True Crime Campfire - Dark Strangler: The Crimes of Earle Leonard Nelson Pt 2

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

In last week’s episode, we learned about the troubled early life of Earle Nelson, and witnessed his first steps towards becoming one of the most prolific serial killers in North American history. This week, his journey of mayhem across America really kicks into high gear. Join us for part 2 of this terrifying true story.Join Katie and Whitney, plus the hosts of Last Podcast on the Left, Sinisterhood, and Scared to Death, on the very first CRIMEWAVE true crime cruise! Get your fan code now--tickets go on sale February 7: CrimeWaveatSea.com/CAMPFIRESources:Bestial by Harold SchechterThe Laughing Gorilla by Robert GraysmithFollow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/truecrimecampfire/?hl=enTwitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. In last week's episode, we learned about the troubled early life of Earl Nelson and witnessed his first steps towards becoming one of the most prolific serial killers in North American history. This week, his journey of mayhem across America really kicks into high gear. This is part two of Dark Strangler, the crimes of Earl Leonard Nelson.

With panic over the murders of Clara Newman and Laura Beale fading, the people of the Bay Area began to think this grim nightmare was behind them. And then all of a sudden, Three months later, it wasn't. Lillian St. Mary was 63 years old and had been separated from her husband for the past 12. She lived with her adult son James and rented out rooms for some extra money. Two rooms were occupied, two were vacant, and every afternoon Lillian would go out shopping for supplies to make dinner for her tenants, par for the course in cities when refrigerators were still super rare and cost twice as much as a car.

On the afternoon of June 10th, Lillian was clear. nearly ready to go out for this errand. She had on her coat and hat and held her purse. Investigators assumed someone rang the doorbell just as she was about to leave, a prospective lodger who'd seen the room for rent sign in the front window. Lillian led the collar up to the furnished room on the second floor. Earl Nelson was on her as soon as the door closed behind her, heavy hands clutching her throat as he shoved her down to the floor. He knelt on her chest as he choked her. nine of Lillian's ribs were broken. She was incapacitated almost immediately.

Her glasses didn't even fall off her head in the struggle. After she was dead, Earl lifted her body onto the bed and raped her. Then he placed her hat neatly beside her on the bed, folded her coat, and put it under her feet, and stole five dollars from her purse but left the pearl necklace around her neck. Then he left. A Mrs. Vandersey, who stayed, stayed in the room directly below, had been home all day and hadn't heard a thing.

The panic that had followed the last landlady murders surged up again, stronger than ever. Shortly after the time of the murder, a trolley bus conductor had given a ride to a fidgety, nervous man who'd traveled only one block before jumping off and running down the street. His description matched the suspect from the previous two killings, a powerfully built man, about 5'8, with tan skin. Less than helpfully, police told everyone to watch out for someone with, quote, the smooth olive complexion of a man of Italian or Serbian descent, which carried the obvious implication that the killer might be an immigrant.

This caused a lot of grief for innocent men and brought authorities no closer to catching Earl Nelson, who was as American as apple pie and Lizzie Borden, and whose family, for what it's worth, was mostly Irish. Two weeks later, the killer the press was now calling the dark strength, Wrangler struck again. Ollie Russell was 53, and she'd worried about crime even before the killings started. Before answering the front door, she always took off her rings, wrapped them in a handkerchief, and hid them behind some books in her sitting room.

But a consistent feature of Earl Nelson's killings was his ability to talk his way inside, to be charming and non-threatening. Mrs. Russell let him in. One of her tenants, Bill Franey, worked nights, and he'd been asleep in. the afternoon when some commotion from the vacant room next door woke him up. He tried to go back to sleep, but the noise kept going. A locked door connected the two rooms, so Bill bent down to peek through the keyhole. On the bed in the next room, he saw a man, trousers pulled down on top of a woman. What had woken Bill up was the headboard banging against the wall. Bill

stepped back, embarrassed. And then a few moments later, went back for a second. look. He watched the man get up from the bed, pull up his trousers, put on his hat, and leave. The woman was still. The shades were drawn, and it was dim in the room, but Bill thought it was his landlady, Ollie Russell. Bill knew that her husband, George, ran a pool hall just a couple blocks away and looked nothing like the man he'd seen in the room. Bill's first thought was, this is none of my business. But when he looked again, the woman on the bed still hadn't moved. And now, Bill thought he saw blood. He hurried over the pool hall and told George Russell

he should come home and investigate the strange noises coming from the vacant room. He didn't tell George what he'd seen through the keyhole. George hunted around for the key, opened up the room and said, My God! Ollie Russell lay dead on the bed, her face horribly bruised, and her dress pushed up. She'd been strangled with a length of cord that had been pulled tight enough to cut open her throat, spraying blood onto the bed. Jesus.

Like the other victims, Ollie had been raped after death. The blows to her face had also most likely come post-mortem. The largest manhunt in Santa Barbara history began, but it was a long way away in the Mojave Desert town of Needles where police picked up the killer on August 11th.

Well, they picked up a 28-year-old drifter and heroin addict named Paul Cameron, who started confessing as soon as he was arrested for vacation. He'd had trouble with about 12 women on the Pacific coast, he'd said, and had strangled to death a number of them. The press and the Santa Barbara DA were quick to declare his guilt, but a lot of people had doubts. Cameron was thin and lanky and scruffy, which didn't match the witness descriptions at all. And he didn't know any more about the crimes than he might have read in a newspaper.

