True Crime Campfire - Witches' Brew: The Philadelphia Poison Ring

Episode Date: August 13, 2021

In 1930s Philadelphia, men all over town were dying—some in strange accidents, and some of a swift, excruciating illness. Their widows were devastated, of course—but it being the Great Depression and all, they were somewhat comforted by the substantial payouts they received from their late husbands’ life insurance plans. In medical examiners’ offices across the city, one death certificate after another was stamped “Natural Death” or “Accident.” One family doctor after another signed off: So sad, but these things happen. Nothing suspicious here. And in the cellar of one tailor shop, candles and skulls lined the walls. Incantations whispered through the air as little glass vials were carefully filled with deadly poison. The City of Brotherly Love? Not today. Sources:Poison Widows by George CooperRachel Snyder: https://vtuhr.org/articles/10.21061/vtuhr.v5i1.43/print/David Lohr, True TV, "Philadelphia's Poison Ring"Jim Goad, Thought Catalog: https://thoughtcatalog.com/jim-goad/2019/12/witchs-brew-how-the-philadelphia-poison-ring-exploited-unhappy-wives-and-killed-100-people/https://murderpedia.org/male.B/b/bolbermorris1.htmInvestigation Discovery's "Most Evil," Episode "Gangs"Investigation Discovery's "Deadly Women," Episode "Brutal Brides"Follow 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/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]: https://shop.spreadshirt.com/true-crime-campfire/Become 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 1930s, Philadelphia, men all over town were dying. Some in strange accidents and some of a swift excruciating illness. Their widows were devastated, of course, but, it being the Great Depression, they were somewhat comforted by the substantial payouts they received from their late husband's life insurance plans. In medical examiner's offices across the city, one death certificate after another was stamped, natural death or accident.

One family doctor after another signed off. So sad, but these things happen. Nothing suspicious here. And in the cellar of one tailor-shop, candle. and skulls lined the walls. Incantations whispered through the air as little glass vials were carefully filled with deadly poison.

The city of brotherly love? Not today. This is Witches Brew, the Philadelphia Poisoners Ring. So, campers, for this one, we're in the city of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia, a name which any actual resident of Philly will tell you is probably chosen ironically. October 27, 1938, in a place with the unlikely name, the National Stomack Hospital. A 38-year-old Italian-American construction worker named Ferdinando Alfonzi had just expired. Technically, not an especially unusual thing to happen at a hospital, but the circumstances here were anything but usual.

The doctors and nurses' antennae were twitching at this one, and when the coroner filled out the death certificate, he scrawled inquest pending on it in capital letters. In short, Alfonzi's death was suspicious as all hell. Everything about it screamed heavy metal poisoning, and the investigation was about to rip the lid off one of the biggest, weirdest, most chilling criminal cases in American history, a murder case with anywhere from 22 to 100 victims and a list of villains as long as your arm. So, where'd all this start? Well, it started with a pair of cousins, the Petrillo's, which kind of makes me want to start the story and character as Sophia from the Golden Girls, because remember her last name was Petrillo, too?

Picture it, Sicily, 1949. The Petrillo cousins, Herman and Paul, immigrated to Philadelphia from Italy in 1910, right around the time of the First World War. A lot of people did, and a lot of them were Italian, and together they created a vibrant, close-knit community in Philadelphia. Herman and Paul were both dynamic guys, super snazzy dressers, charismatic, easy on the eyes. Both of these dudes could charm the moon down from the sky if they wanted to. Everybody loved the Petrillo's.

So, unsurprisingly, it didn't take long for Paul to establish himself as a success in Philly. He was a clothes horse, and he had a talent for tailoring. So he opened a high-end tailor shop, catering to his fellow snappy dressers who had the extra scratch to spend on looking extra fabulous. Before long, he was a respected businessman, a pillar of the Italian community. As for Herman, well, he was, I shit you not, this is how all the sources put it, a spaghetti salesman. Now, I don't know what that is exactly, like was he selling cooked spaghetti, uncooked spaghetti, was there sauce, was there no sauce, was he running a restaurant? I honestly don't know, but I think spaghetti salesman is my new favorite job to put on internet surveys when I'm

asked what I do for a living. So apparently, he did okay sling in the spigette, but not nearly as well as he would like to. So you're saying Herman got lost in the sauce? Yep. And unlike his legit straight and narrow cousin, Paul, Herman wasn't above getting himself into some crime. After all, he loved the good life just as much as Paul did, and he was every bit as sharp a dresser. Had to find some way to afford it all. So Herman, bless his heart, started. a dabbling and insurance fraud. Basically, he'd set buildings on fire and collect the insurance payouts. He also got involved in a counterfeiting ring.

