Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - “The Quiet Dell Killer” Harry Powers

Episode Date: June 10, 2021

Harry Powers lived a life shrouded in mystery, so tracing his origins is difficult. But here's what we know: he was a conman without a conscience, and he was a ruthless killer whose victim count might be higher than anyone ever imagined... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Due to the graphic nature of this episode, listener discretion is advised. This episode contains discussions of child abduction, murder, and assault that some listeners may find disturbing. Extreme caution is advised for listeners under 13. Life was hard for Asta Iker. In the years leading up to 1931, she'd become a widow and single mother, raising three children alone in the early days of the Depression. To make ends meet, she was forced to rent out a room in her home. But that summer, everything was about to change. She rushed about her house, straightening a curtain here, sweeping up dust there.

Everything had to be perfect for when her fiancé, the man of her dreams, arrived. Asda hadn't expected Cornelius Pearson. The lonely hearts at she answered seemed too good to be true. He was a successful civil engineer, and he wanted to care for her and her children. He wasn't much to look at, sure, but she knew from his little, letters how powerfully he loved her. Today was the start of a new beginning. But there was so much to do. She told her tenant that he'd have to leave, an awkward but necessary conversation. Then she found someone to take care of her children while she and Cornelius

enjoyed a honeymoon. Still, it felt like she was forgetting something, or maybe she was just anxious. For the first time in years, something good was happening. Everything was going to be different now. Still jittery when she heard the car pull up, she took one more deep breath and stepped outside. Relief washed over her as she saw his face. The moment she laid eyes on him, asked it was certain she'd be with Cornelius Pearson for the rest of her life. She was right. She just didn't realize how short a time that would be.

Hi, I'm Greg Paulson. This is Serial Killers, a Spotify original from Parkast. episode, we dive into the minds and madness of serial killers. Today, we're looking at the Blue Beard of Quiet Dell, a killer who went by many names, but is most commonly known as Harry Powers. I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson. Hi, everyone. You can find episodes of serial killers and all other Spotify originals from Parcast for free on Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. In the first part of this episode, we'll look at the mysterious childhood of a young conman, and how his early schemes eventually blossomed into violence.

Later, we'll explore Harry's chilling crimes and the outrageous public response once everything came to light. We've got all that and more coming up. Stay with us. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Bonnie and Clyde, the lonely hearts killers, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. These are infamous criminal duels.

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UN must be 21 to enter. When we imagine America in the 1930s, we all probably think of the same things. Lines at soup kitchens that stretch several city blocks, dust-shoaked farms struggling to produce crops, and FDR reminding the country that the United States would pull through this difficult. time. It's easy to forget that the people experiencing those things were, in fact, people. We imagine their world in sepia tones and black and white, simplifying their complicated

lives to moments captured in a history book. Reducing someone to the role they played in a story is inevitable, especially as time marches on. But in some cases, it happens more quickly. For instance, victims of violent crimes often become cautionary symbols almost immediately. Again, the worst of us never register other people as complicated. To them, other people's lives are unimportant. All that matters is how they can be used.

They're not a human. They're a walking mark. Harry Powers was one such person. He was always looking for the next grift. The latest person he could scam out of a buck, no matter who he heard along the way. Because Harry was always scamming one person or another, he lived a life of aliases. And due to the poor record keeping of the early 20th century, tracking Harry across all of his names and crimes is a challenge.

We know that Harry was born in the Netherlands in 1892. His parents named him Harmdrent. He was raised by parents Vilco and Jancha, and he had a sister. Some reports say that young Harry was a liar from early on and often got in trouble in the small community. Unfortunately, we lose Harry for the rest of his childhood. But in 1910, we know that the 18-year-old traveled to the U.S. with his father, craving the American dream. They settled in Iowa, where they tried to make a life as farmers.

Harry's mother followed shortly after, and as many immigrants did at the time, the family Americanized their names to better fit in. Harm became Harry, which was just the first of his many name changes. It seems that as he entered his 20s, Harry wasn't content with farm life and wanted something more. He found it as the globe plunged into the First World War. He enlisted and served in the military for 20 months. And here's where things get murky. By 1918, his former identity was completely gone. As far as we can tell, this is when Harry started using his knack for lies to make money.

