to that point because he actually started the first eugenics experiment in the United States. He decided that breeding in and in, States. He decided that breeding in and in, breaking lots of taboos would bring them closer to God. So he would literally pick the partners. And of course, the older men were usually picked and the younger women were usually picked. But it was all up to John Humphrey Noyes and he was picked a lot. Oh, oh, that was convenient. How convenient for him. Are we talking about like, okay, John Humphrey Noyes picks John and Emily. Are we talking like they get married for a period of time?

Or are we talking about like switching it up every night? That. Switching it up every night. But John and Emily were already in what he described as a group marriage. Everybody who was a member of the United community was married to everybody else who was in the United community. Oh, oh, so it wasn't like this group of five people, they're all married, and they're all in the mix together. It was everyone is married to each other?

Yes. This is impossible to imagine. Well, especially in Victorian America. Yes. This is impossible to imagine. Well, especially in Victorian America. Yes. They started this in 1848, and they lasted until 1879, 1880. How many people were in this community? There were between 200 and 300 people. How were children handled in this scenario? How were children handled in this scenario? John Humphrey Noyes discouraged what he called emotional attachments between men and women and between parents and children. So when the children were about 15 months old or so, they were moved into a children's

house, and they were raised by the staff of Oneidans who took care of them and sought out their daily needs. And they had contact with their parents, but they were not by the staff of Oneidans who took care of them and sought out their daily needs. And they had contact with their parents, but they were not encouraged to bond. And parents were not encouraged to really bond with their children. So it was a very different system of life. So, yeah, then the children were to be raised essentially by the community itself instead of by John and Emily or whoever that child's parents were. Exactly. And then once they reached adolescence, they became full members of the community. Did a lot of people try to leave?

A few people left, but it happened more later when John Humphrey Noyes became older, when he was in his 60s, and he started losing his personal magnetism and charisma. And there was a new generation of Oneida men, young men who had been sent to college at Yale. They were studying medicine, they were studying Darwin, they were exposed to all of the intellectual currents of the day. And when they came back to the Oneida community, they really had a lot of cynicism about its holy aspects and about John Humphrey Noyes' self-proclaimed position as God's messenger on earth. And so, friction started, and he started to lose control. And at that point, some of the younger members left.

That's so interesting. Were people who left really disgruntled and writing tell-all pamphlets in the 1870s? What happened? Charles Julius Gatteau, the assassin who left the community in 1867, tried to blackmail the community because he threatened to go to the press and tell them all of these things that they were doing with young girls, etc. Then he was threatened enough by the society's lawyers that he dropped the case. But yes, he's a perfect example of that. That some people did leave and were mad. Yes, some people did leave and were mad. But on the other hand, the community was also very transparent about what they were doing. So I think they didn't want to encourage a lot of negative publicity, but they

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we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to office ladies on the free od free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. Let's go to Charles Kittope for a moment, because presidential assassinations are inherently historically interesting. There's a lot of scholarship on the assassination of James Garfield, multiple books written on just the subject of Garfield's assassination. And of course, Guiteau is a central character in that story. For people who have not read about it, who are not educated about it, who haven't read your book yet, what had to happen for Charles Guoteau to think to himself,

you know what a good idea is? I should try to shoot the president. Well, to begin with, he was mentally unstable. And they saw that right away when he joined the Oneida community. And by the way, his father had grown up in upstate New York and was a devotee of John Humphrey Noyes and the Oneida community. So when Charles Coteau was 19 years old, and he was in Ann Arbor trying to get an education, and he was not doing well, he started writing letters to the Oneida community, and they finally accepted him. But it soon became very clear that he was an oddball. He was excitable with a quick temper, and he would mutter and gesture wildly when he was an oddball. He was excitable with a quick temper, and he would mutter and gesture wildly when he was angry or upset. And the women didn't like him either. They started calling him

get out. So, he also had this maniacally inflated ego. Even in the Oneida community, he believed that he should take over for John Humphrey Noyes, and that he was destined to become President of the United States. So that was when he was in his late teens and early 20s, and it just got worse from there. But what sort of laid the template for his assassination of James Garfield was his involvement in the political campaign of Horace Greeley in 1872. That was the first campaign that he got involved in. And he wrote a speech for Horace Greeley. And he believed 100% that he

would be so rewarded for this speech, that Horace Greeley would make him a foreign minister, basically an ambassador. And of course, it was absolutely nuts for him to think so. But that same dynamic happened with James Garfield. He actually rewrote the speech for Greeley for James Garfield and expected that he was going to be appointed minister to Paris. And he wasn't. And he ended up shooting the president. But there was a real He ended up shooting the president. But there was a real feeling among a lot of people in this ferment of the 19th century that they wanted to make something amazing of themselves. The force of the individual that you could create your own life, you could create your