Apparently, the early 1900s were a big moment for criminal rings in Philly. He just couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting some kind of ring of near-dwells. So, anywho, while Paul measured people's in seams, Herman got more and more deeply involved in a whole bunch of shady shit. Apparently, he had a natural talent for counterfeiting. Like, you could barely tell one of his bills from the real thing. And then the Great Depression hit. Oi.

Not a happy time, as you can tell by the name. Times were tough for almost everybody, especially in Philly, because the unemployment rate there was 25%, which was 10% higher than the national average. Ouch. So it got ugly. Small businesses dropped like flies. And Paul Petrillo's tailor shop was, unfortunately, no exception. People just couldn't afford to buy fancy clothes anymore, so he started to go under, fast. And then one day he was sitting around with cousin Herman, chatting about the smoking wreckage that his finances had become, and Herman, always eager to help out a relative in trouble, asked him, so, uh, bro, have you considered crime?

Finances got you down? Try crime. Paul hadn't tried crime before, but when you're staring down the barrel of a financial, ruin, you'd be surprised what you'll consider. So he was like, crime, tell me more. According to criminal psychologist, Dr. Michael Stone, who created what he calls the scale of evil to categorize different types

of violent crime, gangsters tend to be motivated by a nasty little mix of narcissism and greed. They think they're entitled to take whatever they want, and what they want is everything. And because of the narcissism, they're a lot less

likely to be hampered by silly little trivialities like morality and ethics. So under cousin Herman's guidance, Paul started selling life insurance policies. That wasn't a bad gig during the Depression. I mean, people were losing their jobs left and right. It took a toll on their health. And Paul managed to hook up with an insurance company that did not require a medical exam to buy a policy. So our boy would sell some of his policies to older men who, you know, maybe didn't look so good. Maybe they were diabetics or alcoholics in the early stages of liver failure. And then, without his client's knowledge or consent, he'd list himself as the beneficiary of the policy. He'd lie and say he was a relative. So these poor people were

diligently paying their premiums every month, thinking they'd be covered if something happened to the family breadwinner. But when the guy would die, Paul, would be the only one who collected. Of course, the problem with this little scheme was that somebody had to die for Paul to get a payout. That was a big gamble. I mean, sometimes they did, and sometimes they didn't. I'm so confused about this. Like, he managed to get away with this multiple times.

Didn't the families complain? Like, where's our money? Hey, why is this asshole getting our life insurance payout? He's not our dad's brother. Like, I just, I don't get it. And unfortunately, I couldn't really find a straight answer in any of the sources that I saw. I mean, maybe he just got lucky and managed to get families who were too intimidated or uneducated to pursue charges. I think that's actually pretty likely.

But I don't know for sure. It's just bizarre. It really is. And I have maybe kind of a theory on it. It's, you know, it probably doesn't hold much water, but it's not a colander. I think maybe he told them the policy was worth less than it actually. actually was. So maybe he just was like, oh, it was a $100 policy and it was actually like a $500 policy. That could be for sure. Because he, I mean, as we're going to see later, he and his

cousin had a knack for choosing kind of naive victims for the things that they did. So, yeah. And after a while, Paul and his accomplice cousin, Herman, realized it was a pretty inefficient way to make money too. They needed to cut out the element of chance. Make sure they'd get their payout. Hmm How do we think We do that, I wonder Murder? Murder?

Murder. So one of the quirky little things about our boy Paul is that he was really really, really into magic. He was into witchcraft and potions and spells and all that kind of stuff. I mean, we were barely out of the Victorian age at that point when that stuff was all the rage,

so this really isn't a surprise. you know, it's possible people were still eating mummies at that point. What day, gross. Paul was into it big time. He even took witchcraft lessons for years from a woman who called herself a Cirrus. Once a week, 50 cents a pop. Not small change in Depression-era-Philly, so this was not a casual interest for Paul. Yeah, in the Italian-American community, they called it La Fattura, which meant something

like fixing. Folk magic wrapped up with Catholicism. A lot of people believed in it, and Paul wanted to build a reputation as a practitioner and set up a side hustle selling his services. And in 1931, at a meeting of so-called faith healers, Paul Petrillo

met a Russian immigrant named Morris Bolber. Also known as Louis the rabbi, despite the fact that he was neither a rabbi nor a Louis. Wrap your head around that one. I cannot. Bulber had a fascination with magic and mysticism since he first discovered the Kabbalah at age 12.