We can't be sure how many crimes and grifts he pulled, or if violence played a role at this early stage. But by the end of the war, he was introducing himself as Harry Powers, a total of the war. 26-year-old oil stock salesmen from Oklahoma. The job, the name, and the hometown were all fake, a manufactured identity to use for thefts and cons. And Harry was a great con man. 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. We often think of con men as larger than life, But that's not actually true. The traits that make someone a good con man aren't supernatural charm or intelligence. They're much simpler. In her 2016 book The Confidence Game, Social Scientist Maria Konnikova studied con artists and their crimes.

She found that cons are not flashy and rare, but rather simple, common crimes. And for the right person, they're incredibly easy to pull off. Connikova explains that cons are often a combination of, two ingredients, the lie and the liar. Crucially, a good con artist knows exactly what to offer. They identify needs, tell the lies people want to believe, then exploit the results. As primed as we all are to stay suspicious of things that seem too good to be true, we share a common weakness. If someone tells us something we want to be true, we're likely to trust it. But it has to come from the right messenger.

Con artists are great at building trust and familiarity. They're good listeners, both in terms of making you feel heard and in listening for clues on how to exploit their marks. They build a casual rapport so subtly you don't realize you're being played. In fact, a lot of cons happen right under our noses. Then the criminal is gone before we know there was even a crime. Over the years, Harry used all of these tools. to commit an untold number of scams.

At the very least, he was committing thefts and burglaries, but he was also using his Harry Powers persona to pull off fake oil investment scams. He spent some of his time in Wisconsin, which we know because he was arrested there for burglary in 1921. Interestingly, he gave his real name to authorities, but he didn't make a habit out of it, and by the time he left prison, he disappeared again.

Over the next several years, Harry honed his skills. Harry honed his skills and narrowed his sights on a particular type of victim. He liked to make women swoon and he was charming enough to pull it off. But not just any woman would do, he liked lonely widows who were desperate for a new beginning. You see, widows in the early 20th century had few options. Society afforded them few opportunities to get jobs or make their own money. Because they lived in a male-dominated society, there was a social assumption that women needed a man in the home. So when Harry showed up offering to be that man, they were only too happy to believe him.

It was a lie they wanted to be true. Harry was the perfect con artist to deliver this lie. He was unassuming and therefore unthreatening. He was particularly good at letter writing, wooing women from afar with heartfelt messages of love, building trust before they ever met. This was easier thanks to a growing romance industry. Perhaps due to the number of husbands who never returned, turned from the war, Lonely Hearts magazines were growing in popularity. A low-tech ancestor of

modern-day dating apps, these magazines allowed people to rent out space for a personal ad. They would lay out their financial situation, what they were looking for, and include a few details about their appearance. These ads gave Harry an endless supply of potential marks. Answering one such posting in 1926, 34-year-old Harry met Luella Struther. She was a wealthy widow who owned a market in the city and a farm in Quiet Del, just outside of Clarksburg, West Virginia. To Harry, she was the perfect target. He worked his charm on Luella, and in 1927, the pair married and settled down in Clarksburg, West Virginia. But life as newlyweds didn't go as smoothly as Luella might have hoped. Despite his wife's fortune, Harry didn't seem content to take things

easy, so he got a job as a carpet cleaner, a job where his silver tongue served him well. But Harry wasn't in it for an honest day's pay. Why should he struggle to bring home a meager paycheck when crime could make him a fortune? In 1928, Harry's manager, Dudley C. Wade suddenly disappeared. With little fanfare, Harry took over his role and carried on as usual. But when word of this sudden change reached corporate headquarters, the higher-ups had questions. They came to West Virginia to check in and found that Dudley Wade wasn't their only missing asset. Several carpet sweepers were missing too. Harry explained that before Wade left town, he'd stolen a fleet of sweepers and sold them, then ran off with the money. Hoping to recover

their stolen goods, corporate offered a reward for their return. They were willing to compensate anyone who purchased a stolen product and replaced the sweeper, but no one came forward to take advantage of the deal, which is when management began to suspect that Harry was lying. At some point, they had police search his home. Sure enough, all of the missing sweepers were in his garage. He'd changed their serial numbers to cover his tracks, but it was an easy thing to spot. Suddenly, Harry was cornered, and this is one of the first times we notice his great weakness. Though Harry was a great liar. He was bad at covering for himself when confronted with his crimes. Trapped, he doubled down on his lie that Wade had stolen the sweepers, but this time he changed

