Speaker 1: At Target. We come in for black owned coffee and
Speaker 1: leave with change in our hands. We come in for
Speaker 1: healthier snacks and leave feeling more fulfilled. At Target, better
Speaker 1: days are within our reach. What we value most shouldn't
Speaker 1: cost more. Hi this is Ali went Worth, host of
Speaker 1: Go ask Alli Season two. We'll be back soon with
Speaker 1: more new episodes. As always, Go ask Alli is there
Speaker 1: for binging and catching up, purpose and meaning in life,
Speaker 1: or how you figure out what life is all about.
Speaker 1: And that requires unhappiness. So here's the great paradox. To
Speaker 1: be happy, you also have to be unhappy. Don't miss
Speaker 1: a single episode. Listen to Go ask Ali on the
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Speaker 1: Make sure you subscribe and share. Hi this is Ali
Speaker 1: went Worth, host of Go ask Alli. My listeners want more,
Speaker 1: so we are digging in. It's real. It's honest, open
Speaker 1: and unexpected and sometimes amusing. He told me you chased
Speaker 1: him with a butcher knife, tried to cut off his penis.
Speaker 1: But that's his version and everybody has everybody has to
Speaker 1: two sides of every store exactly. All new episodes of
Speaker 1: Go ask Alli release every Thursday. Listen to Go ask
Speaker 1: Alli on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Criminalia, a production
Speaker 1: of Shonda land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to Criminalia. I'm Maria tram Marquis and I'm
Speaker 1: Holly Fry. We know that humans have always managed to
Speaker 1: commit crimes, almost certainly before there was even recorded history,
Speaker 1: so we decided that we would start looking at those
Speaker 1: crimes and get our hands dirty. We wanted to dig
Speaker 1: in and look at some of histories, crimes and criminals
Speaker 1: to understand them better. And in doing so, we're curious
Speaker 1: if we can find commonality with our modern world and
Speaker 1: our modern problems, and whether these crimes look different a
Speaker 1: little bit of distance on the timeline, and whether any
Speaker 1: of these perpetrators emerge as more but that it characters.
Speaker 1: This first season is going to be all about poisoners,
Speaker 1: specifically women poisoners. Poison is often called a woman's weapon,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that roughly two thirds of the poisonings
Speaker 1: committed throughout time have been the work of men. So
Speaker 1: let's start looking at these women and their motivations and
Speaker 1: see if any patterns develop. This week, we're looking into
Speaker 1: the life and Crimes of Tilly Clinic, a Polish immigrant
Speaker 1: who killed at least one and possibly as many as
Speaker 1: twenty people and at least one dog between the years
Speaker 1: nineteen fourteen. And I will confess that when you were
Speaker 1: telling me about the research you were doing initially on
Speaker 1: this and you mentioned the dog, I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I hate her. Um not that it wasn't terrible it
Speaker 1: she killed people, just you know, that was for me
Speaker 1: the worst thing that she could have done as well.
Speaker 1: She was born Tiafila Burick to Michaelina and Michael Burick
Speaker 1: on October eighteen seventy seven, and Tilly was probably right
Speaker 1: around four years old when her family immigrated to the
Speaker 1: United States. They moved from Poland to the Little Poland
Speaker 1: neighborhood of Chicago, and of the seven children in the family,
Speaker 1: a Tilly, as she was called, was the eldest. Chicago
Speaker 1: has a long history of Polish immigration, and Polish Americans
Speaker 1: have lived in the area for well over a century.
Speaker 1: In eighteen ninety, around the time Tilly was born, there
Speaker 1: was a wave of immigration to the United States. At
Speaker 1: that time, the number of Polish immigrants in the city
Speaker 1: blossomed to more than twenty five thousand. By nineteen thirty,
Speaker 1: a few years before she died, that number had grown
Speaker 1: two hundred and sixty five thousand. Most they lived below
Speaker 1: the poverty line. Is the tale of immigration in so
Speaker 1: many ways. So let's set the scene of the actual
Speaker 1: situation we're talking about today. So this is Chicago in
Speaker 1: the early twentieth centuries. You couldn't necessarily count on your
Speaker 1: food and drinks to be clean. Upton Sinclair started publishing
Speaker 1: the serialized version of his groundbreaking expose a of the
Speaker 1: meat industry in the US, The Jungle, in nineteen o five,
Speaker 1: and while that led to the creation of the Meat
Speaker 1: Inspection Act in nineteen o six, food safety legislation was
Speaker 1: still in its infancy. But if you were at a
Speaker 1: restaurant or a club or hotel around the city, there
Speaker 1: were other dangers when it came to what you consumed
Speaker 1: at the table. In particular, wait staff were known to
Speaker 1: target patrons who didn't tip well. Not like the content
Speaker 1: of the chatter in fight Club, although honestly maybe a
Speaker 1: little of that. Uh. They usually chose poisons and various
Speaker 1: other things you really don't want to be in your food.