own society. And Guiteau was one of those people. He was demented, but he really wanted to make a mark. And he was going to do that by killing some of our public men, he said. And did Charles Guiteau truly grasp the consequences of his actions? Did he think, well, if I shoot him, I'm probably going to go to prison, but it's worth the risk? Or did he have such an altered view of reality that he thought some fantastic earthly reward awaited him when he removed James Garfield from the equation? He had no fear of going to jail. In fact, he welcomed it. And before he shot Garfield, he visited the Washington, D.C. jail to make sure it was up to his standards.

And once he was arrested and he was finally in jail, he was so happy because he was getting three solid meals a day. He was protected from vigilantes and he was having his photo taken. This was his idea of a good deal. This was a man who never paid his boarding house bills, for example. So this was, he had a bed. He was fed. Life doesn't get much better than that. Built-in friends, probably some books to read.

Yeah, he was upset that he didn't get the newspapers every day. He loved the daily newspapers. That makes me laugh that he was like, you know, before I commit this crime, let me make sure the jail meets my standards. The jail is what I hope it will be. Because I'm probably going to go there. That is hilarious. And it also speaks to the idea, of course, that the modern day security state where we create a six block radius essentially around a president, and we have jails that are very, very difficult to penetrate. It's hard to even get into a jail

as a visitor. It's difficult sometimes to imagine by today's standards, how much access to the president people used to have. Yeah, it is truly amazing to think about how much access the public had, especially for office seekers. There were lines around the block at the White House, and they would go in and they would wait for the president to see them. And if they didn't get that audience, they would come back the next day or them. And if they didn't get that audience, they would come back the next day or two days later, which Coteau did.

He actually did see President Garfield at one point and was ushered into his office and handed him his speech and wrote minister to Paris on it. And I think Garfield was completely bewildered by the whole thing. But after the inauguration and Garfield was in the White House, they would throw the doors open on Saturday afternoons for two hours and just invite the whole public. And on one of those Saturdays, actually, it was the first one, there was the long receiving line and Lucretia Garfield, his wife, the first lady was shaking hands and this shabby looking man shook her hand and handed her his card and said he was very involved in her husband's campaign.

And it was Charles Coteau. She said, thank you for coming. So nice to see you. Thank you for your efforts. It is crazy. You know, like when you look back at the history of the White House, the number and type of gatherings that presidents used to have. Andrew Jackson had several famous White House gatherings, one where he had a Christmas party that had over 1000 people at it. And then things got so out of hand that almost all of the White House crystal got broken. And Andrew Jackson ended up leaping out of the first floor White House window because the crowd was so out of control. I have been to the White House on multiple occasions, and there are eyeballs on you literally every move you make. You can't even step too close to a photograph of the current president on the wall without somebody stopping you.

It truly boggles the mind. But it really does speak to how we cannot foist our current viewpoints of how things should be or are on the past. That is just not how it was. No, it wasn't. It was very permeable in those days and very public. Yes. It was the people's house.

Yeah, it really was. permeable in those days and very public. Yes. It was the people's house. Yeah, it really was. Okay, so we know that Charles Coteau shoots James Garfield. James Garfield eventually dies. He doesn't is not if you guys are not familiar with the assassination of James Garfield, he lives for a while. Yeah, it's really terrible medical care and kind of just dies of what we would call today medical malpractice. Like, it's clear. If you can live for 10 months after being shot, you didn't die of the gunshot wound. You died of like the infection, you know, or subsequent illnesses that occurred after you were killed. Was the fact that James Garfield didn't

die, was that upsetting to Charles Guiteau? Well, he was jailed pretty quickly after the shooting. And yeah, I think he was waiting expectantly for Garfield to die. And apparently when he got the word that Garfield had died, he dropped to his knees in prayer. It's like, hallelujah, this was God's will. Oh my goodness. This was my plan. It all went according to plan. He had sort of gotten to know the new president, Chester Arthur, in the course of his political campaigning.