Plenty of people thought Cameron was just a weirdo who falsely confessed, something that's pretty common in high-profile cases. Still, he was charged with Ollie Russell's murder, and right away, on August 16th, the whole case fell apart. Stephen and Mary Nisbet were a couple in their early 50s who owned a small apartment building in Oakland. When Stephen came home from work that day, he called for Mary but got no answer. In the kitchen, sliced vegetables sat on the cutting board, as if Mary had been interrupted in the middle of making dinner. Stephen figured she'd popped out to get a missing ingredient and sat down to read the paper. When there was no sign of Mary after an hour, though, Stephen started to worry.

He asked his tenants if they'd seen her, but no one had. He stuck his head inside their one vacant apartment on the first floor, but didn't see any sign that she'd been in there. He went down to the local grocery to ask if she'd been there, but she hadn't. Stephen, starting to get frantic, hurried home and looked all through the building again. The only place he hadn't searched thoroughly was the empty first-floor apartment. He hurried through it, turning on lights as he went. As soon as he went into the bathroom, the upstairs neighbors heard an awful scream from below. Mary Nisbet lay face down on the bathroom tiles, strangled with a kitchen towel.

Her face was bruised almost black, and broken teeth sat in the blood below her mouth. Her killer had knelt on her back as he strangled her, bashing her face into the floor. She was naked from the waist down and had been raped, again after death. Starting with Clara Newman in February, five women had now been brutally strangled and assaulted in just six months. The Bay Area was in a panic. Whether Earl Nelson felt the heat or just a little wander list, we don't know, but without a word to his wife, he left town and headed north in his beat-up Ford.

And while Earl's on the road, we should take a moment to try and figure out what was going on here. These five crimes are startlingly similar, even by the standards of serial killers who tend to stick to a fairly rigid pattern. All the victims were much older than Earl Nelson, who was still in his 20s. Often, when older women are sexually assaulted,

the perpetrator is young and sexually inexperienced. In fact, the original profilers used to have a sort of rule of thumb. The older the victim, the younger the perpetrator. I'm not sure if they still believe that or if that's held up. But I remember reading that in Mind Hunter, like, years ago. I think I watched some crime show where they still used that as a rule of thumb. The victim was, like, 80-something. So they started looking for, like, a very young perpetrator.

I think it does happen a lot for sure. But that wasn't really the case with Earl. Serial killers usually target victims from whatever group they're sexually attracted to, and Earl genuinely had the hots for older ladies. He'd married one, after all, and was constantly pestering her for sex. And while we always have to be careful about drawing direct lines from A to B, I don't think you have to look too deeply into Earl's life to see the likely genesis of that fixation. Remember, Earl had been raised by his grandmother, Jenny Nelson, a chilly woman whose child-rearing,

at least with Earl, leaned more towards spankings and threats than hugs and praise. To what extent Mrs. Nelson became a conscious focus of little Orrne's. Earl's sexual interest, we'll never know, but we do know he always had a habit of peeking through inappropriate keyholes at home. He had an unusual mind and an early, voracious interest in sex. As horrifying a thought as it is, I don't think it would have taken too many peaks at me, maw, getting out of the shower, to set some wheels in his brain spinning in really unfortunate directions. But rape, of course, is an act of violence, much more than it is about sexual desire. Earl's murders show deep burning anger, and that line is easier to draw back to Earl's grandmother.

Earl never truly felt safe or wanted in her home, and her death was, to him, the ultimate desertion. As to why Earl only raped his victims after they were dead, we can only speculate. Maybe he needed to pretend they were willing participants. Maybe he felt some fundamental shame about what he was doing and didn't want anybody else to see. Earl wasn't the type of killer who enjoyed causing his victim's fear and pain. As brutal as his attacks were, they were about killing as quickly as possible. In some ways, Earl was sensitive about what people thought of him, and the distress of his victims might have actually made him uncomfortable.

Better to just reduce them to objects as quickly as possible. Kind of like Dahmer, actually. And Earl wasn't sneaking in and jumping on these women. He talked his way in. even in the heights of a panic. He managed to convince his victims that he was harmless, harmless enough that they invited him inside their homes to show him a room. This aspect of trickery, fooling people with his mask is such a constant feature of Earl's crimes that is probably best to think of it as a signature aspect. Talking his way in wasn't just something that helped Earl get

what he wanted. It was part of what he wanted. And over the course of about 16 months, he killed a lot of people. Earl Nelson was one of the most prolific serial killers in North American history, and that means we have to speed things up a little bit. But we want to be clear. This doesn't mean that the victims we only mention briefly are any less important than the others. Right. The fact is, given the age of these cases, we often only have the flimsyest outline of many of his victims' lives, if we haven't outlined at all. And most of Earl's murders closely follow the pattern we've seen in the five killings we've already discussed. They're no less important,

but they don't necessarily add to our understanding of the case. Earl's next victim, though, was unusual. Bita Withers was 32 years old, just a few years older than Earl, although she had recently taken out an ad in the paper advertising a room to let. Bita was divorced and lived with her 15-year-old son, Charles. On October 19, 1926,

Charles came home from school, and his mother was nowhere to be found. This wasn't that weird. Bita was a lively, pretty woman who was often out with friends or running errands, so Charles did whatever 15-year-olds did for fun in 1926, probably listening to baseball and thinking real hard about what it'd be like to kiss Clara Bow on the mouth. Bita still wasn't home by dinner time, and Charles called her friend Bob Frenzel, who lived a couple blocks away. Bob called around to beat his friends, but no one had seen her all day. Charles slept alone in the empty house that night, and as soon as he woke up, he went to the police station to report his mother missing. He still went to school, hoping his mom would be there when he got home, but she wasn't. He called Bob Frenzel again, and Bob called in another friend named Cook.