Speaker 1: So remember always tip well. But moreover, it turns out
Speaker 1: that you couldn't really count on food safety at home either,
Speaker 1: at least if you lived with a Tilly Clinic. During
Speaker 1: the time that Chicago's most visible criminal element was organized crime,
Speaker 1: Tilly was quietly becoming the city's most prolific female serial killer.
Speaker 1: She had allegedly killed between six and twenty people. Like
Speaker 1: we said, but it was all through arsenic poisoning. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk first just about what arsenic actually is.
Speaker 1: It is a naturally occurring element in the Earth's crust
Speaker 1: and in its raw state. As much as it has
Speaker 1: this instant conjuring of poison, it's not actually harmful the
Speaker 1: way it naturally exists. Archenic only really becomes poisonous when
Speaker 1: it's converted into arsenic trioxide, which is better known as
Speaker 1: white arsenic. White arsenic not only is odorless, but it's
Speaker 1: tasteless um and it's white or transparent in form, so
Speaker 1: it's easily confused with sugar or flour. But it's highly
Speaker 1: toxic when it's inhaled into your lungs or when you
Speaker 1: ingest it. And it might surprise you that even white
Speaker 1: arsenic is actually fairly benign in relatively small amounts because
Speaker 1: it is very lethal at higher doses. In fact, doctors
Speaker 1: have actually prescribed white arsenic through the years in its
Speaker 1: low dosage as a treatment for things like asthma, typhus, malaria,
Speaker 1: even menstrual cramps, and it continues to be administered intravenously
Speaker 1: as a chemotherapy for a specific type of leukemia. When
Speaker 1: arsenic is ingested, initially, it causes symptoms such as abdominal pain, diarrhea,
Speaker 1: and that's often being accompanied by bleeding and vomiting. It's terrible.
Speaker 1: As the dose gets more and more lethal in the body, though,
Speaker 1: the symptoms also begin to include convulsion, cardiovascular problems, hair loss,
Speaker 1: liver and kidney problems, and even organ damage. So not
Speaker 1: a peaceful way to go. Definitely not sugar no, and
Speaker 1: despite its potency, it has been used in the production
Speaker 1: of semiconductors. It's been used as wood preservative, and it's
Speaker 1: also sometimes found in pesticides. Manufacturers in the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: started using it for its green pigment in products like
Speaker 1: paint and wallpaper, fabrics, beauty products, and as food coloring.
Speaker 1: The list goes on because green is very beautiful color,
Speaker 1: so sometimes those products would actually make people sick, but
Speaker 1: at the time, no one was suspecting that the arsenic
Speaker 1: in them was the problem that was causing their ailments.
Speaker 1: In the early twentieth century, when Tilly was busy murdering
Speaker 1: people in her community, the average Americans medicine cabinet was
Speaker 1: stocked with all sorts of toxic things like radioactive radium
Speaker 1: for acne, and mercury is a topical antiseptic for cuts
Speaker 1: and scrapes and burns. Morphine showed up in everyday products
Speaker 1: and everything from teething medications to cures for heroin addiction.
Speaker 1: From roughly the late eight into the early twentieth century
Speaker 1: is considered to be the Golden age of poisoners, and
Speaker 1: during that time, arsenic specifically caught the nickname the inheritance powder.
Speaker 1: And you can probably imagine why, hm. The police really
Speaker 1: didn't have any of the tools to test the corpse
Speaker 1: for poison. Arsenic was an only easy to acquire, it
Speaker 1: was hard to detect as a cause of death, which
Speaker 1: was win win for the Golden Age of poisoners. It
Speaker 1: was common practice for doctors to treat suspected poisoning with
Speaker 1: leeches bleeded out or try to identify the poison involved
Speaker 1: by sniffing the contents of the person's stomach. Remember how
Speaker 1: we said arsenic was odorless though, Yeah, so you just
Speaker 1: sniff those contents for nothing. But it was also just
Speaker 1: unusual for a doctor or a coroner to suspect arsenic
Speaker 1: as a cause of death, mainly because the symptoms of
Speaker 1: arsenic poisoning that Maria just talked about, diarrhea and vomiting
Speaker 1: and abdominal pain are so similar to a lot of
Speaker 1: other disorders. It's also really hard to place the poisoner
Speaker 1: at the scene of the murder. Dying can typically take
Speaker 1: hours or longer if you administered the poison gradually, such
Speaker 1: as with someone's meals, so the perpetrator could easily have
Speaker 1: a seemingly airtight alibi for their whereabouts because the window
Speaker 1: of time had such fuzzy edges. But it actually wouldn't
Speaker 1: be of the late nineteenth century that a chemist named
Speaker 1: James marsh would come up with a reliable chemical test
Speaker 1: for arsenic poisoning. Today, arsenic poisoning is treated with Chilatian therapy,
Speaker 1: which uses special drugs that bind to metal ions in
Speaker 1: your blood. So rough on rats was the product that
Speaker 1: became popular in the late eighteen hundreds. It was composed
Speaker 1: mainly of arsenic and a little black coal for masking
Speaker 1: the poison, and while I was advertised for use in
Speaker 1: killing rats, mice, bedbugs, flies, roaches, it occasionally was used
Speaker 1: for the very off label purpose of killing husbands. Believe
Speaker 1: it or not, the marketing slogan for this poison rough
Speaker 1: On Rats was don't die in the house, thinking, of course,
Speaker 1: being that the creature you had poison would scurry away
Speaker 1: to die. It was also really easily available at the
Speaker 1: local store until he actually got her first bottle of
Speaker 1: rough On Rats from her cousin, Nelly Kulik, and Nelly,
Speaker 1: it would turn out, was also a fellow poisoner murder
Speaker 1: and husbands. According to your accounts from her neighbors, Tilly
Speaker 1: was sent to have precognitive dreams, meaning that she could
Speaker 1: predict the future in real life through sort of a
Speaker 1: sixth sensish kind of way. She began to predict the
Speaker 1: depths of neighborhood dogs, and she was surprisingly accurate, But
Speaker 1: it turns out she was just scheduling their depths. We're
Speaker 1: getting a little ahead of ourselves though. In the progression
Speaker 1: of Tilly's activities with rough on rats, So we're going
Speaker 1: to back up to at Target. We come in for
Speaker 1: black owned coffee and leave with change in our hands.
