Let's Go To Court! - 32: The Trials of Lizzie Borden & Alice Crimmins

Episode Date: September 5, 2018

When Lizzie Borden’s dad and stepmom were brutally murdered in their Massachusetts home, people were stunned. The wealthy couple had been mercilessly hacked to death. But who could have done it? Police had their immediate suspicions — surely this heinous crime was carried out by a male intruder. But in the aftermath of the crime, people weren’t so sure. The slain couple’s 33-year-old daughter was acting weird. Could she have been the violent perpetrator? Police thought so, and so did the district attorney. Lizzie Borden’s eventual trial captivated the nation. Then Brandi tells us the infuriating story of Alice Crimmins, a woman whose young children went missing one night in 1965. Police suspected the beautiful, perfectly coiffed mother immediately. She didn’t fit their grieving mother narrative. She was well dressed. Her hair was expertly teased and sprayed. Her makeup? Impeccable. Oh, and another thing — she liked to have sex. Police hounded her for years, and despite little to no evidence pointing her way, Alice was brought to trial. And now for a note about our process. For each episode, Kristin reads a bunch of articles, then spits them back out in her very limited vocabulary. Brandi copies and pastes from the best sources on the web. And sometimes Wikipedia. (No shade, Wikipedia. We love you.) We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the real experts who covered these cases. In this episode, Kristin pulled from: “Lizzie Borden,” FamousTrials.com Thelizziebordencollection.com “Lizzie Borden,” biography.com Good ole’ Wikipedia In this episode, Brandi pulled from: “The Alice Crimmins Case” by Denise Noe, crimelibrary.com “Alice Crimmins” murderpedia.org “‘Why Can’t You Behave?’: Revisiting the Case of Alice Crimmins” by Sarah Weinman, Hazlitt Magazine

One semester of law school. One semester of criminal justice. Two experts. I'm Kristen Pitts. I'm Brandi Egan. Let's go to court. On this episode, I'll talk about the trial of Lizzie Borden. And I'll be talking about Alice Crimmins, a beautiful woman who became a tabloid sensation

when her young children went missing. Okay, Lizzie Borden. Let's do the cheer we choreographed. No, Lizzie Borden, this is a, she's a heavy hitter. Yeah. Big time trap. Oh, oh, I didn't even think about that. That is dark.

Not to sound biased, but I think she's a heavy hitter. That is dark. Not to sound biased, but I think she's a heavy hitter. No, this one, the idea for this one came from Jamie Lynn on Facebook, who was just like, you know, she was really nice about it. She was like, hey, no pressure, but. Be interested to see what you guys think about this kind of like high profile case. Ho, ho profile. Few people know.

That Lizzie was also a ho. Lizzie was also a ho hoing it around not true at all from my research but anyway how much do you know about this case I know the rhyme

and that's about it you want to say the rhyme oh gosh I'm going to pull up the rhyme and we'll see how right you are. I can't think of how it

starts. Lizzie Borden took an axe, gave her father 40 whacks, and when she saw what she had done, she gave her mother 41. Yeah. Hey, good job. I haven't even pulled it up.

And of course, some of these sources are like, just so you know, she didn't actually get 41 waxes. Like, all right, okay. Yeah, it's more about the rhyme here than the accuracy. Okay, so let's set the scene. Yes. It's 1892. I remember it like it was yesterday. set the scene yes it's 1892 i remember it like it was yesterday we're at the borden family home at 92 second street in fall river massachusetts if you want to look this place up it's a bed and

breakfast i was gonna say it's still around it's a bed and breakfast okay hold on wait i was not prepared i could tell you had your hands clasped like a dress lady. I was trying to be a good listener. 92 2nd Street, Fall River, Massachusetts. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I'm seeing it. Mm-hmm. I'm seeing it. Nice size house.

That's not the address. Oh, what? 92 2nd Street, Fall River, Massachusetts? No? You know, another way to do it would be to just look up, oh, that is not the address at all. Oh, you know what? I think I have the original address, but now it's been changed. Okay.

I think actually it's 230 2nd Street, Fall River, Massachusetts. I'm sorry about that. Can you imagine if anyone is actually like looking at this? Oh, yes. This business park. That's where that is. Wow, they had a really strange looking house. Huh?

Like all concrete. Yeah. Excellent. Seeing it now. Yeah. That looks like a home. That is. Yes.

Okay. I'm picturing myself there. I'm sorry. What year is it? 1892? Sure is. Yeah. That looks like a home. That is. Yes. Okay. I'm picturing myself there. I'm sorry. What year is it? 1892? Sure is. Okay. So the home is owned by Andrew Borden, who is crazy rich.

By 1892, he was worth about $300,000. Adjusted for inflation. Excellent. About $8 million. Wow. Yeah wow yeah pretty crazy nothing to sneeze at he's got like eight million dollars he made his money through a couple different ventures but mainly it was real estate and manufacturing excellent was he manufacturing cheese slices oh borden right i was like why would she i even have prepared in my head like a few of the things was he manufacturing cheese slices? Oh, Borden, right. I was like, why would she?

I even have prepared in my head like a few of the things he manufactured because I just pictured you being like, and what exactly did he manufacture? What exactly did he manufacture, Kristen? Furniture was one of the things. Excellent. Now I can't remember any of the other things. So his two adult daughters, Lizzie and Emma, also lived in the family home.

And of course, his second wife and their stepmother, Abby Borden, also lived there. How old was she? I think she and Andrew were roughly the same age. All right, just checking. Making sure everything's on the up and up for you, Kristen. You know how judgmental I get about age gaps. One of the, well, spoiler alert, but I mean, this is only a spoiler alert. If you just have nothing, I mean, like you've never heard a thing about this.

One of the newspaper headlines when they died said something like, it said something about how he was a, you know, respected businessman and his aged wife murdered. So, boy, that's nice, isn't it? Yeah. My husband's a respected businessman and I'm his aged wife. But yeah, so no big age gap there. Excellent. But yeah, so no big age gap there.

Excellent. Here's the thing, though. Life in the Borden house is a little tense. Andrew is crazy rich, as I've said, but he didn't get that way by spending money. Oh, yeah. He's a real tightwad, huh? Dude was a tightwad. So the family home was very nice,

but when you consider how wealthy they were, were actually oh my could have been way nicer and by that i mean like in the late 1800s at this point most super rich people had electricity and they had indoor plumbing not the borden's which to me is like that oh boy man if i'm peeing outside i mean if you're not spending your money on that yeah you're not spending your money on anything i feel like right that's how i would feel yeah so here's another kind of interesting thing they didn't even live in the nicest part of Fall River. So they didn't have flushing toilets. And if that didn't make things tense enough,

Lizzie and Emma weren't huge fans of their stepmom. Oh, gosh. Their relationship with her was very chilly. They referred to her as Mrs. Borden. Ooh. And by the way, my assumption when I first started looking into this was like, oh, well, this must have been a much later in life marriage. No, she married into the family when the girls were pretty young.

That's what I call my step parents, Mrs. Borden. No, just kidding. I call my step parents Steve and Lisa because that is their name. Yeah, which I think most people do. Please call Steve Mrs. Borden from now on. Mrs. Borden! The other thing that made this relationship kind of tough was they secretly suspected that Abby had married their dad for his money. But But I mean, I feel like that did not pay off at all. I mean, if you married

a rich guy who's not getting you a flushing toilet, you did some bad gold digging. So things aren't going great, but they're not horrible either. Like a lot of people said that they actually had a fine relationship. So it kind of depended on who you asked but then things did get pretty bad around 11 a.m on august 4th 1892 the family maid bridget who also went by maggie was napping in the attic. Oh, I'm sorry. Huh? What? I thought the family was making something. I thought you said the family made, like they were getting ready to make something. I had the wrong kind of made.

They were making a human woman. The family made, M-A-I-D. This is not your fault. This is my fault fault well no i um i could have worded it differently no the family made yes got it a lego set of no bridget was napping in the attic and she woke to the sound of city bells so she knew it was 11 yeah and a scream from downstairs it was lizzie lizzie shouted maggie come down come down quick father's dead somebody came in and killed him so maggie runs down the stairs and she's horrified by what she sees mr borden has been brutally murdered. His dead body was covered in blood. He was laid out on this Victorian-looking couch.

Which I'm realizing now is kind of dumb to say. It's just a couch at that time. Although I'm sure it was kind of out of style, because you know he didn't buy a new couch anytime soon. Did he make the couch? The family made the couch. No, you said he manufactured furniture. Oh he make the couch? The family made the couch. No, you said he manufactured furniture. Oh, you know what?

I bet he did. You know what I bet it was? I bet it was like a reject. Nobody bought that model and he was so... Yeah, it was like a regular. Like one arm was slightly off. He kind of slumped over when you sat on that side. Why are we talking shit about this poor dead man? Oh, God.

And now I have to go into this paragraph that's just terrible. The attack was so violent that it was hard to even recognize him oh andrew's face you know why because lizzie was heavy thank god everyone in this story is dead i can't i can't go on i'm sorry Everyone in this story is dead. I can't go on. I'm sorry. I take that back.

Oh, good. It's a horrible crime, obviously. The man is dead. Yeah. It's not the least bit funny. Andrew's face was in pieces, and one of his eyes had come out. What? That's not my fault that you made it. Not my fault.

Well, you're making this. It's not your fault his eyeball fell out. You're making this face like, why did you make me say that thing right before you read that thing? Yeah. Not my fault that you're just tasteless. It's distasteful. Oh, distasteful. Yeah. you're just tasteless it's distasteful oh distasteful yeah instead of just tasteless yes so andrew had been hacked to death maggie and lizzie are distraught obviously lizzie gets the attention of her neighbor she's like my father has been murdered

the neighbor rushes over and pretty quickly it just becomes total chaos news of the murder spreads and people are there talking to lizzie and they're like where's your stepmom where's mrs borden yeah and lizzie says oh uh right well she was called away i got a a note earlier saying that her friend was sick, so she went to go check on the friend. But I'm pretty sure I heard her come back home. Will someone go upstairs and check on her? Okay, that's sketch. Why? Why wouldn't she go up and look for her? Because she just saw her dead dad?

Eyeball out. Yeah, I mean. I mean, that would be shocking. You're right. Yeah, I mean, imagine. Unless you were the one that did it. It'd still be pretty shocking. So the maid is like, no way.

I am not going up there alone after what I just saw. So the neighbor is like, okay, okay. We'll go together they go upstairs together and they come upon the dead body of abby borden she's been murdered in the same brutal fashion as her husband so there's more screaming more panic eventually the police arrive and they're like don't worry we got this they felt andrew's body and realized that it was still warm so they're like all right the killer can't be too far away yeah they go upstairs to abby's body and it's cold they're like this crime is horrifying we will find the intruder who did

this police of course talked to lizzie and they were really gentle with her because of the circumstances but overall they thought her attitude was super weird really she was really chill which could be shock shock or she could have just murdered her parents i feel like it's so hard to know with these things what's weird behavior and what's not. Yeah. And I also wonder if the police at this time had, I mean, it'd be weird if you had that much experience

with brutal murders in a town of this size. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's true. Anyway, so there's that. Did they know right away that they'd been killed with an axe? You know, I think they figured it out pretty quickly.