He'd actually spent five years living with a quote-unquote sorceress in China, learning how to make potions and communicate with spirits to heal various medical ailments. He'd come to the States around the same time that Paul had, got married, had kids, got a job as a teacher, then switched to selling groceries for a while. Like Paul, Bulber eventually became a respected member of the community, the successful businessman. But then, of course, in came the stupid, flippity, flapping depression. And now, the grocery store wasn't bringing in enough to support the family anymore. So he started branching out, prepping Jewish boys for their bar mitzvahs, which is why they called him rabbi, even though he wasn't one,

and selling himself around town as a faith healer, and sometimes a, quote, witch doctor. In fact, he went by Dr. Bulber, even though it doesn't seem like the guy had any actual medical qualifications or a medical degree. Like Dr. Phil. Exactly like Dr. Phil. In fact, Bulber used to tell people he was sort of a psychiatrist. Like, that was how he put it. Just like Dr. Bill. I'm kind of a psychologist.

I'm not really a therapist, but I play one on TV. I'm kind of a therapist. Don't worry about it. I was at one point, sort of a therapist. Someone told me a problem one time. On an elevator. I think I helped him. Anyway, you can see why.

he and Paul Petrilla would hit it off, right? I mean, their life stories are so parallel, it's crazy. And when they met that night at the magical healer meeting, or whatever it was, they hit it off big. Began quite the bromance. Paul thought Bulber was the bees' knees, and Bulber agreed, by the way. Dude had an ego on him. According to writer Jim Goad, in addition to bragging about his magical healing abilities, Morris liked to tell people he was a, quote, Master of the Black Arts. Nerd alert So now Paul and Herman had access to a whole new world of knowledge about magic And do we think they're going to use it for good?

Yeah, my money's on no So as you can imagine, running a tailor shop Paul Petrillo came into contact with quite a few ladies And those ladies would sometimes talk as they browsed around the shop About what a bunch of drunken, useless assholes their husbands were And as Paul listened to their complaints, an idea started to take shape in his head. Now, times being what they were, a lot of these women were kind of naive. They hadn't been around the block enough to know when they were being worked.

On top of that, Paul and Cousin Herman knew that these women were very superstitious and every bit as enchanted by the idea of magic as Paul was. And in this, they saw a golden opportunity. And with Morris Bulber's help and the help of Bulber's secretary, a pretty young thing named Rose Carina, they started selling love potions out of the tailor shop. The sales pitch went like this, at least in the early stages of the game. If your hubs wasn't treating you right, just slip a little of this in his morning coffee. If he's fixable, it'll make him fall back in love with you and everything will be great.

But if he's a lost cause, it'll kill him. And just in case we end up with the second option, why don't we go ahead and take out little old life insurance policy on the old boy? And then if the worst happens, aw, a tear, we'll split the proceeds. Sound good? Well, I mean, who could argue with that? So these ladies would take the potion,

aka arsenic. Their husbands would die horrible deaths over the course of the next week or so and ba-a-bing-bada-boom, money. Now, as you can imagine, before long, words started to get around about this love potion, and more and more women started coming around

to the tailor shop, and not to buy clothes, to buy arsenic. The little gang was making bank. A little vial of the potion cost about 300 bucks, which is equivalent to over five grand in today's money. And I mean, it's not like people were rolling in disposable income at this time. Just disposable husbands.

Oh, snap. So obviously, these ladies were miserable in their marriages. Sometimes the women would be a little bit queasy about the idea of killing their husbands, and then it was time for the charm offensive. Paul and or Herman would work a little love magic of their own, no potions required, by which I mean they'd seduce the woman and then convince them to go through with the murder. Both of these guys were master manipulators, and they talked quite a few reluctant housewives into becoming poisoners. And Morris Bulber helped out too, by making sure they really laid the magical atmosphere on with a trowel.

One witness that one of the trials later on would testify about being led into the basement of the tailor shop into a room lined with candles and skulls. Maximum woo-woo effect for maximum magical authenticity. One of the women who took advantage of the Petrillo's patented love potion number nine was Maria Favato. Maria was 39 years old, and when she first met the Petrillo's, she was married to a guy named Charles. She'd been with him for about 10 years, and she was miserable. Charles was an abusive alcoholic, treated Maria like garbage. And after a while, she decided she didn't want to take it anymore.

Part of the equation may have been her new tenant, a younger man named Raphael. Ooh, hello, Raphael. Raphael was a sweet guy, and when he'd see Charles treat Maria badly, he'd react as any kind person would react. He'd be horrified. He'd start telling Maria, you know, you don't have to put up with this. Apparently, Raphael was a man ahead of his time. Yeah, Raphael was woke.

