Mind of a Serial Killer - SERIAL KILLER: "The Dark Strangler" Pt. 2
Episode Date: March 27, 2025After the American police started to catch on to Earle Leonard Nelson's murderous rampage, he tried to lie low in Canada. But Earle couldn't stop himself from seeking out more victims... and it wasn't... long before the Canadian authorities realized there was a serial killer in their midst. Killer Minds is a Crime House Original. Follow us on social media, @crimehouse for more true crime content. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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We have an exciting update.
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Most of the time, urban legends are harmless fun, like the man with a hook for a hand who
attacks young couples kissing in a car, or the evil spirit of Bloody Mary, who appears
in a mirror after you chant her name three times with the lights off, maybe even the
goat monster that kills livestock by sucking out their blood. But these are just
cautionary tales, reminding us that if we step out of line, trouble isn't far
behind. And deep down, we aren't scared. Not really, because we know these are
nothing more than just stories. But every once in a while, what sounds like an
urban legend is actually real life.
Like the story of the Gorilla Man, also known as the Gorilla Killer.
But don't let the nickname fool you, because he was no circus sideshow.
He was the hulking serial killer, Earl Leonard Nelson. He could appear anywhere, literally killing in multiple states
and countries, and his victims never saw him coming.
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I'm Vanessa Richardson.
And I'm Dr. Tristan Ingalls. As Vanessa takes
you through our subject stories, I'll be helping her dive into these killers' minds
as we try to understand how someone can do such horrible things. Before we get into the
story, you should know it contains descriptions of murder and sexual assault. This is our
second and final episode on Earl Leonard Nelson, whose nicknames include The
Gorilla Man, The Gorilla Killer, and The Dark Strangler.
For over a year in the 1920s, Earl wandered through the US and Canada, leaving a trail
of over 20 strangled victims in his wake.
Last episode, we discussed Earl Leonard Nelson's early life, his infamous killing spree, and
the mistake that alerted the police to his activities.
Today we'll follow the frantic search to find Earl, the drastic measures he took to avoid
justice and his ultimate downfall.
And along the way, I'll be talking about things like Earl's bizarre reaction to being caught, his attempts to charm his way out of trouble, and his
refusal to confront the reality of his crimes. And as always we'll be asking the
question, what makes a killer? With the Fizz loyalty program you get rewarded
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In June 1927, 30-year-old Earl Leonard Nelson made his way to Winnipeg in the Canadian province
of Manitoba.
Over the past 17 months or so, Earl had murdered over 20 victims, mostly older women who ran
boarding houses.
Although the authorities didn't know who Earl was yet, his murder spree had become
publicized in the United States, so Earl decided to head
for Canada and presumably lie low.
But Earl's compulsion to kill was unstoppable.
On June 8, 1927, he deviated from his usual M.O. and murdered a 14-year-old girl named
Lola Cowan.
And two days later, he killed 23 killed 23 year old Emily Patterson.
Earl knew it would only be a matter of time until the authorities realized the dark strangler
was in town.
To throw them off his scent, he bought some new clothes and went for a shave and a haircut.
But Earl wasn't careful enough.
The barber noticed blood and scratches on his scalp.
After Earl left, the barber called the police. And by the end of that night, they realized what
Earl had done. When it comes to serial sexual killers, there are two types of individuals who
commit these murders. There are those that are highly organized.
They do it in a planned fashion where they are very aware of their crimes and the forensic evidence,
and they leave their crime scenes with as little physical evidence as possible.
And then there are those who are more spontaneous.
They're less organized, and because of their psychopathology,
they have an even more difficult time controlling their impulses.
I think on the surface, Earl could seem like he's the organized type because of the disguises he's used in the planning that went into his actions,
but the reality is he was nearly caught the first time with Mary Summers.
He is choosing locations where he could be caught at any given moment by other residents or the husbands even of the victims. He does not take care of
the forensic evidence at the crime scene and he has significant deficits
controlling his impulses. If this was not the 1900s he would have been caught
almost immediately because of this. With that said, I think that this event at the barber was a result of the fact that he
truly wasn't detail-oriented at all, and he lacks the awareness to even consider the risks
of going to the barber to begin with.
