Last Podcast On The Left - The Ragged Stranger: A Chat with Harold Schechter

Episode Date: January 11, 2020

This week we're joined by one of our favorite true crime authors Harold Schechter as we discuss his new book, true crime as a genre, Ed Gein, AND MORE.

There's no place to escape to. This is the last time. On the left. Why? Love your gliss. That's when the cannibalism started. What was that? Oh, yeah!

Boys, boys, boys. Why do boys commit so many crimes? Well, they're bored, I think. Is that, you know, why do young boys grow into men and then do all of these crimes? Women hide them so much better. Yeah, that's true. People aren't looking for women to commit crimes. Everyone's looking for boys.

We're all pre-criminals until proven otherwise. I had a listener send me a casting breakdown of the new Bel Gunness movie. You're gonna love this. There's the whole thing coming up. They're searching for a name only for Bel Gunness. But the way they described her was tall, buxom, sensual, like, these are the words that they use. She was a lithe panther that on one side was a purring cat, a velveteen cat, and the other

a deadly adversary. And I was like, this is, who is writing this? They got it all wrong. That is horrible. Hey, what's up, everyone? How are you? Welcome to last podcast on the left, Relaxed Fit. I am hanging out with the beautiful Marcus Parks.

And of course, we also have Henry Zabrowski in sunny Los Angeles. And today's guest for the show is our favorite true crime author in the world, Harold Checkter. Thank you so much for joining us, Harold. Thank you, man. Very excited to be here. Say, I got a question. What Bel Gunness movie were you just referring to? It was a new, it was a breakdown.

It's not the new, new one, because I know there was a, there's like a big one coming out that I believe Charlize Theron is Bel Gunness. It's like one of those where they put- She can't be Bel Gunness, though. They just put a fat suit on her, and then they say that she's incredible, you know? But I got this breakdown, the way they broke, the way they, I have to find the actual listing, but it was Bel Gunness and describing her as essentially like the only way to put it was she was a lot of vagina from Austin Powers. You know what?

I don't think that there should be fat suits allowed in Hollywood. If you wear a fat suit, you're not eligible for the bachelor or for the Oscar. It's, it's factual appropriation. It is, it's fat cultural appropriation, and I don't like it. We've already began this off the rails. For Harold's new book, The Ragged Stranger, the hero, the hobo, and the crime that shocked Jazz Age Chicago is now available on Kindle, and it's free with Kindle Unlimited, clocking in at a brisk 75 pages.

The Ragged Stranger is a tale that personally I would kind of describe as like a 1920s analog to the Scott Peterson case, but with even more twists and turns throughout. So Harold, how did you find the story of the Ragged Stranger and what was it about the story that compelled you to tell it? By the way, yeah, it's funny you should say Scott Peterson because just, you know, a little while ago I was trying to think of recent analogs and Scott Peterson was the first I came to my mind also. But you know, I'm not sure, you know, I'm so immersed in the history of American crime

that I, you know, I'm never sure exactly where I come across references to some of these things. But back in the 1940s, there was a comic book called Crime Doesn't Pay, which you guys might have seen, you know, which is, was one of these incredibly lurid sensationalistic comic books marketed to young children under the pretext that they were going to be edified in some way. It's so much fun though that now everyone's mad about it. They're saying true crime content is doing that now, like now true crime content is making

everything easy for children to digest, but it's been happening forever. Oh yeah. You know, kids would read these magazines, read these comic books and thought, wow, crime doesn't really pay. Meanwhile, they're totally getting off on these, you know, incredibly lurid sensationalistic comic books. This is before the comic book, anyway, one of these stories and one of the issues was the Call Wanderer case.

I think that's where I first came across it. And you know, it was one of the most sensational crimes of the 1920s, but one that very few people have heard of. It's nice because it evens out being called a nerd for reading a comic book in public and be like, yeah, you think I'm a nerd, you think this is a comic book. This is teach me how to gut you. So this was like a man, can you hit some of the points of the of this shooting or just so we could talk about it a little bit without spoiling the whole thing so that people can

kind of understand the structure of this crime. Well, I'll try to avoid too many spoilers, although it's hard. But you know, basically, Wanderer had been a soldier. He was the first soldier during this expedition down in Mexico. And then during World War One, he fought in France when the United States entered World War One, which was like 1918, came back, married, basically his childhood sweetheart, who immediately got pregnant. And then he decided, well, what happened was they went out to a movie one day.

And when they returned home, a very raggedy homeless guy followed them into the vestibule of their building and was about to hold them up. Wanderer pulled out the service revolver he always carried and started shooting this guy. And this guy was also shooting, supposedly the gun he was carrying, right? When all the gunfire stopped, the mugger was dead and Wanderer's pregnant wife was dying. And Wanderer was held as a hero for having killed this thief who had shot his wife. Well, you never know what's going to happen in a vestibule.

Vestibules can be very scary. I've been especially with the lights out. Anyway, so Wanderer was held as this hero. You know, this guy had held him up, Wanderer pulled out his gun, shot the bad guy. But unfortunately, not before the bad guy shot Wanderer's wife. That was a story that was in all the newspapers. It turned out there was more to the tale than. Oh, okay.

So this is very, this is very similar where he is, he has been labeled, well, but reverse where like Scott Peterson was immediately the villain. But it's all centered on a very sweet woman that just managed to just be in the crosshairs of a bunch of people that wanted her dead for being pregnant. Well, ultimately, yes. I mean, so can I go ahead and do the spoilers? Sure. I mean, if you want to, I mean, it really is like it's a fantastic story, even with

the spoilers. It's great. Well, it turned out, you know, there were just all these, you know, like suspicious things about Wanderer's story, you know, like altogether, there were 10 bullets fired in this tiny vestibule. He came away without a scratch, meanwhile, these other two people were lying dead. So, you know, this was a very no holds barred time in American taboo journalism. And you had all these, you know, rabbit newshounds following the story. Anyway, they managed to discover that the cult semi-automatic pistol that supposedly

this homeless guy had been carrying and wielding actually belonged to Carl Wanderer's cousin. Oh, Jesus Christ. You got to wipe the gun. You got to clean the numbers. You got to do something. And they also discovered that Carl Wanderer had borrowed it from his cousin earlier on that afternoon. Anyway, it turned out, you know, when he finally confessed that the whole thing was a plot

by Wanderer to get rid of his wife. Damn. This is where the Scott Peterson analogy comes in, and you know, a whole bunch of things. So what he had done was he had gone out, he had found this, you know, street guy, said he had a job for him, you know, offered him some money, said, all you got to do is follow me and my wife home and then pretend to hold us up. Oh, poor bastard. He didn't know.

He was just trying to go along to get along and get a job or something, but never have a job where you have to voluntarily just wave a gun around. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, the newspaper has kept calling him the poor boob. Oh, that is the worst. He's dead and they're calling him the poor boob. Well, that's what he came to be known as. Oh, and of course, we are talking about Harold Schecter's most recent book.

It's a tiny one so you can get through it very quickly over your lunch break. Yeah. I've written a couple hours and it's full of amazing characters like Carl Wanderer himself is such a strange, rich character. And the name of that book is Ragged Stranger. So make sure you get out there and support Harold Schecter's new venture. I'm sure it'll be very exciting and I'm sure there's much more in the book than you've already talked about.