Bless him. Raphael, early feminist. Hashtag woke. I don't know if Maria was into Raphael and suddenly just wanted Charles out of the way. Or if being treated with basic respect just made her realize she was sick of her husband's shit. But whatever the impetus behind it, the summer of 1935, Maria went to the petrillos and she said she wanted some of that sweet, sweet potion. The next weekend with Raphael's help, by the way, because it's... Apparently, he was in on this plan, too.

She made Charles a special breakfast. Coffee, a bottle of wine, roasted chicken, fresh bread, and fruit. It's like I know it's all poison, but I still want it because it all sounds delicious. Absolutely. But about 10 agonizing days later, Charles was no longer a problem for Maria. And she collected a tidy sum of about $500, which back then was a lot of scratch. after that Maria became one of the gang's best customers killed her stepson, a couple other relatives

and after a while Paul and Herman recruited her to help them bring in new customers Yeah it was great for them because not only was she clearly a Consciousless asshole but Maria also had a reputation in the neighborhood as a witch So she fit right into their love potion racket just like a hand into a glove Maria liked to add little extra pizzazz to the whole thing incantations, for example, really make it feel like magic was happening. She'd sidle up to friends of hers who she knew were unhappy with their husbands and be like,

Hey, so, um, how about you get him to sign this life insurance paperwork and then put this in his coffee? The gang excelled at choosing just the right victims. Women whose husbands were illiterate or naive wouldn't know what they were signing and wouldn't ask to any questions. Maria and Morris Bolber's assistant Rose Carina eventually started their own little enterprise within the ring what amounted to a matchmaking service. The matrimonial service, as they called it, paired women with eligible men. Oh, that sounds nice. Yeah, not so much. They weren't matching them up for love.

They were matching them up for murder. They would pair women with eligible bachelors and what made a guy eligible was being gullible enough. To put a ring on it fast, then sign whatever life insurance documents their blushing new bride handed them. And drink whatever she gave him, even if it had a sort of funny taste. Exactly. Rose Carina, by the way, was her own best customer. She met married and murdered four husbands, possibly five, according to some sources, during her years in the poison ring. And recruited, God knows how many other poor bastards to get murdered by other women.

So, as you can probably tell, there was a... mix of clientele. Some of these women were just really naive and kind of got manipulated into it and didn't really understand what they were getting themselves into. They really bought into the potion thing. Others, like Rose and Maria, knew exactly what they were doing. And we need to stop for a second and acknowledge something. Arsenic is a brutal weapon. Poison kind of has this reputation as sort of a soft method of murder because you can be kind of removed from the action. Like you don't have to stab somebody and get your hands all bloody, you don't have to put your hands around their throats and choke the life out of them. But make no mistake, to poison somebody

with arsenic, you have to be willing to watch them suffer horribly as the poison attacks their organs at the cellular level, and it is usually not quick. These people sat by and watched husbands and other relatives get sicker and sicker, horrible pain, hallucinations, violent vomiting and diarrhea and convulsions for days. They knew exactly what it was, and they knew they could stop it, and they didn't do that. These victims died horrendous deaths, and they went undetected because, you know, it was the depression, and people were always dying of stomach ailments. For God's sake, Philly had a medical facility called the stomach hospital. People's tummies clearly were upset.

So as the enterprise grew, more and more people got brought in. Doctors to sign off on cause of death, medical examiners to make sure the autopsy reports showed only what they were supposed to. Pharmacists and chemists to supply the poisons. Insurance agents to draw up the policies and make sure they paid out. Before it all fell apart, the poison ring had dozens of members, some estimate as many as 75, all getting a cut of the action to buy their cooperation and silence. It wasn't all about poison, by the way,

and not all the victims were hapless husbands. The ring also talked some of their victims into buying policies for themselves and then dispatched them by other methods. drownings and hit and runs were two favorites. They liked those methods because they looked like accidents, which meant they could take advantage of the double indemnity clause. The policies would pay out double the amount for an accidental death. They wouldn't do that for natural deaths,

which is what the poisonings looked like. I feel like maybe we should stop allowing double indemnity to be a thing, just a drive-by hot take from me. Yeah, I think that's probably a good idea. I don't even understand why. Anyway, it doesn't make sense to me. So, Herman's favorite murder scenario was to have one of his little minions take the poor victim on a fishing trip, where he'd be bludgeoned and pushed into the water to drown.