Speaker 1: We come in for healthier snacks and leave feeling more fulfilled.
Speaker 1: At Target, better days are within our reach. What we
Speaker 1: value most shouldn't cost more. Hey, I'm Gabrielle Collins, period
Speaker 1: drama nerd and you're behind the scenes guide to Bridgetin
Speaker 1: On Bridgetain the Official Podcast. We're learning how this fantasy
Speaker 1: world dipped in history came to life. Daphnie, her costume
Speaker 1: design really is about the elegance of simplicity. It's just
Speaker 1: color and shape. We went old school and we got
Speaker 1: to scenic cartists then, who painted the backings for us
Speaker 1: by hand. These dukes are all like in their late
Speaker 1: twenties early thirties. Almost all of them are unmarried, really
Speaker 1: good looking, and none of them have syphilis. Can you
Speaker 1: imagine when he looks into your eyes and then he
Speaker 1: dips you. We just heard this sort of ripping sounds. Yep.
Speaker 1: I think there's just been a wardrobe malfunction. Listen to
Speaker 1: Bridgetain the Official Podcast on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts, or anywhere you get your favorite shows. Hi,
Speaker 1: this is Ali went Worth, host of Go Ask Gali
Speaker 1: Season two. We'll be back soon with more new episodes.
Speaker 1: But what you can do is binge the first half
Speaker 1: of season two or revisit our first spectacular season. Everyone
Speaker 1: has to deal with money, and typically like people don't
Speaker 1: talk about it. It's like this quiet thing that everyone
Speaker 1: wants to avoid. But then everyone wants to live this
Speaker 1: life and doesn't matter what how you define that life,
Speaker 1: but you need money for it. Just a few of
Speaker 1: our fabulous guests this season are former editor of People
Speaker 1: magazine Jess Cagel, New York Times bestselling author Isabel Gillies,
Speaker 1: and writer and Oprah's favorite life coach Martha Beck. And
Speaker 1: people come to me now and they will say negative things,
Speaker 1: and I think, I, respectfully do not give a crap
Speaker 1: what you think because I'm a crazy old that now
Speaker 1: and you can't stop me. That's great. Our guests have
Speaker 1: so much to say. One lesson isn't enough. Listen to
Speaker 1: Go Ask Ali on the I Heart Radio app or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure you subscribe and share.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Criminalia. Tilly was married to John mckaywitz.
Speaker 1: His name may have been Joseph, not John. Records aren't
Speaker 1: entirely consistent, but we're gonna go with John because that's
Speaker 1: what the majority of records from the time referred to
Speaker 1: him as. That is one of the delights word I'm using,
Speaker 1: ironically of doing historical research, particularly when you are talking
Speaker 1: about UH immigrants, because there was not a vested interest
Speaker 1: always in the government in keeping accurate records about them,
Speaker 1: so you often have these these people's stories that get
Speaker 1: really muddy because their names do shift around in the
Speaker 1: historical record. Anyway, by all accounts, this couple UH Tilly
Speaker 1: and John were well liked in their community, and their
Speaker 1: marriage appeared by all accounts to be happy. Tilly made
Speaker 1: her life as a housekeeper, but it was also during
Speaker 1: this time that Tilly started telling neighbors about some vision
Speaker 1: that she was having. She was, as we mentioned before
Speaker 1: the break, an alleged psychic who was skilled specifically at
Speaker 1: predicting deaths. This included predicting the death of her own husband, John,
Speaker 1: who had left her a thousand dollars when he died
Speaker 1: in nineteen fourteen. The coroner's report listed his death as
Speaker 1: a result of heart trouble, nothing suspicious there was no
Speaker 1: reason at the time to suspect that John had been
Speaker 1: poisoned by his wife. The nickname black widow, which is
Speaker 1: often given to women who kill their lovers in order
Speaker 1: to inherit their wealth, would eventually be bestowed upon Tilly,
Speaker 1: but not just yet. Here's a little more in detail
Speaker 1: on John's sudden end. Okay. In the beginning of nineteen fourteen,
Speaker 1: Tilly began telling friends and those in the community that
Speaker 1: she dreamed that John was ill. She expected he would
Speaker 1: be on his deathbed in just a few weeks um
Speaker 1: and when he died in January that year, the cause
Speaker 1: of death was listed as heart trouble and till he
Speaker 1: collected a thousand dollars in life insurance. I guess after
Speaker 1: nineteen years she just didn't want to go to um.
