Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - “The Lambeth Poisoner” Thomas Neill Cream

Episode Date: February 3, 2020

In the late 1800s, Dr. Thomas Neill Cream was the go-to doctor for Chicago's Red Light District. The women, who grew to trust, admire, and even fall in love with Dr. Cream, would soon become victims of his quiet-but-deadly poisonings.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th, and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamavatheater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in? Must be 21 to enter. Due to the graphic nature of this killer's crimes, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of murder and assault that some people may find offensive. We advise extreme caution for children under 13. A warm wind blew across London's River Thames, rustling the

hair of two young women, Alice and Emma. Both straightened their dresses and smiled brightly, hoping to secure a client for the evening. Soon they were approached by a tall, stately man, well-dressed, but weathered by time. He introduced himself as a doctor named Fred and asked to buy them both for the evening. The women eagerly invited him back to their homestead where they shared a few beers, some canned salmon, and of course their bed. After the deed was done, Fred offered them two small white pills to help clear up the nereal disease. The women gladly accepted the gift and said goodbye to Fred, hoping the wealthy doctor would return again soon.

But only moments after his departure, screams erupted through the halls of the homestead. The screams came from not one, but two different bedrooms. Alice stumbled into the hallway, foaming at the mouth and clutching her nightgown. She staggered toward Emma, who was still in her room calling out for Alice.

Seconds later, they both began to violently convulse. Soon it was impossible for either to move at all. Emma looked to Alice, wondering how they could have been foolish enough to take pills from a stranger. Emma could only choke out. He is not a stranger. He is a doctor. A few hours later, none of it seemed to matter. By that time, both women were dead. Hi, I'm Greg Paulson. This is serial killers, a podcast original. Every Monday, we dive into the minds of and madness of serial killers. Today, we're exploring the life of Victorian murderer, Dr. Thomas Neil Cream, also known as

the Lambeth Poisoner. I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson. Hi, everyone. You can find episodes of serial killers and all other Parcast originals for free on Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. To stream serial killers for free on Spotify, just open the app and type serial killers in the search bar. At Parcast, we're grateful for you,

listeners. You allow us to do what we love. Let us know how we're doing. Reach out on Facebook and Instagram at Parcast and Twitter at Parcast Network. And if you enjoyed today's episode, the best way to help us is to leave a five-star review wherever you're listening. It really does help. This is a one-part episode covering Thomas Neal Cream. He was a physician and surgeon who murdered at least five people across three countries between 1877 and 1892. Today we'll cover his 15-year spree and see how he was eventually caught. Thomas Neil Cream was a child of the Victorian era, born on May 27, 1850. He was the oldest of Mary and William Cream's eight children. The creams were originally from Scotland, but moved the family to Canada in 1854 when Thomas was four.

Thomas was an extremely intelligent child. He always did well in school and was the apple of his father's eye. Other families who attended school with the creams felt that Thomas was spoiled and undisciplined. His father constantly rewarded him with expensive clothes and new toys for no reason. Mr. Cream also indulged his son's bad behavior. Instead of punishing the boy, he tried to buy cream off with expensive gifts. It didn't take long for Cream to learn how to manipulate his parents and get away with just about anything. Vanessa is going to take over on the psychology here, and throughout the episode. Please note, Vanessa is not a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist, but she has done a lot of research for this show. Thanks, Greg. It's possible that William Cream's

style of submissive parenting inflated his son's narcissistic tendencies in a 2015 study performed by Eddie Bremelman, an expert in developmental psychopathology, 565 kids between the ages of 7 to 12, along with their parents, put this theory to the test. They found that parents who overvalued their child caused the children to feel superior to others, expecting special treatment as well as exemption from bad behavior.