They knew Beda's coat and hat were missing, presumably with her, and thought it'd be useful to figure out what she was wearing so they could give a good description to the authority. authorities. Charles looked through Bita's bedroom closet to see what might be missing, but she kept most of her clothes in a big trunk in the attic, and Frenzel and Cook climbed up there to look. They opened the trunk. On top was a partition tray, and under that, crammed tight was a big mess of clothing. That was unusual. Bita was kind of a neat freak, definitely the type who folded clothes before putting them away. Bob Frenzel took out a few pieces of clothing, then cried out and step back. He'd just revealed a pair of bare female legs.

Dear God, can you freaking imagine? Oh my God. Ugh. Bita Withers was curled up in a fetal position, naked except for a slip that had been pushed up to her armpits. Okay, now hold up your hand if your first thought would be,

well, she obviously killed herself. Are you kidding me? I wish I That was the conclusion, Detective James Takaberry came to after he noticed a bit of inspirational poetry hanging on the wall of Beda's Kitchen. The poem encouraged people to bottle up all their unpleasant emotions, repression being one of the great engines that kept the 1920s society running. God, that's awful. Detective Taka Barry is, I mean, oh my God.

specifically the poem called Then Laugh Encouraged the reader To pack their troubles and cares Into an imaginary box Then sit on the lid and laugh As soon as he read this Detective Takaberry thought

He'd cracked the case Because life is exactly Like an Agatha Christie novel Unbelievable Yeah he really thought he was friggin Poirot in that moment I'm sure I really doubt that Agatha Christie

would do something that elementary. She would not, no. Pun intended. Bita Withers had been so overcome by the power of poetry that she'd gone upstairs and buried herself in her trunk till she suffocated.

Oh my God, because of some cliche shit you'd find it like Hobby Lobby, this great detective decided it was suicide. Unbelievable. To prove that this was possible,

because, of course, you want to prove your theory, not test it. To prove it was possible, TakaBerry got his skinniest constable to squeeze into the trunk, pull clothes over himself, set the tray back in place, and then shake himself around till the lid of the trunk fell down and closed. This accomplished two things, and they both sucked. It convinced TakaBerry his ridiculous theory was right, and it ruined a potential source of physical evidence. Now, if we want to be, to be fair to the Portland PD, TakaBerry was out on his own with this angle. Others were suspicious of Bob Frenzel. Bita's diary revealed they were a little more than friends and that at the start of their affair, he lied to her about being married.

But it didn't take long for all current theories of Bita's death to be proven wrong. The day after Bita's body was found, the body of 59-year-old Virginia Grant, a landlady, was found in the basement of one of her properties, her body stuffed behind the furnace and two diamond rings missing from her fingers. The Portland PD, who apparently would rather do anything other than investigate a murder, initially declared she died of a heart attack. Oh, my God. Jesus Murphy. Two days later, the family of wealthy widow Mabel Fluke asked officers to check on her at the Portland property she was trying to sell. They found her in the attic, strangled with her own silk scarf. The condition of her body suggested she'd been

killed days ago. As with Bita Withers, some detectives immediately assumed she'd killed herself. Guys, oh my God, stop. What do you just hate investigating? Isn't that what detectives want to do? I just can't get over this. Oh my God. So three women killed and their bodies hidden in the same week convinced even the sluggish Portland authorities finally that something was up, although there was still plenty of heated debate about how closely the cases were related to each other. Detective Taka Berry had changed his tune and decided they were looking for what the chief of police described as a methodically working pervert. But there were plenty of others, especially in the coroner's office, rigidly insisting they were dealing with two suicides and a heart attack. None of these bodies

showed signs of sexual assault. If you have confidence in the Portland coroner's office, that is, which I don't know if you should. Earl Nelson was operating at the beginning of what was something of a golden age for American serial killers. The ready availability of automobiles meant they could travel quickly and easily, and there was no kind of quick and rigorous exchange of information between different police departments. Investigators in Portland hadn't gotten any detailed information on the California killings, but they read the papers, and some started to wonder if the dark strangler had come north, and one officer at least had a good idea of who to watch for. This was James Russell, coincidentally, the cousin of George Russell,

whose wife Ollie had been murdered in Santa Barbara in June. George had just sent his cousin a letter with a thorough, if not quite accurate description of the killer. Thirty-five years old, five feet 8 or 10 inches tall, heavy-billed, especially shoulders and chest, and very dark, said to be of Greek nativity, though speaking excellent English. Officer Russell recalled seeing a man, just like that the previous Tuesday in the Selwood neighborhood where Mabel Fluke lived. The Oregonian newspaper published the description as quickly as they could, but Earl Nelson had already left town. He'd come home to San Francisco. Anna Edmonds was 56 years old.

a widow living alone in a big empty house and had recently put a for-sale sign up in a window. On November 8th, her son Raoul found her body in her radio room, her neck bruised and her skirt pushed up. She'd been strangled, then raped after death. He attacked again the next day. An eight-month pregnant woman recorded only as Mrs. H.C. Murray had also recently put up a for-sale sign.