Herman called it sending him to California. Charming. Morris Bulber, on the other hand, was partial to braining the victim on the head with a heavy sandbag, causing a brain hemorrhage. He told one woman to take her passed out alcoholic husband, strip him buck-ass naked, and drag him out into the street on a freezing cold night. the guy died of hypothermia of course and the gang collected the insurance cash another man got handed this is bonkers he got handed a sheaf of pornographic postcards and then thrown off a roof the coroner just thought he'd gotten distracted looking at tities and walked right off the building to his death like you do it's just what ah yes the third most common cause of accidental death in the thirties right after oh shit i saw a pretty

lady and made it a woo-go sound and ran into a brick wall painted to look like a tunnel. By the smart-ass roadrunner you were chasing at the time. Precisely, yes. Well, yep, I know the drill. Oh, and by the way, if the victim himself wasn't willing to take out life insurance policy, Herman would sometimes impersonate the guy and just do it himself. He was a really effective actor, apparently, and nobody ever suspected a thing. Let's not compliment him too much.

much. In the 30s, a pinky swear was as good as a money order to some people, I swear. Okay, fair enough. So after a while, the gang expanded, setting up business in Delaware and New York. I swear to God, it's like a murdery multi-level marketing scheme. And the ghouls at the top of the pyramid, the petrillos, Rose Carina, Maria Favato, and Morris, Louis the Rabbi Bulber were raking it in, just getting richer and richer. Yeah, it's like women all over the eastern seaboard, we're getting letters in their mailboxes from their high school bullies that went, hey, hon, I know it's been a while since we spoke and we didn't always get along, but I came across a business opportunity that I think you would love. I see you haven't

lost the baby weight yet. So that must mean one thing. You hate your husband, right? Oh my God, it's so dead on. We've all gotten those messages, right? From like the meanest girl in our high school. You want to have coffee? You want to be a boss, babe, like me? But, you know, all things must come to an end, and the beginning of the end for the poison ring was a sexy lady named Stella Alfancy. Despite being married to a construction worker named Ferdinando,

Stella struck up a hot and heavy affair with Herman Petrillo. Herman, never wanted to waste a perfectly good opportunity for crime, decided to talk Stella into having poor Ferdinando killed and collecting on his life insurance. For this, he enlisted a dude named George Meyer. George ran an upholstery cleaning business, but like almost everybody else, he'd taken a financial hit from the Depression,

and he was close to being broke. So somebody told him to go talk to Herman Petrillo, and George sought Herman out, asking to borrow $25 for his business. That's all he wanted, was $25. Herman's reaction was basically like $25 measly? Come on. I've got a way you can make 500 if you're up for it.

Or even better, $2,500 in top quality counterfeit bills. I love that this guy is just asking some random stranger to do a murder for hire. Like, oh, you want to borrow a sawbook? Sure, sure. But hey, how about you kill a guy for me, too? He wanted George Meyer to slip into Ferdinando Alfonzi's house, whack him over the head with an 18-inch lead pipe. and throw him down a flight of stairs.

That way, it would look like he took an accidental fall, and the gang would collect that good old double indemnity. Now again, George was an upholstree cleaner. Right. Dude was not a hitman. He cleaned couches. Why Herman Petrillo thought he'd be a good bet for this job, I cannot imagine. Maybe he was just so stupid.

steeped in the criminal mindset by then that he figured anybody would do anything for money. Well, I mean, he would. But George Meyer wouldn't. He was horrified at the idea. But he was also really hard up for cash. So he decided to play along with Herman Petrillo long enough to see if he could get some money in advance. Then he just wouldn't do the hit. I mean, what's Petrillo going to do?

It's not like he can go to the cops and be like, I hired this guy to kill somebody and he took my money and ran to arrest him. Yeah, that's not going to work. No. It's like George decided to play the world's most terrifying game of chicken with like an actual

murderer. The balls on this man are titanium, you know? For sure. Oh, yeah. So for a little while, George Meyer strung Herman along, trying to talk him into paying him some money in advance with the hit. But Herman,

being a shrewd business guy wasn't going to give him a dime until the job was done, which, you know what, respect. Sure. And when Meyer finally realized that, he decided it was time for Plan B. And Plan B was a doozy.

Still broke and pissed off that Herman had wasted his time, Meyer strolled himself into the police station and announced that he had some scalding hot tea to sell him on Herman Petrillo. And the cops sent him away with his tail between his legs. Thought he was nuts.

Which, seriously? You're not going to at least do the bare minimum amount of investigation to see if maybe this guy is telling the truth? Of course, I guess we don't know. Like maybe he walked in wearing a pair of boxer shorts on his head singing happy birthday or something like that. I hope so, because otherwise this was a serious mistake on the part of the Philly Police. In fairness to George, though, the cops have ignored more credible witnesses for less in some of the cases we've covered. So, but our guy George wasn't going to be deterred. He just headed down the street to the office of the Secret Service.