Yes, quite a bit more. Well, you know how they discovered the crime, then, you know, he had three separate trials called Wanderer, all of which are pretty interesting. And it turned out that the reason he decided to get rid of his nine months pregnant wife was he wanted to go back to the army and hang around with other guys. Wait, what? That is the craziest reason ever to not have a family. Yeah.

Well, you know, it's because he had a girlfriend and he was sort of seeing this other young lady, but basically it was because he just wanted to hang around with other guys. Was it a like slapping butts thing, having fun in the shower, dropping the soap on purpose? What was going on? Why did you want to go back into the military? Yeah. Well, it was a little ambiguous. You know, some people felt very, very strongly that there was a distinct homoerotic element

to this fantasy, especially after Wanderer said that he couldn't stand the thought of touching his wife. But a lot of guys from what I was actually just recently reading an account of a man who came home from the war, who's recently came home from Afghanistan, and he said the main thing he said camaraderie, which just sound like maybe it's light frottage happening like on the front line, but it's the also like the order and it's adventure, it's anything but walking around like in a suburban life, this quote unquote, like, I've settled down. I used to be a warrior, like literally a warrior, and now I'm here doing all this stuff.

And I'm like, I can't smoke cigars inside anymore and curse because I think it's more the killing people. They can't kill. They can still smoke cigars inside. But Marcus, what do you want to talk to Harold about? Well, I think, I mean, I definitely want to keep talking about this a little bit. I mean, it's, I mean, in addition to just the crime itself, like a lot of the Ragged Stranger is about how the media covered the crime at the time.

So how do you think true crime coverage has changed at all, or if at all, from, you know, 100 years ago to the way they covered, say like the Scott Peterson case or the Casey Anthony case? Yeah. Well, I mean, you're talking about, you know, the 1920s, again, was really the golden age of tabloid journalism. And you know, you have, I don't know if you ever saw the movie The Frontage, you know, which Ben, these two Chicago journalists, Ben Hatt and Charles MacArthur, who went

on to become incredibly successful Hollywood screenwriters, you know, they first became big writing this big smash hit Broadway play called The Frontage, which was made into several different movies and also very famously a version with Karen Grant and Rosalind Russell called His Girl Friday. So but, but, you know, these guys were these bare knuckle journalists who would go to extraordinary lengths, you know, to turn up all, you know, to investigate these crimes, you know, they were often doing more investigation and more successful investigation than the police were and then turn it into, you know, these incredibly lurid stories.

You know, I mentioned in my, in The Ragged Stranger, one of Charles MacArthur's favorites, famous stories had to do with a Chicago dentist who had been accused of molesting one of his patients. And the headline was Dentist Fills Wrong Cavity. That was an episode of Seinfeld as well, remember that? So, you know, so on the one hand, again, you're talking about a certain kind of journalism, you know, a certain kind of very, very sensationalistic journalism that, again, defined the tabloids back then and, you know, still defines tabloid media today.

So you think it was, you think it's less classless now than it was in the 1920s? Because we have some pretty sensational headlines. I remember I'm always struck by, I think it was 17 people killed in the Upper West Side and the headline was West Side Gory, which is just like a lot of people are dead, but they're just in the room trying to find this ridiculous theatrical pun. Do you think it was more crass back in the 20s? No, it wasn't necessarily, look, I mean, I remember back in the 70s, I forget, it was either the post or the news, you know, famous headline, Headless Body and Topless Bar.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, you're always going to have this sensationalism. A lot of it now is not in print journalism, right? I mean, a lot of it now, yeah, so, and, you know, there's always something inherently sensationalistic about covering gruesome, boring, true crimes, you know, it probably depends on how much you want to exploit that. So, you know, I don't think true, I really think the only change is in true crime, how we digest it, how we experience it, you know, mostly technological, you know, the appetite

for reading about the stuff or watching about the stuff hasn't changed. I mean, that's just part of human nature, you know, that goes back even before there was such a thing as print, you know, back in the pre-Guttenberg era, you know, there were these murder ballots, I'm sure you know about them, I mean, every time a gruesome murder happened, somebody would turn it into a song or a poem, and, you know, many of those are incredibly gruesome and sensationalistic, so really, you know, human nature doesn't change, the appetite for true crime doesn't change, the way true crime is presented doesn't change.

I mean, it changes the technology of transmission. I guess out of my own self-interest, I do have a question regarding the last podcast on the left. Obviously, you've listened to some episodes, we deliver the true crime news in a way that may have never existed before. I'm just interested to hear what your thoughts were when you first heard us talking about true crime in the way that we do, were you like, this is a total bastardization of everything I love and work so hard for, or did you sort of like the sugar to help the medicine go

down? No, no, you know, I saw you guys in a certain kind of tradition, you know, I remember back in the, I guess, 70s also, maybe later, there was a fanzine called Murder Can Be Fun. I love Murder Can Be Fun, I love it, you can still get, yeah, I love that, it's a great zine out there. You know, I mean, one of the things that people are reluctant to admit to, but I think it's important to admit to, you know, is that this is a form of entertainment, you know, when you hear these stories about true crime, you guys are, you know, just very, very open about

that and that's great. You know, I think people should accept that in them, so, you know, one of the things I'm always struck by, you know, when I meet people who've read my work and so on and so forth, you know, people often rationalize their fascination with true crime. I'm interested in the human condition and the way the human mind works, and I do believe that that is up to a point, but sure, you also like hearing about people getting their heads chopped off a little bit, you know, basically, you know, it's how you tell stories about these crimes, you know, people want, you know, want to hear stories, I mean, you

guys tell your stories in this incredibly engaging way, so. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for saying nice things. Thank you. Do you get hit up in the true crime arena? I feel like there's a lot of people, because we do it all too, right? Because we also do the paranormal and we do the, all the various aspects of macopting,

so we have a whole swath of different people that we reach and people that are interested in the show. Do you yourself get reached out to by a lot of, like, interesting, quote-unquote, interesting people? Like, do you get reached out to by a lot of, like, goth chicks and psychos who want to kill you and stuff like that, or people who'd be like, I want you to write a book about me. I'll show you the evidence.

Right. Yeah, yeah. Not infrequently. I will get emails or whatever. You know, I'm not a social media person, but I have a, I'm not on Facebook, but I have a Facebook page where somebody else basically keeps from me, and if somebody contacts me, she'll follow it. So, yeah, I mean, I'll often, or not infrequently, be contacted by somebody who has this amazing

story about how her uncle was killed by a serial killer or whatever, and maybe I want to write a book about it, you know, you know, give it to me, give me the material. But isn't that sad, though, that you have to tell that person, yeah, it's just not that exciting of a murder, and it's like they've already lost their uncle or their father or their brother, and they're just like, ah, you kind of lose twice because pretty standard stuff. Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, you know, I kind of have my standard answer, which is basically true.

I mean, I'm a, you know, I write historical true crime. You know, my books are almost entirely, well, my full length books are pretty much all about people who are no longer alive, you know, goes back to the 19th century, where the 20s were then, I think probably the most recent criminal like I would have was Ed Dean. You know, that was like 1957, so. Yeah, that's what I was like. What is it about historical true crime that, you know, peaks your interest so much? Like, why is it that historical true crime is what you decided to focus on?