Around 5 p.m., while her husband was still at work, A stranger knocked on the door. He'd seen the sign and was interested in the house. He was polite and well-spoken and wore a blue suit and a brown hat. Mrs. Murray wasn't threatened by him at all, but she'd made it a habit to keep at least six or eight feet away from strangers when she showed them the house. She let him in and showed him around. The prospective buyer was an oversharer.

He said he was going to get married in three days. This will be my third marriage, he said. the first time my wife nagged me to death, the second one I took to dances and would find sitting on the laps of other men. I couldn't stand that. Well, and he, even in his fantasies, he's like a bad husband. Like his made-up story, he's like, yeah, I treat my, I treat my women bad, see? And he apparently knew a lot about building construction. He kept pointing out details on the ceiling. He was trying to get her to look up. and expose her neck.

Ah, so creepy. He started to leave, then suddenly he said he wanted to take another look at the screened-in porch out back. Out there, he suddenly pointed and said, what sort of roof is that on the garage? It came so quick that, for the first time, Mrs. Murray took her eyes off him and turned to look. His big, squeezing hands closed around her neck an instant later. I suspect Earl regretted not sticking to his youth. usual pattern of attacking older ladies. Mrs. Murray was a healthy 28-year-old. She screamed and scratched at his hands with her nails, so he loosened his grip enough for her to break free.

She spun around and clotted his face, then threw herself through the screen door out into the yard. Face and hands bleeding, Earl raced through the house and out the front door. Still yelling, Mrs. Murray ran around the side of the house and yelled at a passing driver. Stop that man. The man slowed down instead. And Mrs. Murray leapt into the running board, pointing and yelling, that man, he attacked me. He's the strangler. As neighbors burst out of their homes, Earl fled, and the whole experience caught up with Mrs. Murray in a rush, and she collapsed. But she survived. And as far as we know, she was the only one of Earl's victims to make it out alive. A massive manhunt failed to track down the dark strangler. The San Francisco Chronicle tried out a new nickname, Jack the Strangler,

But it didn't catch on. A little played out. And from now on, stories about the Strangler would come from far away. Earl had finally left the Bay Area for good, heading north once again. Mrs. Florian monks of Seattle liked to keep her wealth with her when she went out. Even for a trip to the grocery store, she'd wear at least four diamond rings, matching diamond bracelets and earrings, a triple-strand pearl choker, and a diamond sunburst brooch. She even kept a small sack of diamonds.

secretly strapped to her right leg. Wow. I'm guessing this wasn't because she was anticipating running into a sudden need for diamonds. She just didn't want to leave her valuables home when she went out. And she scoffed at warnings that this wasn't exactly the safest behavior. Yeah. She was 48 years old, widowed twice by wealthy men,

and she'd recently taken out ads to try and sell one of her properties in Capitol Hill. On November 24th, Thomas Raymond, the caret of her in a couple of days and was worried. She suffered from her in a couple of days and was worried. She suffered from dizzy spells, and he thought she might fallen down some stairs in the Capitol Hill House, where she sometimes stayed overnight after showing it. Raymond looked through the house, then down in the cellar. As soon as he turned on the light, he could tell something heavy had been dragged across the dirt floor. He followed the tracks and found Florian Monk's body, strangled and shoved tightly behind the coal furnace. Her jewels were missing, and the chief of detectives was convinced Florian's habit of flaunting her wealth

had led to her death. Come and take them, he said to reporters, that's what these women are saying to every cut purse and sneak thief that comes along. Earl Nelson often took jewelry from his victims. In common with many other serial killers, he liked to take little mementos, trophies from his victims. As we'll see soon, he didn't care at all about their monetary value.

It was all about remembering the crime. Five days later in Portland, the body of Landlady Blanche Meyer, was found by police after her son called to report her missing. Her body had been jammed under a bed. She'd been strangled with her aprons so hard that blood had leaked from her ears. She'd been raped after death. With this fourth death in their city,

the Portland police finally got their shit together and took things seriously. They sealed off the scene and did some proper forensics, which revealed three clear fingerprints on the bed's iron headboard, where someone might hold on during sex. These would turn out to be a perfect match for Prince taken from the Bay Area killings. The big break, though, came via two elderly widows, Edna Gaylord and Sophie Yates, landlady and longtime tenant of a Portland boarding house. A week earlier, a polite man, a perfect gentleman, the lady said,

had come to stay with them, a carpenter in Portland for work. He stayed with them over Thanksgiving, and when Edna admitted she couldn't afford to offer them much in the way of a meal, he'd gone out and come back laden with grocery bags. Tomorrow we'll have a real holiday feast, he said. Edna said he looked like a boy unwrapping birthday presents as he unpacked the groceries. The only price for their great Thanksgiving dinner was listening to their guests bang on about the Bible, but that wasn't so bad.

The next day, against their protests, he insisted they take several pieces of expensive-looking jewelry he happened to have. I have no use for it, and you have so little, he said. He left a few days later. a couple days after that edna read in the newspaper a description of the dark strangler which closely matched her recent tenant she called the police and a pair of detectives arrived initially without a whole lot of hope of a breakthrough there'd been no shortage of supposed strangler sightings that led nowhere but as soon as edna and sophie showed them the jewelry their tenant had left they got excited this looked just like and would prove to be the jewelry taken from flor Monks. Soon, a fingerprint found on Florian's pocketbook would match those from Blanche Myers's headboard. With the Seattle and Portland murders definitively linked, another massive manhunt was underway, and yet again it would fail, because Earl Nelson had left the West Coast for good. He stopped in Council Bluffs, Iowa first, where on December 23rd, the body of a Mrs. Burrard

was found, jammed between the furnace and a basement wall. She'd been strengthened, strangled with a shirt ripped from a clothesline. Her face and arms were bruised and clumps of her hair were stuck to the furnace door where she'd been bashed against it. Despite this, the county attorney declared she'd probably killed herself due to her being recently discharged from a mental institution for a nervous disorder. Fortunately, no actual detective shared this opinion, but it would take more deaths for them to realize what they were dealing with. In Kansas City on December 27th, Bonnie Pace was strangled to death and then raped. The next day, Germania Harpen suffered the same fate.