Well, the blood on his scalp wasn't the only thing Earl left behind.
That same evening of June 10th, Emily Patterson's husband, William,
came home and found her body. Investigators rushed to their home, and as they searched
the crime scene, they realized one of William's suits was missing. It was clear the killer
had taken it because he'd left his own clothes on the floor. There was even a piece of newspaper
in one of the pockets advertising
local rooms to rent.
And this is exactly what I mean. This is not a detail-oriented killer. This is someone
who is not at all organized but rather acting on impulse.
Which meant for the first time the authorities had a real lead to chase down. But Earl was
already long gone. By the time the Winnipeg police picked up his trail, he was 350 miles away in Regina
in the province of Saskatchewan.
On the afternoon of June 11th, while police in Winnipeg were investigating the Emily Patterson
murder scene, Earl was renting a room from a woman named Mary Rowe. Mary didn't seem to know about
the dark strangler, but even so, she wasn't sure about letting this large, hulking man into her
home, especially because she had a nine-year-old daughter. However, Earl had charmed his way into
a lot of boarding houses by now. He had his act down pat. He came to the doorstep dressed
nicely in a suit, maybe with a Bible tucked under his arm, and just like so many others,
Mary was charmed by Earl's unassuming demeanor. She decided to rent him a tiny, furnished
single bedroom near the back. The next morning, another one of Mary Rose Borders, 23-year-old Grace Nelson, was in
her nightgown reading in bed.
All of a sudden, she looked up to see Earl staring at her from the doorway.
Startled, Grace shot up in bed and yelled at him to leave.
Earl was taken aback.
He muttered an apology before scurrying down the hallway
for maybe the first time he backed down from an attack.
Yeah, let's talk about this decision.
The most obvious to me is his fear of getting caught.
In the past, he's only killed when he was ready
to disappear without a trace,
and he might not be ready to do that.
He's on the run, essentially, at this point.
But more importantly, he doesn't have the element of surprise here.
He also did not have the control in this situation.
In all of his cases, he has been able to get his victims' defenses down by how he presented
himself, and this allowed him the element of surprise.
He was able to strangle these women before they could realize that he was a threat, let
alone call out for help.
So here he is, encountering a woman who is not immediately trusting of him, simply because
he's living in the same boarding house.
I think her reaction to him surprised him more than anything.
After his encounter with Grace, Earl shifted his focus elsewhere.
Later that day, his new landlady, Mary, was playing in the garden with her daughter, Jessie.
Earl came outside and they chatted briefly, until Mary caught Earl's gaze wandering to
her daughter.
Unsettled, she cut off the conversation and took Jessie back inside.
But Earl had already spotted his next victim.
That afternoon, Mary was doing some house chores when she noticed that Jessie was missing.
At first she thought her daughter snuck back into the garden to keep playing, but Jessie
was nowhere to be
found.
Mary threw on her shoes and ran around the neighborhood, desperately searching for her
daughter.
She made her way to a nearby park where Jessie liked to go, and that's where she saw her
daughter strolling along with her new border.
Earl said he was bringing her back home, but Mary wasn't taking any chances.
She snatched Jessie away and brought her back to the house herself.
When Mary questioned Jessie about why she ran off with him, Jessie said Earl was nice
to her and bought her an ice cream soda.
But Mary wasn't buying it.
She told Jessie she was never to go anywhere with a
stranger again.
Aside from Earl knowing that children are more vulnerable, there might be another reason
why he is suddenly targeting younger girls. He's new in this country. It's new to him.
And he knows the police are after him. he's already made attempts to change up his appearance
as a result.
So he's been trying to throw off the police and throw off anyone possibly identifying
him.
If he cannot control his urge to kill until he feels confident he is safe from being identified,
then changing who he kills would be another way in his mind to throw off the police while
also satisfying his compulsion.
Though we still continue to see that he is driven by impulse
rather than details, because if he was paying attention
to detail, he would have noticed that Mary saw the way
that he was looking at Jesse on that occasion
and intervened because it made her uncomfortable.