And I also think the wounds were pretty obvious. Yeah. Do we know where the axe is at this point? Not at this point. Okay, excellent. Continue continue so the officer asks her who she thinks might have killed her mom and dad and lizzie said mrs borden was not my mother she was my stepmother my mother died when i was a little girl what's colder than being cold My mother died when I was a little girl.

What's colder than being cold? Ice cold! Yeah, thoughts? It is cold. Yeah. Yeah. Eventually, she went upstairs to lie down. And her doctor came by to give her some medicine to kind of keep her calm. And since she was so sick, the police didn't spend much time looking at Lizzie's room.

They just wanted to be courteous. And so they just kind of glanced at everything. What did they find? Nothing. What would they have found had they looked harder? That's an excellent question but we'll never know yeah yeah no that when i say that's an excellent question i mean it like um a lot of people are like well gee it would have been great if they'd like looked for bloody

clothes in her closet and you know they did look in her closet but again they didn't look hard you know they thought an intruder had come in and here, but, again, they didn't look hard. You know, they thought an intruder had come in here. She was so sick, and they didn't want to be rude and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They were probably distracted by, like, the posters of her favorite composers on the wall. Mozart and cutoffs he's doing like his tongue out like doing like the rock fist looking super high yeah hey lizzie was single so she had to have some posters so police didn't spend much time in lizzie's room but they did spend some time in the basement right away they found two hatchets and two axes and eventually they found a third hatchet

and this one was missing the handle what so they've got the head of a hatchet all right so it looked like the handle had been snapped off recently. Now, how could they tell it was recently? That is an excellent question. And you sound like the defense right now. So that's a little foreshadowing. The police at that time, they were all in agreement. This looks like a recent snap.

OK. But I think that's a very fair question. How the hell can you tell? How can you okay all right maybe they're in their ways i am not a handle expert so um neither arguably are most police officers but you know whatever usually most police departments have like one guy who's been to handle school and handles he can be the handles he's like finally i can get out from behind this desk and do some work so many people are turning to guns these days there was something else that was weird about about the axe the dust on it was different from the dust on everything else in the basement what the fuck does that mean well the police took it to mean that it had been

in the dust had been intentionally applied onto it to make it look like it had been in the basement so you take it to the basement you kind of like flip it over in the dust. Right. And then you set it there with the other stuff. Yes. All right, I got you. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Did it have blood on it? No. Okay. At least I don't think so. I feel like that would have. Would have probably. Yeah. Yeah.

If they're talking about the snap on the handle looking fresh, I think they might mention if there was blood on it. There's fresh blood. I think they might mention if there was blood on it. Oh, by the way, there's fresh blood. So aside from that, the police really didn't have a lot to go on. What about, they talked to this maid at all? Yeah, a bit.

But I mean, she told them what she knew. She was just sleeping. That's her alibi. Just asleep when it happened. You sound a little like some of these conspiracy theories more recently but yeah so and i wish i'd written this part down but earlier in the day she'd been asked to go clean the exterior windows of the house which apparently sucked because it was just such a hot day so she went out and did i don't care if it's 70 and beautiful out that sounds like the worst job.

Yeah. Yeah. So she did that on like a super hot day and then like was so exhausted that she came in to her attic room. Which had to be just sweltering. Boiling hot and took a nap. So that's her story. Meanwhile, people are just horrified by this crime who could have done it yeah initial reports blamed some dude some vagrant the fall river herald said the top suspect was a portuguese

laborer who had come to the house to get some money from andrew that andrew owed him but apparently andrew had said no come back later what yeah yeah not buying it why not what's he so he he doesn't get his 12 dollars he's owed and so he hacks up a man and his wife but leaves the two daughters and the maid no oh i should mention emma was out of town at this point so it was fine left the one daughter and the maid still no okay doctors meanwhile examined the bodies and for the most part they were like yeah a man did this how can you tell? Because it couldn't have happened from some weak woman with her weak little arms. She'd be like, oh. No way could she brutally murder two people.

Had to be a dude. Okay. But it really didn't take too long for people to change their tune. Yeah. Suspicion shifted away from this mystery man and onto 33 year old Lizzie Borden. Ooh, 33.

Spinster. Yeah. I was kind of surprised by that too. What's wrong with her? I don't know. Maybe because she's a cold-blooded murderer, people kind of pick up on that. She just kind of always had a vibe. She always had kind of a hatchet vibe.

She's very hatchety. So people start coming forward and they're like, you know, Lizzie never really liked her stepmom. Yeah, she called her Mrs. Borden. I can't believe that. That's terrible. What's worse?

Hacking your stepmom to death? No, obviously! Hacking your stepmom to death no obviously hacking your stepmom to death i'm sorry you just seemed so disgusted then a guy who worked at the local someone who has great step parents no i know yeah i i know where that's coming from it's like you love your step parents so much and like that coldness just seems so foreign yes exactly a guy who worked at the local pharmacy was like uh excuse me hello hey i don't know if this is relevant but the day before those two were murdered lizzie came in here asking for poison and i refused to sell it to her. Oh, shit. So she had to go with the axe.

She had a real axe to grind. That pharmacist is next on our list. Telling me I can't buy poison. So police circle back to Lizzie. And this time they ask tougher questions and let me tell you she did not hold up well under pressure really her alibi kind of sucked she claimed that around 9 a.m she was upstairs putting shams on pillows and later around the time frame when her dad was murdered she said she was out in the barn looking for supplies for an upcoming fishing trip she was like yeah i was up there for like 15 minutes and putting shams on

pillows yeah how long does that take that's the worst alibi i've ever heard maybe she didn't know the trick where you put the pillow under your chin and then shake it yeah yeah she was like yeah i was up in the barn loft for like 15 minutes looking for those things so police are like okay cool they go to the barn it's super dusty yeah no way she was up there there are no footprints in the dust and nothing appears to have been disturbed the other thing they thought was like okay the day of the murders it was crazy hot crazy hot and obviously it was super hot in the loft of this barn yeah so why would you go up there voluntarily and spend 15 minutes up there for supplies that you need for a fishing trip that's a few days off. You know, this is a task you can put off if you need to.

There was something else, too. Lizzie had said that the morning of the murders, she received that note saying that her stepmom's friend was sick. And she was pretty sure she gave Abby the note and Abby went to check on the friend. So police were like, okay, where's that note? Yeah. She ate it. She didn't know. She didn't know? No. What? What, Brandy? She just didn't know she didn't know no what what brandy she just didn't know where the note was how dare you ask follow-up questions make any sense so police were like okay we'll find it

so they searched the house no no couldn't find that note more and more details roll in and police start hearing really weird details about how lizzie reacted to finding her father and stepmother dead witnesses told police that immediately after the murders were discovered lizzie kind of sent people out of the house to go do errands like go get the doctor go get this blah blah meanwhile she stayed in the house alone with these two bodies that's weird too so i i feel like that's one of those things that for me can kind of go either way yeah one way is like you know if you truly believe that an intruder came to the house, murdered these two members of your family, why would you want to be left there alone? Like, couldn't he come back? Of course, if you were the murderer, you wouldn't be worried about that.

So it's like, I can stay here all day. But at the same time, I can see. You could just be protective of your family members. Absolutely. And especially when people are starting to swarm around you like, oh, isn't it terrible? Merci. Yeah. You know.

That's my old timey impression. I sound like a French guy. My hope is that I just sound like Kenan Thompson in a bathtub. So that struck police as very odd. So odd that the district attorney started up this official inquest into what happened. And basically during that, he essentially interrogated Lizzie for three days without an attorney present wow for three days what'd he do put her in a cell at night no so here was kind of the weird thing she was she was not charged with anything at this point so she was living at home but she was basically surrounded by police at all times um so these kind of it's not technically called an interrogation but it

was it happened in a courtroom yeah and she did ask for her attorney to be present okay but under massachusetts state law at the time people who were being questioned in an inquest didn't necessarily have the right to an attorney wow more on this later excellent so lizzie's testimony during the inquest was a mess it was contradictory at times she seemed like confused by herself oh gosh a lot of her friends who supported her through this whole thing heard about her testimony and listened to the inconsistencies. And they were like, whoa, maybe she did do this. Right. Yeah.

About a week after the crimes were committed, police arrested Lizzie Borden. She was charged with murdering her father and stepmother. Lizzie pled not guilty. All right. They put her in front of a grand jury that November, but the grand jury initially refused to give an indictment. Really? But then they reconvened.

The prosecution had new evidence. Okay, and a couple different places. This is kind of the tough thing about some of these old timey ones. A couple different places have this a few different ways. I'm just going with the source that I'm just deciding to trust. Excellent. So whatever. How did you vet them?

Take us through your vetting process. The source I'm trusting is FamousTrials.com. Excellent. Which is a website. I mean, I'm not educating you on this, obviously. We both love this site. But it's put together by a law professor who studies famous trials. And he only writes about ones that he was present at.

He's a vampire. Very impressive. I gotta say. So that's how I decided wonderful love it okay so a friend of the borden's named alice russell had stayed with lizzie and emma for a few days after the murders just to kind of be supportive and she said yeah when i stayed with them, I saw Lizzie burn a blue dress. And when I asked her why she was burning the dress, Lizzie was like, oh, it's covered in old paint. But that was pretty suspicious because on the morning of the murders, Lizzie had been wearing a blue dress. At that, the grand jury was like... Sorry a weird voice it was a gas it was good so the grand jury heard that and they were like yeah we're for sure indicting you yes

indictment handed down lizzie was like shit yeah good thing i'm rich She hired three of the best attorneys she could find. She had her family lawyer. She had another Boston lawyer and another lawyer who was the former governor of Massachusetts. Wow. Yeah. But here's the thing. The prosecution wasn't too shabby either.

One attorney was Hosea Knowlton, who would go on to become the attorney general for the state of Massachusetts. The other was William Moody. He would later go on to become the attorney general for the United States and eventually be appointed to the Supreme Court. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. So everyone's gearing up for Lizzie's trial. The media is obsessed with the case.

The public is enthralled. Yeah. And then, on June 1st, just a few days before Lizzie's trial was scheduled to start, a Fall River resident named Bertha Manchester was found dead in her kitchen. She had been hacked to death with an axe. Whoa! What? Yeah. I've never heard this part before.

I hadn't either. I thought it was shocking. Okay. When I wrote this script, I made a decision, and now I'm changing my decision. Hang on. I'm going to just straight up tell you what happened with that you were gonna sell like a mystery and now you're not well there's just too many mysteries in this so you know that happened like i want to say four or five days before lizzie's trial which i would think would you know totally raise suspicions there but according to what i'm seeing here the person who did that was a portuguese immigrant what i know i know i think this is super weird

um and he was convicted in her murder but was determined and i'm reading straight from wikipedia so take this for what it's worth was determined to not have been in the vicinity of Fall River at the time of the Borden murders. Your face is the same as mine. I'm, like, shocked by this. That's quite the fucking coincidence. I had never heard this. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, everyone's like, well, that's weird.

Yeah. On June 5th, 1893, her trial began. On June 5th, 1893, her trial began. It included a three-judge panel and a jury, which was made up of 12 white guys, and they all had mustaches. That's not true. What do you mean it's not true? Yes, it's true. Why would I lie about that?