Speaker 1: She's like enough. After receiving that payout on John's life
Speaker 1: insurance policy, Tilly actually remarried pretty quickly. See, now, that's
Speaker 1: the thing. She remarried quickly often, And I have to
Speaker 1: I always sort of wonder like if she would follow
Speaker 1: in love with someone new and be like, oh, I'll
Speaker 1: kill my husband and we'll start out fresh with like
Speaker 1: this new thousand dollars. It's just my own personal theory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there's merit to it. But her new husband,
Speaker 1: Joseph Riskowski, died just three months after they got married,
Speaker 1: and he happened to leave his widow twelve hundred dollars
Speaker 1: in cash and seven dollars in insurance money. Not only
Speaker 1: did Tilly predict Joseph's death, she went on to predict
Speaker 1: the deaths of her third husband, although they may or
Speaker 1: may not have been married. It's a little sketchy, uh,
Speaker 1: and her fourth husband, as well as children, she cared
Speaker 1: for a few neighbors and possibly some other family members.
Speaker 1: And not only did she joke with neighbors that her
Speaker 1: fourth husband, Frank, had quote two inches to live, which
Speaker 1: is a really interesting, fascinating turn of phrase, she allegedly
Speaker 1: taunted him on his deathbed and said things like it
Speaker 1: won't be long now and you'll be dying soon, which
Speaker 1: is in my own home, Like you got to it
Speaker 1: just to live. I don't know, right, It's like callous
Speaker 1: on a level that's hard to comprehend, right right. She also,
Speaker 1: in an act of both cruel and creative, knitted herself
Speaker 1: a morning hat um as she sat by his bedside
Speaker 1: while he was dying. She even so far as to
Speaker 1: purchase a thirty dollar bargain coffin to keep in the
Speaker 1: basement of her house waiting for his death. That storage
Speaker 1: dreament was a little unsettling request made of her landlord, um,
Speaker 1: who began to be a little suspicious of Tilly after
Speaker 1: that came in. Frank did die on ap and it
Speaker 1: is said that when it happened, Tilly played dance music
Speaker 1: in the room. The coroner listed Frank's cause of death
Speaker 1: as bronchial pneumonia. Tilly's poisonous predilections unnoticed. She once again
Speaker 1: collected on his life insurance, this time in the amount
Speaker 1: of six seventy five dollars, nearly as much as the
Speaker 1: last two. I know she's downgrading the insurance situation with
Speaker 1: each one. They're going faster now, you know. It's just
Speaker 1: not enough time to like build up to the thousand.
Speaker 1: That's another theory I have. UM. It's interesting and grimly
Speaker 1: fun to note that Frank Antilli's home at Winchester It's
Speaker 1: a house in East Dillage in Chicago, shows up on
Speaker 1: the Old Fourth Where social networking site as Old Lady
Speaker 1: Tilly clinics haunted house. Even today, Tilly was still not arrested.
Speaker 1: The that didn't happen until after she botched an attempt
Speaker 1: at poisoning husband number five, that was Joseph Clinic. She
Speaker 1: and Joseph had gotten married in July of ninety one,
Speaker 1: again not long after Frank's demise, and Clinic is said
Speaker 1: to have been a relatively wealthy man, but Tilly did
Speaker 1: not like that. He also apparently had a wandering eye,
Speaker 1: and by October of nineteen twenty two, he was in
Speaker 1: the hospital experiencing arm numbness, leg paralysis, and other symptoms
Speaker 1: consistent with severe arsenic poisoning. So while he was in
Speaker 1: the hospital, Tilly's husband recalled that his food had tasted
Speaker 1: strangely lately. And here's one big red flag. He remembered
Speaker 1: the dog dying after eating scraps of food till he
Speaker 1: had cooked. Her husband also stated he'd planned to press
Speaker 1: charges against her until he kissed him. Such a strange
Speaker 1: dynamic at play, But uh, it was not poisoning Joseph
Speaker 1: that she went on trial for. While Tilly was arrested
Speaker 1: initially for the attempted murder of Joseph Clinic, who would
Speaker 1: survive her poison his hand um after an investigation into
Speaker 1: the deaths of her previous husbands. The crime Tilly was
Speaker 1: eventually tried for was the murder of Frank, her third husband,
Speaker 1: but even as she was taken in, she appeared completely
Speaker 1: indifferent to the whole situation. It is said that she
Speaker 1: told the arresting officer, who was Lieutenant William Malone, the
Speaker 1: next one I want to cook dinner for is you?