If he was paying attention to detail, he would realize
that she would also
then be paying close attention to him and her daughter going forward. And he clearly did not
consider this or if he did, his impulsivity is overriding his judgment. Does it seem like Earl
was planning to hurt Jessie here or if he wasn't, what could his motivations have been? I think at the very least, he was starting to groom Jesse by bribing her for her trust.
At the worst, he planned to do much more that same day. But I don't think that she was at
any real danger at the time because he wouldn't have done it outside of the boarding home.
I don't think so, since that is usually how his method is. Even when he
had attacked Lola, he lured her back to his room first. So this is the pattern he has.
He enjoys the act of gaining their trust first, and he needs a controlled environment. If
Mary hadn't intervened when she did, and he got home with Justy before Mary even realized
that she was gone, I think it's
highly likely that he would have impulsively done something simply because he had the opportunity.
If Earl had decided to hurt Jesse, the authorities may have found him sooner.
Instead, while Earl was spending a relatively leisurely weekend in Regina,
the police in Winnipeg were still trying to track him down.
Earlier that morning, on June 12th, the investigators back in Winnipeg were focused on the newspaper
Earl had left behind. It was full of ads for rooms to rent, and they quickly located the
boarding house in Winnipeg where he'd stayed before making his way to Regina.
The Winnipeg police asked the house's owner, Catherine Hill, if any of her boarders had
been acting suspiciously.
She said no.
But later that day, Catherine realized she hadn't seen Earl in a couple days.
Curious, she took another look in Earl's room.
She'd checked on it a few days earlier while Earl was still in
town. Back then, she'd noticed a bad smell emanating from it. Nothing else had seemed
out of the ordinary at the time, though. But now, the smell was even worse. Catherine got
the feeling that something was terribly wrong, so she called the police and asked them to come back. They looked around Earl's
room and found the dead body of 14-year-old Lola Cowan under the bed. The discovery was
shocking and tragic, but it was also the last piece of the puzzle the authorities needed
to catch her killer. And it wouldn't be long before they knew
Earl Leonard Nelson was the culprit.
Following a frantic phone call from Catherine Hill
on June 12, 1927, police rushed back to her boarding house
in Winnipeg.
After identifying 14-year-old Lola Cowan's body, officers realized she was killed in
the same manner as Emily Patterson, who had been murdered two days earlier.
Earl had left some clothes behind at the Patterson crime scene.
Catherine Hill was able to confirm that, yes, the clothes belonged
to Earl, who she knew as Mr. Woodcoats.
Finally, the pieces were falling into place. Earl's pattern of discarding and buying
thrift store clothing, how he killed his victims, and the location of his crimes, it all led
police to realize they weren't dealing with a local menace.
This was the work of the Dark Strangler. By that evening, a city-wide announcement was made across
Winnipeg for everyone to be on the lookout for the mysterious Mr. Woodcoats. It wasn't long before
reporters and regular citizens alike swarmed Catherine Hill's boarding house.
One reporter from the Winnipeg Tribune
overheard two women chatting about the killer.
They called him the Gorilla Man due to his large stature
and the fact that he strangled his victims
with his bare hands.
Let's talk about the media giving serial killers nicknames. The reason this happens is because they
don't have a confirmed identity yet. Just descriptions, sketches, or even aliases. So they
need to have an identifier to refer to them to when they're reporting on the case. The name they
settle on is usually a variation of known characteristics, often the location or method,
or something related to identifiable features,
like Gorilla Man being the one for Earl, or one of them,
given he's got Gorilla Killer and Dark Strangler.
The Gorilla Man came about, like you said,
because he was described to police
as being a large, stocky man who had long arms and large hands.
And the unfortunate reality is that these nicknames, although intended to be identifiable
for reporting purposes, actually serve to sensationalize them even more, which is a
phenomenon that we often see when it comes to the news.
It attracts more attention, and that sells more newspapers or gets more advertisements.
And once their identity is confirmed,
people tend to continue calling them by their nickname
because at this point, it's become so ingrained
in the public consciousness for the purpose of recognition
that their real name gets rarely used after the fact.
The attention-seeking serial killers love this.