Why would they all have mustaches? I don't know. Stylish back then. You want to see a picture of all of them? Why is that? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like, why is that something of note that they all had mustaches? Oh, it'll come up later. What?

No, it won't. No, I just saw a picture of them and I thought it was interesting. Sorry. I mean, it's like, you know all juries back then kind of looked the same because they're all white dudes. But, like, literally they all have, like, the same looking suit and the same mustache. All right.

Would they clone a dude? I don't think they had cloning back then. But the Borden family made a human woman so obviously technology was pretty far advanced the prosecution's opening argument was dramatic prosecutor thomas moody brought andrew Abby's skulls. Oh, my gosh. Which I feel like you expect that later in the trial. The skull? Yeah, to, like, show what happened to them. I think they usually have pictures, Kristen.

I don't think they usually actually bring the body parts in there. Well, they did for this one. They did both. Apparently, when he unveiled the skulls, Lizzie fainted. Oh. When she came back to a few minutes later, Thomas kept right on trucking.

He was like, Lizzie is the only person with a motive and the only person who had the opportunity to commit these crimes what's the motive that she just didn't like her stepmom well she got a ton of money yeah eight million dollars which she split with her sister four million dollars very good but yeah i guess the motive being she hates her stepmom her father also and I'll get into this a little bit later. Her father had also given some property to Abby's sister,

which pissed Lizzie and Emma off. Don't take away my inheritance. That's, yeah. All right, all right. Did the skulls have like big like slash marks in them? Yeah, dude. I'm just asking. Well, I mean, Andrew's eye.

But your eye is not attached to your skull. It sits inside your skull. But it's not like she took a tiny hatchet to remove the eye. I mean, it came in. It just busted. The whole eye socket is... Okay. It is pretty brutal.

You can Google it. Have you seen the crime scene photos? Oh, yeah, I've seen the crime scene photos. The thing is, like, thank God they're black and white, so I could kind of handle it. Because if there was, like, red blood, you wouldn't be able to handle it. Well, it's, like, it's blurry, it's black and white,

so you kind of, like... You can, like, tell yourself, it's just chocolate syrup, it's fine. Shut up. It's one of those things that, like... This guy really made a mess making a chocolate syrup. It's funny. Shut up. It's one of those things that like. This guy really made a mess making a chocolate milk. He was like, Lizzie is the only person with a motive and the only person who had the opportunity to commit these crimes. Then he pulled out the axe head that he claimed she used to kill her dad and stepmom.

Later, they called witnesses to the stand and of course the maid bridget or maggie i hate when people go by two different names for this i'm not even sure how you get to maggie from bridget i don't know either real weird suspect her huh yeah don't you she said yeah lizzie was the only person I saw in the house. I already have a theory. What's your theory? Secret lesbians. Are you serious? Yeah.

Have you read that somewhere? No. That's an honest to God theory. Is it really? Yes, it's an honest to God theory that this case. Should we discuss this now or later? We'll discuss it later. Okay, okay.

I can't believe that that was your, seriously. Yeah, that's seriously my theory. Hold on, we're pausing. What made you think secret lesbians? That Lizzie's 33? Lizzie's 33. Was it home? She's obviously not interested in marrying a man. I'm sure there's a man who would marry her if she wanted to.

Yeah, secret lesbian. In love with the maid. Bridget Maggie. What about Emma? Emma's even older than Lizzie. Nah, I don't know that she's a Secret lesbian. In love with the maid. Bridget Maggie. What about Emma? Emma's even older than Lizzie. Nah. I don't know that she's a secret lesbian. I don't know enough about her.

Okay. Maybe she's in love with a Portuguese immigrant. Who's a woman. So. Very sidetracked by the secret list. Sorry. She said, yeah, Lizzie was the only person I saw in the house around the time that her dad and stepmom were murdered. And oh, by the way, Andrew and Abby were really sick the night before the murder.

Attempted poisoning, eh? Perhaps. Hmm. Attempted poisoning, eh? Perhaps. Perhaps. You don't approve? I don't. Okay. Her testimony also placed Lizzie at the spot where her stepmom had been murdered shortly after the murder took place. All right.

So get this. She said that at one point, you know, Andrew had been out shortly after the murder took place all right so get this she said that at one point you know andrew had been out kind of running errands doing his thing he comes to the front door but couldn't get in either because the door was locked or jammed so she goes to the front door to try to get it open but she actually had trouble with it and so in the course of trying to get the door open she cursed cursed. And she said that after she cursed, she heard Lizzie laugh. And she heard the laugh come from the second floor. And basically because of the layout of this house, if you were on the second floor, you would have had to have seen Abby dead. Interesting.

That would have done me in if it was me. I know. That's why you can't kill people. I mean, you'd be laughing the whole way. That's why my serial killer name is so good. The Laugher. So that didn't look good for Lizzie. No.

But the defense did a nice job in cross-examination, and they asked her about Lizzie's relationship with her stepmom and Bridget said look you know to be honest I've worked there for two years I've never seen them fight. Other witnesses took the stand and again the defense did a good job with them. The Borden family doctor testified that he arrived on the scene shortly after the murders and that Lizzie had told them that her father had been murdered by one of his angry tenants. On cross-examination, the defense said,

Hey, doctor, the prosecution is making a huge deal about how contradictory and confusing Lizzie's statements have been. They're so thrilled with how poorly she did during the inquest, but the whole time she was being questioned, you were giving her morphine, right? So couldn't that be the reason that she wasn't totally making sense? Wouldn't that account for how foggy she was during the inquest? And the doctor was like, well, maybe.

Interesting. Isn't that interesting? Then up comes the neighbor, who came over on the day of the murders to comfort Lizzie, and she said, yeah, I remember Lizzie wearing a blue dress that day, but it didn't have any blood on it. Then came Alice Russell. She's the woman who said that Lizzie burned the dress.

Alice testified that the night before the murders, she had a really weird conversation with Lizzie. How weird? Well, Lizzie told her that she'd be going away soon on vacation. And she talked about how her parents had been sick that night. And she kind of implied that she thought maybe someone was trying to poison them. She said, I feel afraid something is going to happen. That's pretty suspect.

Why? Well, if something happens the next day. Yeah. It's a hell of a coincidence. Yeah, the prosecution was like, she was trying to build up this story. Yeah, except that's a terrible plan. Yeah, we don't know how smart she was. I mean, I don't know.

Alice said she wanted to go to sleep with one eye open half the time for fear somebody might burn the house down or hurt her father because he was so discourteous to people. Wow. Discourteous. That's a pretty big insult. I was going to say, if discourteousness will get you murdered. Woof. Woof. Woof.

And your aged wife, too. Then she talked about seeing Lizzie burn the blue dress and how lizzie had said she was burning the dress because she'd gotten paint on it so the defense stands up and they start suggesting that if the dress was really covered in blood yeah why on earth would lizzie burn it openly in the kitchen for anyone to see why wouldn't she get rid of the dress more discreetly how i don't know all right what was the what was the answer was there an answer no they're just they're just kind of throwing yeah they're kind of like this doesn't really make sense and this is why this

doesn't make sense but i'm kind of with you because my understanding is that she even though she was living at home she was being watched pretty closely so it's not like she could like sneak out with a bloody garment too easily yeah although surely this alice russell character didn't come over and come over into this house where these two people had just been murdered. That sounds like she did. It does sound that way. Oh, that's a good friend. Even though she kind of screwed her over on the witness stand. So the defense made a pretty strong case. They aggressively cross-examined witnesses and generally just talked shit about the prosecution. They were like, oh, you guys have the murder weapon, do you? It's that hatchet blade, is it?

Where's the handle? You got the handle? No? Well, sounds like you don't really have the murder weapon then, because you can't just come at somebody with just a hatchet blade. And they were like, oh, by the way, your timeline for these murders does not work. If Andrew died when you say he died then that gave

lizzie almost no time whatsoever to hide the weapon wash away all the blood from her clothes and hands and face and then scream for the maid yeah which i think is a pretty good point i agree because like the police did talk about how weird the crime scene was because you know your famous line is there was blood everywhere. There kind of wasn't. It was like there was blood obviously all over the two murder victims, but there wasn't blood like throughout the house. No, no. Which I think, okay, stab me if I'm wrong here.

No, go for it. But I think that that proves the case that someone in the house did do it. And not some intruder. Because if an intruder is coming in and running through the house with the axe from one victim to the next, they're dragging that bloody thing down the hall. They're dripping blood. Between rooms. Wouldn't that be the case for anyone who was coming?

No. Not if Lizzie's doing it. In her own house. You think she'd be more methodical? Yeah. But. She doesn't have to worry about getting out of the house. Or anything like that and she'd be the one they have to clean up the fucking mess so she's like let's keep this blood to a minimum

she's got a maid but maybe she's in love with the maid yeah she is in love with the maid secret lesbians secret i still don't know that i get what you're saying here because like i think an intruder like if they come in you think he's gonna be like wiping the blood off of the axe in the one room and making sure he's gonna carry it with the little drippies are gonna come on his hand so that he doesn't, you know, drip blood as he goes from one. No, he's a fucking intruder. Okay. I just don't, I don't know.

Don't give me that face. I just like, I kind of feel like if you're murdering people with axes, I don't care if you live there or if you don't live there, would you really be that focused on the cleanup? If you live there, yes. If you didn't live there, no. That is my point. I think that's super weird. I don't. Clearly.

On a related note, and I only found this one place, but i think it's super interesting so i'm including including it anyway so we just talked about how the timeline didn't make sense the defense was like how would she have had time to clean herself up do all this stuff apparently the prosecution might have floated a theory that um lizzie did these crimes in the nude. That means it's not a bad theory. I think it's crazy. I mean, it's slightly weird, but I don't know that it's crazy. You get naked with an ax and you kill your parents?

You don't have to. This goes back to the cleanup, Kristen. You know, the other thing I'm thinking is, I mean, they didn't have indoor plumbing cleanup would have been really would have been a bitch yeah huh for her lesbian lover maid i still don't think they were lovers you don't no i really don't i really do based on nothing. Oh no, this is based on lots of facts. Of course it's based on nothing! I just think it's

funny because I feel like of the two of us, I'm the one who always thinks everyone's gay. And this time I'm like, no. For sure. Yeah. You know, a lot of people agree with you. I don't know why I'm being like, no, you're wrong. And I will tell you, I am not a conspiracy theorist. I usually think they're bullshit. Not this one.

Okay, we're going to talk conspiracies at the end of this thing. Let's see. The defense was strong, but the prosecution wasn't too worried they were like it was for sure lizzie she's a big old sketchball and we can prove it to the jury all we have to do is show them the inquest show them her testimony which by the way was just a bunch of contradictory nonsense she said that around the time of her father's murder she was out in the barn looking for lead sinkers for the fishing trip. But then she said that she was out there looking for a piece of tin to go over a screen door.

Those are very different. She said she was out there for 15 minutes. Then she said she was out there for 30. She said she came back into the house because she heard a cry for help or a groan or something. But she also said she didn't hear anything coming from the house when she came back in. Her story changed and changed and changed and changed. It wasn't a confession, but it was so muddled that the prosecution was like, this is pretty damn close to a confession because she's just doing this to herself.