As the years went on, William's parenting only grew worse. A talented chip builder, William was promoted in Canada and his work became more demanding. The new obligations meant that he had less time to spend with his precious son. To placate cream,

William bought him more elaborate. gifts and completely stopped reprimanding him at all. Cream grew into a bit of a wild child, doing whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, without regard for the rules. It's not clear exactly how often Cream misbehaved, but many of his peers referred to him as a delinquent. Yet no matter how far Cream crossed over the line, he was spared punishment. While all of William's other children were required to spend their days working in the shipyard with their father, Cream was given a free pass. William was proud his teenage son had more sophisticated interests, like the study of medicine. Thanks to William's comfortable salary, his son was able to follow through

on his dreams of becoming a doctor. In September of 1872, 22-year-old Cream left home to study at McGill University in Montreal. It was here that Cream became more independent than ever before. He started to wear flashy clothes and jewelry, grew a mustache, and devoted most of his time to seducing women. Cream's flamboyant nature made him the subject of gossip around McGill. Many felt that his antics were empty calls for attention. For his part, Cream enjoyed the attention. He reveled in gossip, even if most of it was negative. And yet, Cream never let his extracurricular activities get in the way of his studies.

At the university, Cream took on a professional. profound interest in the chemical chloroform. He found it so fascinating that he decided to make it the focus of his senior thesis. On March 31st, 1876, 25-year-old Cream proudly received his medical degree from McGill. Ironically, the commencement speech given to Cream's graduating class was titled The Evils of Malpractice in the Medical Profession. The month after graduation, Cream met Flora Elizabeth Brooks, the daughter of a wealthy hotel owner and herself recently graduated from high school. Flora was immediately enraptured by the confident, sophisticated, Dr. Cream. Swept up in a passionate whirlwind. Flora genuinely believed they had fallen madly in love.

Soon she was pressing Cream about marriage, but he had other goals in mind. He'd already made plans to continue his studies in London at St. Thomas's medical school in the fall, which is why he was incensed when Flora sat him down one evening to break him the news. She was pregnant with his child. Cream's mind started to race, a ringing set in between his ears. He had a reputation to uphold. He had plans for a future that didn't include Flora or a newborn child. There was only one solution.

Flora would need an abortion. Flora was terrified. she initially refused, which enraged Cream. In his view, she should do everything he demanded of her. After browbeating Flora, Cream finally convinced her that she would bring shame to her family if they knew she became pregnant out of wedlock. Not only were abortions dangerous and illegal in Canada

during this time, but they were also punishable by death. There was no way they could go to an outside doctor for help. Cream would have to do it himself. Despite having never done one before, Cream was allegedly convinced he could perform the abortion just as well as any other doctor. In the middle of the night, Cream reportedly snuck a pregnant flora into his home

and performed his first abortion. After her initial refusal to do what he asked, any love or sympathy he once felt for her was no longer there. To him, she was now just a lab rat. a subject, nothing more. At first, Flora's procedure appeared to have been successful, but a few days later, she fell ill with a fever.

When she was visited by the family doctor, he concluded that Flora had contracted an infection due to the abortion. The cat was out of the bag. Flora's father was irate. Mr. Brooks gathered a mob and set off to find Thomas Neal Cream. Toating guns and knives, they found the 25-year-old at his wife. apartment, bags packed and ready to leave for London.

Mr. Brooks threatened Cream's life and forced him to return with a mob to Flora's home in Waterloo. The next day, on September 11, 1876, Cream married Flora at gunpoint. The couple then spent their first and final night together as newlyweds. The next morning, Flora woke to find that Cream was gone. In his place was a no promoting to write soon. By the time Flora found it, he was already en route to the United Kingdom, just as he planned. In London, Cream attended St. Thomas's Medical School. There, he received an education from some of the best medical professionals the field had to offer.

Cream was particularly inspired by his chemistry professor, Dr. Albert James Bernays. Bernays had recently been called as an expert witness in a murder, referred to in the papers as, the Vauxhall Stricknine case. Silas Barlow, a railway worker, was accused of killing his wife with a rat poisoning product known as Battles Berman Killer. Her cause of death was initially ruled as epilepsy,

but after suspecting her husband's involvement, her body was exhumed and an autopsy was performed. Doctors found an unusual amount of strychnine in her body, a key ingredient in the vermin killer, and Barlow was hanged for the crime. Cream took great interest in Barlow's case, especially in his use of strychnine. He uncovered an article from the British Medical Journal that griped over the lack of investigation done by police at the time. The piece suggested that many murder cases were being closed prematurely because murder by poisoning was widely overlooked.