And he believed that now that Chester Arthur was going to be president, Arthur would pardon him. Because, of course, this was a wonderful opportunity for Arthur. You know, his salary expanded from $10,000 to $50,000. And he had all of this power now. And it was all thanks to Charles Coteau. But he was very disappointed, of course, and very angry when Arthur refused to pardon him. I'm sure he felt like Arthur was really missing a golden opportunity. Absolutely. You're missing a golden opportunity to pardon me and appoint me minister to Paris. Exactly. Because it was all thanks to him. It was all thanks to Charles Coteau that

Chester Arthur was now president of the United States, which is true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But Chester Arthur was also not an idiot. Who was like, let me pardon the previous president's assassin. And that will go over well. Very well. People will trust me then. What was it about Charles Guiteau that made him feel like he had any claim to minister to Paris? Did he speak French? Was his family French? Did he have some specific skill or gift that he believes that he would be using in France? It wasn't all about France. At first, it was minister to Chile. I think he was interested minister to Vienna. It was sort of whatever was available, but he just had it in his head that he would make a great foreign minister. And when he was campaigning for Horace Greeley, apparently he would parade in front of the looking glass in his rented room and say, wouldn't I make a great foreign minister? So I don't know where this idea came from, but it was absolutely embedded in his brain that, yes, this was going

to be his just reward, and this is how he was going to get it. So it wasn't that he needed to go to Paris specifically. It's that he needed the title of foreign minister, and he wanted to move abroad and be supported by the United States government. Pretty much. Yeah, guess what? If you're minister to Chile or minister to Vienna, they're probably going to feed you there too and give you somewhere to sleep. Exactly. You can read the newspaper in Vienna. Let's get back to the Oneida community. I want to hear more about the silverware situation because Oneida is still a very prevalent silverware brand.

How? How? How does that get started? Well, in about 1879, there was pressure from upstate New York ministers who were creating a movement against the Oneida community. They were outraged by its practices. And there was a professor, Professor Mears, who was really inflaming all of this. And he leaked some information to a newspaper. It was not correct, but he leaked information that John Humphrey Noyes was about to be arrested. And so John Humphrey Noyes fled to Canada in the middle of the night and was pretty much running the Oneida community from a distance.

But things were really breaking down. The community was losing its structure. Everybody was pretty much doing what they wanted to with whoever they wanted to and, you know, without asking permission from John Humphrey Noyes or any of the other elders. So he announced that they could either choose between celibacy or traditional marriage. And the community accepted that, and they had two days in which to say their goodbyes. And then at 10 o'clock on a Wednesday or something, it all went into effect. And they turned the Oneida community into a joint stock company,

so that everybody who was a member got a certain amount of money. They were entitled to a certain amount of furniture. They divided up their mansion house by square footage, and you could rent so many square feet. Their kitchen and their dining room turned into an a la carte restaurant where even pats of butter were priced. And while this was going on, John Humphrey Noyes was in Canada, and they bought him a house right over the falls in Niagara. And over the next few

years, as the community sort of collapsed, they had been manufacturing spoons in Connecticut in one of their external sites. And so a number of Oneidans moved to Canada. Some of them lived with John Humphrey Noyes in Stone Cottage, his house there, and others had homes on the Canadian or the American side. And they would get together every Sunday. John Humphrey Noyes could hardly speak at that time, but he would whisper his little lectures and they'd have cookies and lemonade. That all lasted until 1886 when he died. They're manufacturing spoons. I mean, it seems random that, because you mentioned they had a number of successful

businesses, and of course, they needed to support themselves. But it seems random that this cult would also make spoons. You know what I mean? Maybe it's not random. But like, what, what, why did they make? I guess there was a demand. There was a demand for spoons in the 1870s. And they, they established a factory in Connecticut that made them it was water powered and all of that. So this was something they were already doing. And again, a water powered factory, Niagara Falls.

already doing. And again, a water powered factory, Niagara Falls. So was John Humphrey Noyes just a really fantastic businessman that he was able to create these thriving businesses, including making spouts? He believed that people should pursue their passions. And people would rotate through different jobs in the Oneida community, so that they wouldn't get stuck in ruts. And he encouraged people to pursue their talents. So in that way, yeah, he was a good manager. I know I'm very hung up on this spoon thing. This whole story is very amusing to me because it has so many just ridiculous twists and turns that you're right, that is absolutely stranger than fiction. If I wrote a fiction book proposal and was, and was like, and then a sex cult plus an assassin plus spoons, like no editor would be like, good idea, Sharon. Like let's write that published. The reader would never

be able to suspend their disbelief in a fiction book. If you add in the spoons, in a fiction book if you add in the spoons. The spoons like really put it over the top for me. It was specifically spoons. It wasn't all silverware. It was specifically spoons. Oh my goodness. There was a big market for spoons in the 1870s. That is hilarious. Maybe people had been using homemade wooden spoons for things, or I don't, I could only hypothesize. That's probably a book for somebody else. These were metal spoons. These were metal spoons.

