Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - "The Shoemaker” Joseph Kallinger Pt. 1

Episode Date: March 7, 2022

The adopted son of cobblers began having hallucinations as early as 15 years old. They were harmless at first — but tragically, they wouldn’t stay that way.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Due to the graphic nature of this killer's crimes, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of murder, sexual assault, rape, attempted suicide, child and animal abuse. We advise extreme caution for children under 13. On a cold January evening in 1972, 36-year-old Joseph Calliger sat in the back of a cab. He thumbed the pistol in his coat pocket as he looked out the window, searching the streets of Philadelphia. He was looking for his kids, Isabel and Tommy, who had run away from home a few days earlier. Finally, he spotted them leaving a movie theater and told the driver to follow them. When they caught up to the teens, Joe got out of the cab.

He pulled the gun out of his pocket and pointed it at his kids, ordering them into the car. Huddled together in terror, Isabel and Tommy climbed into the back seat. Joe slid in next to them, and the family drove home, in silence. But things weren't quiet in Joe's head. There was a voice speaking to him the whole way home. He listened as God gave him instructions on exactly how to punish his children. Joe intended to teach the kids a lesson about what would happen to them if they abandoned

him. When he was done, he felt sure they would never, ever leave him again. Hi, I'm Greg Polson. This is serial killers. A Spotify original from Parcast. Every episode, we dive into the minds and madness of serial killers. Today, we're exploring the life of Joseph Callencher, a shoemaker with a dark, disturbing secret. 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. Today, we'll look into Joseph's childhood and his descent into madness. We'll also discuss how his hallucinations. turned into a torture spree, directed at his own children. Next time, we'll document Joseph's rapidly deteriorating mental state and explore how he roped his teenage son into being his accomplice in murder. We've got all that and more coming up. Stay with us.

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Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. 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. But you don't need to break any laws to find your perfect business partner because you have Shopify.

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wreaks havoc on everyone around them. How that baby is loved and nurtured and how they're taught to engage with the world can help define the role they play in it. Unfortunately, some are born into families that set them on a dark, violent path. As they grow up, they turn their learned hostility on those they're closest to. Of course, a rough upbringing certainly doesn't guarantee that a child will turn to a life of brutality and sadism, but sometimes abuse combines with... other factors to turn a human being into a monster.

For Joseph Callinger, his sickness, childhood abuse, and a desire to hurt others, coalesced to reveal the ugliest, most barbarous parts of him. Joseph's story of rejection and abandonment began before he was even born. His mother got pregnant with him when she was 20 years old in 1936. Because Joe's father wasn't in the picture and other contributing factors in her life, She eventually put her son up for adoption. Joe was adopted when he was around two by Stephen and Anna Callinger. The Calengers lived in a two-story red brick home in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia.

Stevens' shoe repair store took up the main floor of the building, and the family lived upstairs. As they neared 40, the couple had realized they needed an heir to the family business, and little Joseph seemed like the perfect fit. His jet black hair resembled Stevens, and they even looked a little like father and son. But despite the physical resemblance, Joe couldn't have been more different from his adoptive parents. Joe was curious, imaginative, and emotional.

Anna and Stephen were cold and reserved. According to Joe, the only emotion they displayed was anger. Even though he had a family, the little boy felt alone in his new home. On top of that, his adoptive parents never really let him be a kid. Instead, they treated him like a shoemaker in training. Playing games was a frivolity they didn't tolerate, and they expected Joe to act much older than he was.

Misbehaving was out of the question. When Joe did behave in concerning ways, the Callenger saw it as a sign that he was a bad seed and inflicted severe and cruel punishments. In reality, though, Joe's earlier concerning actions might have been signs of a serious mental illness. understanding this condition is important to understanding Joe's story. Vanessa is going to take over in the psychology here and throughout the episode.