And here, he got a very different reaction. The Secret Service was well aware of Herman Petrillo. Not because of the poisonings. They had no idea about that yet. But they knew he was a counterfeiter. and they'd been trying to nail him for it for years. An agent named Landvoit was gutting for the guy like he was Captain Ahab, and Herman was his very own Moby Dick.

So, of course, Agent Landvoight was thrilled to pieces to meet George Meyer. He wasn't super interested in the murder plot, but he was all over the counterfeit stuff. And the fact that Herman had offered to pay Meyer and counterfeit bills meant that Landvoit might finally get to harpoon his white whale. He wasn't interested in the murder plot. Like, why the hell not? What a freaking weirdo.

Like, this is a secret service agent hearing about a vicious murder for profit. And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell me about the fake money, though. Just laser focused on that case he'd been trying to build, I guess. Yeah. Murder is local biz, Whitney. He wanted the big Fed crime. Murder is a very sticky business.

Too sticky for Agent Landvoid. Sticky, but not federal. I guess not. At least not yet. They didn't know they were expanding their franchises. Yep. So Agent Landvoit said to Meyer, okay, bud, here's what we're going to do.

We're going to pay you, if you're willing to go along with Herman's little murder scheme for a while, just long enough for us to get some ironclad evidence. Sound like a plan? Yeah, Meyer didn't really think it did, but he was broker than one of those cartoon sad sacks from the 20s with the moths coming out of their pockets, so he didn't really feel like he had a choice. So he said, okay, fine. But he wasn't happy about it, poor bastard. So now at the Secret Services direction, George Meyer went back to Herman Petrillo and said,

okay, I decided I don't want to do them way to myself, but I found you a guy who's up for it. Guys made out a chilled steel, okay? He's poifed, I tells you. he's a killing machine. That, by the way, is my 1930s gangster voice, y'all. You like it? It's really good. I learned it from Bugs Bunny cartoons, and I'm pretty sure it's exactly accurate.

So, Herman said, okay, great, that'll work. You know, bring the guy over and we'll chat. And the hitman showed up. Of course, it wasn't a real hitman. It was an undercover Secret Service agent. Herman gave the undercover a rundown of what he wanted done to Ferdinando Alfonzi. He was pretty flexible. He was cool.

was drowning the guy, running him over with a car, or if the hitman felt like a workout, beating him to death with a sandbag. God, this poor guy. It always kills me in murder for higher cases to think about the victim just kind of going about their day and totally oblivious to this horrendous betrayal that's happening behind their backs. I mean, this was his wife's lover. And his wife, Stella, that robo bitch, had conned him into signing like multiple life insurance policies. He, like she would tell him that they got rejected. So let's try again when actually they were getting accepted, so it ended up with payouts amounting to about 150 grand in today's money. And Ferdinando couldn't read in English, so he just signed whatever Stella put in front of him to sign.

So I don't know. I feel really sorry for Ferdinando. Anyway, the Secret Service guys were still more interested in the counterfeiting than the murder for some weird-ass reason, so the undercover tried to get Herman to give him some fake bills by suggesting that he go by a car to use a hit-and-run. but Herman wouldn't cough up. He liked the car idea fine, but he's like, just steal one, you know, because again, he loves crime. He strung the undercover along for weeks, telling him he wasn't sure yet what the best murder method would be to make sure they got the double indemnity and everything. He did finally agree to sell the undercover agent some counterfeit money in a week or two, though, and he was, you know, happy about that. Now they were finally going to have something concrete that they could nail this guy on.

and then every undercover agent's worst nightmare came true Herman called him up and said hey guess what we're not going to need you after all apparently Herman had decided he didn't want to pay for something he could just as easily do himself so he'd just gone ahead and dosed Fernando with enough arsenic to fell an elephant the guy was in the hospital Herman said and quote he's not coming out

so oh my god like imagine if you were that secret service agent like it was just an enormous blow because they had known this man was in danger and they hadn't managed to protect him. Awful. So a couple days after that conversation, Herman told the undercover he had his counterfeit money ready for him. So at long last, the police were able to slap the cuffs on Mr. Petrillo.