Well, once Earl was nicknamed the Gorilla Man, it stuck, and it didn't take long for
the headlines to spread from Winnipeg throughout the rest of Canada.
Which meant, on the morning of June 13, 1927, news of the Gorilla Killer was reported in
the newspapers in Regina.
Presumably Earl found out the authorities had caught on to him, which is probably why
around 8 o'clock that morning Earl frantically collected his few belongings and tore out
of Mary Rose House without a word to anyone.
Earl high-tailed it back to the U.S. but he needed money and a disguise, so his first order of business was to pawn
a ring he'd stolen from his last victim, Emily Patterson. Then he exchanged clothes
at two different thrift shops. At the second one, the owner noticed a chevrier label on
Earl's hat. It was a store in Winnipeg.
Making friendly conversation, the man asked Earl where he was from and how
he came to Regina. He didn't realize Earl was a wanted man, but it made Earl nervous
anyway. The second another customer entered, Earl ran off, forgetting the new pair of shoes
he'd just purchased.
Wow, okay. So it seems like Earl's starting to really feel the weight of consequences
breathing down his neck for once.
He's definitely exhibiting signs of anxiety and fear, maybe even realistic paranoia for
someone who likely has developed a level of arrogance related to being able to kill an
average of one person a month for nearly two years without getting caught.
I wouldn't be surprised if we find him more desperate
doing whatever he can to avoid being caught or spotted,
or maybe even an escalation of violence.
Does a situation tend to make serial killers
or violent offenders more likely to lie low,
or do some of them just not care?
This is a great question because it's actually a myth
that all serial killers cannot
fight the urge to lie low, even in the face of being caught. One well-known example of this is
Dennis Rader. He killed 10 victims from 1974 to 1991 and did not kill again prior to getting
captured in 2005. It's also a myth that they all want to get caught.
Their ability to lie low or their desire to be caught really depends on the psychopathology
and personality factors that are there, as well as whether or not they have the mask
of sanity.
Like Dennis Rader, he had an entire family, so he had that mask of sanity.
He did what he needed to do to blend in.
And with that come obligations that may have helped him
to resist killing for that period of time.
Someone like Earl does not have family.
His wife certainly isn't holding him accountable
or even knows where he is at this point in the story.
So there's no need for him to be self-disciplined,
even if he could be.
Though I truly don't think when it comes to Earl
that he is someone that's capable of lying low
for any length of time in the same way
that Dennis Rader was.
At this point at least, it seems like Earl was doing his best
to evade capture.
After he fled from the thrift shop,
he trudged on foot for several miles
before resorting to hitchhiking.
Throughout the day, the folks he met asked him polite questions like where he was from, trudged on foot for several miles before resorting to hitchhiking.
Throughout the day, the folks he met asked him polite questions like where he was from,
what he did for work, and why he was heading south.
Earl was as vague as possible, but said he came from working on a ranch near Winnipeg.
He had no idea, he'd just given himself away.
One of the people Earl hitched with in Regina called
the police with a tip, saying they may have encountered the guerrilla killer.
The police realized Earl was heading south. They traced his route and stopped at some
stores along the road he'd hitchhiked down. When asked if an odd stranger had passed through
their town, the store owners immediately thought of Earl, not just for his distinctive frame, but because he said he was a ranch worker,
which wouldn't have set off alarm bells back in the States, but in Canada, the term
most people used was just farm worker.
By that evening, later on June 13th, police had been able to fully piece together Earl's
movements.
They realized he'd stayed at Mary Rowe's boarding house in Regina, that he'd pawned
Emily Patterson's ring on his way out of town, and that he was making a beeline for
the American border.
At that point, Earl was only a few miles from freedom.
He stopped at a store in a town called Waukepa to buy a final
round of supplies. The owner recognized him from his description in the papers, and as soon as Earl
was gone, he contacted the police. The call went to a local constable named Wilton Gray.
Hearing the news, he quickly grabbed another officer, and they set off in pursuit.
Not knowing he'd been identified, Earl proceeded on foot. But just when Earl thought he was
home free, he crossed paths with Constable Gray near a set of railroad tracks.