Please note, Vanessa is not a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist, but we have done a lot of research for this show. Thanks, Greg. Throughout his life, Joe dealt with serious mental health issues, including visual and auditory hallucinations. Eventually, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and many of the doctors who examined him later in life, agree that his illness likely began in his early childhood.

But schizophrenia that presents itself before the age of 13 is extremely rare and difficult to diagnose. To determine if a child has schizophrenia requires a host of tests, evaluations, and neurological workups. Doctors also need to examine the family history, something the Calengers didn't have access to since Joe was adopted. Not that it mattered, though, since the Callenger's never suspected, never suspected that Joe was sick. In their minds, he was possessed by evil, not disease. But it wasn't only his concerning behavior that drove the challengers to punish and abuse Joe.

Sometimes it was just simple childhood curiosity that drew their ire. In 1941, when Joe was five, he heard some older boys in the neighborhood cursing. He'd never heard the word before, and naturally, he wanted to know what it meant. so he rode his tricycle straight home to ask his parents. When the curse word left their son's mouth, Anna and Stephen were furious. Stephen dragged the boy inside and beat him with a strip of leather. When it was Anna's turn, she used a large wooden spoon. They reminded him, as they always did when he misbehaved,

that they had saved him from the orphanage, and they wouldn't hesitate to take him back at any point. Crucially, they didn't explain the word to Joe, or why he wasn't allowed to say it. Without an explanation, Joe didn't know what he did wrong, only that he was being punished. That might explain why, three weeks later,

Joe's curiosity got him into trouble again. A neighbor told Anna that she'd watch Joe try to pull down a girl's underwear and then run away. The Calengers believed that Joe's actions pointed to a deeper problem within him, one they had to fix. Anna beat Joe mercilessly with her wooden spoon, when he returned home that day.

Unfortunately, Joe also experienced violence beyond his family home. In late August of 1943, the six-year-old came home in terrible pain. He explained that an older girl had kicked him in the groin. But Anna didn't believe her son. She accused him of doing something terrible to the girl, insisting that he must have deserved to be kicked. She sent him to his room without supper and told him they would return him to the orphanage in the morning. That night, Joe cried, alone in his bed, pain still shooting through his groin. Despite his misery, he hoped that by the morning, his parents would forgive him and let him stay with them.

The next day, Stephen and Anna didn't take Joe back to the orphanage, but he was still in a lot of pain. A few days later, he was admitted to the hospital for a surgery on a hernia. In an ideal world, that would have been the end of the episode. But the Calengers had something else in mind. They were determined to rid their son of his wickedness once and for all. They told Joe that during his surgery, the doctors had fixed his penis. There was a demon in it, they said, but the doctor had taken it out. Now it would always be small and would never get hard again.

To be clear, the doctors did not operate on Joe's penis, but the six-year-old didn't know that, so he was understandably traumatized. The cruel lie eventually defecutive. find much of his relationship with women and his own masculinity for the rest of his life. After that, the Calenger's became even more strict. Since Joe always seemed to get into trouble while playing outside, his parents decided to keep him locked inside and alone. He couldn't go on play dates with other kids or have anyone over at the house. As a result, the Callenger home became a prison where Joe was alone with only fantasies to keep him company. By the time he was seven,

Joe was working every day at the shoe repair shop. He didn't have any friends or anyone to talk to, but he found small ways to escape the rigidity of his life at home. Joe later recalled that one day, while he was outrunning errands for his parents, he stopped at a favorite hideaway spot, a series of three abandoned oil tankers. He climbed a ladder to the top of one of the tankers, then climbed down. But when he got inside, he wasn't alone.

Three older boys from the neighborhood were there. When they saw Joe, the boys rushed at him. They put a knife to his throat and sexually assaulted him. Even when he'd gotten away from his parents for a few minutes, Joe's one safe place had been twisted into a nightmare. At the same time, whatever innocence he had left had been stripped away by the violent assault. The boys had used a knife to disempower him, leaving him helpless to fight back.