Speaker 1: You made all my trouble. After eighteen hours of interrogation,
Speaker 1: Tilly confessed to her crimes, admitting to mixing rat poison
Speaker 1: into her victims food and drink note plural. It's interesting, right,
Speaker 1: Like eighteen hours of interrogation is considered extreme, it is,
Speaker 1: and she just gives it all up. Then there's that
Speaker 1: whole thing of like is this a coerced confession at
Speaker 1: that point, But her later behavior makes it seem like
Speaker 1: she's she's pretty down with this information being uh one
Speaker 1: true and part of public records. Yeah, she's a badass.
Speaker 1: Just to grains of arsenic is enough to kill almost anyone,
Speaker 1: uh and as much as eight grains were found in
Speaker 1: Frank's organs, so enough to kill four people. Authorities decided
Speaker 1: to exhume Tilly's other husbands and found their stomachs each
Speaker 1: contained lethal doses of arsenic, and although evidence existed to
Speaker 1: convict her of as many as twenty murders by arsenic,
Speaker 1: only one charge resulted in a conviction. Although she was
Speaker 1: not the only woman and wife in her community to
Speaker 1: be arrested for suspicion of poisoning, she was the only
Speaker 1: one of them who was sentenced. You remember how we
Speaker 1: mentioned her cousin earlier. Authorities went on to investigate a
Speaker 1: possible poison ring in the Little Poland neighborhood, arresting other
Speaker 1: local women in what the assistant state attorney at the
Speaker 1: time that was, a man named William McLaughlin called quote
Speaker 1: the most astonishing wholesale poisoning plot uncovered. He wanted the
Speaker 1: death penalty for Tilly, but without better evidence, the other
Speaker 1: women who had been rounded up just had to be released.
Speaker 1: As Tillie's story unfurls, it becomes apparent that it wasn't
Speaker 1: just husbands that she poisoned. She played fast and loose
Speaker 1: with rough on rats, poisoning people who irritated her and
Speaker 1: dogs who barked too much. In the neighborhood life was
Speaker 1: especially risky if you were one of Tillie's cousins. In
Speaker 1: nineteen twelve, Tilly's cousin, Stanley Zaczuski, died at the age
Speaker 1: of sixteen. Tilly, who was in her mid thirties at
Speaker 1: the time, tended on him while he was ill. Another cousin,
Speaker 1: Stanley's sister, Still, died in nineteen thirteen. She was twenty
Speaker 1: three at the time, and again Tilly played the role
Speaker 1: of caregiver. After her husband Frank's death, Tillie started seeing
Speaker 1: a man named Joseph Grantkowski, like lovers before him. Joseph
Speaker 1: died in nineteen fourteen after jilting her and back to cousins.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifteen, Tilly's cousin Helen died at age fifteen.
Speaker 1: Another cousin, Nick Micko, became sick from arsenic poisoning, but
Speaker 1: he was lucky enough to actually recover. In nineteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: Tilly's cousin Rose died after attending Tilly and Frank's wedding party.
Speaker 1: Tillie may have been involved in the poisoning of woe
Speaker 1: Jack Strummer, who was the husband of her cousin Nellie.
Speaker 1: The same Nellie from she procured her rat poison. It
Speaker 1: turns out that Tilly wasn't only cooking arsenic in two meals,
Speaker 1: she was also a confectioner. Twizzlers may make mouse happy,
Speaker 1: but you definitely want to skip Tilly streets. So uh.
Speaker 1: Stella Gooskowski, sister of Tillie's former boyfriend Joseph, got sick
Speaker 1: after she ate a candy that was given to her
Speaker 1: by Tilly after the two women had an argument. Joseph
Speaker 1: died from tainted candy as well. Rose Split had also
Speaker 1: stayed un Tillie gave her arsenic confused candies after Joseph
Speaker 1: Clinic talked to her. So jealous, Tilly was willing to
Speaker 1: go after innocent women who her husband even dared to
Speaker 1: converse with. So let's keep going because we're only about
Speaker 1: halfway through the body count. There was also a woman
Speaker 1: named Bessie kop Sick, sister in law of Tilly's husband Frank,
Speaker 1: who fell sick after eating Tillie's cooking, but Bessie recovered. Children,
Speaker 1: primarily relatives, were also on Tillie's hit list. At least
Speaker 1: four children in Tillie's sphere were poisoned between nineteen seventeen.