a detail. Now he told police that Wade had taken the products with him. Harry painted himself as a hero who tracked the thief down and recovered the stolen merchandise. It was a bad lie, but the police had no proof that it wasn't true, so they were forced to let Harry go. Not only was he released from custody, he successfully sued the vacuum company and collected the remorbed money himself. As for Wade, we can't say for sure what happened. One source claims that Harry confessed to murdering his manager, but there are few details to support this version of events. To this day, the truth is unclear. Perhaps Harry and Wade launched a scheme together, and Harry turned on his partner. Maybe Wade discovered Harry's theft of the cleaners and Harry

killed him to cover it up. Maybe Wade actually did steal the sweepers on his own, and Harry was telling the truth. Though given what we know about Harry, that idea seems the most far-fetched. There are many such tales about Harry's early years, supposed crimes he committed, people he grifted, and aliases he assumed, none of which can be verified. Some accounts suggest that Harry killed as many as 45 people before 1931, though no specifics about these other crimes have ever been offered. So it's entirely possible that number is completely fictitious. Unfortunately, there are a few details about Harry's life before the crimes that made him famous. Despite the potential victims who never found justice, it seems no one ever dug deeper into

his criminal past. The story eclipsed the people. But we do know how the next stage of Harry's criminal life started. It began with the creation of the American Friendship Society, a national Lonely Hearts Club. This club used a membership model to directly connect single men and women across the country. Gone were the days of combing through newspapers and magazines. Now the Lonely Hearts postings could come to you. Once you joined, your ad would be circulated to other members around the country. One of the club's most interesting members was Cornelius O. Pearson. According to his ad, Cornelius was worth $150,000, which would be around $2 million in 2020. He was also a widower and a member of several fraternal organizations, including the Freemasons.

Unfortunately, his busy business schedule made it hard for him to meet women, and all he wanted was a loyal partner to share his beautiful home. He was just the kind of man women across the United States were looking for. And he was, of course, completely fabricated, an invention from Harry Power's mind. Cornelius Pearson was a trap he would. used to entice women and then swindled them out of everything they had. Including in some cases, their lives. Coming up, what happened at Quiet Dell.

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catch a glimpse of the frightening side of fatherhood. Follow the Spotify original from Parcast Devious Dads. Listen free only on Spotify. Now back to the story. Amidst the worsening depression, Grifter Harry Powers was scheming more than ever.

Even after he married a woman named Luella, he continued to target widows as easy marks. And as Lonely Hearts Clubs became more popular, it only got easier to find more potential victims. He joined the American Friendship Society as his alter ego. Cornelius Pearson was a wealthy civil engineer who was seeking a wife. His perfectly crafted ad was drawing in 10 to 20 replies every day. From these replies, Harry was looking for widows with any amount of money he could steal.

As far as we can tell, his M.O. was simple. First, he'd court lonely women and propose marriage from afar. Then, he'd have them empty their bank accounts to ease the transition to their new life together. Finally, he'd take their cash and disappear. We don't know how many times he pulled this scheme, but we do know that in 1931, Harry was focused on his next score. Asta Iker was a 50-year-old widow in the Chicago suburbs. Her husband had been a silversmith, and in the eight years since his death, Asta had used the money he left behind to support their three children.

She also earned a little extra money by boarding out a room in her home. Astha's struggles were mostly practical. The Great Depression was difficult for many, but Asthma was a single mom with three kids, and she was also lonely. She wanted a partner, but not just someone to help support. and raise her family, she wanted someone to love her. In Harry's eyes, she was perfect. According to criminologist Cassandra Cross, older adults are more likely to fall victim to fraud crimes

than any other crime. In a research review about elder victims of crimes, Cross describes three areas of perceived vulnerability for older victims. The first is simply physical. Older people are easier to overpower if it comes to that. The second is financial. The older a person is, the more money they're likely to have. But it's the third area, social, that comes up the most in actual work with victims. Because older people are less likely to have a large social circle, many scammers view them as socially vulnerable, which makes them obvious marks.

With fewer people around them, loneliness can create an opening for a con artist to create the vital sense of familiarity. It's this that allows them to run their schemes. Interestingly, it doesn't matter whether or not older adults are actually more physically vulnerable, wealthy, and emotionally needy. If a criminal thinks they are, they're likely to become a target for their lies and thefts. The perception of their vulnerability is what makes them appealing targets. Asta certainly looked vulnerable to Harry. We don't know for sure how long she wrote to Cornelius, but it had been some time since Harry laid his trap, so the pair might have corresponded for months or even years. However long it took him, Harry slowly built familiarity with Asta, careful not to promise too much too soon.