She's just messed up. Yeah. The defense was so worried about that testimony that they start talking to the three judges. They're like, you cannot show that to the jury. She didn't have an attorney present. And let's face it, by that point, she was basically charged with the two murders, even though she wasn't technically charged yet. She couldn't leave her home because she was constantly surrounded by police. And right before she was questioned, she'd been told that she was the main suspect. And oh, by the way,

the DA had a warrant for her arrest all drawn up and ready to go before the main suspect. And oh, by the way, the DA had a warrant for her arrest all drawn up and ready to go before the inquest. So even though she wasn't technically charged yet, she might as well have been. And that means that she should have been read her rights and she should have had the right to an attorney. You're giving me this look. Interesting. The prosecution was pissed. pissed they were like are you kidding first of all she was just a suspect at the time of the questioning she was not a prisoner

she was living at home and by the way it's not like we're trying to get a confession admitted into evidence she doesn't confess anything. She just denies everything. She just does it so badly that it's great for our case. So what are your thoughts on this? Well, I don't know. It sounds like they were within the law. I think they were bending the law well i imagine they were but it's not like they broke it in half oh see i i think i think they were being big old sketch balls that's the second time you

said that on this podcast i'm sorry and not just on this podcast, on this episode. So the three judges huddled and they agreed with the defense. Police should have informed her of her right to remain silent, but they didn't. And even though she technically hadn't been charged at that moment, she probably should have been. So that was like the biggest blow to the prosecution that could have happened but later it was time for the local pharmacist to testify so the prosecution is like all right we're back on track the pharmacist is going to say that lizzie came in to buy poison the night before the murders and he turned her away by the way she said she wanted it to like... Kill rats?

No, it was like to clean... Kill her mother and father? Oh, it's nothing bad. I just want to murder two people. No, she said she wanted it to like clean some coat she had. I don't. Yeah. A coat of arms. The look you're giving me right now is the same look that the druggist gave her.

He was like, oh, no. I've heard it for like jewelry cleaning, but never. It was some weird kind of coat too. And of course, I can't remember. I want to say seal skin, but I'm 100% sure I'm wrong. Shark skin? No, I would have remembered that because that sounds really cool. For real. that because that sounds really cool i wouldn't forget sharkskin coat huh so anyway the defense was like oh oh bad this is gonna be bad yo judges could we talk to you guys for a minute

so they start building this argument they're like how is this relevant she's on trial for murdering two people with a hatchet she's not on trial for poisoning anybody yeah this has nothing to do with with the case meanwhile the prosecution is like uh no no no this is not happening to us again. This absolutely is relevant. It shows where her head was at. It shows what she wanted to do. She wanted to kill these people. The judges sided with the defense again.

What? What's going on with you? I'm just trying to take this all in the judges said that the story was too remote to have any connection to the murders so the jury never heard the pharmacist testimony really i think this is total bullshit that is total bullshit i agreed with the defense on that other thing yeah yeah she should have had her attorney present there they were bending the law oh okay this one okay i i completely agree with the prosecution it shows her state of mind shows what she wanted to do yep

clean that sharkskin coat i'm picturing it like you know how people have those bare skin rugs that still have the bare head on them yeah i'm picturing like a shark that's a fin no i'm still with a shark head yeah your head goes in the head that's the hood and then the fins on the back beautiful yeah gotta keep that thing clean that thing's dirty. People are gonna look at you funny. That's right.

Doctors were also called to testify. And for the most part, everyone agreed that Abby died an hour and a half before Andrew. One doctor who had their stomachs tested for poison, which is the thing I was talking to you about earlier, said that he didn't find any traces of poison. Huh? When were you talking to me about it earlier? When you were like, oh.

You turd. So he was like, yeah, they didn't have any traces of poison in their system. Okay. Which I find very interesting. Another doctor shocked a ton of people when he was like, I hate to break it to everybody, but an average woman totally could have committed these crimes. Yeah.

Shocking. Yeah. The theory at that time was that the vagina would stop the hatchet from coming out. No! Sorry, does that not make any sense? No. That's just what they believed in those olden times. Weird.

Yeah, I know. Then the defense took over. People testified about seeing sketchy guys around the Borden house. But, of course, the prosecution had had people say, no, there were no sketchy guys around the Borden house. But of course the prosecution had had people say, no, there were no sketchy dudes around. They also had two workmen who said they'd been up in the Borden's barn a few days before the murders, which was pretty damning. Because they said the dust hadn't been disturbed.

Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, Lizzie's alibi had been like been like oh i'd been up in the barn and the prosecution was like no you weren't because there were no footprints the dust hadn't been disturbed but clearly if these two workmen had been up there the prosecution and police didn't know what they were talking about they were either lying or they just hadn't looked hard enough for the footprints yeah either way they couldn't be trusted and by this point people were really fed up with the job the police did yeah they felt like

it had been really sloppy lizzie's sister emma also testified in her sister's defense she said lizzie had a really good relationship with dad things were fine with the stepmom she did admit that she and lizzie had gotten upset when their father transferred one of his properties over to her stepmom's family you know like i was telling you about earlier yeah but she was like you know that wasn't a huge deal no recollection of it am i being too obvious again? If you recall from earlier. All right. How did they don't remember at this point, Kristen? You know what?

This is all your fault because you forced me to jump ahead several times here. If you just sat totally silently, this wouldn't be an issue. Got it. Don't do the silent thing. That'll freak me out. Like I could do it anyway. No, yeah, okay. And she also said, I was the one who told Lizzie to burn her dress. I looked at that thing, said, hey, that's got paint on it.

You should burn it. Was it red paint? Kind of like brownish paint? Kind of like a maroon. In closing arguments, the defense talked a lot about Lizzie's character. She was a good woman. A Christian woman. The person who did this was a maniac or a devil.

Wasn't her. Mm-hmm. That sweet old 33 year old spinster. After the closing arguments, one of the judges was so moved that he made a speech to the jury, basically advocating for Lizzie and saying that circumstantial evidence wasn't enough. Wow.

I know. I think that's super weird. That is super weird. The jury deliberated for 90 minutes. They found her not guilty. Yeah. Newspapers at the time praised the jury's verdict. The prosecution hadn't proven beyond a reasonable doubt that she did it.

Yeah. Despite that fact, a lot of people still thought she was guilty. The fancy pants people of Fall River shunned her for the rest of her life. After the trial, Lizzie and Emma bought a new house for themselves in the more fashionable area of Fall River. They didn't move away? Can you believe that? No, I would have got the fuck out of there. No kidding.

I think that's super weird i mean in that day and age you can move two towns over nobody's ever heard of you before exactly that's dumb do you think that i'm living it up in the cape but do you think that's what do you think that points to though well i don't know that it points to anything. It's just kind of a dumb decision. Okay. Okay.

Fair enough. See, part of me feels like, gosh, does that mean you're innocent? And you're like, no, I'm. No. No? No. She's guilty. Okay.

I mean, probably. Yeah. Here's what I want to know. In this new fancy house, did they have indoor plumbing? Of course they did. Electricity? Of course. Yeah, probably.

The finest flushing toilet money could buy. You know, I've always liked those old-fashioned ones that are like in two. Oh, yeah. Pull the chain. Yeah. Feels like you're really doing something. They inherited a ton of money. Is that where the phrase yank in your chain comes from?

Oh. Google it. You think so? I don't know. No. No? It's an old mining reference. Oh.

Okay. Bummer. Yeah. They inherited a reference. Oh, okay. Bummer. Yeah. They inherited a ton of money, obviously, but that didn't stop Lizzie from making headlines a few years later for shoplifting. What? Yeah. She was accused of shoplifting.

What? What was she accused of? I'm not sure. I didn't dig that deep but i saw something else um where that was not the first time she'd been accused of shoplifting really yeah but i don't know she's in that same damn town people think she's a big old sketch ball as kristin would say but you look to find her? Oh, sure. You'd be watching her like a hawk.

Yeah. Yeah. She goes into the hardware store, you're like, lock up the hatchets. Stay out of the hatchet section. No, but the thing I saw, and of course I did not write this down, the thing I saw was that she'd been accused of stealing before the murders, too. Interesting. But I could see that, because her dad didn't want to buy her stuff.

Yeah. Now she's got all the money. But see, but now she's got all the money, but she's still stealing. She's accused of stealing because she's a big old sketchball and people don't like her. But she's a secret lesbian, which they frowned upon in 1892. This is true. By the 1900s, everyone was cool with it. Eventually,

in the early 1900s, Emma moved out of their shared house and never saw Lizzie again. The sisters died in 1927. Like, their deaths were really close. I want to say like nine days apart. What? Yeah. Neither of them married.

They were buried next to each other. Get this. In her will, Lizzie five hundred dollars in a perpetual trust for maintenance on her father's grave didn't leave anything for her stepmom duh okay should we talk conspiracy yeah okay i didn't write any conspiracy theories down because you and i are not really conspiracy theory people but no i think that she and the maid and were lesbians and they weren't allowed to be then and the stepmother probably found out okay walked in on him canoodling canoodle do you mean canoodling? Is that a thing? Yeah, that's a thing. They weren't canoeing, Kristen.

I know they weren't canoeing. Canoodling. Yeah, canoodling. Oh, yeah. Kiss and cuddle. Wow. Canoodle. Okay.

I'm learning so much from you. And so she had to kill the mother, the stepmother. Not her mother. Yes, I apologize for that. How dare you. Had to kill the stepmother. And then once she did that, you know, an hour and a half went by and she's like, well, shit. I'm not going to be able to get her out of here. I can't get away with this.

I'm going to have to kill my dad, too. Okay. I mean, what's crazy to me. So that's truly something that you're just thinking. Yes. Okay. That's an honest to God theory. Okay. I mean, what's crazy to me, so that's truly something that you're just thinking. Yes. Okay. That's an honest to God theory. Okay. So just so we're perfectly clear, I am looking at the Wikipedia page under the theories section. Excellent. So I'm going to start from the top here. One theory is that Lizzie was physically and sexually abused by her father, which is what drove her to kill him.

Why would she kill her stepmom first in that theory? Because she also hated her stepmom, I assume. Maybe the stepmom put up with it, didn't do anything about it. But why an hour and a half separation? I don't know. I don't believe this theory. On to the next. Well, let me read just a little more on this so there's little evidence to support this but incest is not a topic that would have been discussed at the time uh blah blah blah the theory was

intimated in local papers at the time and was revisited by a scholar later. Yeah, I don't buy it. No. No. Because it really does seem to me that the focus of her fury was on the stepmom. Yeah, because she walked in on her canoodling with the maid. Mm-hmm. Next!

So next up... La la la. Mystery author Ed McBain in his 1984 novel Lizzie suggested that Lizzie committed the murders after being caught in a lesbian tryst with Bridget. Supported by famous podcaster Brandi Egan. He speculated that Abby had caught Lizzie and Bridget together and had reacted with horror and disgust and that Lizzie had killed abby with a candlestick when andrew returned she had confessed to him but killed him in a rage with a hatchet when he reacted exactly

as abby had mcbain further speculates that that bridget disposed of the hatchet somewhere afterward in her whoa okay i didn't know this in her years, Lizzie was rumored to be a lesbian. I am tap dancing over here. Hold that tap dancing for just a second. But there was no such speculation about Bridget, who found other employment after the murders and later married a man. Well, but that, see, that doesn't mean shit to me. Yeah, that doesn't, yeah. Yeah.