And while they were at it, they added on a charge of attempted murder for the poisoning of Ferdinando Alfonzi. Alfonzi was in horrible shape at the stomach hospital and his doctors were pretty much baffled until investigating came blazing in to tell him, test for arsenic, test for arsenic. Alfonzi's body was loaded with it, and unfortunately it was too late at that point to do anything to save him, because at a certain point it just goes too far, and the organs are

too damaged, and that's it. So, poor guy, he died aged 38 after weeks of horrible suffering. His widow was set to collect a fortune. And of course, the investigators knew exactly who was responsible. It was time to charge Herman with murder, and time to put the habeas grab us on self-made widow, Stella Alfonzi. At this point, as far as they knew, the investigators had solved one murder, but it didn't take long for them to realize that they'd stumbled into something much, much bigger and badder than the killing of Ferdinando Alfonzi. The Domino started to fall around the poison ring when the Fed spoke to John Kakapardo, a dude

who was doing a life's term in Sing Sing for killing his girlfriend. John happened to be Herman Petrillo's nephew, and he had a... all the dirt on the poison ring. In fact, he claimed his uncle had framed him for his girlfriend's murder. Why? Because John refused to join the ring himself, but knew way too much about it for Uncle Harmon's comfort. John figured, as much as he hated prison, he was probably lucky to be alive. Herman's nephew sang like a proverbial canary, implicating his uncle, plus cousin Paul Petrillo, quote-unquote witches, Maria Favado, and Rose Carina, and others. He told them about the love potions being sold out the back of the tailor shop, the life insurance policies,

the hit and runs, the drownings, everything he knew. And to their shock, once he realized he was fucked, Herman spilled his guts too, told them everything about the poison ring. He almost seemed to be enjoying himself. I guess he was proud of his criminal enterprise and wanted to show it off now that he knew he probably wasn't going to see daylight again. And the more the feds investigated, the bigger the case got. They could hardly believe what they were learning. This organization was a well-oiled, impeccably organized murder machine, all for profit. All told, they uncovered as many as 70 to 100 possible victims and dozens of perpetrators.

They started arresting people left and right, doctors, insurance agents, drugists, and of course, at the very top, the ringleaders. The Petrillo Cousins, The Witches, and Dr. Louis the Rabbi Morris Bulber. When they interrogated a shop owner named Millie Giacobi about her role in the murdery matchmaking service run by the women in the ring, she attempted suicide with a handgun. The judge presiding over Herman Petrillo's murder trial announced that he was going to prosecute this, quote, group of assassins relentlessly. Everyone involved in the ring was getting squirrelly, and it only got worse. worse after Herman's trial. Despite his detailed confession months earlier,

he gone up on the witness stand and denied everything. And the jury did not buy it. Found him guilty in record time. Oh, and by the way, this is amazing. When the jury four woman read the word guilty, Herman said, you lousy bitch and tried to take a swing at her. Like right in the middle of the courtroom. The bailiffs had to take him down, everything.

Like, Jesus, dude. So, anyway, when Herman was sentenced to die in the electric chair, that was it. People started snitching on each other, like, damn it. For example, neighborhood witch Maria Favato, Maria had earned herself almost 30 grand in insurance payouts from the various hubbies and other relatives she'd murdered. And campers, that's about half a mill in today's money. Wow.

After they arrested her, she stuck to her guns briefly and then shocked everybody by first attempt. attempting suicide with a safety pin, and then suddenly confessing to everything, in the middle of a court proceeding. And she was a huge drama queen about it, too. She was like, I may as well tell you everything. What do I have to live for anyway? Aw, puppy, are we not enjoying the consequences of our actions? Bless your heart. Maria was freaked out. She told the jailers not to bother locking her in her cell because the witches would be coming to kill her anyway.

Maria had been facing the electric chair. They'd exhumed. the bodies of her victims and found them loaded with arsenic, wasn't looking good for her, at all. But once she confessed and agreed to testify against the other ringleaders, she came away with a life sentence instead. Some of the gang had to be finessed a little bit to get him to talk, though. For example, Morris Bulber. The investigators figured out early on that the best way to get him to spill was to flatter his ego. So they took him out for dinner, treated him like a very important witness T.M. Acted impressed with him, and it

worked. The Master of the Black Arts sang like Pavarotti. About everybody else, that is. It took him a while to get sweaty enough to turn himself in. And when he finally did, he tried to claim he was only pretending to be guilty to make the city of Philly feel more

secure. What? I have no idea. He's a freaking weirdo. Lulling him into a false sense of security, more like. Yeah. So thanks to Herman and Maria and others, though, investigators knew he was just as deeply involved as the other ringleaders. He'd whipped up poisonous potions, he'd helped create the whole witchy, magical atmosphere that reeled in the more superstitious or spiritual women, and he'd arranged multiple murders himself. One of those was the murder of Jenny Cassetti.