Cream continued his research into the subject of stricnine by day. By night, he went out flirting with women, dancing at music halls, and, sleeping with sex workers. In the meantime, Flora was still sick. The infection she had contracted during her abortion had now evolved into a deadly case of bronchitis. Cream wrote to her, claiming to be distraught over her condition. He also sent her some small, white pills that he claimed would alleviate her pain. After she started taking the pills, Flora's symptoms suddenly took a turn for the worse. Her physician, Dr. Phelan, asked Flora if she said, she'd been taking any medication other than what he prescribed?

She admitted to taking the pills that were being mailed by her husband. Dr. Phelan, sensing that something was amiss, insisted that she stopped taking the pills. Flora temporarily bounced back from her worst symptoms, but unfortunately it was already the beginning of the end. In August of 1877, Kreme received a letter from Flora's family. His young bride had passed away in the night. The cause of death was officially ruled as bronchitis, although some sources claim she might have died from consumption, otherwise known as tuberculosis.

As for Dr. Phelan, he felt something more nefarious was going on. While he couldn't prove that Dr. Cream's pills were actually the cause of Flora's death because he never saw them, he, quote, strongly suspected him of foul play. Luckily for Cream, he was more than 3,000 miles away. and now he was a single man. The world was his oyster, and his clandestine career of poisoning had only just begun. Coming up, Thomas Neil Cream grows bolder

and is finally punished for it. Now back to the story. In 1876, 25-year-old Thomas Neil Cream likely performed his first abortion on his girlfriend, Flora Brooks. Months later, Flora died of what her doctor ruled at first to be a case of bronchitis. But after further consideration, Dr. Feelein grew skeptical.

Flora may have, in fact, been poisoned by Cream. Unfortunately, he was unable to begin an investigation into Cream, who was thousands of miles away, studying medicine in London. By 1878, Cream was a qualified doctor. Despite the suspicions that he'd poisoned Flora, cream had no qualms about returning home to Canada to practice medicine. Upon his arrival, Flora's parents tried to get him investigated for murder, but since they didn't have a sample of the pills Cream sent to their daughter, they couldn't prove she'd been poisoned. Once again, Cream slithered his way out of trouble. Now, when he

thought about the abortion he performed on Flora, he was filled with a twisted sense of satisfaction, so much so that he decided he would make a career out of it. In 1879, Cream opened his first medical practice in London, Ontario. By day, he met with patients as an ordinary physician. But by night, he seized the opportunity to make an extra buck by performing illegal abortions. Cream's charm and approachability now became his best marketing tool. Word soon spread, and in no time, the doctor had a booming medical practice.

According to forensic scientist, Dr. Robert M. Kaplan, Charming doctors hold power over patients who are unlikely to question their authority. This can actually create a god complex for the doctor. They then get their pleasure or thrill by asserting their power to end or cause suffering for their patient. Peter Smarick, a former FBI criminal profiler, places these doctors in two different categories. The hero-killer doctor, who might take unnecessary medical risks to save the patient. in grand fashion. But there's also the mercy killer doctor who convinces themselves that because they care about a patient, they must put them out of their misery. And it's not an accident

that Cream's patients were primarily female, damsels in distress that fueled his God complex. In the summer of 1879, Dr. Cream met a new patient to prey upon. A young chambermaid named Kate Gardner. She was attractive, advanced. adventurous, young, and naive. Cream allegedly convinced Kate that their love affair should remain a secret, and that Trist continued for months. Their relationship was similar to his fling with Flora, in more ways than one. In August of that year, Kate came to him with a confession.

She was pregnant. Just like before, Cream was frantic. He took Kate's confession as a threat. He wouldn't let a woman ruin his reputation and put his freedoms at risk. a second time. Cream demanded that Kate have an abortion, but like Flora, she refused.

He decided to take matters into his own hands. A week later, Kate disappeared, but not for long. Soon after she went missing, a young couple was overwhelmed by a revolting odor as they strolled through an alleyway.

The scent couldn't be ignored. They followed it to a small shed. where they found the lifeless body of a young woman. The alleyway was the back entrance to Dr. Cream's office, and the body belonged to none other than the pregnant Kate Gardner. Cream's proximity to the crime scene required that he be called in for questioning. The doctor did his best to feign innocence.