I mean, if she's a maid, she't have like millions of dollars yeah so yeah you have to marry a dude yeah it's the 1800s or by this point the 1900s early 1900s yep yep um a gold star by that theory okay we don't buy the theory about the molesting dad, but lesbian love wrote for sure. Do buy the secret lesbian theory. Ooh. So Bridget died in Montana in 1948. Man, she lived a while. Yeah.

Where she allegedly gave a deathbed confession to her sister, stating that she had changed her testimony on the stand to protect Lizzie. Ah, death is dead. Brandi, thank you for being a genius man there's another theory that you know bridget did it possibly and this is so stupid it says possibly in retaliation for being ordered to clean the windows on a hot day. Okay. Give me a break. No. No. Don't buy it.

Not buying it. Okay, I'm going to read you one more just because this one kind of... It's not correct. I agree, but I want to throw this out there because I totally ignored this guy for this case, and I think it was probably wrong of me to do. So John Morse was Lizzie's maternal uncle. and he had stayed at the house the night of the murders oh but he so some people suspected him because they claimed that like oh he didn't visit

very often he just randomly showed up this day but then i saw another thing that was like no he it wasn't super random actually and people were don't buy that. And people were like, his alibi is too good, which I think, come the fuck on, people. Yeah. So, man. Well, Brandy solved the crime, everybody. With the help of Ed McBain. God, that is so weird. You, You like freaked

me out when you said Yeah, I think it just makes perfect sense. Man. Solved. Rubber stamp it. Yeah, I don't know. You guys are listening to History in the Making.

That's why they tune into this podcast. I don't tune in for the laughs. I tune in for them to solve crimes. That's correct. Now can we be like every other podcast when they solve a murder? What happens? They get really full of themselves. We're already there.

You know, a lot of people say that the crime of the Borden family would have never been solved if Let's Go to Court hadn't followed up on it. Yeah, so that's the trial of Lizzie B was good that was really good i'm glad i could solve yeah one of history's greatest mysteries wow thank you brandy for being here and thank you for rhyming that it's very much appreciated how did you feel about the jury's verdict uh i'm not surprised by it at all i think they did the right thing yeah i do too i think there was too many questions. Oh yeah. But at the same time she had to have done it. I'm pretty sure she did it. Come on.

Yep. Okay, well that was nuts. I loved it. Okay. Are you ready for another crazy mom case? Yes. So, you know, I was kind of inspired by your crazy mom case. Yes. So, you know, I was kind of inspired by your crazy mom case. And then I did the Mary Beth Tenning one last week. And as I mentioned earlier, I just followed the bread crumbs to this case. I've never heard of it. There's a crazy tabloid thing in the 1960s. Oh my God. I'm so excited. Okay. So at 9am on July 14th, 1965, Alice Crimmins called her estranged husband, Eddie, in a panic. Have you got the kids? She cried.

No, he replied. Don't play games with me, Alice demanded. I don't have them, Eddie said. Eddie, don't fool around. Do you have them? Please don't do this to me. Eddie, they're missing. When Eddie heard the news, he rushed to Alice's house, a ground floor apartment in the Kew Garden Hills neighborhood of Queens, New York.

Until their separation, this had been the home that they had shared. Eddie and Alice, born Alice Mary Burke in 1939, had been high school sweethearts and had married in 1958 because that's what young couples of that day and age were expected to do. The couple quickly grew into a family with the birth of a son in 1959 and the birth of a daughter a year later they of course named them oh no eddie and alice because apparently there was a fucking shortage of names was this a trend i don't know. Their daughter Alice did go by the nickname Missy to help ease the confusion. Yeah, you'd have to. Yeah.

That's the thing I don't like about this. Someone has to get a shitty nickname. Yeah. I mean, you can't be calling everybody in the house by the same fucking name. The two children were described as well-behaved, cheerful youngsters who would sit in their bedroom window and wave at passersby but as happy as the children were the same could not be said for the marriage eddie didn't like to spend a lot of time at home he worked a lot and when he wasn't working he liked drinking with the boys and alice had discovered in her marriage that she liked sex a lot so when eddie began to spend more time away from the house she looked to fulfill her desires elsewhere oh initially she was discreet in her extramarital affairs but by 1964 she'd gotten a bit lax and eddie walked in on her with another man in their bed oh

so was eddie eddie was just out hanging with the boys he was drinking just out drinking with the boys yeah he wasn't cheating on her no he was just either at work he worked a lot she because alice stayed home and or he and then when he was done working he wanted to go drink with the buddies. He didn't want to come home to his wife, Alice, and his kids. And so she was over it. So she was bringing dudes in. So when he walked in on her and another man in bed, they'd formally separated. And things got pretty nasty pretty fast. Following their separation, Eddie installed a wiretap on Alice's phone

so he could listen in on conversations with her potential suitors. Then he'd installed a wiretap from her bedroom to the basement so he could sneak into her home when she was entertaining a lover and listen to them have sex from the oh oh my god yeah on one instance he burst into her bedroom while she was having sex and chased her lover from the house naked what yes oh my god yeah so he was yeah he was messed up he was yeah he was not letting her go really sleep sounds like but he wasn't it's weird because he didn't really fight to keep her well i mean if you're putting wiretaps on the phones if you're listening i mean there's something oh yeah wrong with you oh my gosh so things between the estranged couple escalated further

in february of 1965 when 26 year old alice took an unplanned cruise to the bahamas with her 50 something millionaire boyfriend anthony grace alice swore that the cruise was an accident, though. What? She and a friend were using the bathroom on Tony's boat while docked and somehow got locked in. It wasn't until the boat was at sea en route to the Bahamas that the women were discovered in the bathroom. Alice had called the children's nanny

and convinced her to stay a few days with the children. But when Eddie found out that the children had been home with just the nanny without his knowledge while their mother was traipsing around with her boyfriend, he was pissed. Yeah, and I'm not buying one bit of the oopsie I went on a cruise story. Oops, I went to the Bahamas. Classic. We've all been there. That incident, coupled with a complaint from Eddie Jr. that he often saw men in their undershirts in the living room in the morning when he woke up, led Eddie to file for sole custody on June 22nd, 1965. He alleged that Alice was an unfit mother who was subjecting her children to an endless string of strange men due to her immoral lifestyle choices. Alice's own mother wrote an affidavit siding with her son-in-law. She called Alice mentally ill and asked the court to grant full custody to Eddie.

She called him a good man who would take good care of the children who were in her opinion innocent victims of a sick mind did everyone know that he was tapping her phones and like people were literally my next sentence is she obviously didn't know about his extracurricular basement activity because i was gonna say like no so in her mind there's this great father and her daughter who's just banging any dude who will look her way sure just three weeks after this filing alice would wake up to find the kids missing from their room oh okay so this takes us back to that Wednesday morning, July 14th. When Eddie arrived at the apartment, he found the kids' bedroom window open. So it's a ground floor apartment. The kids' bedroom has this big window, but it like swings open rather than being like a lift open.

Gotcha. So it's like two sides that just, you know, push out and then it's open. So that was wide open. And he searched the house, didn't find anything just as Alice had. And so they called the police. Detective Gerard Peering, a 30 something father of six and his easygoing partner, George Martin were sent to the Queen's apartment to investigate the case of the missing children. fact when the call came in about this peering requested to take the case okay he's like i'm on it let's go yeah when peering first laid his eyes

on alex on alice crimmons after arriving at the home he was taken aback here was a woman whose children were missing but she wasn't sobbing or hysterical oh my instead the beautiful young mother was heavily made up sharply dressed in tight pants and a floral top and heels and her short red hair was elaborately teased and styled by his own recollection detective peering disliked her on site he told his partner you interview the guy i'll take the bitch oh bad yikes yeah real bad all because he gets the scene he expects to find this sobbing mother and instead he finds she looks way too good yes a beautiful woman yeah alice walked detective peering through the previous night's event while police looked over the house for evidence she said other than taking the kids with her to put gas in the car

that night they'd been home all evening she'd fed the children veal that she'd bought from the butcher that day for dinner at 7 30 the kids had gone to bed sometime after nine, and then she had taken her pregnant 11-year-old dog, named Brandy, for a walk. She'd checked on the kids at midnight, taken a bath, and then hadn't gone to bed until after 3 a.m. due to a contentious phone call with her drunk, estranged husband, during which they'd fought about money. with her drunk, estranged husband, during which they'd fought about money. She'd slept until nine the following morning, and that's when she woke up to find the children missing. But Detective Peering was suspicious of Alice from the moment he met her. He knew her type.

He knew her lifestyle. And he didn't approve. So when word came in a few hours later that they had found four-year-old missy's body in a vacant lot oh no he decided to put alice through a little test without any knowledge of what they were going to see detective peering took alice to the vacant lot and escorted her directly to the tiny body of Missy. The delicately featured blonde lay on her side, dressed in a white t-shirt and panties. A floral patterned pajama top was twisted and knotted around her neck. Alice swooned and collapsed at the sight of her, saying only, It's Missy, as Detective Pe peering caught her but she didn't cry

she didn't cry at the scene she didn't cry in the police cruiser in fact she didn't cry until they reached her home and she stepped into a crowd of tv and news reporters flash bulbs going off all around her. Suddenly, she broke down sobbing. Oh, that's... It's not great. No. It's for sure not great. But it could also be shock.

Yeah, I... And we've talked about this before. Oh, yeah. People grieve in very, very different ways, and there's not a right way or a wrong way. But I... As sexist as this detective sounds i'm kind of with them yeah this was it in the minds of detectives this woman didn't care about her children this was simply a calculated attempt to simulate

grief for the cameras this opinion was reinforced the next day when detectives wishing to interview Alice were kept waiting while she finished putting on her makeup. This woman's daughter had just been found dead. Her son was still missing. She was supposed to be in the highest state of grief. What the fuck was wrong with her that she was so concerned about her appearance i relate to this very personally because i i am willing to bet that i would be putting my makeup on that morning you and i are a lot alike in this regard yes i mean part of the reason we met at 12 30 today instead of noon was because neither one of us

had makeup on in time right now granted this is not a life or death situation it is not so it's it was reported that alice was very self-conscious about her appearance without makeup because she had heavily scarred skin from teenage acne so she expertly applied like a series of makeup each morning that completely covered that yeah but investigators opinions and suspicions of alice would be changing no time soon several days after this after the discovery of little missy's body eddie's body was discovered in an advanced stage of decomposition um in a wooded area near missy's body or no uh several blocks from where missy's body was in fact the body was so badly decomposed that no cause of death was able to be determined.

Then, within a week of the children's funerals, Alice Crimmins, mother of two dead children, seemed to simply resume her normal life. She and Eddie reconciled, and she spent her days doing housework and preparing him meals, And then in the evening, they would go out drinking and dancing. Investigators cited this as further proof that she was a cold, callous murderer. What other explanation could there be? I mean, that that's just who she was. Yeah. Although, I've got to say. I agree.

I think it doesn't look great. No, it looks terrible. It looks terrible. And, I mean, we all know that everyone grieves exactly the same way. So, certainly nobody has ever drowned their sorrows in drinking and trying to forget. Yeah. And everybody knows that never happens. In addition to her highly suspicious behavior, Detective Peering was sure that Alice was responsible for the death of her children due to some inconsistencies between Alice's recollection of events, evidence at the scene, and the autopsies of the children.