Yep, not all the victims were male. Jenny was a jealous wife, and when her husband Dominic got sick of her accusing him of cheating all the time, he approached one of the poison ring members. and arranged to buy some of the poison on an installment plan, because again, this stuff was not cheap. Well, eventually, Dominic started missing payments. When Morris Bulber got word of this, he set up an appointment for Dominic with one of the fortune tellers on the payroll, and had her theatrically threatened to cast the evil eye on Dominic if he didn't pay up and go through with the murder. Now, that case is a perfect example of Bulber's unique role in the ring, making sure everybody went

through with the murders, so the ring collected every penny of the life insurance money that it was promised. Bulbors rep as a magical practitioner and his network of witchy contacts helped keep people in line if they started to get cold feet. Because nobody wants that evil eye cast on him. That's some scary shit. Despite his protestations of innocence, Morris eventually realized it was in his best interest to take a plea. Otherwise, he was in for the chair. So he pled guilty to one of the poisonings and got a life sentence and exchange. One of the investigators' techniques to get ring members talking was to stick them in a room together and start asking questions.

It tended to get the suspects pissed off at each other and in the mood to rat each other out. During one of these sessions, they got Morris Bulber, Herman Petrillo, and one other ring member together, and they were not prepared for what happened. As the interview went along, all three of the dudes started getting paranoid that the others were trying to put the evil eye on him. And they were sweating bullets about it, saying stuff like, don't look at me like that. Don't get me the eye. And then this happened again during Paul Petrillo's trial.

When Morris Bulber was on the stand, testifying against his old buddy, he suddenly launched into this dramatic, like, evil eye demo, directed right at Paul. And Paul, probably after, like, looking around behind him for a second, like me, is it me he's doing that at? Yeah? Okay.

got visibly rattled and started like frantically gesturing back at Morris Bulbar trying to like defend himself from the nasty mojo from the sources we've seen it sounds like he was making the like Hail Satan type gesture you see people do

at heavy metal shows like the sign language I love you without the thumb so he's like doing that at him and Morris Bulber's like you know glaring at him with like his eyes bulging out these are grown ass adults Jesus, Murphy Brown.

Like Maria Favato, Paul Petrillo realized midway through his own court proceedings that he was probably 16 kinds of fucked, and it was time to take a knee. He pled guilty, but unfortunately for him, it didn't work out. The judge sentenced him to the electric chair anyway. Oh, man, he must have been in a bad mood that day. Yeah, or just, you know, objected to the whole multiple murder thing. Right, right, yeah. So both of the original leaders of the ring were sentenced to die, and back then, executions tended to happen fast.

Both Paul and Herman were executed in 1941, two years after the convictions. Morris served 13 years of his life sentence before he died in prison. Before it was all over, 25 murder cases ended up tried. 22 of those defendants were convicted. One of the three who wasn't was Rose Carina, the pretty young secretary who became one of the ring's recruiters. Yep. In addition to killing four of her own husbands, all of whom she married specifically to murder them, Rose helped run that ghoulish matchmaking service that matched up the women with eligible

victims. So aside from Herman and Paul, she was probably the guiltiest one of all of them. But Rose was smart, and she was attractive, which tended to be a really good asset for a woman on trial back in those days, because people just couldn't seem to wrap their brains around the idea of a pretty girl being evil. And even better than that, thanks to her involvement in the poison ring, she was rich as hell. So Rose hired herself a dream team of attorneys and campers, this bitch got off scot-free, acquitted of all charges. This, despite the media calling her Rose of death and everything, I just cannot. Yeah, and I think all the other women got convicted. But not Rose.

She went on to live her life like nothing ever happened. And I'm sure she lived well. What with all that money she got from murder and all? Isn't that awful? Ugh. So, anywho, y'all, we can't be sure exactly how many people ended up murdered in this case. We know we've got 22 convictions, so it's at least that many. But the authorities suspected there were many, many more, hidden by the fact that poisoning

deaths could seem natural, especially back then. The high estimate is around 100. I think the high estimate is probably right. So, just digest that for a second. A hundred victims. Holy shit. So I'm sure it took Philadelphia a while to recover from this awful thing, but it's not unique, believe it or not.

There was actually a very similar ring in Hungary, just a little bit earlier, from 1914 to about 1930. They were called the Angel Makers of Nogative. I'm probably butchering that pronunciation, I apologize. and they poisoned about 40 men before they were finally brought down. And what both cases had in common, interestingly enough, was economic depression and lots of unhappy women. Hopefully the Philly Ring will be the last we ever see.

Fingers crossed on that. It'd be a lot easier to get caught these days. 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 we want to send a shout out to a few of our newest patrons.

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