Well, partly it's, you know, it has to do in a way with my academic background. I mean, one of the reasons I became, you know, an English professor is I love doing research, and doing this historical true crime allows me both to gratify my own morbid interests and my own, you know, interest in extreme psychological criminal aberration and horror, you know, with my, again, sort of scholarly interest in doing a lot of digging around and doing a lot of research. You know, the other thing is, and again, this goes, I think, also to your show, you know, there are so many incredibly gruesome crimes.

If you read newspapers at any time in any day, you'll come across horrific crimes. You know, but there are a certain number of crimes that just, there are these amazing stories, you know, and there are these amazing stories that take place in certain years, and in a way help illuminate certain years, you know, like the ragged stranger, you know, tells you a lot about tabloid journalism in the 1920s, you know, so I'm always interested in what the particular crimes that fascinate people have to say about that particular era. So I also like how you put, we were speaking, I believe I saw you speak several years ago, and then recently you were, you were simply the idea, but you love telling the stories

of these grand villains, like true living monsters like H.H. Holmes, Albert Fish, these, like, legends, essentially, that became real, and it's, where do you see that now? Like, do you kind of like, do you ever aim towards something contemporary, or does history really allow those stories to unfold, and then you can see more of the context? Is that why, is that help, or would you, would you gain, would you be able to have the same sort of resource materials if you were going after somebody more recent? Well, theoretically, you know, again, I'm interested in what, when I first started writing in this genre, you know, if you read my Ed Gein book, for example, or Albert Fish book,

I don't even use the word serial killer, because nobody was using the term back then. And I mean, it had started to enter the language, but you know, hadn't become this big huge thing. I thought I was inventing a new genre. I thought of it as true horror, more than true crime, because I'm interested in writing about, you know, these very rare psychos who take on the stature of these mythic monsters. And you know, it's interesting to me, again, why certain criminals achieve that kind of status in the culture. So you know, I look for certain cases, you know, again, it's in a book I've just finished,

I've just finished a book about the worst school massacre in US history, something called the Bath School Disaster of 1927, you know. And I begin the book by talking about this horrific crime that happened in Connecticut a few years ago. It was on the national news, it was covered by NBC News, where these two guys broke into the house of this doctor. Yeah. Remember that?

Yeah. That was disgusting. And, you know, he ended up burning, you know, the wife of the kids alive, and they made the wife go take all this money on the ATM. The father survived and he was on Oprah Winfrey, and that episode was very traumatic. Yeah. But I defy you, you know, I can't even, and I was just rereading my own manuscript to name the two guys who did it.

Yeah. Yeah. That's so fucked up. I go to why I can't remember their name. I was like, it's so funny. I was thinking, I mean, like, why do I not remember their names? Because they don't have the bio, they don't have the villain description. Yeah.

I mean, there's something, you know, again, it's this incredibly appalling crime. You know, but somehow, you know, the story of those two guys, except for this appalling crime is totally uninteresting. Yeah. You know, we're, you know, you talk about an edgine or, and obviously there are these much more recent figures like Ted Bundy or Henry Lee Lucas, you know, who have achieved that kind of status. So you know, it's not just like guys from the way distant past, you know, but, but again,

it's a little, I think in a way the most recent examples of American criminals who have achieved that kind of thing or the Columbine killers, you know, can't think of anybody more recent than that. I mean, maybe, you know, there's the sounding of shooting, but, you know, but definitely Columbine killers. You know, I mean, they, of course, you know, they set out the legends and they kind of have achieved that. Well, I guess speaking of Columbine, I mean, obviously Eric and Dylan, they sort of represented

the 1990s in a way, you know, the late 90s, the sort of disgruntled youth movement and those kinds of things. Is there any correlation or like, how would you view, if you're just looking at true crime through the lens of history? Is there any difference between the true crime of the 20s and what we're talking about World War I, late 30s, World War II, Vietnam, you know, the 60s counterculture? Is there any, if you're just looking at true crime through modern history of America, is there any differences within the crimes that sort of reflect the new reality that they're

taking place in? Well, you know, I think what's interesting is not so much, you know, that there are differences in crimes, although, you know, for whatever reason, for example, there was, you know, starting in the late 70s and to the 80s, you know, what I think of is this golden age of serial murder. I mean, there was something in the corner, you know, just so happy we can say that on this show. Well, we're, we're now in the golden age of the mass shooters.

Oh, that's really, yeah, we're not in the, yeah, we're not in the, the serial killer ages back then. We're now in mass shooter days. Oh, wonderful. That's absolutely true. And you know, the other thing, you know, that is interesting to me is, you know, not so much. I mean, I do think there were certain cultural conditions that produced people like Gacy and

the Hillside Stranglers and Dahmer and all those people. But what's interesting is why certain types of crimes become these cultural obsessions. Is there, I think that does reflect some kind of large, free-floating cultural anxiety of the time. You know, I think I first became aware of this when I was doing a book years ago called The Devil's Gentleman about this notorious poison murder case that happened around 1900. And I discovered, you know, that in the late 19th century, around the turn of the century, turn of the 20th century, the poison murderers were like what serial killers became like

in the 1970s. You know, the culture was just obsessed with these poison murders, even though, you know, as with serial killers, you know, there was like, they represented a tiny infinitesimal fraction of crimes. But if you read the newspapers, it was like there was this incredible epidemic of poison murders. And what I concluded was, you know, that Americans were kind of obsessed with this because the poison murderer embodied or incarnated this very widespread anxiety, you know, about

all this toxic stuff, you know, that you never knew what food you were going to eat. This is pre-FDA, you know, it was going to kill you. So there was all this anxiety about ingesting poison. And you know, the poison murderer became, again, this mythic incarnation, the boogeyman, you know, of this cultural anxiety, in the same way the serial killer did, I think, in the free, sexually free-willing 1970s and 80s and so on and so forth. And now you don't feel any really be worried about poison as if you're married. And you have a really strong life insurance policy somewhere in there because that's my

main fear. I don't understand life insurance. I'll never give, I'm not giving anyone a payout when I die. Well, that's very generous of you. So Harold, going back a little bit to what you're saying about the sensationalism of journalism back in the 20s and even back into the 1800s, like you do a ton of historical research. And I know when we're looking at a story and we're trying to figure out the character of a guy, like sometimes you'll see one detail that you don't see anywhere else.

It's just in one source, but it changes the entire content. It changes the entire story. If this one detail is true, then the entire story changes. Like when you're doing historical research, like how do you decide whether to go with that detail or not? Yeah, that's a good question. You know, back in the late 19th century, in particular, when you had back then pre-tablet was called Yellow Journalism, as you probably know.

I remember my high school history class a little bit. There's some bits in there. Yeah, I don't remember studying that in high school history, but that's good. But you know, yeah, I mean, those people had no qualms about making shit up, you know? So generally speaking, you know, I would, before I would include something like that, I would try to find if there are any other corroborating sources or if this is just one thing that appeared in one newspaper or whatever, because really, you can't always trust that stuff.

You know, it's never, you know, never let, you know, never let, you know, a fact get in the way of a good story. So yeah, so you do have to be careful. And I guess the inverse of that, have you ever left out details because they didn't fit a narrative you wanted to sort of portray? No, I don't think I have. I mean, I might have possibly, I can't think of an example, you know, I might have tried to present that fact in a certain way, you know, certain like, you know, but, but I mean,

I don't recall ever, like, you know, discovering like, well, Ed Gein didn't really dig up those bodies. Right. Yeah, I would suck like they're like, man, I got to throw out all of this bullshit now. I actually got to take that back a little bit because by the time I got to the end of my book on H.H. Holmes, I had kind of concluded, and I still feel this way, that like 90 percent of what was written about him, what I even wrote about him, certainly what appears in the devil in the white city was actually probably not true.