Okay. Evidence at the scene and the autopsies of the children. Okay. Alice had told Peering that she'd fed the children veal for dinner that night at 730. But the autopsies had found pasta in their stomachs and no meat. And Missy's stomach had been quite full. The medical examiner determined that she had died within a couple of hours of eating the pasta. Hmm. Examiner determined that she had died within a couple of hours of eating the pasta. Could someone have abducted Missy and fed her pasta before killing her? Detective Peering didn't think so.

But that timeline didn't make any sense. No, because she said she saw them at midnight. Yeah, that doesn't make sense. On Peering's inspection of the scene the day the children went missing, he recalled seeing a frozen manicotti box in the trash and the remaining portion of the pasta wrapped up in the fridge. He'd not bagged the trash as evidence, though, nor had he photographed it. And Alice denied that it had ever existed.

had he photographed it and alice denied that it had ever existed in fact the only evidence that this manicotti that this manicotti existed at all is peering's own memory of it he did not nor did any other detective at the scene make any kind of note of it and at this point when alice tells this story about feeding them veal the autopsies haven't come back. She's got no reason to lie about what she fed them for dinner. That's what I'm wondering. What would be the motivation for lying? There would be no reason to lie about what she fed them for dinner. Unless you felt like it made you a bad mom to feed them something frozen? Made you look better to say veal?

I don't know. Okay. Then there was the open window alice told investigators that she believed maybe the kids had climbed out the window or perhaps someone had taken the children and had come and gone through the window it was a large window like i said on the ground level but it had a dresser partially in front of it the children and or the intruder would have had to climb over the top of the dresser to access the window. This is not something that was difficult to do.

The kids did it on a regular basis when they would sit in the window and wave at people going by. But in his investigation of the room, peering noticed a layer of undisturbed dust on the dresser. This of course, couldn't be the case for Alice's theory to be correct. But again, Peering had not bothered to make note of this or take pictures of it. It was, again, simply his memory of the scene.

What do you think about that? I don't like that at all. Yeah. I don't like that at all. Think about that. I don't like that at all. Yeah. I don't like that at all.

That's sloppy, and then it comes down to how much are we going to believe him? Exactly. And even if he shakes out to be a perfectly good guy, memories are faulty. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Absolutely. So by this time, Peering is sure that Alice killed her children. But he doesn't believe that she could have done it alone. She must have had an accomplice.

So detectives turn up the heat on Alice. Over the next several months, they have her phone tapped and keep her under constant surveillance. Surely at some point she would have to communicate with her accomplice. It became sort of a fight between officers over who would get to listen to Alice's phone calls. Because they were so hot? Not because she was spilling details about her suspected crimes, because she was engaging in regular sexually explicit phone calls with her many suitors. Police joked that it was like they were being paid to listen in on a dial for sex hotline. Wow.

As for those incriminating conversations with her accomplice that they were sure they would catch her having? Didn't happen? Never happened. She never had any conversations of that nature. So when police were frustrated that they weren't getting what they wanted out of her, they turned to harassment. What? Alice had attempted to take on some secretarial jobs to get herself out of the house. She had taken the jobs in her maiden name, Alice Burke, because her name was now well known throughout the city.

But police would follow her to each job, and after a few days there, they would inform the employer that the efficient secretary they'd hired was actually the notorious Alice Crimmins, the promiscuous woman suspected in the deaths of her two children. What the fuck? Why would they do that? Each time this would result in Alice's firing. Of course. They were hoping that if they harassed her to this point

that she would just break and just admit what she'd done. Oh, they'd get a false confession because they harassed her into it? Yeah. Great. Good detective work. Right. So Alice went from one employer to another working for a few weeks as a secretary here a receptionist there an airline travel agent on one occasion and then inevitably unemployed and looking for work again yeah the surveillance team

in charge of watching alice's home would also call ed. They were on and off by this time, sometimes reconciled, sometimes not. So they'd call him anytime she was entertaining a male guest in her bedroom. And say what? Hey, she has a dude in her bed. Are you kidding me? It wasn't long before Alice discovered

that they'd tapped her phone. And she began all of her conversations with, hi boys, drop dead. Good for her. I know. Okay. You changed your opinion of her? Yeah.

And now I feel horrible for her. I feel horrible for her too. Because she's got two dead kids and she's being harassed by the police. She's unemployed and really unemployable. Unemployable, yeah. And her creepy-ass ex-husband has the police, like, urging him on. I mean, this is terrible. Yeah, it's not great.

Yeah, it's not great. Despite the constant surveillance and the added pressure on her, Alice never cracked as investigators suspected she would. But on November 30th, 1966, nearly a year and a half after the children's death, police got a lead they thought would break the case wide open. They received a tip in the form of a letter that read, May I please tell you of an incident that I witnessed? It may be connected and may not, but I will feel better telling it to you. This was on the night before the children were missing. The night was very hot and I could not sleep. I went into the living room and was

looking out the window getting some air. This was at 2 a.m. A short while later a man and a woman were walking down the street towards 72 road. The woman was about five feet in back of the man. She was holding what appeared to be a bundle of blankets that were white under her left arm and was holding a little child walking with her right hand. He now hollered at her to hurry up. She told him to be quiet or someone will see us. At that moment, I closed my window, which squeaks, and they looked up but did not see me. The man took the white bundle and he heaved it into the back seat of the car. She picked up the little baby and sat with him in the back seat of the car.

The woman was thin with dark hair. The man was tall, not heavy, with dark hair and a large nose. This took place under a streetlight so I was able to see it quite plainly. took place under a streetlight so I was able to see it quite plainly. The car turned from the corner of 153rd Street onto 72 Road and out to Kisina Boulevard. Please forgive me for not signing my name, but I am afraid to. Wishing you the best of luck. Signed, a reader. P.S. About one hour later, I thought I saw the man getting into a late model white car. Police were elated over the contents of this letter, but they needed to track down the writer so they could question the person further. So they used the context clues in the letter to try and pinpoint the vantage point of the potential witness. Right.

They reduced the possibilities to a reasonable block of residences. Then they eliminated any residents that had any loud air conditioner beside the living room window that would have kept the witnesses from being a from that would have kept the witness from hearing the conversation on the street that night. That's smart. That left them with 39 apartment homes. They then compared the handwriting from the anonymous letter to complaint letters that had been sent from some of those residences. They found a match. Sophie Iramerski was a middle-aged, heavyset blonde who often suffered from insomnia.

When investigators interviewed her, they found her story somewhat revised from the version she'd told in the letter. Sophie told the police that now she recalled the woman saying, My God, don't throw her like that! When they tossed the bundle in the back seat and while the letter described an incident that may be connected or may not sophie now identified the woman she had seen as alice crimen no no iromirsky knew alice from around the neighborhood and alice's photo was regularly now in the newspapers. So it seemed rather odd in the letter that Eromerski only saw her as a woman with dark hair, but now was certain of her identity.

But the police paid little mind to these discrepancies. Yeah, because they didn't want to hear that. Expanding on Sophie's account, investigators put together a scenario of a murderous mother aided by a man with mob ties for some reason alice had strangled missy to death they theorized perhaps missy had intruded on alice when she and a boyfriend were going at it hot and heavy and alice had been murderously enraged and her horrified lover had made a quick exit never to be seen or heard from again that is ridiculous alice had told peering during his investigations of her her when he was questioning her that she had made a phone call that night to a bar and had spoken to anthony grace this kind of on-again, off-again boyfriend of hers.

They decided that the call must have been about Missy's killing, and that Grace, eager to shield his lady love from the results of her impulsive actions, had placed a fatal call from the busy bar. He had called a hoodlum and told the thug to go over to the cribman's place to silence little Eddie. told the thug to go over to the Cribman's place to silence little Eddie. Irmurski had seen a dead Missy being carried in a blanket and her older brother obediently trudging to his doom. Her eyewitness account was just what they needed to secure an indictment against Alice Cribman's. It was just the bullshit they needed.

Mm-hmm. You know who this woman reminds me of? Who? Pig Woman. Yes! Yes, from the torn love letters case.

Oh my, just you wait. Okay, okay. I have to, I'm sorry, let me take one second here because I just realized that I didn't do this at the top. I need to call out

where I got most of this information from because I feel bad that I'm this far in and have not done it yet. I pulled most of this information from because I feel bad that I'm this far in and have not done it yet. I pulled most of this from an article by Denise Noe for the Crime Library. Cool. Sorry, Denise, for just now giving you credit. Denise, if you're angry, just send a hoodlum after Brandy. On September 11th, 1967, two years and two months after the deaths of little missy and eddie god this poor woman alice crimmins was arrested for first degree murder of her daughter yeah she was not charged in her son's death because it could not be medically proven

that he'd been murdered okay if alice had thought the publicity was bad before she was in for a shock now that she was officially charged in the murder of one of her children her face graced every tabloid cover at the grocery store they dubbed her trial the sex pot trial and described her as an amoral woman whose many affairs appear symptomatic of america's sexual revolution oh give me a break yeah crimen's sexual escapades were raked over for both their titillation value and as a source of moral outrage. The trial began in May of 1968, and it was a doozy, both because of the sexually themed testimony and because of Alice's many emotional outbursts. Oh, poor Alice.

Richard Grimes, the doctor who had first inspected Missy's body after it was discovered, was among the first to testify. He described for jurors what he'd seen that day. I saw the body of a girl who appeared to be about five years of age. She was clad in a cotton undershirt, a pair of yellow panties. Alice interrupted his testimony by crying, no, and beginning to weep. Judge Peter Farrell demanded order and told the doctor to continue. Dr. Grimes continued, around the little girl's face, there was a cloth tie.

The loose ends of the tie appeared to be the arm of some kind of garment. The tie was over the mouth of the child. The knot encircling the neck and the tie was over the mouth of the child, the knot encircling the neck, and the tie was rather loose. By this point, Alice was wailing and sobbing uncontrollably. By this point, Alice was wailing and sobbing uncontrollably, and people in the gallery had begun to cry along with her. The judge put the court into recess. Alice had an outburst of a different nature during the testimony of Joe Rorich.

Rorich? R-O-R-E-C-H. I have no idea. Rorich. I like Rorich. Joe testified. Joe was a semi-regular suitor of Alice's who, during the investigation, I like of Joe. Joe testified. Joe was a semi-regular suitor of Alice's who, during the investigation, had been in some legal trouble of his own.

Oh, did police make a deal with him? Due to some sketchy business dealings, he'd ended up in some hot water over some bad checks. In exchange for immunity in those cases, he'd agreed to wear a wire while talking to Alice. But she'd never said anything incriminating during those occasions. Investigators kept drilling Joe, though, interrogating him over and over and over again over a period of several months. Finally, he gave up that Alice had said something incriminating to him in conversation. But just not when he was wearing a wiretap? Oh, shut up, Joe. When discussing the custody case, he said Alice had told him,

I'd rather see them dead than with Eddie. At trial, a usually loud and boisterous man, Joe, had to be asked repeatedly to speak up. Yeah, because he was ashamed of lying. Yes. He told the jury what Alice had said to him, and he took it a step further, testifying that on one evening when conversation had turned to the children, Alice had said through tears, Joseph, please forgive me. I killed her. At this testimony, Alice Crimmins leapt to her feet and screamed, Joseph, how could you do this? This is not true. Joseph, you of all people. Oh my God.