He acted offended that he was being considered a suspect in the case at all. He admitted to knowing Kate, but only as one of his patients, nothing more. He claimed that she'd recently, come to him looking for an abortion and that he'd refused to help. But the police knew he was lying. An anonymous witness had told them about Kate and Cream's secret affair. Authorities suspected Cream was the father of Kate's child. Cream denied the accusations. He insisted that the child belonged to a wealthy businessman in the area that had been residing at Kate's hotel. He tried to manipulate the police into believing she'd taken her own life out of despair. Once again,

his lives were easily disproved. Kate's face was covered with abrasions. It appeared as though she'd been caught in a struggle, clawing at her face in a desperate attempt to breathe. Dr. Niven, the medical examiner assigned to the case, concluded that Kate had died of asphyxiation after being smothered with chloroform. It would have been impossible for Kate to cover her face with a chloroform-soaked cloth long enough to commit suicide. Unfortunately, in spite of their suspicions, the police could not provide enough evidence to indict Cream for the murder of Kate Gardner. It was all circumstantial.

Instead, her case was ruled as a murder caused by persons unknown. Cream had dodged another legal bullet, but he didn't entirely escape accountability. The news spread like wildfire, and soon the local community turned against Cream. all of his clients and was forced to shut down his practice. To escape his soiled reputation, Cream moved again. This time, he took his work to the U.S. where he resettled in Chicago, Illinois. 29-year-old Cream arrived in Chicago towards the end of 1879. This time, he strategically positioned his office near the 400 block of West Madison Street,

also known as the city's Red Light District. Cream enacted the same business plan he'd followed in Ontario. His name slowly began to spread, and soon he was the go-to abortionist for Chicago's working women. His business started doing so well that he hired the help of a black midwife named Hattie Mack. But with Cream's increasing wealth came new vices. Rumors circle that he was addicted to drugs like cocaine and morphine. Even high as a kite, Cream would have continued to perform. form dangerous procedures on vulnerable women.

One of his patients was allegedly the young sex worker Marianne Faulkner. In mid-August of 1880, Hattie Mack arrived at Cream's office to find a deceased Maryanne still on his operating table. She had died of blood loss from what appeared to be a violently botched operation. Haddy later reported that the frantic Cream asked for her help covering up the crime. He wanted Haddy to help him burn the place to the grower. When she refused, the doctor left the body at the scene and returned home to get high. The police came looking for Cream the following afternoon.

He soon found himself back in court, this time having to fight against one very brave witness, Hattie Mack. The evidence was stacked against Cream, but his fast-talking, cigar-puffing attorney, Alfred S. Trude, pinned the crime on the midwife. wife. He claimed that Hattie had performed Faulkner's abortion herself. After all, an accomplished surgeon like Cream would never have performed such a hack job on poor Marianne Faulkner. Trude went on to convince the all-white, all-male jury that men like themselves needed to look out for one another. They needed to protect themselves from shrewd and vindictive women. The jury bought the testimony, and Hattie Mack was convicted of the crime instead.

Once again, Cream was let off the hook. Only three months after Faulkner's death, he committed his next crime. This time, his victim was a sex worker named Ellen Stack. Stack had come to the doctor in confidence, hoping he could secretly provide her with some form of oral contraceptive. Cream was happy to help. The doctor got to work, creating his own cocktail of chemicals for the woman's birth control. The key ingredient, strychnine, the same poisonous chemical that had fascinated him in medical school.

What Ellen likely experienced after taking the strychnine pills was an inexplicable feeling of terror, followed by muscular stiffness, twitching, and then convulsions throughout her entire body. Completely aware of the fact that she was dying, her brain would have fully registered the pain. Between one and three hours later, she was dead. Cream was also charged with Ellen's death. Trude worked as magic and successfully convinced the jury that Cream's prescription had been drawn up by a pharmacist. Cream likely had just gotten away with his fourth murder.

His head was now bigger than ever before. He felt invincible. With a raging drug habit to fund, Cream began concocting his own medications that he claimed would cure those with epilepsy. He ran advertisements in local papers and received quite a few bites. One of those hits happened to be from a railway worker named Daniel Stott. Stott sent his beautiful wife, Julia, to Cream's office weekly to retrieve his pills. Like so many others, Julia fell for Dr. Cream's charms.