And if we needed anything to prove Earl's total disregard for human life, after killing Germania, he murdered her eight-month-old son, Robert, strangling him with his own diaper. Oh, my God. There was no reason to do it. I'm guessing Earl just wanted to shut the poor kid up. These were not people to him in any meaningful way. On April 27, 1927, Earl killed.

killed and raped Mary McConnell in Philadelphia. On May 30th, he killed Jenny Randolph in Buffalo. On June 1st, he murdered Landlady Fannie Mae in Detroit, then her tenant, Marine Atorthy. On June 4th, in Chicago, he strangled Mary Sietzma with an appliance cord. In a little over a year, Earl Nelson had killed at least 20 people, 19 women and one young boy. Detectives all over the country were looking for him.

he decided to try a different country, and on the morning of June 8th, he crossed the border from Minnesota into Canada. He hitchhiked to Winnipeg. In fact, he'd been hitchhiking since Chicago and was tired, hungry, and down to just a few dollars. He needed a cheap place to stay. At this point, there was probably no one in North America more adept at evaluating boarding houses and landlady than Earl Nelson. He found a large but shabby place on Smith Street run by a starchy lady named Mrs. Hill. My house is quiet, she told him. I don't allow any drinking on the premises, and if you're looking to bring any girls into your room, you'd better go elsewhere. All I want is quiet surroundings, Earl told her. I don't like to be bothered while I'm studying my

Bible. After she'd showed him to his room, Mrs. Hill said again, now mind, no liquor in the room, and no girls. No need to worry, Earl said with a smile, I'm a straightforward and good living man who never wants to do wrong by anyone. Oh, right. The next afternoon, Earl went out to prowl around his new neighborhood. Around the same time, 14-year-old Lola Cowan was finishing up school. She and some buddies hung around the playground to play baseball, and she walked home to do her homework.

She wasn't done after that. Her dad had been off work for weeks with pneumonia, and Lola wanted to help with the family finances. Her older sister made paper flowers from colored paper, and Lola went door to door to sell them. After her homework, she grabbed a few bunches and headed out to work. We don't know exactly where she crossed paths with Earl Nelson, but it wouldn't have been hard to lure her to his room in the boarding house.

Maybe he'd said he'd buy her flowers, but had to get the money from his room first. None of the other tenants saw him and the girl come in, and no one heard anything as he strangled her, then raped her and hid her body under his bed. It was his most impulsive murder, In fact, it was reckless and feels a lot like when Ted Bundy started to go really off the rails toward the end. A lot like, as a matter of fact, because one of the victims that week was a young girl, like much younger than he ever went for.

So it was like he was just spiraling. Some sources say this was the only victim that Earl mutilated after death in a manner, quote, reminiscent of Jack the Ripper. Harold Schechter, whose book Beastiel was our primary source for this case, doesn't mention this and says later that many modern reports get details of the case wrong, most likely because they treat contemporary news stories as gospel truth. What probably happened is that some cop said Earl reminded him of Jack the Ripper, and through a quick game of telephone, this turned into a reporter printing that this victim had been mutilated. I mean, it was a hundred years ago. No one who was there is still alive, so who knows. But that would be a radical change in criminal psychology. That's an entirely different kind of killer.

Earl had never been a cutter, had never shown any interest in the insides of people. His victims were just dolls to him. The inside of a doll doesn't matter. Earl left early the next morning. When Mrs. Hill came in to do her housekeeping, she was impressed by how neatly he'd made the bed. He'd even smoothed out the coverlet to make sure it reached all the way down to the floor. By this time, Earl was a few miles away, on the other side of the Red River. A neighbor spotted him on the porch of William and Emily Patterson,

a young Irish immigrant couple who'd just moved into the neighborhood with their two young boys. The neighbor didn't know William Patterson well. He left early for work every morning, so he assumed the man fiddling with the front doorlock was him. An hour or so later, the same man left the Patterson house, but in a different suit and with $60 in his pockets. Earl didn't keep his new clothes for long. The Patterson's weren't wealthy, and the suit he'd stolen was threadbare at best. He went to his second-hand clothes store and bought a gray suit, a beige cap, and new shoes for $30, then asked where he could get a shave. The clothier directed him across the street to central billiards where a row of barber chairs sat against the far

wall past all the pool tables. Earl got a shave and a haircut and managed to make himself memorable to the barber, Nick Tabor. When Nick asked what brought Earl North, Earl North, Earl said he'd been going through North Dakota and just decided to take a look at Canada. Not much to see, though, he said. There's as much to see here as in the States, Nick said. Maybe, Earl said, smirking. You know, me personally, I wouldn't piss off somebody with a razor to my throat, but nobody ever accused Earl Nelson of making good decisions. Nick, anyway, took note of fresh scratches on his customer's scalp and filed the information away. Flesh with cash and looking spiffy, Earl's fancy was caught by a champagne fedora in a shop window. He bought it and gave away the cap he'd just bought to a stranger

on a trolley to Heddingley, just outside of Winnipeg. He started hitchhiking again and looking respectable now didn't have to wait long for a ride to Portage La Prairie, 40 miles. away. Around 6.30 p.m., William Patterson came home from work to an empty house. He quickly found his boys playing with friends at a neighbor's house, but there was no sign of Emily. He figured she'd been out with a friend and got held up by something or other, but by the time it was dark, he was really starting to panic. He went to a neighbor's house to use their phone to call Emily's friends. No one had seen her all day. He went home and paced up and down the hallway. There There was a nightlight in the room his son shared, and as he glanced in, William noticed something.