This is horrible. This is horrible. It's horrible. Yes. Next to take the stand was the prosecution's best witness. Do you know who it is? The husband? Nope. Sophie, the window lady.

Oh no. No, no, no. And would you believe it? In the two years that had gone by since the night she'd been looking out her window, she managed to remember a bunch of more details. A bunch more details? Scratch the of in there. You know, whatever.

A bunch of more details. She testified how she had seen a woman carrying a bundle and a man and a little boy on that sleepless night at the window. He took the bundle and he swung the bundle under his arm and he walked very quickly to the car. Sophie testified as the courtroom listened in hushed anticipation. He took the bundle and he threw it into the back seat of the car she ran over to him and she said my god don't do that to her and then he looked at her and he said now you're sorry and she said please don't say that when asked if she recognized the woman in the courtroom sophie didn't hesitate she pointed an accusing

finger at alice crimmins and said that's the woman god alice again jumped to her feet and screamed you liar you liar you liar you liar once the judge regained control of the courtroom alice's defense team attempted to point out the inconsistencies of Sophie's statements. They were able to do very little to tear her down. The spectators loved her and would applaud, laugh, and cheer at her answers. Are you serious? Yes. She held up well on cross-examination and when she left the courtroom

she threw her fist into the air for the waiting photographers like she was a boxer who just won a prize fight oh shut up oh no i cannot stand this woman like she just, ugh. Yeah. Ugh. Finally. This was, like, her performance. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It went from, I don't know if this pertains, but I really want you guys to have this information, to, I fucking saw a murderer in the street.

Yeah. Yeah. Finally, Alice took the stand in her own defense. Uh-oh. finally alice took the stand in her own defense she spoke in a thin voice that did not carry well so the judge recessed court until the next day so a microphone could be installed in front of her when testimony resumed she repeated the story she had told the police of her activities on the terrible night her children disappeared she strongly denied that she'd ever confessed to killing missy to joe crimmins was aggressively and belligerently cross-examined by prosecutor tommy lombardino lombardino okay tony lombardino due to the rules of evidence in New York courtrooms at the time, he had complete leeway to delve

into anything that might reflect adversely on her character. So it was all about her sex life. It was all about her sex life. Question after question after question about her sex life. That's awful.

It didn't matter if it had no direct connection to the issues at trial. Some of their exchanges were really lurid. Of course. In one particularly damaging exchange, Lombardino was able to leverage the deaths of her children with the apparently immoral acts of their promiscuous mother here's the exchange no lombardino does joe have a swimming pool crimmons he does lombardino did you swim in it crimmons yes i did lombardino what were you wearing when you swam in Joe's pool?

Crimmins. One time, a bathing suit. One time, no bathing suit. Lombardino. And where were your children while you were swimming in Joe's pool without a bathing suit? Crimmins. They were dead. Well, that has nothing to do...

It has nothing to do with it! What was she supposed to do? Yeah! Sit at home and cry, constantly. Yeah. If she did anything other than that, she's not a proper grieving mother and she better not have mascara on those eyes no definitely not

alice cremmons left the stand on shaky legs she knew that she damaged herself in the eyes of the conservative old-fashioned men who made up the jury oh she didn't have any women on her jury so it doesn't specifically say the breakdown but that sentence i pulled directly from the article that makes it sound like it's all men um so her defense attorney was she advised to take the stand because that just seems like apparently oh that seems like terrible advice because you knew that that was going to come up yeah so she knew she damaged herself in the eyes of this conservative jury and reportedly one of the jurors commented to another that a tramp like that is capable of Oh, oh my God. When the jury came back, they found her guilty of manslaughter, not of murder.

And it wasn't a shock to anyone but Alice. Alice was so shocked by the verdict that she collapsed into a coma in court. She spent two weeks in the jail infirmary before being transferred to prison to serve her sentence of five to 25 years. Oh, my God. Yeah. Do you think it was one of those deals where, like a lot of the people we've talked about, they really thought, I didn't do anything. Well, you can't go to prison if you're not guilty, so I'm fine.

I really do. I mean, they didn't come back. I mean, she was charged with murder. They came back guilty on manslaughter. Sure. So it is a lesser charge, but still. Yeah, she was so shocked that she collapsed into a coma. I've never even heard of that.

I've never heard of it either. Apparently it only happened in the 60s. They were a crazy time. A crazy time where people could swim without swimming suits. Her attorneys were soon back in court asking for a mistrial. Three of the jurors had made trips to the crime scene, despite the judge's warnings that they were not to visit it. What? Yes.

The court denied the motion for a mistrial, though, and Crimmins settled into prison life. Hold on. Yeah. During the trial, in their off hours, some of the jurors went... Yes! What the hell? Yes. Yes. Okay.

That's terrible juror misconduct. That's ridiculous. Yeah. So she's... They've denied this appeal for... Or they've denied this motion for a mistrialrial and she's settling into life in prison. She's just gonna, I guess, serve her time. Right.

But then she got a new legal team. A couple of well-known big deal New York lawyers who had followed her trial and thought she hadn't gotten a fair shake agreed to take her case on pro bono. Whoa. thought she hadn't gotten a fair shake agreed to take her case on pro bono whoa they filed an appeal and while waiting for a decision they asked a queens county supreme court judge for bail on the grounds that there was a good chance the conviction would not stand and he granted it what just 20 after just 24 days in prison, Alice was free on bail. It would be another year and four months before the appellate court would rule on Alice's case. So she's out on bail. The appellate court's looking over the case.

A year and four months later, they rule on it. What do you think they ruled? Please tell me they let her go. They threw out the conviction. Wow. But she out the conviction. Wow. But she was tried again. Oh. Her second trial began in March 1971.

Wait, they threw it out on what grounds? Juror misconduct is the grounds that they threw it out on. That was great, which is great and right um her second trial began in march 1971 six years after the deaths of her children oh my god this poor woman this time the stakes were even higher she had been charged with first degree murder of her son eddie this time and first degree manslaughter and the death of missy because she was not found guilty of murder of missy in the first trial they couldn't charge her with it the second time they could only charge her with manslaughter oh but jeopardy is that kind of yeah because it wasn't the conviction wasn't thrown out it wasn't thrown out on

conviction it was thrown out on juror misconduct. They couldn't. Yeah. Whatever weird legal shit happened, they could not charge her with murder. So to get a murder charge in there, they charged her with the murder of Eddie, who even though they had no before, they said, yeah, we can't prove how he died. Yeah. Interesting. This trial was, again, a spectacle.

But I'm not going to go into a ton of details about it because it was really just the same. Same thing. Yeah. What I will say is that the women's lib movement was a hot topic at the time. And Alice's sexcapades didn't seem to have the same immoral implications that they had had at her trial just three years prior. Okay, I'm so glad you're saying this because I was wondering when you were talking about people taking it on pro bono. Yeah. Was this a feminist? It was it was awesome. Hell yes. Yes. I wondered about that with the time period.

Yeah. So only three years had passed from the first trial to this new trial. But the outlook on the sexual revolution was totally different. Right. Right. In that short amount of time. There was one big change at the second trial, though. A new witness came forward and backed up the window lady's story. Are you kidding me? He said that that night he had also looked out of his window and seen a man

carrying a bundle, a woman, a dog, and a boy on the street that night. Alice was stunned at this new testimony. During a court recess, she went outside to the gathered news cameras and issued a desperate plea for help. I've come here to make an appeal, she began in a shaky voice. Tears blurred her blue eyes. Alice Crimmins was clearly terrified. I'd like anybody that lived in my neighborhood to come forward, she said. Anybody that lived in my neighborhood who might know something about what happened on the night of July 13th or the morning of July 14th. I'm asking for anyone that was out that morning

between 1.30 and 2.30. Anybody that saw something or didn't see something. It doesn't make a difference either way. I'm asking for help for my side. Herman's voice cracked and it seemed like she might collapse into sobs, but she managed to choke out. I need that help because I did not kill my children. Anybody that just didn't see anything is just as important to me as someone who might have seen something. I didn't kill my children. I swear I didn't kill them. Can you see my goosebumps?

I know, right? Yes. Yes. Oh, my God. So the prosecutors are pissed that she's done this. Too damn bad. Yeah. They said that it was part of a court order,

that she wasn't supposed to do any press interviews and all of this this doesn't come across on a podcast but uh kristin is flipping the prosecutors off right now and dancing while i do it they said so prosecutors were pissed about it they were like you're not allowed to do that and the judge gave her a warning and they said if she breaks any more court orders we will revoke her bail and she'll be held in jail for the rest of her trial okay but it worked yeah the next day there was another surprise witness this time it was the prosecution that was stunned by the testimony. That witness was Marvin Weinstein, a travel agency manager who claimed that he had been walking on 153rd Street in the wee hours of July 14th, 1965. He had been visiting a friend when questioned about who was with him he said my wife my son my daughter and our dog oh my god he went on to say that his son was three and a half at the time

and his daughter was two years old weinstein had carried his little girl in his arms wrapped in a white blanket oh my gosh yes that's crazy yeah crazy testimony alice did not testify at her second trial yeah she learned yes well she might have had better legal representation. Yes. Yeah. But just before the case was handed over to the jury for deliberation, the prosecution pointed this out.

In his summation, Prosecutor Thomas DeMacos said she doesn't have the courage to stand up here and tell the world that she killed her daughter. Oh, no. And the shame and the pity of it is that this little boy had to die, too. You don't have to testify at your own trial. So he can... That is correct, Kristen. But it made an impact on the jury. No. The jury came back with the harshest possible verdict.

Guilty of first degree murder in Eddie Jr.'s death and first degree manslaughter in that of Missy. Many in the courtroom burst into tears and Alice sobbed. Oh my God. Dear God, not again. People broke down crying the the defense attorney the new defense attorney was like i guess i convinced everybody but the jury yeah oh my gosh i can't believe that the second trial of alice cremmons ended and cremmons went to prison for what was assumed to be the rest of her life but that wasn't the end oh my god this story is so good it's so good

she had served more than two years behind bars when she was released in 1973 the appellate division of the supreme court in Brooklyn reversed her conviction in Eddie Jr.'s case, ruling that there was no evidence of murder. Yeah. It also reversed the manslaughter conviction in Missy's case because DeMacco's assertion that she didn't

have enough courage to stand up here and tell the world that she'd killed her daughter suggested that a defendant who exercised the right to refrain from testifying was admitting guilt i'm doing a lot of things you can't see on the podcast i'm in a full-on victory pose right now you solved lizzie borden's case i i didn't quite do that here but you know i made a good guess um the da appealed those rulings no and in february of 1975 you're killing me the court of appeals upheld the reversal of the murder conviction but reinstated the conviction for manslaughter and sent her back to prison

and ruled that they would hear no further appeals in the case alice crimmins was paroled two years later in 1977 and released for good yeah she married her longtime boyfriend anthony grace and lived much of her life in Florida on his yacht. After his death in 1998, it is believed that she moved back to the New York area. And it is believed that she is still alive and living a reclusive life under a different name. She would be 79 years old today. Whoa. But nothing's really known of her of her life now oh my gosh is that

case not crazy that's that's insane i have to look her up now she's beautiful and she rocked all the best hairstyles of the 60s i I have to say. Yeah. Ooh, she had some voluminous hair. Oh, man. All the best hairstyles. So I think it is crazy that neither of us have heard of this case. Let me tell you about the things that this has inspired in popular culture. Okay. Okay.