The two began a sorted love affair that lasted for several months. before Mr. Stott caught wind of their fling. When Stott demanded Julia end the relationship, she broke the news to the doctor. Cream hated being told what to do. That week, he placed an extra ingredient in Stott's epilepsy pills. Days later, he was dead. The coroner chalked his cause of death up to epilepsy

and closed the case, but Kreme couldn't help but get involved. True to form, he tried to pin the blame on someone else. For no apparent reason, Cream telegraphed the coroner with a tip. He believed the pharmacists at Buck and Rayner may have put too much strychnine in Stott's pills.

The deceased Stott was taken in for a post-mortem examination. They found that Stott's body did indeed have evidence of strychnine, enough to kill him three times over. But how could Cream have possibly known? Cream had blown his cover. Instead of the pharmacists at Buck and Raynor, he was charged with Stott's murder. The primary witness called to the bench was none other than Julia Stott. She claimed that Cream had seduced her and that he even made jokes about killing her husband.

This time, Cream couldn't escape punishment. The jury found him guilty. The doctor was sentenced to life in prison. It looked like his career as a doctor, a womanizer, and a murderer was over. But Cream wouldn't rest until Julia Stott was dead. Up next, Thomas Neal Cream is released on good behavior, and the Lambeth Poisoner becomes infamous. Now back to the story. On November 1, 1881, 31-year-old Dr. Thomas Neal Cream was convicted of murder.

After killing five people, Cream was finally sentenced to life in prison for poison. poisoning his lover's husband, Daniel Stott, with a heavy dose of strychnine. Prison certainly wasn't kind to Cream. His drug habit worsened during his time there. It caused his skin to wither, his eyes to yellow, and his hair to thin. Cream apparently stood over the women who had betrayed his trust, soiled his reputation, and taken away his freedom. He blamed his mistress, Julia Stott, for testifying against him. but he was also resentful toward two of his victims, Kate and Flora.

Cream felt that all these women had put his reputation at risk. In his mind, they forced his hand. To him, it was Kate and Flora's own fault they were dead. As many have pointed out, including Angus McLaren in his book, A Prescription for Murder, Cream was overcome by extreme misogyny. According to Dr. Barrett Brogard, Director of the Brogard Lab for Multisensory Research in Miami,

misogyny is a bit more complex than the standard definition of hatred towards women. She claims that misogyny is actually a hatred towards women who don't follow the standards and beliefs of how a woman should act or behave, according to the subject. When a particular female doesn't conform to their standards, misogynists become deeply hateful. This is why many misogynists deny their issue by claiming they love their sister, wife, or mother, but that's simply because

these women do fulfill the standards that the subject expects. McLaren applies this to Cream in his book and claims his crimes were wedded to a generalized misogyny in a time when women were making a well-publicized bid for greater autonomy. Gender boundaries were shifting during the Victorian era. Women were making new, albeit still mostly underground, attempts to control their fertility, and were attempting to gain some sense of financial and social independence. Cream lured in and most often preyed upon women

who sought this kind of independence. Perhaps talking them into abortions to begin with was a way for Cream to regain the control he felt women were stealing from him. But once again, he was convicted. Control was arrested away from him once again. As Cream stood in his prison cell for years, he became obsessed with only one thing, revenge.

That desire drove him to do everything he could to get an early release. Ten years after his sentencing, 41-year-old Cream was declared a fit and proper subject for executive clemency. At last, he was free. Cream emerged, guns blazing, ready to seek vengeance on Julius Stott. Immediately after getting out, Cream reportedly hired a private detective to track Julia down.

But after searching for many months, nothing came up. Cream was forced to move on and raged that his revenge had gone unfulfilled. Angry and bitter, Cream sought to escape his ruined reputation once again. In 1891, he headed back to his old stopping ground, the London Borough of Lambeth.

Days after Southern, back in London, Cream opened a medical practice directly across the street from St. Thomas Medical Hospital. He posed as one of their resident doctors under the new title Thomas Neal M.D. It was also during this time that rumors of a murderer named Jack the Ripper spread throughout London proper. This unidentified killer had been terrorizing the Whitechapel area since 1888 and was thought to be the first of his kind. Much like Cream, his victims were also women, most of them sex workers local to the area. Those investigating the Ripper case believed that he might have had some sort of medical background,

since the killer seemed to be so surgically precise. But Jack and Cream made their kills in very different ways. Jack lured his victims into dark streets by first offering to pay for sex. Then he slit their throats and left their mutilated bodies out in the open, like a McConaugh. a macab display of performance art. Cream's kills were less of a spectacle, but still the two shared the same type of victims and the same violent, misogynistic tendencies.