He kept a small, locked suitcase in the corner of this room, where he kept his savings, $60 and $10 bills. The latch, he saw, had been twisted and sprung. He hurried over and opened the case. There was no sign of the money, and in its place, set a claw hammer. Oh, my God. William was alarmed and confused. He was very religious. He knelt by his son James's bed and prayed.

When he stood, his knee lifted the coverlet and he saw what looked like the sleeve of a woolen sweater lying under the bed. He reached under, and his fingers touched cold, clammy skin. William looked under the bed where his son slept, then raced to his neighbor and called the police. Then he fainted. Oh, this is hot. 23-year-old Emily Patterson lay on her back beneath her son's bed with an ugly bruise her forehead and blood on her face from blows to her nose and mouth. Her skirt had been pushed up above her waist, and her stockings were down below her knees. She'd been struck with a blunt

object, probably the claw hammer, and strangled to death and raped. Jesus. A cheap suit belonging to William Patterson was missing and a pile of shabby discarded clothes was found in the corner of the bedroom. In a pocket, detectives found several scraps of paper torn from the Winnipeg Tribune, all from the rooms to let section. The Winnipeg police were on the ball. Not long ago, they'd received a circular from the Buffalo PD describing the continent spanning crimes of the dark strangler. And right away, they thought the killer had come north.

Emily Patterson hadn't been a landlady. There's a good chance Earl had broken in, looking only for money and a change of clothes, and had just taken advantage of finding her there. But landlady's were clearly his preferred target. So officers were sent to visit every boarding house in the city to see if there were any suspicious-looking characters, especially anyone who'd just checked out. Mrs. Hill answered no to both questions.

Her new lodger was polite, devout young man, and as far as she knew, he was still a resident. She hadn't set eyes on him for the past couple of days, but he hadn't checked out. She was sure about that. He still owed her $2. The next day, Sunday, she was less certain. There was still no sign of her new lodger. She looked in his room, and it clearly hadn't been slept in since she'd last seen it on Friday morning. And there was a smell.

She'd noticed that the polite, devout young man wasn't a big fan of soap, so she opened the window when left the door open to try and clear out the funk. Mrs. Hill spoke to her husband, and he said he'd stop off at the police station on his way to the evening service at church. As Mr. Hill was talking to the cops, another tenant, a Danish guy named Burhart Morton, was headed downstairs from the second-floor bathroom. Partway down, with his head at the same height as the floor on the second-floor landing, he happened to glance in through the open door of the new tenant's room, just as sunlight through the window shone on something under the bed.

He squinted and gasped and raced downstairs to Mrs. Hill. His English, never strong, abandoned him in his panic, and he grabbed her elbow and all but dragged her upstairs. Under there, he said. Filled with dread, Mrs. Hill crouched and looked under the bed. She saw the thin, naked body of a young girl on her side, facing the wall. Mrs. Hill screamed. Oh, God, she's dead. Quick, the police.

A citywide alert went out. The authorities now in no doubt that the notorious American strangler was in town. Five hundred people gathered at the Smith Street boarding house, a crowd that threatened to turn into a mob. If Earl Nelson had been caught, they might have killed. killed him right then and there. A reporter for the Winnipeg Tribune moved through the crowd and heard a woman refer to the killer by a name that he'd use in his story in the next day's paper. It would ultimately replace the dark strangler as Earl Nelson's most well-used

nickname, the gorilla man. Panic gripped Winnipeg, but Earl Nelson was long gone, 500 miles away in Regina Saskatchewan. But he made a quick getaway when he read Monday's newspaper. His most recent crimes, plus a very accurate physical description of himself and what he was wearing, was on the front page. He'd been in Canada less than a week, and it was already too hot for him. Earl traveled by the power of his thumb again, hitching south and east to the tiny town of Boisevan, Manitoba, in the middle of a whole lot of that flat prairie nothing, and barely 15 miles north of the U.S. border. Authorities quickly tracked Earl to Regina, but lost his scent there, although they did find the second-hand store where Earl had again changed his clothes

into a workman's khaki shirt and bib overalls. Officers armed with revolvers and shotguns swarmed the roads of southern Saskatchewan in Manitoba, while locals armed themselves with hunting rifles and axe handles. There was a $1,500 reward for the killer's capture. Descriptions of Earl and his new clothing were broadcast on the radio, which reached the ear of one of the guys who'd given him. given him a ride towards the border and narrowed the focus of the search. Earl's thumb took him to the even smaller and now completely vanished town of Wacopa,

just five miles from the border. There were fewer than ten houses in Wacopa, and any stranger walking into the general store is going to get attention. And Leslie Morgan, the store's owner, had been listening to the radio all morning. He thought his customer was the gorilla man the second he walked in. When Earl left with his purchases, a brick of cheese, two coax and cigarettes, Leslie called the provincial police ten miles away in Killarney. Not long after, Constable Wilton Gray spotted the suspect beside a muddy ravine like he was trying to work out the best way to cross it. Gray snuck up, then jumped out with his revolver ready. Earl stuck his hands up in the air and said, honest to God, sir, I'm not trying to cross the line.