So there was a book about the case written called The Alice Crimmins Case written by Kenneth Gross. Another book was Ordeal by Trial. Another book was The Investigation. A major bestseller by Mary Higgins Clark. Oh. Was written called Where Are the Children? And that was made into a movie.

Holy shit. There was a made for TV movie called A Question of Guilt that aired in 1978. There was a play written called Landscape of the Body. Another play called Two Small Bodies, which was later adapted into a movie in 1993. Later adapted into a movie in 1993. The Investigation Discovery series, A Crime to Remember, did an episode on this case called Go Ask Alice. And the 2017 novel Little Deaths by Emma Flint is a fictionalized account of this case. This is crazy. Is that not nuts?

So there was almost no evidence linking her to this. Nothing. No. Oh, that's terrifying. I mean, it's just crazy. There's no evidence linking her to it. There's really no evidence linking anybody to the crime. But it doesn't matter because it didn't look like they looked into anybody else.

Yeah. Not even the dad. Yeah. Well, and I'm sorry, but he seemed sketchy as fuck you know he was i don't want to say bad things about him because there's no evidence against him either he was sketchy but he stayed by alice's side during all of her criminal proceedings and when she was convicted he on the second trial because he testified at the second trial okay he did not testify the first trial he testified the second trial he wouldn he testified at the second trial. He did not testify at the first trial.

He testified at the second trial. He wouldn't say anything bad about her. He simply said, we're no longer married, and I don't have feelings for her anymore. But when she was convicted in the second trial, he broke down in tears. Of guilt? But that's the big mystery. If she didn't kill the kids who did never know i feel obligated since you solved my case i know you're gonna have to solve this one now

i think it was bob moss the mob boss I loved this case. Yes. It was just nuts to me from the beginning. And this poor woman, like, just because she liked to have some sex. Good grief. Yeah, could there be a greater crime? It seemed like that was on par with killing your kids. Good looking and put together. Yes.

And didn't cry when she was supposed to cry. Yeah. In the eyes of whoever man yeah i tell you what the stuff about wanting to have your makeup right before you come talk to people we're gonna get locked up one day oh for sure do you ever go anywhere without makeup on that's a hard no you've never done it like maybe run to the grocery store yeah and i like put a hat on and sunglasses and wrap a scarf around my face put a shirt on that says i'm kind of the same way yeah yeah yeah i'm just i mean i'm not doing for anybody else it's for me i'm doing it for deep self-loathing well i mean really is that the reason yeah i don't know you know when i do go out without makeup on i don't feel like me

like that's exactly it yeah and i like i don't walk as confidently like i look down so i don't make eye contact with people yeah that's not my style nobody wants to see your unpainted eyes correct man these things oh that was crazy right and very upsetting yeah so there are no other theories in this not that i came across oh my god i'm sure they there are but man that was so much i couldn't go into more hang on i'm consulting she has um and i feel like this is an insult to her for sure. Okay. She has been called the Casey Anthony of her day.

Oh, that's not fair. No, I don't think that's fair at all. No. Should probably do that case next, huh? You've got to do it. I would love it. Okay, I'm looking up alice cremin's other theories oh these articles are too long we don't have time that was so good though

so good do you have a story to tell us to wrap it up this week, Kristen? So Norman is out of town this week. Yeah. He insulted me big time. So as I just told you a little bit ago, Peanut is diabetic. Yeah. I didn't just tell you that. No. This is the first I'm hearing this.

Yes, I know Peanut is diabetic. So the diabetic dog. And Norman is always in charge of giving her the insulin and you know doing that whole thing well now we've got the jb squad doing the insulin and like you know i draw her blood at night to see where her levels are which how do you do that does that freak you out i mean you don't like needles and blood there's a reason why he does it i mean like i, I really hate it. But I've gotten kind of used to it.

Yeah. But her levels are, like, out of whack. So, like, clearly I'm doing something not great here, which is, you know, bad. And then our AC crapped out again this summer on, like, when we were having a heat wave. A heat wave, yeah. So that was great. So I was telling Norman, I was complaining norman all about this on the phone and he goes you know what this reminds me of that episode of the simpsons where marge has a gambling problem and homer's left in charge of

everything and he messes everything up and i was like compared to what i'm homer in what world am i homer simpson in this world in this world right now this week this week you are hey look on the bright side you could eat donuts oh my god hey i did eat a lot of donuts this week see man it's always there's always a silver lining sometimes it comes with a delicious frosting and sprinkles. Oh, my God. Norman, for our anniversary, like, so, you know, for our wedding, we had the donuts instead of cake. And so he went out to that donut shop, Doughboys in Raytown, Missouri. Yeah.

And got us a bunch of donuts. And for some reason, for just the two of us, he got, like, a dozen donuts. Yeah, you buy donuts, you buy a dozen. It's just how donuts work, Kristen. Unless you're buying gas station donuts. If you're going to a donut place, you're buying a dozen donuts. Why are you being so condescending right now? I'm just saying, like, don't act like Norm did something crazy. To me it was crazy.

But not so crazy that I didn't eat like almost all of them finally i got down to one uh-huh one left and i was like it's like all kind of like dry and hard and no because i ate them quickly so they were fine but i was like i've got to bring this over to kyla and you know give this to her because i can't you can't handle it i can't eat all every single one i have a donut story this week too what's your donut story okay so like you know every few days i you know get on like just check out the bank account make sure there's nothing like crazy right out of it and i see that zach has spent like 12 at quick trip which not that crazy zach

loves quick trip quick trip is a convenience store that's kind of like midwest and it's just in the midwest and the south i think yeah and i i'm with zach on this they've got really good iced tea there they've got their beverages on zach loves quick trip and so but like eight twelve dollars i'm, what the hell did you buy at Quick Trip? And he's like, oh, I bought donuts for me and the guys at work. And I was like, I'm sorry. You did fucking what? Because I love donuts. Zach doesn't really care for donuts that much.

So he never buys us donuts. And so I'm like, hold the the fucking phone there's been a murder you bought donuts for guys at work uh-huh not for me he's like oh i didn't even really think about it i'm sorry oh my gosh so sunday morning uh-huh is that gets up and goes and gets us donuts oh my gosh he comes home and he calls me into the living room and he's standing like in the living room he went and got krispy krings that's like the closest it's not my favorite donut but they're the closest to our house and whatever and i'm not complaining yeah it was a really nice thing that he did and he's standing in our living room with a box of donuts like on display wearing one of those crispy cream like paper hats it was the cutest thing ever you know i hate to compare

our husbands but i think if that were to happen to norman he would just be like what yeah okay next time i'll get you no that's pretty awesome it was it's really it was really awesome what kind of donuts he got a a sampler pack you've got to do this i hate it when people do a dozen glaze he got like you know like a couple glazed, a couple with chocolate frosting, a couple with strawberry frosting, a couple with sprinkles. There are still two in my house that are way too dry to eat now because we didn't eat them fast enough.

So you guys need to take this more seriously. What's your favorite kind of donut? See, I feel like this is going to be unpopular because of what you just said. Glazed donut is my favorite. Just your... A little basic, aren't you? But it has to be, like, for it to be my favorite donut, it has to be, like, the classic raised donut.

Like, a glazed Krispy Kreme is not my favorite donut because the consistency is different. Yeah. I like a doughy donut. Okay, I got to say, Doughboys in Raytown. I've never had it. It's so good. They've been around for, I was about to say a couple years, but no, we had our wedding.

So you've been married five years now. Five years, yeah. Happy anniversary. Congratulations. Thank you. They said we wouldn't make it. No, gosh, I love donuts so much. The Frosted Blueberry Cake Donut.

Big fan of that. Sounds good. But also, anything with a pink frosting on it. Yeah. I'm a fan. Yeah. Really, I don't know that I've ever had a donut that I didn't like. I don't like a...

Okay, so there's two different types of cream-filled donuts. I like the fluffy cream, not the pudding cream. That pudding cream, get the fuck out of here. What? No, that's good. No. I'm going to tell you a story about that pudding cream. Okay.

Okay. The consistency of it. You know, I'm a consistency person, texture person. It really bothers me because like sometimes it's not quite set up enough yeah a little bit runny and one time when i was a little kid this little girl that i was playing with i don't know i think she was my grandma's friend's granddaughter anyway because i only play with her like one time she had this pet rabbit and it fucking like squirted this gross stuff all over her to look just like that pudding

filling i don't know if it was beef i don't know if it was poop i didn't ask any questions it was white and disgusting looking and i think of it every time i see one of those donuts i cannot believe that story didn't include an actual donut are you serious that's ridiculous. Okay, now I will agree that with that type of donut, you have to have like a plate directly under you at all times because it's going to come squirting out. It's going to be a mess.

I don't want it okay fair enough one thing we should definitely say yeah because i've been meaning to bring it up lillian on twitter oh man okay you guys if you don't know about Lillian on Twitter she has made two drawings for us she's an actually skilled artist yes and because she's a wonderful person she has actually put her talents into making things for the podcast yes so after we did the episode where Brandy said uh bob moss the mob boss she created this image of bob ross the painter as a mob boss and he's at an easel that's like covered in blood and it says there was blood everywhere it's hilarious it's hilarious it's the most amazing thing ever and then after we did the episode on was it john Robinson, the serial killer? Yeah.

And we made that joke about him having a trench coat full of stamps. Well, it's a pretty graphic image, what she created. But we loved it. We loved it. Anyway, we just want to say thank you to Lillian because it's so fun. I mean, it's amazing when someone that talented is taking the time to interact with us. Oh, man. We love it. We are so impressed by your talent. Yeah. when someone that talented is taking the time to interact with us. Oh man, we love it.

We're so impressed by your talent. I know this is probably not where you thought it would go, but, um, but we have shared that on all of our social media. So if you want to check it out, head on over to our Facebook, head on over to our Instagram,

our Twitter, you'll find it in all those places. We love them. And while you're there, give us a like, leave us a review. There's a new thing on Facebook. on over to our instagram our twitter you'll find it in all those places we love them and while you're there give us a like leave us a review there's a new thing on facebook where instead of a review you leave a recommendation so people are recommending our podcast now which is kind of cool whatever and then uh yeah head on over to itunes and leave us a rating and a review there i'm sorry i just burped that's why i. I was like, what are you laughing about?

It wasn't that funny. I mean, I know I'm just naturally hilarious, Kristen. iTunes. It just cracks me up. I know. Who doesn't love a good iTunes joke?

And join us next week when we'll be experts on two whole new topics. Podcast adjourned. And now for a note about our process. I read a bunch of stuff, then regurgitate it all back up in my very limited vocabulary. And I copy and paste from the best sources on the web and sometimes Wikipedia. So we owe a huge thank you to the real experts. For this episode, I got my info from FamousTrials.com, TheLizzieBordenCollection.com, and good old Wikipedia.

And I got my info from Crime Library, Murderpedia, and Hazlet Magazine. For a full list of our sources, visit LGTCPodcast.com. Any errors are of course ours, but please don't take our word for it. Go read their stuff.