Speaker 1: Nineteen eighteen, Dorthy Spara died at age two. Twins Sophie
Speaker 1: and Ben Strummer also died. John Strummer was the only
Speaker 1: one to recover Lillian's Strummer, who was in her early teens,
Speaker 1: lived at Tillie's home for a year when she became
Speaker 1: deathly ill from the food and suffered heart trouble. So
Speaker 1: skip ahead just a few years to March ninety three
Speaker 1: and a man named Myers goes missing. Suspicious. Uh, maybe
Speaker 1: he might have been one of Tilly's husband's, but he
Speaker 1: was more likely just a boyfriend. Records from this time,
Speaker 1: as we've mentioned, not always robust, and a lot of
Speaker 1: times people would just claim to be spouses without going
Speaker 1: through the paperwork, kind of like common law, but more
Speaker 1: like they were just like, well, we lived together, and
Speaker 1: we live as a married couple. Either way, the risk
Speaker 1: of dying was obviously considerably high for any of Tilly's paramours,
Speaker 1: legally wed or not. I don't think she cared about
Speaker 1: the paperwork, just just the life insurance. At her trial,
Speaker 1: Tillie wore the black hat that she had made when
Speaker 1: her third husband, Frank, had been on his deathbed. She
Speaker 1: had also warned to his funeral as she had planned. Historically,
Speaker 1: in Chicago in the early twentieth century, women who were
Speaker 1: brought to trial for murder, which was usually murder of
Speaker 1: their husbands, were almost always acquitted. If a woman was
Speaker 1: unlucky enough to be convicted, she was generally going to
Speaker 1: be given an amazingly light sentence in comparison to men
Speaker 1: who had stood trial for murder, and it really helped
Speaker 1: your case. If you were very feminine, weeping a bit
Speaker 1: and flirting would always help. In the years leading up
Speaker 1: to Tillie's trial, twenty eight women had been charged with
Speaker 1: murder in Cook County, where Chicago is located. Twenty four
Speaker 1: were acquitted. It is probably no coincidence that all twenty
Speaker 1: four of those women were considered conventionally attractive. Up the
Speaker 1: only four were found guilty Hilda Axeland, who was not
Speaker 1: considered a beauty Vera Trepagnier who was middle aged, Emma Simpson,
Speaker 1: who was determined to be insane, and Dora Waterman, who
Speaker 1: also was not known for her looks. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: the well dressed, well groomed Cora or Queen, who shot
Speaker 1: her boyfriend over his cheating walked free. Tilly, though, did
Speaker 1: not have these advantages. She was nothing like skylish Belva
Speaker 1: Gartner and beautiful Beulah Annam, the killers who inspired the
Speaker 1: play Chicago. According to Genevieve Forbes, a crime reporter who
Speaker 1: covered the trial for the Chicago Tribune, Tilly was neither
Speaker 1: beautiful nor charming. She was described as a middle aged
Speaker 1: woman forty five who was squat quote unquote, with a
Speaker 1: greasy complexion and a lumpy figure. Her dull brown hair
Speaker 1: was pulled back into a nod at the back of
Speaker 1: her head. Despite having lived in Chicago since she was
Speaker 1: just a little kid. She spoke only broken English, and
Speaker 1: it was recorded that she growled, I shudder to think
Speaker 1: what Genevieve for um. During the proceedings, prosecutors read a
Speaker 1: list of twenty alleged victims of Tilly, pausing after each
Speaker 1: name to ask her did you kill this person? And
Speaker 1: each time she would reportedly shrug, responding to each of
Speaker 1: the simple yeah, I wish I could have been in
Speaker 1: this trial. The trial Jedge asked for something called a
Speaker 1: psychopathic lab report. According to the examining doctor, Tilly was
Speaker 1: a quote subnormal mentality with an intellect and I quote again,
Speaker 1: no higher than that of an eleven year old child.
Speaker 1: As we just mentioned, she didn't really speak English especially well,
Speaker 1: so let's take these results with a grain of salt.
Speaker 1: And it was reported she was afflicted with dementia precox,
Speaker 1: a diagnosis today that would be schizophrenia. She was also
Speaker 1: described as a rattlesnake, as a heartless woman, and due
Speaker 1: to the murder's around her, she got the nickname we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, Black Widow. Hi, it's Laverne Cox. And on
Speaker 1: my podcast, The Laverne Cox Show, we're ripping the band
Speaker 1: aid off. Trauma, resilience dating, diet culture dating, white supremacy dating. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna get explicit, but just because you're cute,
Speaker 1: like I'm not going I'm not, you're gonna say yes.
Speaker 1: And honey, we have a lot of fun along the way.
Speaker 1: You have a lot of lesbian fans who love your
Speaker 1: femininity and glamour, and I just really really want I
Speaker 1: want us to talk openly about the difficult things we
Speaker 1: all face as humans and as humans in America. Racist
Speaker 1: white people in the United States will sign their own
Speaker 1: death certificates. They will vote for policies that crush them.
Speaker 1: No safety nets, no health care because they feel too
Speaker 1: much like entitlements. And those are folks of color, right.
Speaker 1: Listen to the Laverne Cox Show in the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or ever you get your podcast,
Speaker 1: make sure you subscribe and share. Hi. It's Ali Wentworth,
Speaker 1: a middle aged woman with a lot of questions and
Speaker 1: a lot of answers. I have pulled out of my tushes,
Speaker 1: host of Go ask Alli. My listeners want more, so
Speaker 1: we are digging in. It's real. It's honest, open and
Speaker 1: unexpected and sometimes amusing. Can you start with your infamous
Speaker 1: nineteen dollar haircut? Yes? And this is a great story
Speaker 1: I I feel about mothers and daughters with a dream
Speaker 1: and an empty bank account. Just a few of our
Speaker 1: fabulous guests this season are New York Times bestselling author
Speaker 1: Isabel Gillies, writer and Oprah's Favorite Life coach Martha Beck,
Speaker 1: and former editor of People magazine Jess Cagel. If we
Speaker 1: know intimate details about another person, then that person is
Speaker 1: socially important to us. Okay, so that's what you like
Speaker 1: to gossip about? Wait, what do you gussip about? All
Speaker 1: new episodes of Go ask Alli release every Thursday. Listen
Speaker 1: to go ask Alli on the irt radio app, Apple
Speaker 1: podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, guys, Katie
Speaker 1: Lowe's here. You might know me as Quinn Perkins on Scandal.