It's possible that the episode forged a connection in Joe's mind. and violence shared an intimate bond. They were both about power, and that twisted understanding would have terrible consequences. Coming up, the calendars think of an especially fiery way to punish their son. I'm Sarah Turney, host of Disappearances,

a Spotify original from Parcast. In 2020, I used social media to help bring justice to my sister Alyssa's nearly two decades-long disappearance. Now I'm exploring the many reasons people disappear and finding that the truth may be even harder to locate than the person. Who forced a famed explorer to lose his way? What did a missing Hollywood starlet leave behind?

And how could the heiress to a Chicago candy fortune just vanish? Every Thursday on Disappearances join me for a deeper look into history's most gripping missing persons cases. Tracking timelines, analyzing clues, and piecing together as many answers as possible to find the actual truth. Follow the Spotify original from Parkast Disappearances. Listen free only on Spotify. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey?

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Now back to the story. By 1948, Joseph Callenger was living a pretty unconventional life for a little boy, While other kids were playing outside or enrolled in extracurricular activities, Joe was working at his dad's shoe repair shop. By the time he was 11, he'd been promoted from running errands to cutting heel pads for men's shoes, a tedious but important task. In exchange for his work, his parents allowed Joe one simple pleasure. If he filled up a basket of heel pads by Saturday afternoon, they'd give him the money to go see a movie.

So every week he'd work hard, cutting leather, for hours at a time to get the job done. Joe enjoyed going to the movies, but eventually he tired of being alone. He wanted to watch movies with other kids his age. The problem was that Joe didn't have any friends, and the only way he could get the other boys to go with them to the movies was if he paid for their tickets. He knew his parents would never give him the money for more tickets,

so he had to find another way. One Saturday, Joe entered Anna and Stephen's room and walked to the closet, where he knew they kept cash. He reached in and grabbed a roll of quarters. That day, for the first time ever, he didn't go to the movies alone. Joe continued to steal money from his parents every week, knowing that eventually he'd be caught and punished.

But it was a risk he was willing to take. When Joe's parents discovered what he'd done, they were furious. They accused him of being ungrateful, reminding him once again that they'd rescued him from the orphanage. Now Anna said they would drive the demons out of his fingers. Stephen grabbed Joe by the hands and led him towards the stove. As they stood before the open flame, he pushed Joe's fingers into the fire.

When the punishment was over, Joe rushed to the sink to run cold water over his throbbing hands. But Anna slammed the tap shut. No cold water, no ointment. Joe had to feel the full extent of the pain, she insisted. Then maybe God would forgive him. for what he'd done. As traumatizing and painful as the experience was, it didn't stop Joe from stealing money from his parents.

Over the next year, the Calengers burned Joe's fingers over the stove at least six times, punishment for his continued theft. But to Joe, loneliness was more painful than a few scorched fingers. However, by the time he was 12, he had tired of paying other kids to hang out with him and stopped stealing from his parents. but a different, more sadistic habit took its place, one possibly brought on by his schizophrenia. That summer, Joe heard a voice telling him to cut someone.

Eager to obey, Joe boarded a bus searching for a target. As he rode through the city, he spotted a boy around his age walking beside the highway. Joe got off the bus and caught up to him. He convinced the boy to come with him to a nearby creek. When they got there, Joe pulled out a knife, and instructed the boy to pull down his pants. Confused, the boy hesitated. But when Joe brought the knife closer, he obliged.