Like what? Like what are the, what's the worst, what's the worst offensives of devil in the white city? I really hope that many and nanny are true. They probably are true. But what I have grave doubts about is that anybody was killed in his hotel. Really? Oh, I mean, I think, you know, many and nanny, but I mean, all this stuff about, you know,

that it was this murder hotel and all these people were coming to visit the world's fair and then disappearing, you know, I sort of think that was kind of made up by the newspapers. But then H.H. Holmes is just a guy who runs a bad pharmacy. No, he's just an insurance scam. Well, I mean, he did, he was definitely a serial killer. And I believe he probably was responsible for at least seven deaths, including the Pytzel children and so on and so forth. But, you know, it's like, there is no historical, you figure if he's killing all these people

who are coming to the world's fair, like some family member would have inquired what happened to their husband, brother, cousin, you know what I mean? There's like nothing to indicate that anybody ever filed a missing persons report, you know, about anybody who came to the world's fair and stayed at, you know, rented a room at home. Yeah, that's because they all took out life insurance and everyone was secretly happy that they're dead. I hadn't thought about that possibility.

Was there any corroborating evidence with all the contractors who said that he had me build this strange chute and he had this other guy build this room with no, was there any corroboration with those guys? There was some corroboration out of that, but again, you know, first of all, if you look at pictures of the castle, you know, just this like little building. But the other thing was, you know, probably homes did, you know, hire and fire contractors. I mean, he was a con man. Other people have done that, including current president, but, you know, but, but, but, you

know, I'm sure the house was, I'm sure there were staircases that didn't lead anywhere and weird things, but, but, you know, you can see that the, the, the newspapers immediately turned these into this incredibly sinister thing, right? You know, there'd be some chute or something and then suddenly it became, you know, a chute leading down to this torture dungeon and so on and so forth. You know, a lot of that stuff was just wild fantasy. No. I am happy that the media did portray it in that way, though, because I think without

that portrayal of H.H. Holmes' torture mansion, we wouldn't have nothing but trouble. I don't think that, I don't think that Dan Eckerd would have come up with that beautiful structure they had in the film, the home that they did the Humpty in. Right. Yeah. I mean, you know, that famous line from the John Ford movie, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, you know, when the truth becomes legend, print the legend, so. Right.

I mean, I'm, I'm with that. I was always, I, I don't know if you could tell, but it was a 14 year old devotee to Hunter S. Thompson. So at some point at that, at my young age, his whole concept of the, the gonzo form of telling a story that'd be like sometimes just the gist, even though it's not necessarily technically full of actual hard facts, sometimes it can be very, it could be accurate and it's just more fun. Totally.

Well, you know, I used to teach a class before I retired and started playing Red Dead Redemption all the time. Oh yeah. I used to teach a class on myth and, and I would quote the last line of the first chapter of Ken Keezy's One Flu of the Cuckoo's Nest, where the narrator says, it's the truth even if it didn't happen. So, you know, sometimes you can get at these deeper truths, you know, even by presenting facts in a certain way that aren't strictly historically accurate.

Can I ask you something about, about truth? This is a question I've been, we've wrestled quite a bit on the show and this is really just about your opinion. You know, I don't know whether or not you're going to know for certain or what you have ever had to kind of draw, like drag up in your research. How much credit do you give the confessions of serial killers? I was like, like we were talking about this quite often because like Ted Bundy at the very end decided to tell everybody that he was a cannibal, like all these types of things

where they, how often or not is a serial killer's confessions just extended fantasies and in what cases have you seen confessions, like be corroborated by stuff you've dug up? Like, like we were just saying how like you basically showed that H.H. Holmes, the whole story about the inside of the hotel is might be a sham, where it's like, how do you feel, how often are these guys just making up shit? Very often. I mean, H.H. Holmes, you know, he published a confession, you know, that he was paid all this money by William Randolph Hearst and you know, when you read it and look at the

stories that had been published before, you know, he was just given Hearst, you know, the story that he was being paid to give him. You know, you've all seen, I'm sure, you know, that recent Netflix thing on Henry Lee Lucas. I mean, that's right. It's wild. I just finished it last night. Me too.

Because we covered Henry Lee Lucas years ago. And so now you relook at it and be like, man, these two, the two dumbest men in the world took the law enforcement, Texas law enforcement for the ride of the century. Yeah. Well, you know, Lucas is obviously a very extreme case, you know, but the thing about most serial murderers is, you know, they're psychopathic con artists and their word is just not to be trusted. I mean, I think, you know, one of the rare exceptions to that was Jeffrey Dahmer.

Because I think Dahmer also, you know, did experience some genuine remorse, which was also unusual for those people. And I think that, you know, he really wanted, as much as anything else, to try to understand himself and what drove him to his crimes. But for most are, you know, Gacy, all those people, Bundy from Mucky just can't believe a word they're saying. What did you think about the questioning of Ed Gein, like when they were asking him about, like, did you ever put the vaginas near your penis and dance around and he just said things

like, Moppy, I did that, could be. Oh, he's so, he's like the forest gump of serial killers or grave robbers, rather. Yeah. Gein's an interesting case. I mean, I, it's really hard to tell. You know, I mean, there obviously was a lot of physical evidence that corroborated his confession. So, in a general way, I think that, you know, what he was saying was accurate.

You know, it's also, you know, a lot of, as you saw with Henry Lucas, and people sometimes, you know, put words into the mouths of some of these people, and, you know, they sometimes just say what they think their interrogators want them to hear. But you know, with Gein from all available evidence, it's likely that most of what he confessed to was true. Hell yeah. Yeah. Good.

I mean, I mean, I know that makes, I'm so, I'm so saddened by it. You just want, you're, you just want honesty. That is Henry's, Henry's faith in humanity is strangely, strangely shattered. Like, this suspicion is so, you know, really feel bad now. I'm so, I'm like legitimately bummed out. Oh man. You're holding, I'm sorry. No, you're correct.

Next thing we're going to find out, the grim sleeper didn't even rest very well. No, he had a horrible time resting and sleeping. What do you, Harold, what do you think comes first, the media or the actions? Like, obviously we see a rise of mass shootings after Columbine, the way the media covered Columbine as we've talked about extensively was horrible and completely wrong, almost made them, Dylan and Eric looked like anti-heroes in a strange way. Yeah. The whole bully narrative, which was completely wrong.

Yes. Obviously they were the bullies and now we see this massive rise in mass shootings. The media coverage is 24 seven news. You can become a celebrity overnight. You'll be on the front pages of Rolling Stone. If you look at the Sharnoff, the man with the Boston, the man behind the Boston Marathon bombing, one of them, do you think that what's media's role in provoking true crime or provoking violence?

Do you give any credence to the notion that they're sort of helping move along what we're seeing right now? Well, you know, they're obviously, you know, copycat killers and so on and so forth. But, you know, the media, well, some of the more legitimate medias in the business of transmitting the news and, you know, the more exploitive tabloid media, you know, I don't think it, I don't think it promotes crime. I think, again, they're in the business of giving the audience the stories it wants to hear.

You know, the fact is, people are fascinated by this stuff. You know, people didn't want to read about all this stuff or watch cable news about it or listen to podcasts about it, you know, you know, the media would just stop supplying those stories. So I don't think we can, you know, I feel very strongly, you know, that the media, you know, it's like, you know, complaints about, you know, movies, inspiring crimes and so on. You know, the media has, I think, very limited power in determining what kind of stories

the public wants to hear. And you see that, like with any blockbuster movie, well, with any big budget movie, that's a total flop, you know, people think like Hollywood, you know, has this like mind control thing over the audience, you know, and can just instill all this stuff in the audience, you know, but if the audience isn't interested in seeing, you know, what, you know, the new Terminator movie, you know, they're just not going to go see the new Terminator movie. It's not like Hollywood could make you see the new Terminator movie. So right.

Well, it's the narrative around Joker. I remember Joker came out and the narrative around it was there with like, it's going to inspire people to start shooting people at the movie theaters up to a point where I was like, I think you want people to shoot people at the movie theaters, but then it shows that you're right and that the Joker is to blame somehow, even though it's just a much too skinny, Joaquin Phoenix. It's a fun movie. I loved it.

I loved it. It's all right. It could have been funnier for a movie about a comedian, but you know, I remember I just created it when Fred Easton Ellis's American Psycho came out, you know, there was all this stuff about, you know, who was going to inspire a rash of like psychos doing horrible things to women. So you know, people and they didn't realize you just had to just sit back and dudes were going to do it anyway.

Yeah. I mean, there was, I mean, I know like Luca Magnata said that like American Psycho is one of his favorite movies, but I mean, but he also loved like basic instinct. He also loved also he loved Mickey Mouse. Like these guys are into what they're going to be into and they're going to do what they're going to do. I think no matter what these guys are going to do what they're going to do, they're not going to be inspired by anything or spurred on by anything.

They may gravitate gravitate towards that stuff, but I don't think they're to blame. I based my entire comedy career off of grandpa from House of a Thousand Corpses and I found that the standup bits that he did in that movie only worked with a certain audience. Well, you know, people have a very simplistic view of the relationship between popular media and human behavior. You know, mostly, you know, it's appealing to certain kinds of fantasies that people have often forbidden and taboo fantasies that they need some outlet for, you know, and the other thing is what I've discovered with psychopathic killers, you don't know what's

going to set them off. I mean, there are Charles Manson, you know, ordered the Sharon Tate murders after listening to the Beatles wide album, you know, which is one of the most benign pieces of pop culture ever created. You know, the guy who shot John Lennon was inspired by holding Caulfield and Coucher and the Ride. You know, so, you know, you don't know what's going to set off a psycho and as opposed to the vast mass audience, you know, this stuff is allowing them to indulge in certain kinds

of possibly forbidden fantasies and daydreams that they do need some kind of outlet for. Right. Well, I guess sort of in that vein, when it comes to nature versus nurture, what, what do you weigh more? Do you think these are genetically flawed people or do you think it has to also be a kind of a perfect environment to cultivate a serial killer? Yeah. Yeah, I think it's probably a combination of both.

I mean, you know, I've come more and more to believe that one, you know, common denominator among most of these kinds of criminals is extreme being subjected from their earliest childhoods to extreme forms of humiliation, yeah, logical, sexual, physical, emotional. I mean, you know, I think there has to be some other element, some neurological element. So in that sense, it's probably a combination of nature and nature, but the nurture thing is definitely a key component to. So going to one of your most recent books, Hell's Princess, the story of Bell Gunness. So you mentioned earlier that, you know, that you taught a class in myth, like was it kind

of the myth of Bell Gunness that drew you to the story? Or was it the sex appeal? That's what's going to put people in seats, Henry. Well, she apparently had something going for her. But well, I had become very interested in the whole topic of female serial murderers years ago. And I wrote a book called Fatal about Jane Toppin, who was a nurse who confessed ultimately to murdering 31 people and was considered to be at one point America's most well, she

was listed in the Gunness Book of World Guinness Book of World's record as America's most prolific serial killer before John Wayne Gacy. So what they do, Guinness Book of World Records will be like, oh, he put a sprite cap on his elbow and walked for a mile fast. I didn't know they did like serial killers. It's always like egg carton racing or something weird like that. Yeah, I haven't read it for a while, but you know, that they do have records of everything and they had again, most prolific serial murder.

But anyway, so yeah, I became very interested in female serial killers and did they send her the damn plaque that you get? I'm actually a little bit, I didn't know they just a book of records, but you really get a plaque that is like congratulations to everyone they solve like the fastest 100 meter race, the fastest. Okay. Yeah, but if I'm this chick, I'm demanding a fricking plaque. Yeah.

Well, maybe although she'd probably been dead for about 50 years, but still. Okay. All right. Fine. I was very interested in the bell gunness case because unlike virtually every other female serial killer that I'm aware of, you know, she also like chopped up these guys, you know, that was a very unusual feature for female serial killer. They're just usually content with, you know, coicing them and watching them suffer horrible

deaths and not just chopping them up afterwards. So with, with, with bell gunness, like when you were writing this book, like of course, like, you know, we did a series on bell gunness not too long ago and like the big question because of the new book, we were so excited and it's nice and it's a nice and I think it. Yeah. Yeah, it's great. But with, with bell gunness, like the question is at the end is like what happened to bell

gunness? Like where did bell gunness go? Like so when you, when you started writing this book, did you think, I'm going to fucking figure this out, man, I'm going to be the guy? I didn't think that. Yeah. No, I did. I thought I would solve it at one point, I thought I had actually solved it because I

came, you know, I, when I work on my books like that, I hire a genealogist to help me do research and stuff. Anyway, we, that's the key. That's the key. I was going to, I want to ask you literally about your whole process, if you don't mind at some point being like, how the hell do you get so much deep time, but continue with the story. Yeah.

So I came across a woman who had moved to Wisconsin shortly after bell gunness's farm burned down and she was using a name that was one of bell gunness's aliases that bell had used when she put some of these matrimonial ads in the newspapers. So I was pretty sure that I had actually located bell gunness and determined that she had escaped. Well, that is a great place for bell to go. She's a Wisconsin 11. She is. She's perfect for Wisconsin.

You can go out tipping with her. You can drink beers with her. Yeah. No, Wisconsin. Yeah. It's like a hotbed of these psychos, but anyway, but it's so cold there, it's cold. Anyway, it turned out that my genealogist discovered that I was completely wrong about this.

So damn it. I was very unhappy that it kind of unresolved at the end. One thing I hate ambiguity, just like, you know, that that that was going to be my question. Like, do you prefer the mystery or certainty? And so it's certainly would have loved, I would love to have been able to solve it. You know, and then at the end, there was that woman Esther Carlson, as you know, but you know, the people were absolutely convinced was bell gunness, even, you know, ship people from La Porte who had known Bell to look at her corpse and they all swore it was bell

gunness. But then I think I mentioned, there was some researcher from Norway, he has a YouTube presentation on this, who discovered definitively that Esther Carlson wasn't Bell. Yes. You know, then there were some people who had gotten permission to exhume the skeletal remains of the body that supposedly was bells that was buried in Chicago. And they ran some DNS DNA tests, but those came back, you know, very indefinite. So, you know, remains a mystery.

And my opinion of it keeps changing. You know, sometimes I'm sure she died on the fire. Other times, you know, some people write me with certain facts that convinced me she did get away. So, I'm completely of two minds about it. Where are you at right like today? Where are you at with it? Same place.

I've always been at. You know, I mean, I, you know, it's weird. I mean, I can't remember a time when I felt so equally split between two completely opposing conclusions, you know, every time I have reason to think one is true, something will convince me that the other one is equally plausible. So do you, do you complete all of your research before you start writing, or is it sort of a in tandem process? And if it's in tandem, we've forgotten to like near the end of the book and been like

this as I don't have an end. Well, I do, I do a lot of it before I start writing. I mean, the bulk of it before I start writing, but inevitably as I'm writing, you know, things unforeseen things come up, you know, that will necessitate for research or lead me along and do it. Like, you know, when I was writing, I started, I wrote a book called The Mad Sculptor about this guy Robert Irwin, you know, committed this horrific triple murder in New York City in 1937.

And I did all this incredible research on Irwin, you know, in the Library of Congress and all these places started writing the book. And then I started coming across references to these other crimes that have happened right before Bob Irwin's crimes in the same neighborhood as his crime. So that, you know, I had to kind of stop in my track and start, my tracks and start researching those other crimes to put this certain kind of context, you know. So things like that happen pretty, pretty frequently. Can I ask a, just this is a more general question about true crime in a world.

Do you ever feel that, do these subjects affect your personal life in any way, shape, or form? Because we've covered some of the darker aspects of these stories. Sometimes, I mean, they fuck with us all the time. Like last year, we did kind of a perspective on Joseph Mengele from like a true crime perspective, like looking at him like as a criminal, essentially. And then of course you're looking at his true crimes, which is that he was a cog inside of the death machine of Auschwitz. So as you're going through it, it wasn't like, we at first were like, oh, this will

be an interesting way to cover this story. And as you're doing me like, oh, this is like ruining our lives. This is a terrible experience. Like, have you experienced that in any way, shape, or form? I did. I experienced that when I was writing my book on Albert Fish. Oh, I bet. Yeah.

Well, we experienced that when we were doing our episode on Albert Fish. It's a fucking awful story. And, you know, I have two daughters, my daughter, you know, grown women, but they were basically, you know, roughly the same age as Grace Budd was at that time. Yeah, that was a hard book for me to write. It was a hard book for me to write because of, you know, what Fish was doing. But also, I mean, to some extent, in order for me to write my books, and this was more true in the past than it is now.

But I had to go to some very dark places in my own psyche in order to really understand the people I was writing about. Yeah. So, you know, that can be obviously a disconcerting experience. But just reading, you know, Fish's Confessions, you know, I mean, the guy was torturing children. So that was that was the toughest book for me to write. You know, when people ask me that question, which they not, you know, they sometimes do, you know, I sort of compare my experience to what I imagine a medical student is like,

you know, we're like, you know, the first few times you dissect a corpse, this is incredibly disturbing experience. And after a while, you're like eating lunch while you're doing it. You know, you know, to some extent, you become a little, I'm not anured exactly, but, you know, accustomed to the, to, yeah. Right. Yeah. You know, as a killer, like as a former professor, how would you rate Carl Pansram's writing

abilities? Yeah. Well, Pansram, you know, was, I know, you know, I wrote this introduction to this Pansram, you know, autobiography. Yeah. He was kind of a remarkable person. I mean, he was obviously terrifying, but, you know, very, very smart. Again, it's, well, as I remember, it's been a while since I read them.

It's hard to know, though, how much he was being edited by the guy who published it, whose name I can't remember, but he also wrote the Birdman of Alcatraz book. You know, so sometimes, I mean, it does sound very authentic, but it might have been cleaned up a little, you know, by the guy who wrote it, whose name I can't remember. Right. Right. Well, I guess sort of on that similar vein, do you have someone that you're most intrigued by, any, either someone you've covered or someone you would like to cover?

Well, I don't like to use the term favorite serial killer because I just, we all, we hate all of them. They're horrible scumbags. And you, well, like, what's the most intriguing or fascinating person you've covered or want to cover? Well, you know, I mean, the fascination with that Dean never grows old. You know, also, you know, kind of an interesting figure because I was just talking to somebody, you know, who'd read my book recently, you know, of all the serial killers I've covered.

Well, first of all, you know, Dean, I don't think falls into the serial killer category. Serial crafter. Yes. Yeah. It was kind of an outsider artist, I think. Yeah. He's a hobby lobby. He's protesting their gay stance on marriage.

You know, he was, he wasn't a sadistic sex killer, right? You know, the way fish was and well, you know, Gacy and Bundy and all the basically he was a necrophile, really, you know, he just ran out of like available corpses. So, you know, you have to make a couple of the terms, but I mean, the two women he killed and again, not condoning it, you know, but, but he, you know, they were very swift executions. You know, he wasn't into getting off on torturing them and so on, you know, suffering. And yeah, I mean, Dean is just this incredibly, you know, fascinating figure, not only in terms of his psychopathology, but, you know, some weird way that, you know, there's something

out of this stick about Dean's crimes. You know, it's like you're stepping into this world of pagan religion, you know, as tech sacrifices where they skin, you know, flay victims of where they're skin, you know, just all that stuff, you know, Dean, you know, has been behind what I consider the three most terrifying horror movies of the modern era, Texas and Mesca Cycle and Sons of the Land. You know, there's something very, very resonant about his, you know, about his case. And I think that'll always be true. Because private world, it all happened inside of his own mind almost.

I've been endlessly fascinated about the idea of the connection between serial killers and people like Ed Gein. I mean, you know, whatever, we'll just call Ed Gein serial killer for shorthand and their homes and the idea of that when some of them, the ones that operate inside of their own, the only word I could really use is layer of they, they compartmentalize physically their own mind like Ed Gein's home is so fascinating to me. The whole house is in disarray filled with fucking human viscera, all this bullshit. And then, but his, his mother's room is pristine.

And like how same thing with like Gacy, how that Rumpus room was where shit went bad. Like the rest of the house was kind of off limits from bad behavior. It was when he went entered literally into a subterranean cave. When he became a monster, it becomes what you talked about the idea of these, these people becoming mythic. Well, speaking of media as well, Henry, this is something that we may have brought into the world. HGTV is working on a new reality show where you can buy the houses of serial killers and

murderers. They're going to flip up. They're going to start flipping those houses to murderhouse flip shot. I think it's actually called like flip the murderhouse. I think it's called murderhouse flip, murderhouse, and we talked about this about two years ago in just being like, well, we know, we know society is going to be crumbling when they make this show and then look at what they made it. Yeah.

Well, you know, it could be good like if people have trouble selling their houses, they could just like lure a lot of people there and kill them and then sell their house. Now you're the real estate agent we need. Like instead of location, location, location, corpse, corpse, corpse. So with Ed Gein's crimes, with the murders of Bernice Warden and Mary Hogan, Ed Gein always said that he blacked out when he made, that he doesn't remember actually committing those crimes. Like do you think that Ed Gein truly did black out and that it was just some sort of like

inner desire that was driving him, or do you think he said, I'm going to get a live one now? First of all, with Gein, and one thing about Gein that differentiates him from most serial murders is that he was psychotic. Most serial murders are psychopaths, they're not psychotic. Gein was having hallucinations and he was schizophrenic. So it's hard to know what's going on in those moments. My take on, well, you know, there's a Freudian term over determined, Freud used it to mean

that there's just not one simple cause of an erosis or something, you know, in the complex of things, you know, with killing people like Mary Hogan and Bernice Warden, you know, there's obviously on the one, you know, some, you know, again, Freudian, some other thing going on there. Yeah, he needed something about mommy, something about being inside a mommy. Yeah, it was more it's like, oh, Bernice and Mary, that's bad mommy. That's bad mommy. Good mommy's dead, bad mommy's alive, now bad mommy needs to be dead too.

If the last words I hear are, you're bad mommy, and then I get shot in the head, I'll be real mad. So yeah, and again, because, you know, he was a classic necrophile, you know, I think he at the point at which he was running low on, you know, available corpses of elderly women in the local graveyards, you know, he had to go out and make a couple. Yeah, I do like the idea of a classic grave robber or corpse fucker, I guess that's what we call him. Well, I just think of like Humphrey, Humphrey Bogart and like Casablanca, very fancy smoking

a cigarette, real cool, very chill, classic. Yeah, well, I didn't have that in mind. But you know, if you look at, for example, Kraft Ebbing, psychopathic sexualist, you know, which was this, you know, classic book of criminal aberration and sexual aberration, you know, is a section on necrophiles and, you know, Dean fits the profile, except for the fact that we don't know if he actually had sex with him. You know, as you know, from his confession, you know, he said he was put off by the smell, which suggests that, you know, he was at least thinking about it anyway.

I feel like the only time he ever came was on the accident and then he put himself in the bathroom for a week and shamed himself, just hung out in the tub, sitting there talking about the smell, eating a slice of apple pie with a piece of cheddar cheese on top. Love it is life. Yeah, I mean, I mean, one of the reasons, again, it's possible to feel a modicum of sympathy for Dean is, you know, most of his victims were already dead. You know, there were corpses that he assumed and the two women that we know for sure he killed, he executed swiftly as opposed to again, subjecting them to these horrible tortures

in the way that Gacy Bundy, et cetera, et cetera, I mean, do you think? I mean, I know that this is a question that many people have asked you a million times, but do you think he killed his brother? Yeah, that's a good question. I tend to think he probably did not kill his brother. Yeah. It's hard to know, but, but, you know, it doesn't light seem to fit in with his M.O. You know, I think it's equally as likely that, you know, often when these kinds of killers

are caught, people immediately attribute retroactively all these other mysterious crimes to them. Killings of his brother, again, seems does seem to me to be a little inconsistent with the kinds of crimes that being committed. And again, given the circumstances of his death and what was going on at the time, it does seem equally as likely to me, you know, that Henry died of a heart attack or, you know, smoke inhalation or whatever. Yeah. I mean, I know they tried with Ed Gein, they tried putting all sorts of disappearances,

but that was the funny thing about Wisconsin around that time is so many people were going missing. They were going to Los Angeles to make it big in Hollywood. Like there was a little girl that disappeared. There was a guy that disappeared on a hunting trip. Like there were a lot of people going missing in the Midwestern that time period. It's called the Midwest Divorce. You go hunting and never come back.

I went there to do my research. You know, I was told that that area of Wisconsin had a higher per capita murder rate than New York City at the time. Of course, I mean, they had very few people here in general, but per capita, people did often disappear in those woods. It was a little bit of a scary play. Do you have any serial killer memorabilia? Do you go as far as to collect?

No, I don't. I mean, I have a couple of things that have been gifted to me, but no, I'm not a collector. What I do is when I when I'm writing a book, I do like to often have some kind of object that's connected to the case I'm writing about on my desk is whatever. So for example, the book I just finished on the Bath School Disaster, you know, the Bath School Disaster, there was this guy, it took place in a little town called Bath, Michigan in 1927, and a guy named Andrew Kehoe, who was a respected member of the community, was on the school board, rigged their public school.

They had this shiny new public school. This is a crazy story. This is a crazy story. Yeah. This is fucking crazy. Yeah. Anyway, he rigged the basement of the school with all this World War One surplus dynamite, which had been sold to farmers in the form of something called Pyritol.

You know, Pyritol looked just like dynamite, but it was a less potent explosive, and it was being sold to farmers, you know, so they'd get rid of tree stumps and so on and so forth. Anyway, Kehoe purchased like 500 pounds of this stuff, and rigged the basement of the school with it, and blew the school up on the last day of school. So crazy. Yeah. He intended to destroy the whole school, and if he had, he would have killed basically the entire juvenile population of the town.

Oh, my God. Good Lord. He ended up killing like 40 children, though, and some children, anyway. So I can show it to you, wait, hold on a second. I was looking around eBay, and I don't know if you can see it. Wow. Cool. Part of a Pyritol container of the disaster that Andrew Kehoe would have used.

That's fun as shit. That's fun as shit. That's a great piece of memorabilia, and it's not like fully morbid, but it's morbid adjacent. What is it with having one of the objects near you while you write? What's the... You know, it just sort of, in a way, takes me to the place I'm writing about, you know. You could see it in his hands. You could see him loading up all of the explosives.

All of a sudden, you're in front of an elementary school. You don't know how you got there. You've lined the whole thing with explosives you've been writing in your journal. I'm going to do it again. You've become Andrew Kehoe? Yeah. That doesn't quite go that far, though that's actually kind of a cool plot. Oh, yeah.

So, Harold, what has it been like for you over the last 20 years or so to see true crime become not only socially acceptable, but kind of hip? Yeah. No, it's been very, very interesting. When I first started writing it, it was still such a disreputable genre that I couldn't even get Deviant published in hardcover. You know, publisher would only assist on doing it, you know, as a kind of paperback that would have been sold in Greyhound bus stations and stuff like that.

So, you know, seeing it, you know, turn into this major cultural thing, well, it makes me feel I was ahead of my time. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, I know you said in an email that you wrote to us that your fans have been changing lately. Oh, well, I just wrote because Oling, I think to a large extent, to the publicity that you guys have given me, I seem to, you know, people like a younger, well, your age, like, you know.

You're not young, but we are not, we are not young. We're pushing for it. So yeah, now there are these, you know, like, I went into a framing shop not too long ago to get something framed. I can't remember what. And the young woman behind the counter, Cara died blue, etc., etc., said, well, I just heard, you know, they're just talking about you unless podcast on the left and so on and so forth.

So yeah, so thanks to you guys. I am now being recognized by an entire new generation of people. That's great, man. Hopefully you get some free beer, some free tacos. That's the bet. That's the most you can ask for. That's all I want. Occasionally, you'll get something for free.

It's really, it's really, really very nice when it happens. I think it's also because of the tone in which that you write, which I think attracted us, which is this idea that it's, it doesn't have to be dry and serious for you to tastefully talk about these morbid facts. You don't, you could throw some, some fucking, I don't know what it is. There's entertainment value in there, which is why we get into this topic to begin with. Right. Well, also, you know, you guys, I'd like to think to a certain extent, me too, you know,

bring your personalities to bear on this stuff. You know, again, it's about storytelling, right? You know, it's about how you tell the stories and whether the way you tell the stories is going to resonate with the audience. So you know, you guys do that, you know, brilliantly in your way. You know, I like to think, you know, I, I have my own voice when I write my book. So, Of course, I mean, the ragged stranger, I mean, it's, it is absolutely in your voice.

It's a, it's a great read. Yeah. Are there any people that you don't like their presentation? You dislike the presentation? We can't talk shit on the mic. We got to say, I want real juice, real juice. We can't talk about real gossip. I want the real gossip after the show.

No, I'm not, I mean, I'm not a, again, you know, I am, I'm not a big podcast listener and I mean, what I, what I, there are two things I dislike, excuse me, in true crime. One is, you know, when people just embellish or speculate too much, I'm talking about written true crime. You know, maybe this happened as possible. So I was thinking this, you know, you know, I don't really know what the dialogue was, but I'm imagining this is what they might have said to each other, you know, that kind of thing.

Yeah. You know, the trouble once for criticizing a writer for doing that too much. Absolutely. Yeah. Have you ever read the Dune series? Oh my God, you're not going to bring up Dune, Henry. I read the original Dune many years ago. No.

I liked the, the David Lynch version. Yeah, buddy. That's what I'm saying. But you know, and I saw the documentary about the Jodorowsky project that never came to me. Yeah, but I never read any of the ones beyond the first one. He, he, Jodorowsky invented the summer blockbuster. I love that documentary.

It's really amazing. I'm just looking for anybody to talk to about Dune. I guess the last kind of question that I have is, and it's a little bit corny, but if you had to be killed by any of these serial killers, who would you want to be killed by? Are you going to hit him with a fuck Mary kill? No. No, this is the absolute opposite. He is going to be killed by them and he's not going to have sex with them or marry them.

Yeah. I guess one that wouldn't spend like a really long time torturing me. You wouldn't just want one sweet embrace from Bill Gunnis just to see what all the hub up was about. Just for a second. Just to see what her Swedish kisses were like. Yeah. I think I'd rather go with Albert Fish there.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on the show, man. We've been talking to Harold Schechter. If you have not read any of his books, please go out there, support this man. He is grandfather offensive to say the grandfather of true crime. Are we that the father of true crime in the literary sense? Do you have anything else you want to pepper the man with while we got him captive? I mean, I just, you know, thank you so much for writing so many fantastic books.

Uh, that have captivated us and inspired us, uh, throughout the years. I don't know if last podcast would be the show that it is without you. So that means a lot to me and thank you guys for having me on really appreciate it. All right. There was our interview with Harold Schechter. That was awesome. That was absolutely wonderful. That was so cool.

Do you feel satisfied, Marcus? I feel so. Yes, I feel satisfied. It was great to hear from him. And of course, if you want to read his, uh, his new, uh, release, it's called the Ragged Stranger and it's available on Kindle. And if you have Kindle Unlimited, uh, it's free. So just go and check it out, download it.

You can read it in a couple hours. It's just a nice little bite size true crime story. I loved it, especially if you were, uh, into the Scott Peterson case. It's fun to see. It's, it's, it's fun to read a story is like, oh, this is if Scott Peterson had actually done it. Damn. Wow.

And it's a very hot topic that you just dropped very lightly, Marcus, but I'm very excited to one day we will do this, that series. I don't know when we will, but it is in the pipeline and I'm very excited to be on Peterson is innocent. Yeah. Wow. Really? Let's just, all right.

Great. Wow. Leave your replies in the comments. I'm certain this would be great. That's amazing. We'll get into that. And I don't do social media. So you're just going to have to take it.

Oh my God. Wow. Well, Dateline told me he was guilty. I'm going to have to go back and see what stone Phillips had to say. Oh, it was wrong about something. I don't know. No, that comes out of nowhere. I still think he did it.

I'm not going to die on this. Hell, I don't have enough information. All right, you fuckers, we are about to be all around you, all near you in 2020. We're coming. Get your dick at last podcast on the left dot com pick up them dates, whatever's closest to your home, don't you want to see my body dance and jiggle? It definitely dances and it definitely jiggles. We have a ton of shows coming up.

It's going to be New York City on the 7th. This is all starting in April. Okay. You can go and check out last podcast on the left dot com to get the exact dates. It's going to be New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Richmond, Virginia, Durham, North Carolina, Atlanta, Chicago, two shows in Chicago. Sweet. We had an extra show in Chicago.

Because they legalized weed. That's right. We had Nashville, St. Louis, Houston, Austin, Dallas, Lubbock, Denver, Phoenix, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. And now it's time for Marcus to talk to Lubbock, Lubbock went out on a limb for you. Really went on a limb. So we need to do Lubbock this tour. I need you to come, Lubbock.

I very much need you to come to the show. We need you to come to the show. And we need you to come out and buy tickets for this one. So come on out. If you're in New Mexico, if you're in Oklahoma, if you're anywhere in West Texas, come on out to Lubbock and buy tickets to that show. And if you're in Houston, come on out to that show as well. And Las Vegas as well.

We need some people to come out in Las Vegas. All right. So you guys come on out, buy your tickets. They're available over on last podcast on the left dot com. Hell yeah. Yeah. You fuckers. Come and see us, man.

The Lubbock and Vegas are two spots that we've been asked for forever to come see shows. And we got our first, like, our numbers back and we're doing very well, except in those two places. Yeah. Well, that, I think they buy the tickets late because they never know. You never know when Caratop's going to have a hot hit. You don't know what Penn and Teller are going to be, you know, premiering to see that you want.

I know you want to be available. I get you want to be. You've got to be available. I get it. I get it. But come on. Come on, Lubbock. We come out and put my money where my mouth is.

I told everyone we got to go to Lubbock. People come out to shows and love it. Come on out. You know, we always put our money where our mouth is and it always works out great. I'm so sick. All right. I feel so sick. Thank you all so much for listening.

Can't wait to do a show for my mom. Oh, just mommy. I would be so cute if it was just us and your mom, just her staring going being like, I thought they had a professional show, but I didn't know how good they got it. Our hands of my son was honestly, if we just had Marcus's mom, we would put on a great show and that's the only audience we need. That's right. Isn't that nice?

Okay, everyone. Happy New Year. Hope your 2020 has started off all right. If not, hang on in there. We got a whole year to go. Yeah, we do. Hopefully a year after that, a few after that too, but we got a whole one to go. The whole thing with January.

We were just looking. It's like the movie free solo. We're just looking to the, we're on the bottom of the mountain right now. Time is a construct. It doesn't matter. Well, it definitely does because Marcus always gets mad at me when I'm late, but now I can say that. Well, no, I mean the abstract.

You got it. When we, when there is a, uh, it's just when there's a time crunch. Appointments are very real. Time is a construct, my friend. God damn it, man. Appointments are real. Time is a construct. All I know is a wizard is never late.

It arrives exactly when it intends to. Okay, everyone. Hail yourselves. Hail Satan. Hail Geed. Magus Dalatians. Hail me. If you would.

Hail me. Henry, who would you like to be killed by? You know me, man. I said, just fucking Catherine Knight, that first thing. I know that she horribly murdered him, but right before that, that seemed like a lot of fun. Yeah. Okay.

Good choice. Sure. This show is made possible by listeners like you. Thanks to our ad sponsors, you can support our shows by supporting them. For more shows like the one you just listened to, go to lastpodcastnetwork.com.