Speaker 1: I am also the host of Katie's Crib. It's a
Speaker 1: podcast about all things parenthood. Katie's Crib is back with
Speaker 1: new episodes every Thursday. We have got an amazing lineup
Speaker 1: of guests. We have got the amazing Katerina scores Ny,
Speaker 1: who you might also know as Dr Amelia Shephard from
Speaker 1: Gray's Anatomy. She is talking about her three children. We've
Speaker 1: also got Cat McPhee Foster. She just became a mom
Speaker 1: like two seconds ago. We just have a great hang
Speaker 1: sash talking about all things new Mama. We are going
Speaker 1: to be covering everything from discipline to mom ring. Tune
Speaker 1: in as I bring on celebrities, experts, and even more
Speaker 1: guests to continue to help you get your parenthood one
Speaker 1: step at a time. Listen to Katie's Crib on the
Speaker 1: I Heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. Because of the evidence beyond the single murder,
Speaker 1: investigators obtained permission to exhume the corpses of Chili's dead
Speaker 1: husbands for arsenic toxicity testing. Newspaper headlines covering the trial
Speaker 1: featured headlines like three more bodies to be exhumed in
Speaker 1: clinic case, and bodies of other relatives will be exhumed.
Speaker 1: All those cousins, all those cousins, all, yeah, the children
Speaker 1: and dogs thing. I just obviously killing anybody is bad,
Speaker 1: but uh. Tilly, though, stuck to a story that Frank
Speaker 1: had died of alcohol poisoning and that she had absolutely
Speaker 1: not killed her mouses. She said, quote, I loved them,
Speaker 1: They loved me. They just died, same as other people.
Speaker 1: She continued, I'm not responsible for that. I could not
Speaker 1: help if they wanted to die. Contrary to her statement
Speaker 1: during the trial, the coroner accusingly asserted, quote, there is
Speaker 1: no question that Mrs Clinic poisoned everyone. She wanted to
Speaker 1: get out of the way. After the jury deliberated for
Speaker 1: just an were in twenty minutes, Tilly was found guilty
Speaker 1: of the murder of her third husband, Frank kop sick
Speaker 1: In Judge Marcus Kavanaugh sentenced her to life in prison
Speaker 1: without the possibility of parole. That was the harshest sentence
Speaker 1: ever given to a woman in Chicago. At that time,
Speaker 1: for jurors thought she should be given the death penalty.
Speaker 1: At the time, no woman had ever been sentenced to
Speaker 1: death in the state of Illinois. Uh The Chicago Tribune
Speaker 1: reporter Forbes called her gruesomely cruel and went on to
Speaker 1: say that Tilly is a spectator in her own drama.
Speaker 1: While on all accounts, Tilly is considered to have been
Speaker 1: friendly to the other prisoners once she was incarcerated, she
Speaker 1: definitely did not want to talk about the poisonings. It
Speaker 1: has said that she would yell, quote, I didn't rob nobody.
Speaker 1: I didn't shoot nobody. I didn't poison nobody. I didn't
Speaker 1: everybody picks on me. Everybody makes eyes at me like
Speaker 1: they're going to eat me. Why do they make eyes
Speaker 1: like that? I tell the truth. Anything I did, I
Speaker 1: did to myself, nobody else. She was incarcerated at the
Speaker 1: Illinois State Penitentiary at Juliet with one stipulation. It said
Speaker 1: that while Tilly enjoyed the few food served to her
Speaker 1: in prison, the judge declared that she never be allowed
Speaker 1: to cook for her fellow inmates. After thirteen years of incarceration,
Speaker 1: she died on November ninety six, so Tilly clearly does
Speaker 1: seem to have had a certain detachment and a callousness
Speaker 1: about the crime she was found guilty of, and that
Speaker 1: cannot have helped her case. But we also can't disregard
Speaker 1: another significant influence in the outcome of her trial, which
Speaker 1: we briefly touched on, that you might hope something like
Speaker 1: physical appearance wouldn't matter today in the courtroom as it
Speaker 1: clearly did in Tilly's day. You might surprised to hear
Speaker 1: that the judge and jury can still be swayed by
Speaker 1: a pretty face. What we know from study upon study
Speaker 1: is that most people, even without being conscious of it,
Speaker 1: consider physically attractive adults to be healthier, more intelligent, and
Speaker 1: to have better personalities than those who are not consider
Speaker 1: as esthetically pleasing. In fact, in economics, there's a phenomenon
Speaker 1: known as the beauty premium, and on the opposite side
Speaker 1: of the spectrum there's what's called the ugliness penalty um.
Speaker 1: But that's just not limited to economics, it's just how
Speaker 1: humans work with each other. In recent years, studies have
Speaker 1: also found that as humans, we generally consider attractive people
Speaker 1: in our society to just be better people, whether that's
Speaker 1: in the workplace, at school, in relationships, or in the
Speaker 1: courtroom where you would hope and expect to find impartiality.
Speaker 1: Studies in the last few decades have found that juries
Speaker 1: tend to be biased in the favor of good looking defendants.
Speaker 1: This can mean people considered to be attractive or not
Speaker 1: only found guilty less often, um, but that they also
Speaker 1: received less severe sentences when they are found guilty. Unattractive
Speaker 1: however you define it. Defendants, on the other hand, were
Speaker 1: more likely to be served with longer and harsher sentences
Speaker 1: and average of twenty two months longer in prison. And
Speaker 1: that's even today. So while Tilly we could never paint
Speaker 1: as a good guy in any of this, uh, she
Speaker 1: definitely still was also a victim of this kind of
Speaker 1: weird bias that people won't even acknowledge that they have. Right,
Speaker 1: we feel that we're above it. Now that we're not,
Speaker 1: we're clearly not know And the thing is, it's one
Speaker 1: of those things that's insidious, right, like we all have it.
Speaker 1: We all have these biases. So you can't presume that,
Speaker 1: in recognizing that they exist, that you have overcome your
Speaker 1: own because it's hardwired almost in some ways, it's not
Speaker 1: really hardwired. You can relearn it, but it takes an
Speaker 1: awful lot of conscious effort, absolutely, and a constant conscious
Speaker 1: effort probably for the rest of your life. You're always
Speaker 1: practicing it. Yes, um, but in uh less downer talk, Hey, Maria,
Speaker 1: it's my favorite time of the show, cocktail hour. Yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: what's your Poison? Our our time where we'd come up
Speaker 1: with a little something, something that will relate to the
Speaker 1: show in a fun way. And since we've been talking
Speaker 1: about Tilly, and since she was a Polish immigrant, I
Speaker 1: wanted to do something in honor of her Polish heritage.
Speaker 1: So I squirreled around on the Internet for a while
Speaker 1: because I couldn't come up with anything on my own. Um,
Speaker 1: and I discovered this recipe. It's called a few different things.
Speaker 1: The name that I enjoy is Polish kiss. And what
Speaker 1: this is is Zubrowka vodka, which is a bison grass vodka.
Speaker 1: Did you say bison grass vodka? I did. That's interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's the grass that bison prefer,
Speaker 1: like fine bison everywhere. I don't I swear by this grass,
Speaker 1: just I don't know. It has a blade of grass
Speaker 1: in the bottle. I also came across this drink called
Speaker 1: a Frisky bison Ak polish Kiss, so clearly so the
Speaker 1: polish Kiss is. The version that I found was one
Speaker 1: point five ounces of this bice and grass vodka and
Speaker 1: then five ounces of apple juice. And the way it
Speaker 1: was touted when I read about it was that it
Speaker 1: tastes just like apple pie. And does it? It does not,
Speaker 1: at least not the version I made. Now, let me
Speaker 1: back up the truck for a minute, because I don't
Speaker 1: want to blame the recipe maker. I but it's delicious,
Speaker 1: it's just not like apple pie. I think probably if
Speaker 1: you are making it with normal apple juice from the store,
Speaker 1: it probably does start to taste like apple pie. But
Speaker 1: I bought um organic unsweetened hippie apple juice to go
Speaker 1: with the vodka. So what happened is that it tastes
Speaker 1: like you have just picked a fresh apple off of
Speaker 1: a tree and taken a bite of it, because that
Speaker 1: vodka has that grassy flavor that makes it feel like
Speaker 1: a fresh plant based item. And it's absolutely beautiful. It's
Speaker 1: very crisp, sounds delicious, It's like it's a summer day cocktail.
Speaker 1: For sure. It was very delightful. I could see that
Speaker 1: she would probably drink that while she was waiting for
Speaker 1: her husband to die, Like while she was knitting her hat,
Speaker 1: She's like, Oh, I just don'tthing refreshing to drink while
Speaker 1: I will say this, I will say this, that cocktail
Speaker 1: vibes to me a little too fancy for her. I
Speaker 1: picture her as like a bear drink. It does seem
Speaker 1: a little fancy. And remember Chicago in the twenties, probably
Speaker 1: not like I want fancy imported vodka. I doubt I
Speaker 1: would like the imported bison grass vodka from my homeland.
Speaker 1: Probably didn't come up much, I guess, but I guess now.
Speaker 1: But that is this week's What's Your Poison? Uh And
Speaker 1: thank you for joining us again on Criminalia. If you
Speaker 1: would like to subscribe to the podcast, we would like
Speaker 1: you to do that as well, and you can do
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Speaker 1: or wherever it is you listen. Criminalia is a production
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