Seeing the other boy pulled down his pants and underpants, Joe felt satisfied. He slid the knife back into his pocket and ran away, leaving his victim unharmed. But when it was over, Joe felt both shame and terror at what he'd done. He felt like he was being controlled by a powerful force, like he was a puppet and the voice in his head was pulled.

pulling the strings. As we mentioned before, Joe was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia. One of the most common symptoms of this disorder, especially in children, is auditory hallucinations. According to psychiatrist Dr. Abhijit Ramanujam, these kids are less likely to report these hallucinations because they fear the voice may cause them harm. That said, it's unclear if he kept quiet about the voices he heard because of fear or something else entirely. Whatever the reason, the Voices and Joe's head persisted, and they ordered him to find

more targets, which he did. At least three more times he cornered other children, threatened them with a knife, then ran away. Joe didn't understand what was happening to him, but by 1950, when he was 13, the voices finally quieted down and he began to feel normal again. It was around this time that he met a short, skinny girl with sunken cheeks and thin brown hair who will call Helga. Joe had always felt a mix of terror and intimidation around women. He was deeply insecure about his masculinity, likely thanks to his parents' cruel parenting

style and religious beliefs. As a result, the only way he could pleasure himself was by stabbing holes in photos of naked women. The feeling of dominating or overpowering them gave him confidence. But Helga already looked weak and defeated. Something about her appearance made Joe feel strong. When he approached her and asked her to go out with him, she happily agreed, and within no time, the young teens were a couple. Like many kids their age, their dates were simple. They'd walk around, window shop, or go to the movies.

And even though they were spending a lot of time together, Joe kept their relationship a secret from his parents. But one day, a customer at the store spilled the beans, and the calendars were furious. Helga's mother was poor and allegedly had a drinking problem. in Joe's parents' eyes, that pointed to a lack of virtue. Even ignoring her supposedly distasteful family, the more time Joe spent with Helga the less time he had to work at the shop, so they demanded that he stopped seeing her immediately. Joe didn't argue and assured them that he'd end things.

But he continued to see her in secret for the next couple of years, and for a while, things were steady. By September of 51, when he was 15, Joe was content with his life for the first time ever. He'd been in a happy relationship with Helga for nearly two years, and all the time spent at the shop was starting to pay off. He'd become something of an expert in orthopedic work. He often altered shoes or built inserts

that helped correct common foot problems. Life was going well for Joe, but things were about to take a bizarre turn. One day while he was working alone in the shop, a white light appeared before him, revealing a figure in white. The apparition told Joe that he was God, and he had a special mission for him.

God told Joe that it was his duty to heal humanity by healing their feet. Through his expertise in orthotics, Joe would cure mankind of all the ills that plagued their hearts and minds. Joe was clearly hallucinating, but to him, the figure was very real, and he wasn't about to ignore his God-given assignment. Joe told no one about what he'd seen, but he got straight to work creating new orthotic experiments he believed would one day save the world. In the meantime, his life slowly became one he'd always dreamt of.

In 1952, he moved out, renting a room six blocks away from home. Then a few days after his 16th birthday, he dropped out of school and started working full-time at his parents' store. Joe felt confident. He finally established his independence from his tyrannical parents and started living his life the way he wanted to. And in the summer of 1953, he took things a step further. Even though he knew his parents disapproved of his relationship with Helga, the pair boarded a bus to Elklin, Maryland, and came home a married couple.

Strangely, Anna and Stevens seemed to accept and approve of their son's marriage. They even let the newlyweds move into a home they owned, nearby. Now that he had a wife and his own home, the calendars treated Joe in a way they never had before, like family. At this time, with everything else falling into place, Joe started thinking about where he wanted his life to go. He knew that he wanted to open up his own chain of shoe repair shops one day and decided it would be best to broaden his experience in the business. He found a job at a prestigious shop that offered him higher wages and asked for his parents' blessing. The Calengers agreed to let Joe go.

but made him promise not to open a store in their area. He was the heir to the family business, and it would be passed on to him when they retired. In 1954, Joe and Hilda had an heir of their own. That August, their daughter was born. Before we continue, a quick note. There are several children involved in this story, so to protect their privacy, we've changed some names.

Joe was elated. He finally had the family and life he'd always wanted. Unfortunately, those feelings were short-lived. As soon as they brought baby Amelia home, the dream began to fall apart. Joe felt that Helga didn't have much of a maternal instinct. According to him, she often ignored the baby. And Joe sometimes came home from work to find Amelia in her crib without a diaper, covered in her own excrement.