Gray asked him his name. Virgil Wilson, Earl said. When asked what he was doing in the area, Earl said he was working on the ranch of someone called George Harrison. Can't really overstate how empty this corner of Canada was. Gray knew all the local farmers, and none of them was called George Harrison. Gray arrested him and started back on the long and winding road to the Killarney jail. On the ride, Earl was so friendly and funny that Gray started to have real doubts that he could be the killer. But he put Earl in the jail cell below the town hall.

He told the town constable William Dunn to keep an eye on Earl, then went to the telegraph office to report his capture of the continent's most wanted criminal, feeling pretty full of himself. He went to his office afterwards to clean himself up a little bit in case anybody wanted to take his picture. It's so cute. Hey, remember in part one where Earl escaped from Napa State Mental Hospital so often that the other inmates started calling him Houdini? Well, 20 minutes after being told to keep an eye on the prisoner,

town constable Dunn burst into Gray's office and told him the gorilla man was gone. See, Dunn had thought keeping an eye on Earl meant making sure he didn't try to kill himself. Surely, there was no way he could escape the locked cell. So when Dunn wanted a cigarette and realized he needed matches, he just went upstairs to find some. Yeah, I feel like an important part of keeping an eye on, like a dangerous prisoner, is staying in the same room with him, at least on the same floor of the building.

Yeah. Whoopsy. The Killarney Jail was, if anything, easier to get out of than Napa State. When they'd shoved him toward the cell, Earl had noticed a little wooden shelf on the wall beside it. As soon as the old man went looking for his matches, Earl jumped up and shoved a hand through the bars, feeling blindly for whatever might be on there. It was exactly what he needed. An old, rusty nail file.

Come on. No need to smuggle files inside cakes in the Killarney jail. They'll just leave one for you right outside the door. So considerate. Like a late 90s video game. Probably like sparkled. It absolutely is, right? Yeah.

Earl picked both locks inside of two minutes. Gray had taken his shoes and his belt, so he ran barefoot through the basement in the furnace room to the back door, which wasn't locked. It was just before 11.15 p.m. and a cold rain had started falling as he ran across the wet grass into darkness. You know, this is even more Bundy-like because, you know, Bundy escaped from jail twice, two different jails in a really similar way, actually, in one case anyway. Yeah. Do you think they'd be homies or do you think they'd get into catfights? They'd probably get in a cat fight.

Yeah, probably. Yeah. Bundy was a little bit of a mean girl, I think. Definitely. Total bitch. Soon, a mob of armed locals were scouring the woods in barns by lantern and flashlight. Then Gray made a tough phone call to Commissioner Martin at provincial police headquarters in Winnipeg. Martin decided to lead a posse of heavily armed officers down to Killarney, but with the rain picking up, he worried cars would get stuck on the dirt roads. He requisitioned a special train instead, and they set off, with emergency signals ahead of

them so other trains made way. Earl was thinking about trains too. He knew there was a railway station in Killarney and he knew the border was close. If he just hid out until a southbound freight train came by, he could jump onto it and across the border. He heard the town hall bell behind him and he saw the beams of approaching flashlight so he clambered up a big tree and waited until the searchers had gone right past him. Then he snuck back toward the station and into a vacant barn. In here, he found a pile of discarded clothes, including some old ice skates and a baggy cardigan. He tore off the blades and put on the boots of the skates. He snuck into the stall and stayed awake most of the night, but eventually dozed off.

Around eight, he was woken by the sound he had hoped for, a train whistle. That image to me of everybody with their lanterns and flashlights and weapons searching for him in the dark is so chilling. Like, imagine how terrifying that would be to be one of those searchers and how brave you'd have to be to do that. Because you know this man is a prolific murderer and a big dude, too. And just the thought of those swinging lanterns that, oh, it's so really like gives me the chilies. Oh, yeah. Among his many, many flaws, Earl had an overpowering need for an early morning smoke. And with his escape from jail and avoidance of his hunters, he was feeling bulletproof.

At 10 past 8, Alfred Wood was mowing a neighbor's lawn when Earl leaned over the picket fence. Can I bum a cigarette? Earl said. Alfred walked across and handed over his tobacco pouch and rolling papers and took a close look at this stranger, who looked exactly like he'd just slept in a barn. His hair a mess and hay stuck to his ragged cardigan. He looked to be wearing ice gates with the blades taken off. You've been out searching for that fellow who broke out of jail? Alfred asked, already thinking that that fellow was standing right there in front of him.

Earl nodded. Yeah, been up all night, tore my clothes in the bushes. Must be a damn smart man to escape the way he did. You little asshole. Had to get that little dig in. I'm so smart. Alfred lit the guy's cigarette, then watched him walk off toward the railroad tracks. He looked around and saw two teenagers, Kevin and Brian Best,

walking to their dad's car with school books in their hands. He hurried over and told them to drive downtown and tell the police the gorilla man was here by the station. The boys raced downtown and found Constable W.A. Renton, who was waiting for the police garage to fix his car. Brian Best jumped out and hurriedly told him what Mr. Wood suspected. Renton jumped into their Chevy and told Kevin to drive back the way he'd come. We have to hurry, Kevin said. We have to be at school by nine for exams. A quarter mile down the road, Renton spotted Earl stepping out of a thicket and heading for the railroad tracks. He shouted at Kevin to stop and jumped out of the car, sprinting towards Earl.