The two men stared each other down. Earl's legs twitched, but before he could move,
Gray drew his gun and pointed it right at Earl's head.
And the man known as the Dark Strangler, the Gorilla Killer,
who had struck fear into so many hearts,
put his hands up and surrendered.
Earl's surrendering here could have been purely
out of self-preservation.
If you think about it, he was on foot, he's heading back to the United States, and an
officer has a gun to his head.
He was in a lose-lose situation.
If he didn't surrender, his only choice would be to take off running, and that would
not get him far before he would likely be shot and or killed.
This also tells me that Earl is able to do cost-benefit
analysis of risk in a situation like this. But when put in a do or die situation, we are all
biologically wired to survive. And since Earl has lived life on impulse, it's not surprising he would
follow his survival impulse in this situation. Well, Constable Gray probably wasn't wondering why Earl surrendered so easily.
In that moment, he was more concerned with getting him to jail, but Earl was proving
to be surprisingly cooperative.
Sitting in the back of their police car, he seemed almost relaxed.
He cracked jokes and chatted with them as if the situation was totally normal.
His behavior was so casual, Gray and his partner had trouble believing this was the killer they'd been hunting.
So when Earl told the officers he was hungry, they agreed to stop and get a steak dinner before booking him.
After a pleasant meal, the officers gently put Earl back into the car and drove him to
Killarney jail.
They fought through a throng of onlookers, anxiously awaiting a glimpse of the supposed
killer.
The crowd was just as surprised as the officers to see the docile prisoner.
He didn't look like the disheveled gorilla man the papers made him out to be at all.
Yeah, this is superficial charm and glibness, and those are traits of psychopathy.
He's been mastering this for some time and has been successfully cunning and manipulative.
You have to be in order to dress in a disguise and play the role of, say, a plumber or a
faith-based harmless nomad seeking shelter.
Because otherwise you would not be successful
gaining the access to victims and the environment
that he's choosing to attack them in.
He has been doing this all over the United States
and now in Canada and this charm, this manipulation,
this glibness has been working this long.
Regarding the officer's doubt here,
what is the psychology behind that?
Are we just primed as humans to give people the benefit of the doubt in situations like
this or was Earl just that good at lying?
We all have biases, especially individuals in law enforcement.
When they learned about the heinousness of Earl's crimes and the gorilla man description
that was given to the press or the newspapers,
they likely imagined something absolutely different than the version of Earl that he
was presenting to them. And their bias about Earl was being challenged by his charming and calm
demeanor, which was making them question themselves. But thankfully, they did not let that cloud their judgment.
Whatever doubts Constable Gray might have had, he still went through with booking
Earl into jail. He followed the standard procedure of taking Earl's belt, socks
and shoes, then locked him in a cell.
Once Earl was secured, Gray called his supervisor.
He just couldn't believe this was their guy.
But a few minutes later, Gray received a wire transfer confirming Earl's description, down to the shoes Gray had just personally removed.
Baffled but confident, Gray realized he'd just captured a violent killer.
But not for long. When he got back to the station, one of his officers came up in a
panic. He frantically ushered Gray to Earl's cell, where the two padlocks Gray had shut himself
were popped open.
The Gorilla Man had broken out of his cage and was back on the loose.
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On the night of June 13, 1927, it seemed like 30-year-old Earl Leonard
Nelson's 17-month murder spree had finally ended.
But the moment Constable Wilton Gray took his eyes off of Earl,
he escaped from his cell at the local jail in Killarney, Manitoba.
Just like Ted Bundy did.
That's right.
At first, Constable Gray was baffled by Earl's escape.
He'd secured both padlocks on the cell door himself.
But it quickly became clear what happened.
There was a small wooden shelf about a foot away from the cell just close enough
for Earl to reach. When the officer on duty had left to roll a cigarette, Earl must have
grabbed a slender nail file that was resting on the shelf and used it to pick the locks.
Now Earl was racing to cover the 12 miles to the U.S. border, and he was moving fast
– or as fast as he could
without any socks or shoes on.
When his feet were so sore he couldn't take it any longer, Earl ducked into an abandoned
barn for the night.