The teenage Helga had apparently never been a very good homemaker, even before the baby. And while that had always been frustrating to Joe, now it feels. felt like it was actually endangering the life he wanted for his family. The couple began fighting and their marriage deteriorated rapidly. Despite the conflict, they must have found time to fulfill their duties as husband and wife, because in May of 1955, Helga became pregnant again. Joe hoped the new baby would rekindle the bomb they once had and mend their relationship. But Helga had other ideas.

She asked Joe for money for an abortion, when he refused, their relationship got even worse. And in January of 1956, their son, Stuart, was born into a home on the brink of collapse. The couple spent most nights locked in violent fights, shouting and throwing things at each other. It was so bad, even the neighbors noticed. Then, in September of 1956,

things came to a head. One night that month, Joe came home from work to find that Helga had left him to live with another man in his car. He couldn't fathom how she could abandon the home they'd built together to live with someone who couldn't even put a stable roof over her head. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that she left because he was a lousy lover.

His parents had told him that his penis would always be small, and he thought that it was. When he compared himself to other men in public bathrooms or in pornography, he felt like his manhood was insufficient. When Helga left him, it was one more blow to his already fragile masculinity. But Joe didn't have time to fret over the rejection. He had two young children to support.

As he went through divorce proceedings and negotiated custody, Joe moved back in with his parents. It was during that time in June of 1957 that Joe met a woman named Elizabeth Betty Baumgart. The pair became friends, and when his divorce was finalized in January of 1958, they started dating. Three months later, they got married.

married. Joe, Betty, and his two kids all moved into a home in Kensington, the neighborhood he grew up in. Of course, Joe's new beginning wasn't completely fresh. His failed relationship with Helga had scarred him deeply, and he entered his new marriage terrified of abandonment. But Betty was nothing like Helga. For starters, she was an excellent homemaker. She loved to cook, and Joe always came home from work to a clean home and a warm meal. Betty was also a loving and doting mother to Jo's kids. What's more, she was timid and passive, happy to oblige all of Joe's requests. And Joe himself was an attentive and caring father, who spoiled his family.

But of course, it wasn't smooth sailing. Joe still had many fears, and because of them, some of the things he asked Betty to do were bizarre and tyrannical. For example, he forbid Betty from leaving the house without him. except to go to work or to the store. And since he didn't drive, he made Betty sell her car and stop driving too. Joe must have thought that if he kept a tighter grip on his wife, she wouldn't be able to get away like his ex.

But though he tried his best to control every aspect of his life, some things were beyond Joe's power. When he was 22, the hallucinations returned. But this time, the figure wasn't God, and their demands were anything but. benevolent. Coming up, Joe's mental health spirals and his children suffer the consequences.

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includes gas, floating, rumbling, and abdominal discomfort. Now back to the story. In 1959, 22-year-old Joseph Callenger was fresh into his second marriage. Joe, his new wife, and his two children, Amelia and Stewart, lived in a house in his childhood neighborhood. Earlier that year, the hallucinations that had plagued Joe as a child returned. While he was busy at work, he saw a dark figure in a black cloak and a witch's hat appear before him. The figure told Joe to go home and burn down his house. That afternoon, Joe headed home.

He went into the shed at the back of the house, lit a pack of matches, and tossed it into a can of paint thinner. The shed burnt down, taking part of the house with it. Investigators determined the fire was an accident, and Joe collected $1,900 in insurance money. After the fire, Joe moved his family into a beautiful two-story home. It had six bedrooms, a patio, a backyard, and a garden. Shortly after, in March of 1959, Betty gave birth to a girl, they named Isabel. Once again, Joe's life was exactly what he wanted it to be. He had a growing family. He was working at one of the best shoe repair shops in the city. He'd even won awards for the quality of his work. But as usual, whenever things were going too well in Joe Callenger's life, the time

was about to shift. On July 25th, Joe was hit with a splitting headache. He told Betty that he was going to see a doctor. But Joe never made it to the doctor. Hours later, he awoke, dazed and confused. On the steps of a church in Hazleton, 70 miles northwest of Philadelphia, he had no idea how he got there, or even who he was. A policeman passing by saw Joe and took him to the Hazleton State Hospital. There, Joe was diagnosed with amnesia. After several days in the psych ward, with no clue as to his identity, Joe murmured his father's phone number in his sleep. The family was notified and rushed to pick him up.

Before they could take him home, however, Joe attempted suicide. He later told author Flora Schreiber that he didn't know why he did it. But before he was discharged, doctors diagnosed him with hysterical neurosis. What that means is that Joe has... had real physical symptoms caused by underlying psychological sources. When Joe was discharged, reports were sent to his doctor recommending psychiatric care, but neither Joe nor his doctor ever followed up. Joe's behavior, however, became progressively more bizarre.

To help deal with his stress, he installed a 12-foot-long, 4-foot-wide bowling lane in his bedroom. Almost every day from 4 a.m. until it was time for work, Joe bowled. He also liked to walk down the street with a red wagon, collecting discarded treasures from his neighbor's trash cans. Over time, his house became a museum for all the junk no one else wanted. For the next few years, Joe's behavior continued to be strange, but for the most part harmless. That is, until April of 1963 when he was 27. The figure who had once instructed him to burn down his house was back, and he had a familiar command.

it all down. This time, Joe was reluctant to obey. He loved his house and all of the treasures he'd collected over the years. He didn't want to see it all destroyed. But by the end of May, his resolve was gone. He set fire to the house twice that month, four days apart. Over the next four years, Joe continued to see the ominous figure and continued following his orders.

He burned down the house again in August of 1965. in 1967, after the family had moved into a new home, he did it again one final time. In February of 1967, Joe and his family moved into his childhood home on Kensington Street. The senior Calengers had retired, leaving the shoe repair store and attached house to Joe. By this time, his family had grown significantly. He and Betty now had six kids, and while he'd always told himself he'd never treat his children the way Anna and Stephen had treated him, his parenting style had more in common with his parents than he might have realized. For one, Joe used his children like servants, who had to respond to his

every whim or request. He'd often wake them up in the middle of the night to join him on long walks to test his orthotic designs. He also woke the whole family up every year at one minute past midnight on his birthday. They would stay up all night celebrating his special day. He had never had a birthday party as a kid, but now he could use his own children to experience the things he'd missed out on. In early 1969, 33-year-old Joe enlisted his children's help for his strangest project yet. He bought a house and turned it into his own private refuge from the world.

In a back room, he had his kids dig a 20-foot hole deep into the ground. In the safety of the pit, Joe let his dark fantasies and delusions run free, away from the prying eyes of the rest of the world, including the kids. his family. This seems to be when Joe really began to lose touch with reality, when he started spending more time shut off from everything. It was in the hole on a warm June day that Joe had an epiphany. He decided that he'd changed his mind about physically punishing his children, three of them specifically, 13-year-old Stewart, 10-year-old Isabel, and 9-year-old Tommy. He'd always been against corporal punishment because he could remember how terribly it had

impacted him as a child. He never wanted his kids to go through the pain that he had. But something had shifted in his mind as he lay down there in the hole, surrounded by the dark, damp nothingness. He'd been having trouble with the kids. They regularly cut class, got into fights, and were always getting into trouble. Joe decided that since they weren't listening to him, he'd have to re-educate them, and he knew exactly how he'd do it. He went to his workshop and laid out all of the tools he'd he'd use onto a table. They included a box of straight pins, a thick strip of leather, and a homemade cat anine-tales. At night, he'd approach the children's bedrooms and wait for his palm

to itch. If it did, he took that as a sign that the child had done something bad. He didn't know what they did, or if they even did anything at all. The itch was all the proof he needed. He'd wake up the child in question, take them down to the workshop, and inflict his punishment. Over the next couple of years, the abuse became so frequent, the children began calling his workshop the torture chamber. However, in the summer of 1971, Joe stopped his weekly beatings, but it wasn't because he suddenly felt compassion for his children.