Seeing him coming, Earl climbed the railway fence and got onto the tracks, but before he could go any further, Renton was at the fence with his gun out and yelled at him to stop. Earl stopped, hands up. Renton climbed over the fence and pointed his gun at Earl. who are you he said a farmer earl said where do you farm renton said earle looked around and pointed to a big wooden building close to the railroad tracks to a kid from san francisco it probably looked like a barn but it was actually the town slaughterhouse let's go renton said and walked earl at gunpoint toward the station a big mob of locals had gathered many of whom had been out all night searching for earl there was an ugly air about them and renton Renton worried his prisoner might be killed. A patrol car sped in as the crowd closed and Renton bundled Earl in. They drove right up onto the platform as a train pulled into the station,

and as soon as it stopped, Renton pulled Earl out of the car and into one of the train coaches. The train Earl had been hoping to jump the border on turned out to be the one Commissioner Martin had requisitioned to take his posse down to Killarney, and Earl stared in astonishment as he was bundled into a train car full of heavily armed. cops. It's like, wamp, wamp. The cops were similarly surprised. They'd rode the rails all night and didn't even have to leave the train to have their prey delivered. Commissioner Martin put the cuffs on Earl's wrists. Maybe 20 seconds later, he'd slipped free of them and handed them back to Martin. These aren't much good, he said, smirking, you little asshole. Also dumb, because if you want

to escape again, probably not the greatest idea to demonstrate right in front of them that you can get out of handcuffs, right? Like his ego, it's always the fatal flow on these guys. Martin ordered two officers to hold Earl down in his seat, while a third fixed heavy manacles to his wrists and ankles. Houdini would not be making any more escapes. Back in Winnipeg, at the Vaughn Street Jail, he was kept in their most secure cell, the one usually reserved for prisoners condemned to death. He was kept under constant supervision by armed guards who knew what keep an eye on him actually meant. When Earl went to trial for the murders of Lola Callan and Emily Patterson, his wife Mary and Aunt Lillian came to support him. Mary was 66 years old

by now and Lillian 37. When reporters tracked them down, they inevitably confused which one was their wife and which one was the aunt. By support him, I mean, try to convince the jury Earl was insane so he wouldn't be put to death. I will freely admit to not being an expert on Canadian criminal law in the 20s. I know it's a terrible character flaw and I hope you can forgive me, but as far as I know, it follows the same principles as U.S. and British law as far as insanity goes. Right. If Earl was able to control his actions and he was aware that what he was doing was wrong, then he was culpable. And both of those things were definitely true. He was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging scheduled for January 13th,

1928. A few days before that date, a final plea for clemency was denied. On January 11th, a gray-haired, neat little man and gold-rimmed spectacles checked into a hotel room in downtown Winnipeg. He used a false name when he traveled for work. But this was Arthur Ellis, the executioner for the Dominion of Canada. Wow. The next day, he visited the jail to check on the gallows and briefly visit Earl. This was, in small part, a professional courtesy. and mainly to get a first-hand look at Earl's build and wait. The Winnipeg Free Press interviewed Ellis afterwards. Regarding Nelson's crimes as the most horrible he's ever known,

the hangman expressed keener anticipation at carrying out this execution than any other in history. Wow, that's kind of messed up. I mean, obviously Earl deserves it like a hundred times over, but is the guy who pulls the switch really supposed to be all, he-he-he-he, I can't wait. about it. Like, that's just, his whole description kind of creeps me out. Little, the little gray

man in the spectacles, a little neat suit, and he's just delighted that he gets to pull the Yeah, I don't know if the, I don't, the description is so kind of, like, very like 1920 speak, so I don't know if he's excited or if he's like, yeah, if anyone deserves it, this,

it's this guy, you know? So it could be both. But little gray men, man. Little gray men. Mm-hmm. And if you'll remember, this is where we started in the story. In the pre-dawn light of Friday the 13th, Earl Leonard Nelson swung from the gallows. Eleven minutes later, he was pronounced dead.

His official number of victims is 22 over a 16-month span, but he has considered a strong suspect in at least seven more killings, mostly between his second release from Napa State and his first recorded victim, Clara Newman. And that's probably not the full count. maybe not even close. Even serial killers who supposedly confessed to their crimes often either over or understate the number of victims. Shockingly, these are not people you can trust.

And Earl just kept quiet, proclaiming his innocence right up until the last words left his mouth. Earl didn't change much between his teenage years and adulthood. And as we mentioned last week, there's every chance he started his murders among the vulnerable sex workers in San Francisco. Crimes that probably wouldn't even be investigated. And after Clara Newman, he was killing every two or three weeks,

except for four months between his last murder in Missouri and his first on the East Coast. It would be bizarre for a serial killer to take a pause like that in the middle of intense activity like that. We know he wasn't incarcerated. Most likely, there were murders that were never linked to him. As we've seen, plenty of authorities were willing to write off suspicious deaths to suicides. So as much as we've learned about killers like him and what

drives them to do what they do, the dark stranglers' real impact will probably always be a mystery. So that was a wild one, right campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And if you haven't booked your spot yet on the Crime Wave True Crime Cruise From November 3rd through November 7th, we're going to the Bahamas. Get on it, y'all. Join Katie and me, plus last podcast on the left, scared to death and sinisterhood for a rock and good time at sea.

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