He found some old, moth-eaten clothes and a pair of hockey skates which he turned into
a makeshift pair of shoes.
After a quick nap, Earl got up before sunrise and continued his journey
south. Meanwhile, Constable Gray had called in every available officer to search for the
Gorilla Man. The investigators scoured the nearby shops, restaurants, thrift stores, and hotels,
but couldn't find Earl anywhere.
and hotels, but couldn't find Earl anywhere. On the morning of June 14, Earl believed he had outsmarted the officers on his tail.
He even stopped to bum a cigarette off of a local handyman named Alfred Wood.
But as Earl rolled his cigarette, Alfred noticed he was wearing overalls underneath his sweater, exactly what the local paper
said the escaped Gorilla Man was wearing when he was captured.
Once Earl was out of sight, Alfred called the police and told them he'd just encountered
their fugitive and he knew where Earl was going.
Minutes later, officers swarmed a nearby local train station. They hopped out of their
cars and saw the imposing Gorilla Man in the distance, heading south along the tracks.
As the officers approached, Earl leapt onto the tracks, but he was soon surrounded and
threw up his hands. Just like his first arrest, Earl's second was quite anticlimactic, but
this time, police kept a much closer eye on him.
By 10 a.m. on June 14, a crew of Canadian police officers boarded a train toward Winnipeg
with Earl in tow. They put shackles around his hands and feet and told the conductor not to make any
stops along the way. For his part, Earl behaved exactly as he had the first time he was arrested.
Amiable, compliant, chatty, asking for nothing except cigarettes from his captors.
I think Earl is just having fun at this point. If we consider the psychopathology of serial killers, that need for stimulation or sensation seeking is strong.
And he's definitely getting stimulation from toying with the police. Is it possible he does not fully understand the gravity of the situation?
Well, given that he escaped custody, I think he very much does understand it. I simply don't think he knows
how to be anything but superficial. He's been manipulating his entire life.
One thing was clear, the police wouldn't be fooled again. When they arrived back in
Winnipeg with the prisoner, even more officers swarmed Earl and took him to booking. After
that, he was immediately put into a lineup.
The Winnipeg police, it seems, had witnesses standing by, just waiting for Earl's train to arrive.
Forty witnesses, to be specific, each waiting to ID him. Among them were Katherine Hill and her
husband, who had found Lola Cowan's body. They all positively identified Earl.
And finally, after the authorities dug into his background, they learned his real name.
Back in the San Francisco Bay Area, local police approached Earl's wife, Mary.
She hadn't seen Earl in nearly a year, and confirmed Earl hadn't been home when the killings in
Winnipeg occurred.
Though she fully cooperated with the investigators, Mary kept shaking her head as if it was impossible
her husband could do such things, even now after all of this evidence and even now after
all the pain Earl had caused her. I think with Mary,
her self-denial is somewhat of a normal first reaction
to news like this.
I mean, denial is a defense mechanism
and it's intended to avoid deeply uncomfortable feelings,
but it's also the first stage in the grieving process.
Family and wives of serial killers express shock and denial
when learning about their loved
one and what they've been doing or what they've been accused of.
Even if they may have noticed signs or saw some concerning behavior, it's just simply
not natural for pro-social people to automatically assume that their loved one was out doing
depraved and heinous serial killings.
Mary hadn't even seen Earl for the past year. So with that in mind,
let's also recap about what we do know about Mary. We know she was 58 years old when they
had gotten married and he was only 22. She clearly was in some ways abused by Earl, at least on that
one occasion where he attempted to chase her down in a rage, which we talked about in episode one. But let's also not forget that they married eight years earlier in 1919.
And a lot of pressure existed on women to have husbands back then.
She was 58, which is considered elderly for that time.
And when suddenly a 22 year old man shows interest in her, there could be some
real deep seated insecurity there as well that is causing her denial.
She was religious, which is what she was attracted to when it came to Earl because he also shared that.
And it likely wasn't within her faith to divorce.
So knowing that she remained married to someone doing acts that violate her own faith
likely contributed to this denial as well.
I would imagine it would take any
one time to process information like this.
Whether Mary believed that he had actually committed these crimes or not, there were
plenty of people who were certain Earl was the Dark Strangler. On June 17, 1927, the
day after his second arrest, 30-year-old Earl appeared in the Winnipeg City Police
Court.
Though he had also been indicted in several U.S. cities, the Canadian authorities were
adamant about trying him in their country first.
Specifically in a place which had the death penalty at the time.
Earl's lawyers were able to postpone his trial, which was eventually set for three and a half
months later on November 1, 1927.
But that delay also worked out for the prosecution.
They were able to officially link Earl to 22 murders from the beginning of his spree on February 20, 1926, to his final murder on June 10, 1927, when
he killed Emily Patterson.
By the fall, the prosecution was armed with an ironclad case against Earl.
And when the trial finally got underway on November 1, the defense's only hope was to
convince the jury that Earl was medically insane.
They cited his unstable upbringing, his years of suffering through diseases like syphilis,
and the trauma that shaped him as the reasons for his behavior. They even brought his wife
Mary up to Canada to testify on Earl's behalf. Well, they have to prove that during the commission
of each murder that occurred in Canada,
that Earl was incapable of appreciating the nature
and quality of the act or a mission
due to a mental disorder,
and whether or not he knew that that act was wrong.
And that's going to be difficult to do.
Earl's Aunt Lillian came with Mary as well.
Only ten years older than Earl, Lillian had been one of his most constant companions.
She'd given him a place to stay after their grandmother died and supported Earl as best
she could.
However, it was clear the defense was grasping at straws.
Mary and Lillian testified about Earl's erratic, frightening behavior, but it
didn't convince the jury that he was functionally insane. Less than an hour after Earl's trial ended,
on November 5th, he was officially found guilty of murder and sentenced to die by hanging on January 13, 1928.
The day before his execution, Earl gave a final interview.
The reporter asked Earl one last time if it was possible that, even in an altered state
of mind, he had killed all of those people.
Earl looked up at the reporter and with sincere conviction stated,
No, sir.
It's interesting how some serial killers will ultimately confess to their crimes while others don't.
And those that do seem to do it when they have no other choice,
and they do it to regain control in some way.
Like Ted Bundy. He adamantly denied any wrongdoing until he was convicted
and sentenced to death. Then he started to admit to his crimes, but he did this for attention
and to extend his execution date. He was buying time because they were not going to execute
him when he had more information to share and to help them solve cold cases. But Earl, he did not confess. He
had several months between his sentencing and his execution date to
start talking if he wanted the attention or if he wanted to manipulate
officials. But he was never driven by attention-seeking behaviors and his
manipulation efforts were used to gain the trust of others before taking their
lives. He can't gain anyone's trust anymore. The trust is lost.
So maybe he felt that if he maintained his innocence,
he could get people to question him the same way law enforcement did
when they first apprehended him.
Or maybe he was in his own denial.
Maybe he really did experience dissociative fugue
when he was engaging in those killings.
Or he really did have memory loss from a combination of two head traumas and neurosyphilis.
But I am inclined to believe that his lack of confession was a form of control in its
own right.
In the end, though, only Earl can really explain why he maintained his innocence and never
confessed.
Well, one thing was for sure.
Earl wasn't convincing anyone at this point.
But it doesn't seem like it bothered him all that much.
When the reporter left the cell that night, Earl casually ate his last meal, which was
made up of liver, bacon, grapefruit, apple pie, and coffee.
After that, an archbishop came to grant him the sacrament of confirmation, which was meant to strengthen Earl's faith. Lastly, a priest
arrived to read and discuss scripture with Earl well into the night. After so
many years of people trying to instill him with religious beliefs, it seems like
Earl was finally ready for it. At 730 a.m. on January 13th, he walked to the gallows with the priest at his side, climbed
the scaffold, and took his place by the trap door.
The priest held out a cross for Earl to kiss and muttered a final prayer. When Earl was asked if he had any last words, he said,
I declare my innocence before God and man.
With that, the execution commenced.
When the jury's coroner confirmed Earl's cause of death,
he reported strangulation.
Thanks so much for listening.
Come back next time for a deep dive into the mind of another murderer.
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