Tendencies, which encourage Cream to continue preying on young women. He was allegedly thrilled by Jack the Ripper's crimes and seemed to waste no time seeking to match the killer. In October of 1891, a 19-year-old sex worker named Ellen Nellie Donnelly Donner, came to see Dr. Neal. Cream charmed the woman into accompanying him for a drink later that afternoon in the Wellington pub, just around the corner.

Hours later, Ellen, seemingly intoxicated, stumbled out of the bar alone. A friend spotted her and escorted her the rest of the way home. Ellen began convulsing shortly thereafter, and her condition deteriorated over the next few hours. The woman managed to inform her landlady that she had accepted a drink from a doctor A drink with a dusting of white powder. Sadly, the woman died before medics could reach St. Thomas's hospital. An autopsy proved that the woman had one very toxic chemical in her system. Cream's weapon of choice, strychnine.

But as usual, Cream wasn't satisfied with getting away with murder. He lived to tempt fate. So a few days later, he wrote to the deputy coroner claiming that he could provide evidence that would lead to the conviction of Ellen's killer, in exchange for 300,000 pounds, the equivalent to around 50 million American dollars today. Naturally, the coroner balked at the offer and turned the letter signed as A. O'Brien over to the police.

Less than a week later, Cream struck again. His victim this time was 27-year-old Matilda Clover. Clover was forced to work on the streets to support her two-year-old. old son. Matilda arranged to meet up with a regular client of hers known only as Fred. After their sexual encounter, Fred prescribed her some pills that he claimed could help prevent venereal disease. At around 3 a.m., Matilda's housemates woke to violent screams emitting from her bedroom. They rushed in to find the woman convulsing, covered in vomit and foaming at the mouth. The doctor ruled Matilda's death as the result of an alcohol overdose.

She was not given an autopsy, and her orphan's son was then put up for adoption. But Fred, likely Dr. Neil Cream, had ended the woman with his signature dose of strychnine. Cream struck again the following spring when he met with a sex worker named Lou Harvey. He invited the woman to share a nice glass of wine before attending a show at the Oxford Music Hall later that evening. He also told Lou that he had brought with him some pills. that could help bring color to her fair complexion. As they walked along the embankment to the music hall, Cream insisted that she'd take the pills right then.

Yet unlike his other victims, Lou was skeptical of Cream. She'd heard the stories of Jack the Ripper and found the doctor's behavior suspicious. She knew better than to take a set of unfamiliar pills from a complete stranger. Instead, Lou pretended to ingest the pills while secretly hiding them in her palm. cream then mentioned he'd forgotten to check out a patient back at the hospital.

He promised to meet her back at the music hall around 11 p.m. and escort her home. After his abrupt departure, Lou tossed the pills into the River Thames. Lou waited, but Cream never rejoined her that night. He was satisfied that the woman would be dead by the time he returned. Unfortunately for Cream, Lou was still alive. But Cream was none the wiser, riding high, on the thrill of his seventh kill, and he had no plans to stop there. Just weeks later, on April 11, 1892, the 42-year-old Cream tried to up his game.

He introduced himself as Fred to the 21-year-old Alice Marsh and 18-year-old Emma Shrivel, who were working the corners of Stamford Street. He made them both an offer that they couldn't refuse. He wanted them both at the same. time. The women took Cream back to their home to seal the deal. As he'd done with Lou, Cream opened his briefcase and offered the women the little white pills. At 2.30 a.m., Fred was gone, and screams of agony began to emanate throughout the halls. The women knew they'd been poisoned, and their landlady immediately sent for the police. They were ushered to St. Thomas's

hospital, but both died along the way. Cream had killed two women in a single night. Police were now certain there was a new murderer on the loose. A full investigation into the Lambeth Poisoner began, and Cream just couldn't help but push his luck. In fact, he publicly bragged that he knew Marsh and Shrivel victims of the Lambeth Poisoner. One night at a social club,

Cream was introduced to New York City Detective John Haynes, who was in town applying to scuba. Scotland Yard. The two discussed the sensationalized murders of the lambeth poisoner at length, each providing their own theories on what happened. Over time, Cream began to share details of the case that had not yet been released to the public, like the fact that Matilda Clover had actually died of strychnine poison, not alcohol. Cream also rambled about one victim that Haynes had never heard of before, a woman named Lou Harvey.