It was because, according to him, he was the happiest he'd ever been in his life, and the reason why is profoundly disturbing. That July, Joe began dating his 12-year-old daughter. daughter, Isabel. It should be noted that this is Joe's description of the relationship, and the exact nature of what happened is unclear. But it's highly likely that Joe was sexually abusing his daughter. He lavished her with expensive gifts and took her out to dinner, as if she were his girlfriend. Joe says that in that time he fell in love with her. But it seems that even Joe was aware of how wrong the relationship was, or at least how troubling it would be perceived

by everyone around them, because after three weeks, he ended it. But his fascination with Isabel didn't go away. Instead, he now grew jealous of the other boys she would date, who were often much older than her. And after that, the punishments he inflicted on his children, especially Isabel and Tommy, got increasingly worse. The harsher punishments coincided with the rapid deterioration in Joe's mental state. He believed he was once again being controlled by God.

In his mind, the beatings he meted out to his kids were ordained by a higher power. Eventually, the children got tired of the constant and random abuse. Once Saturday in January of 1972, Isabel and Tommy ran away from home. The next evening, Joe went out looking for them. When he eventually found them, he ordered them home at gunpoint. That night, God spoke to Joe and told him exactly how to punish his two willful children. When he was finished with them, they'd never think of running away ever again. As soon as they got home, he sent Betty and the other children out to get pizza for dinner.

He needed complete privacy for what he was about to do next. We won't go into the details of the punishment, but they were eerily similar to how his own parents had abused him as a child. And through it all, he screamed at Isabel and Tommy, warning them never to leave him again. When it was all over, Betty returned with the pizza, and the family sat down at the table to eat. Although Betty was aware of the way her husband abused the children, it seems she never objected to it. For his part, Joe was so sure that his punishment had corrected his kids' bad behavior.

Surely he thought they had learned. They would never abandon him again. But he was wrong. Three of his children, Isabelle, Tommy, and Michael went to the police and reported what he'd done. A few days later, on January 30, 1972, police arrested Joe for child abuse. While Joe was in jail, he was examined by many doctors who wanted to understand more about his mental state. A team of psychiatrists believed Joe had a serious mental illness, likely schizophrenia. As such, they recommended he be hospitalized.

However, at least one doctor disagreed. They believed that Joe should be allowed to go back to his family, and that all of them received therapy for any collective issues. When he eventually faced court, the prosecutor argued that Joe was a ticking time bomb who should be denied bail, but the argument fell on deaf ears, as did the recommendations to hospitalize Joe. In August of 1972, he was released from jail and sent back home. It seems that the courts had decided that Joe was the glue holding his family together, and that they'd simply be worse off without him.

That was a deadly miscalculation, and more than one person would pay the price. Thanks again for tuning into serial killers. We'll be back soon with part two of Joseph Callenger's story. We'll watch as Joseph's hallucinations get worse, and he uses his teenage son to carry out his most sadistic crimes yet. For more information on Joseph Callenger, amongst the men, Any sources we used, we found The Shoemaker, The Anatomy of a Psychotic by Flora Reda Schreiber, extremely helpful to our research.

You can find more episodes of Serial Killers and all other Spotify originals from Parcast or 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 Cutler, sound design by Brendan Hawkins, with production assistance by Ron Shapiro, Trent Williamson, Carly Madden, and Joshua Kern. This episode of serial killers was written by Sarah Hussein, with writing assistance by Joel Callan, fact-checking by Kara McEleen, and research by Brian Petrus and Chelsea Wood.

Serial killers stars Greg Poulson and Vanessa Richardson. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's 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 win? Must be 21 to enter. 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.