He needed her to trust him if he was going to get her money. Remember, Harry was running this scheme on many women at once, so he did need to make a big score off one single crime. Despite her financial struggles, Asta still had something for him to steal. By the time he proposed, Asta was convinced Harry was the answer to her problems. He loved her and he wanted to provide for her kids. She was too distracted by his romantic letters to allow for reason or suspicion. At the end of June, Harry arrived in Illinois to meet his future wife for the first time. Asta was thrilled to finish their courtship in person.

During this time, she had asked her tenant, William O'Boyle, to move out, telling him there wouldn't be room for him once she was married. After that, the pair spent a few days away from Asta's kids. When Harry returned to Parkridge to retrieve Asta's children, he sent one of the kids to the bank. The child had a signed note requesting a check for all of the money in Asta's account. The teller was suspicious. It was an odd request to receive from a child. Sure enough, the signature on the note wasn't Astas, and the teller denied the request. Suddenly, Harry was aftious. scheme had hit a roadblock, but instead of trying a different tactic or giving up on the con, he changed the game in a new, deadly way.

It's frustrating how little we know about Asta or her children, her daughters, Greta and Annabelle and her son Harry, how they spent their time, what people thought of them, who the children imagined they'd grow up to be. None of it mattered to Harry, and much of their story has now been lost to time. Here's what we do know about the Iker's fate. After his bank scheme failed, Harry took the family to his wife's farm in Quiet Dell, West Virginia. There, he trapped Asta and her children in a multi-room basement. For some time after that, Harry continued to look for ways to empty Asta's bank account.

Whether he succeeded or not is unclear, but it wouldn't have changed what came next. One by one, Harry brought each of the Eichers into a separate room, where he hanged them using a makeshift noose. All except Harry, who he beat to death with a hammer. Then he hired a local teen to help him dig a ditch. After the boy's work was done, Harry sent him on his way and buried the bodies alone. At this stage, you might be wondering about Harry's wife, Luella, and what she was doing while he was with Asta and her children. Unfortunately, very little is known about their life together.

We can assume she was unaware of the crimes taking place on the farm because she lived at their home in nearby Clarksburg. Regardless of what Luella knew or believed about her husband, he wasn't done with his schemes. While he was pursuing as to Iker, he was also corresponding with Dorothy Lemke, a divorcee who lived with her sister in Massachusetts. He proposed to Dorothy and she gnecifully accepted. Soon after killing the Iker family, Harry arrived in Massachusetts to meet his new bride. Together they withdrew $4,000 from her accounts and took off,

supposedly headed for a property in Iowa, but Harry didn't bring Deborah to the large home he promised in his letters. Instead, they made for West Virginia and Quiet Dell Farm. Harry locked Dorothy away for an unknown amount of time before he strangled her with a belt. Then he buried her body in the ditch with the Eicher family and burned the possessions that might tie Dorothy to him, though we can assume he kept things of value. When looking at the story of Harry Powers, it's unclear what motivated him to kill some of his marks, but not others. Many women admitted to being wooed and robbed by Cornelius Pearson, but they lived to tell the tale. And while the difficulties he had stealing Asta's money is a possible explanation for why he murdered her.

It doesn't explain why he felt compelled to kill Dorothy. It's possible that it was the violence itself that motivated Harry. Perhaps he simply chose his victims based on who he thought he could get away with killing. Whatever the case, Harry showed no signs of slowing down. He continued writing letters throughout his murderous exploits and even proposed to at least two more women. But before he followed up on those proposals, Harry wanted to squeeze every last cent out of the Ikers. After bearing them in the ditch, he returned to Chicago to sweepast his home for anything of value. But his timing couldn't have been worse.

William O. Boyle, Asta's former tenant, just happened to return on the same day to collect some belongings he'd left behind. Harry slipped into character, introducing himself as Cornelius Pearson, a hotel manager from West Virginia. He claimed to be there settling Astas affairs after she and her children had moved to Colorado. William thought that was odd, because the last he heard, Asta was engaged. It didn't make sense for her to move to a completely different state without her new husband. suspicious of this Cornelius person, William, called the police. Cornered once again, Harry repeated his story to the authorities and even produced a letter and asked his handwriting to back up his claim.

And though he couldn't provide any other details about the Iker's move or why he was cleaning up after them, there was no concrete reason to arrest him. So Harry was allowed to leave. Still, investigators were sure there was more to this story, so they looked a little closer into the Icair's sudden departure. It hadn't been a missing person's case before, but now they believed something terrible had happened, and they had a hunch the mysterious Cornelius Pearson was involved. Coming up, Harry's web of lies unravels.

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to pilfer any remaining valuables. But when police had questions for Harry that he couldn't answer, it raised suspicions about the family's disappearance. Until now, no one thought much about the family's sudden departure. Everyone believed that Asta had run off with her new fiancé, Cornelius Pearson. But now, people realize that Asta's ever after might not have been so happy. Police searched the Eicher home and quickly discovered proof of Harry's lies. He told them that Asta had moved to Colorado, but they felt. found love letters between Asta and Cornelius, whose address was in Fairmont, West Virginia.

When police contacted the authorities in Fairmont, they were surprised to learn that no one had ever heard of Cornelius Pearson, and he certainly didn't run the Fairmont Hotel, as Harriet claimed. It seemed like the name Cornelius Pearson might be a dead end. Luckily, investigators were determined to get to the bottom of the mystery. Using details from Cornelius' letters, detectives guessed their culprit may in fact reside in Clarksburg, a town about 20 miles away from Fairmont. Working with the Clarksburg Police, they found out that a Cornelius Pearson had rented a P.O. box at the Clarksburg Post Office, which was where Asta had sent her letters.

The home address on record for the box led them right to Harry Powers. Now, Clarksburg Police had an earlier run-in with Harry when he'd been suspected of carpet cleaner theft. So when the Illinois police described the man who called himself Cornelius, they They knew they were dealing with Harry. At last, the fog was clearing. The authorities realized that Cornelius Pearson was an identity Harry used to lure Ask to Iker and her family into some kind of plot. Now they just needed to work out exactly what he did with them.

By the end of August, police had arrested Harry and obtained warrants to search his home, his wife's market, and the farm in Quiet Dell. But before the searches began, police questioned Harry about the Iker family. Harry had always had trouble keeping his story straight under pressure, and this was no exception. He told the police that the Eichers had gone west to Colorado and that they had joined him in West Virginia. With just that simple slip-up, they knew he was lying. Now they just needed to prove it. They began their search.

By now, word of the missing family had spread, and crowds gathered at the edge of the farm, desperate to see what dark secrets would emerge. Meanwhile, police made their way into the basement, and it quickly confirmed their suspicions. The Eichers were dead. The basement was divided into four rooms of tile and concrete, and none of them had been cleaned. Investigators discovered bloody hand and footprints, blood-soaked clothing, and strands of human hair. Following their initial search, investigators brought Harry into the basement, hoping that confronting him with his actions would elicit a confession. but he refused to break.

He didn't need to. Among the gathering crowd, a 15-year-old boy held the last piece of the puzzle. He knew Harry Powers. In fact, he'd helped him dig a ditch about a month earlier. When the boy told police what he knew, shovels were quickly brought in to excavate the ditch. It didn't take long to uncover the strangled bodies of Astha and her daughters,

as well as the beaten body of her son. With four murder victims on their hands, the police were determined to get a confession from Harry, even if they had to beat it out of him. By 4 a.m. the next morning, Harry had two black eyes and numerous bruises, and the police had their confession to the four murders. But they suspected there might be more. When they asked how many other people Harry had killed, he simply shrugged and said, I don't know.

Despite his reluctance to give a straight answer, Harry's secrets didn't stay buried. for long. As authorities continued to search the ditch, a fifth corpse was discovered, that of Dorothy Lemke. The belt Harry used to kill her was still wrapped around her neck. It was the final body discovered on the farm, but the story was far from over. With a confession secured, the story of the quiet Del murders spread to the media. As a result, public interest in the case skyrocketed. Every day, hordes of people. descended upon the farm, eager to see the site of where such horrific murders had occurred. Their desire for a peak of the basement and the ditch was voracious.

In early September, a group of promoters tried to capitalize on the fervor and built a fence around the property so that they could charge admission to visit the site of the gruesome killings. Locals didn't take kindly to the idea and set fire to the fence the day it was built. When a replacement went up, it too was torn down almost immediately. They refused to be kept out of the infamous farm in Quiet Dell. Perhaps even more than a glimpse of the murder farm, they wanted justice. In late September, as prosecutors prepared for Harry's trial, a crowd of some 5,000 descended upon the jail, demanding powers be released to them. It was clear they wanted blood.

Clarksburg police and firefighters attempted to disperse the mob by spraying them with fire hoses, but the crowd seized the hoses and even tried to tip the fire trucks over. It was a violent, hours-long standoff, but police ultimately broke up the throng. The Clarksburg authorities knew that they had to move, Harry, and made a plan to take him to a state prison for safekeeping. But the mob wasn't willing to let the killer go so easily. Once again, people descended on the jail, looking to deliver their own justice. Mob justice is not an uncommon phenomena, even today. Across the world, it's a common way that citizens take matters into their own hands.

Looking at modern examples, we're able to understand what causes these mobs to form, with economic deprivation being a key factor. This seems especially relevant considering Harry's story takes place during the Great Depression. The economic slump left many people without a job, and perhaps looking for ways to fill their time in a way that felt purposeful. Being part of a mob might have filled that desire. It's also possible that people rallied for a different reason. A 2010 paper from the University of Gothenburg looked at modern examples from Uganda to extrapolate

causes of violent mobs. Robin Glad, Osa Stramberia, and Anton Vesterlund determined that in addition to economic anxiety, Mob violence sometimes stems from distrust in the Justice Department. When citizens don't believe law enforcement will do their duty, they take matters into their own hands. In Clarksburg, police and prosecutors knew they had to act fast to counter the violent horde. So they went to war with their citizens, patrolling the streets with submachine guns and tear gas. Even hours after Harry was safely on his way to the state prison,

the air around the Clarksburg jail was still thick with gas. Now feeling somewhat safer, Harry became concerned that he wouldn't get a fair trial. Given the size of the mobs who'd been screaming for his blood, he believed that finding an impartial jury of Harrison County residents would be impossible. He may have had a point, but his petition to move the trial out of the county was denied. Still, the trial did happen in an atypical location. Concerned about crowd size, prosecutors rented out an opera house for the trial. The theater could fit over 500 specter.

For all of the fanfare, the trial was mostly uneventful. Harry seemed bored and disinterested at the start of proceedings, but when he took the stand, his demeanor changed, he recanted his confession and fell back into his habit of mixing up his many lies. But his confession was surplus to needs by that stage. The evidence was clear. In December of 1931, Harry was found guilty of murdering the five people slain at his quiet Del farm.

was sentenced to death. Much like the trial, his execution in March of the following year was also a spectator event. Before he was hanged, he was given the chance to offer his final words, but he declined. Harry's silver tongue had spoken its last. Following his death, rumors circulated about Harry's connection to other crimes, but it seems none were ever chased up in an official capacity. Perhaps for this reason the legend of The Bluebeard of Quiet Dell gripped the community for years to come.

Harry's infamy makes the lack of concrete information about his earlier crimes frustrating. Were there more victims out there? Unfortunately, we'll probably never know. Additionally, little is known about his ill-fated victims other than the role they played in his story. Perhaps Harry deserves to have his life reduced to the crimes he committed. But Asta, her children, and Dorothy don't deserve to have the fullness of their lives erased by their tragic endings.

And if there are other victims, they deserved more than just the rumors that they existed. When telling stories from a distance, it's hard to remember people for more than their place in the tale, but it's important that we do. No matter why we remember them, whether they were the hero, victim, or villain, they were vibrant, complicated people, compelling in their own. own right. Harry's victims were more than the easy marks he thought of them as. And if you've listened to this show for long, you know that killers are often more than the figures painted in the media. But archetypes like evil genius, dangerous madman, and lonely widow exist for a reason.

They're shorthand that help us tell stories in compelling ways. It's fitting that Harry Powers' trial took place in a theater. After all, was said and done, his was nothing, if not, a good story. story. Thanks again for tuning into Serial Killers. We'll be back soon with a new episode. You can find all episodes of Serial Killers and all other Spotify originals from Parcast for free on Spotify. We'll see you next time. Have a killer week. Serial Killers is a Spotify original from Parcast. Executive producers include Max and Ron Cuddler, sound designed by Russell Mash, with production assistance by Ron Shapiro, Trent Williamson, Carly Madden, and Bruce Coteau.

This episode of serial killers was written by John McDonough with writing assistance by Jane O. and Joel Callan, fact-checking by Amber Hurley, and research by Brian Petrus and Chelsea Wood. Serial Killers stars Greg Paulson and Vanessa Richardson. Hey there, Carter again. As we close out, here's a reminder to check out my new Parcast Limited Series Devious Dads. For 10 weeks, we're exposing the men who were far more full. flawed than fatherly, ruining anyone who stood in their way, even their own families. Follow Devious Dads free only on Spotify.

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. 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 podcast. 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.