So this was like a new, like, ooh, you have metal spoons. They had to be a worthy business, or they wouldn't have done it. There had to be a specific demand for the spoons. I don't know the answer to that question. But that is truly it kind of cracks me up. Like that's the thing that puts it over the edge for me is like, I can understand like all the weird religious stuff. The Civil War time period is full of spiritualism movements and all kinds of interesting stuff happening around the country. I can be like, yeah, I get that, that I can understand how utopian society could form in upstate New York, like the

ground was fertile. It's the spoons that put it over the edge. It's a straw that brings the candles back. As I said, Sharon, when I got started on this project, you know, when I opened it, it was literally a cabinet of curiosities. And there were just so many aspects of this that were so unexpected. And people who were unexpected, who were involved in this story, like Horace Greeley and P.T. Barnum and Margaret Fuller, who was the first female foreign correspondent in American history. And I mean, the story of all of these utopian societies that just popped up like mushrooms before the Civil War, it was really pretty incredible. I just really enjoyed this so much. What is it, like, if you had one little fun fact that you

were going to, you're on an elevator with somebody and the person says, you know, what is something that I would take away from reading your book? What is it that you would share with them? Oh, there's so many. But at the end of the book, I talk about what happened to Gouteau's body. And that was a real shocker for me. Because after he was hanged, the Army Medical Museum took his body and of course, they put it in a big boiler and they boiled the bones and the skeleton was going into the Army Medical Museum. But they saved his head. And they stuffed it. Yes.

And they put it in a glass jar. And it was so lifelike. I don't approve of this. The doctors would take it out when they had like dinner guests to alarm them. And then finally, they had when it came into the possession of a professor, E.M. Wirth, who took it on tour with a transparent baby and other curiosities, and then brought it back to Indiana and had it in his permanent museum, which then eventually burned down, including Guiteau's face. So my God, that is unbelievable. Yes, and then add that into your fiction book proposal.

And then he brought his head to Indiana. No, that's not going to work either. And I love how you said, and of course they boiled his body. Like, no, not of course. That is not. There's no of course they boiled his body. Well, that's why I say, I mean, this whole story is full of so many surprises. That's why I kept at it for 12 years. Yeah, no kidding. I can see why there were so many tapestry threads to pull at, where you couldn't just be like, and then Guiteau shot the president and was eventually hanged for his assassination.

Then out of curiosity, you're like, well, where did Guiteau go? You know, like, where's he buried? And then you realize that, no, they boiled him. So they could put him in a museum. It just never ends. That is one of the things that I love about history is that there is always something more to learn. You have never reached the end of it. You're never like, I know all the things, but you never reach that point. And what a crazy story this is, Susan. First of all, the story itself is so interesting that you could just literally type a bullet point list of facts and have it be interesting in and of itself.

But you're a fantastic writer. The book pulled me in, like, from the first page. The way you crafted this story is really masterful. So if anybody wants, we have literally just kind of scratched the surface here. There's so much to learn. And I feel like people will have so many little kind of brain tingle moments where they're like, and then they stuffed his head. What?

There's so many of those things that I think people will really enjoy this book. Who would you recommend this book for? Because if I were going to put a list on a list, of course, narrative nonfiction, anybody who loves narrative nonfiction, which is my favorite genre, will enjoy it. People who love true crime will enjoy it. People who are interested in cults will enjoy it. People who are interested in the history of religion itself will enjoy it. Anybody that I have missed that you'd be like, you know who I think would like this? I think you pretty much got the list. It's a book about history, but I think of it as misfit history because it doesn't fit into the traditional official narratives. This is kind of the underbelly of the American experience. This is all true stuff. I've got 65 pages of notes. Everything is documented, but it's unbelievable. And it's a huge amount of fun. So I think if anybody is looking for a read that is going to make them say what, multiple times per chapter, this might be fun for them.

I totally agree. It's not, of course, depressing things happen. But it's not a book that is like, extraordinarily, it's not a depressing book. It's more of a, like you said, like the history of the Island of Misfit Toys. Like everything is happening in one, like in one story. It's really, I enjoyed it. Thank you for being here today. You're so welcome. Thank you. Oh my gosh.

I cannot stop thinking about how if this was a fiction story, you'd be like, no. And then they boiled his body? What? Like, spoons? No, this could never be a fiction story. This is only a case of truth is stranger than fiction. If this episode interested you, I promise there is so much more where this came from in Susan Wells' book, An Assassin in Utopia. Thank you so much for being here today. I'll see you next time. Thank you for listening to Hearer's Work. It's interesting. This show is written and researched by Heather Jackson, Sharon McMahon, Valerie Hoback, and Amy Watkin.

Edited and mixed by our audio producer, Jenny Snyder. And it's hosted by me, Sharonam. We'll see you again soon.