Cream even took Haynes to the spot where he believed the murderer had given Lou the pills, the embankment along the Thames. When Haynes asked where she died, he casually mentioned the Oxford Theater. Haynes was so disturbed by the conversation. He related to an inspector stationed at Scotland Yard. The police started tailing Cream. One inspector requested his records from Chicago and found that Cream had been previously indicted,

for murder. The Lambeth Poisoner had been found out. Cream was arrested in June of 1892, and his story made front-page news. He was eventually charged with premeditated homicide in the deaths of Ellen Donworth, Emma Shrivel, Alice Marsh, and Matilda Clover, as well as the attempted murder on Lou Harvey. Spectators booed and jeered at the murderer as he traveled in handcuffs between Holloway Prison and courtroom in Tooting, but the macabre grin never left his face. He loved every minute of the attention. Perhaps Cream believed that he would get away with these crimes too, as he did so many times before. But when the court called to question their key witness, Cream smirk suddenly faded.

Lou Harvey took the stand, and Cream looked as if he'd seen a ghost. She recounted for the court the stroll she took with Cream along the Thames embankment and the little white pills he tried to force her to take. On October 21st, the jury deliberated for all of 10 minutes before returning a verdict. Dr. Thomas Neal Cream was guilty on all counts. Justice Hawkins wasted no time coming up with his punishment. Cream was hanged for his crimes less than one month later. On November 15, 1892, a crowd congregated outside Newgate prison to see the Lambeth Poisoner meet his fate. When Cream was asked by his executioner James Billington, if he had any final words, Billington allegedly reported that the man indeed had three.

I am Jack. Though it's tempting to conflate Cream and Jack the Ripper, his final words were likely just a final attempt to. to gain notoriety for his crimes. Cream couldn't have been Jack, seeing as the Ripper murders began in 1888, a time when Cream was incarcerated in Illinois. So while the jury's still out on the true identity of Jack the Ripper, we can still put to rest the case of the infamous Lambeth Poisoner, Dr. Thomas Neil Cream.

Thanks again for tuning in to serial killers. We'll be back Monday with a new episode. You can find more episodes of Serial Killers and all other Parcast Originals for free on Spotify. Not only does Spotify already have all of your favorite music, but now Spotify is making it easy for you to enjoy all of your favorite Parcast originals, like Serial Killers, for free, from your phone, desktop, or smart speaker. To stream Serial Killers on Spotify, just open the app and type Serial Killers in the search bar. Several of you have asked how to help the show, and if you enjoy the show, the best way to help is to leave a

five-star review. And don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Parcast and Twitter at Parcast Network. We'll see you next time. Have a killer week. Serial Killers was created by Max Cutler and is a Parcast Studios original. Executive producers include Max and Ron Cutler, sound design by Brian Gullab, with production assistance by Ron Shapiro, Carly Madden, and Travis Clark. This episode of Serial Killers was written by Lori Gottlieb, with writing by Abigail Cannon and stars Greg Poulson and Vanessa Richardson. A beloved 75-year-old man washing up getting ready for bed is brutally beaten and killed. Despite an exhaustive investigation, the killer avoids arrest and then strikes again.

I'm Global News crime reporter Nancy Hicks. You might listen to a lot of true crime podcasts this year, but they're not crime beat. Search for and follow the award-winning podcast Crime Beat on Apple, Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Do you want to hear something spooky? Some Monster, it reminded me of Bigfoot. Monsters Among Us is a weekly podcast featuring true stories of the paranormal. One of the boys started to exhibit demonic possession.

Stories straight from the witnesses' mouths themselves. Something very snake-like lifted its head out of the water. Hosted by Me, Your Guide, Derek Hayes. Somehow I lost eight whole hours. Listen now on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast.