Alina
Appearances
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Hey, weirdos. Before we dive into today's twisted tale, let me tell you about a place where the darkness never ends. Wondery Plus. It's like stepping into a haunted mansion where the floorboards creak with ad-free episodes and early access to new episodes lurks around every corner. So come join us if you dare. Morbid is available one week early and ad-free only on Wondery Plus.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
And even if you saw this, you might not think anything's weird because it's just three people in a car driving. And a lot of people don't want to intervene with that stuff. Oh, yeah. That comes up. Which is really scary. It is scary.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
So eventually it occurred to Allison that they had been driving for quite some time and they seemed to be headed along the beach towards Summer Strand, a suburb of Port Elizabeth, about five or so miles outside of city limits. So they were kind of just like in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. As they got further from the city, they stopped talking.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
The two men just stopped talking completely, and the car was filled with an unbearable silence. In her head, Allison convinced herself that they were just taking the long way to visit this friend, as Clinton had indicated earlier, but the further and further they got from Port Elizabeth, the less likely it was all seeming.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
So finally, when they put the lights of Port Elizabeth behind them, Clinton broke the silence and told Allison, "'Teons doesn't speak good English.'"
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
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Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
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Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Because sometimes, you know, it's hard to go to school sometimes. Because especially when your parents are so fucking awesome. I know. And your auntie. You know, like me and John. So you don't want to leave them. They just want to hang. So they just didn't want to leave. But we did the affirmation song, got them laughing and got them ready for the day. And I did sick braids today on them.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
And my favorite part about Quince is that they only work with factories that use safe, ethical, and responsible manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finishes that I absolutely love. I'm a big, big, big online shopping girly, and one of the first places that I always go is Quince. I absolutely love their stuff, specifically their sweaters.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
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Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
I've been trying to, you know, get like at least seven hours of sleep every night. And now that spring is on the way, it is time to refocus on those goals. I am all about keeping my wellness routine simple but effective, and Symbiotica helps me do just that. I literally just pop a magnesium packet right before bed, and I wake up feeling refreshed, clear-headed, ready to tackle my day.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
actually rested. It's iconic. Symbiotica actually simplifies your routine to keep up with healthy habits all year long. It doesn't matter what your goals are. They have products that are going to support everything from your energy, digestion, that's a big one for me, immune system, and mood. Their liquid travel size packets are perfect for when you're on the go.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
It is genuinely one of the easiest things you could do for your health. Symbiotica is also as clean as it gets. No seed oils, preservatives, or artificial junk. Ugh. just high quality, real ingredients that actually do something. It feels very, very amazing knowing that I'm putting the right stuff in my body and that I actually get real energy that helps me show up throughout my day.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Symbiotica, wellness made simple. Go to symbiotica.com slash morbid for 20% off plus free shipping. That's symbiotica.com slash morbid for 20% off plus free shipping. Now, the sound of his voice jolted Allison out of a panicked state and brought her back into reality. The statement seemed to come out of nowhere and wasn't followed by anything else, which she thought was very strange.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
But now, with her attention focused on what was happening in the car, it occurred to her that Clinton was starting to slow down as they were reaching a wooded area. Oh, God. Yeah.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
So as that happened, he made a U-turn and pulled the car onto a small path that led down to the beach, driving the car right up to the sand until they reached a dark, isolated spot among the trees about 300 feet away from the road. The fear she must have felt. As this car is just slowing down, you're in the middle of nowhere. Incomprehensible. Two strangers who are just being weird.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
It's true. Well, on one of them. Yeah. I was pretty excited about that. Tis true. Tis true. We have a cute little fam bam. It gives full house hugs here in the morning. I'm just like Uncle Joey over here. It's true. Maybe a combination of Uncle Jesse and Uncle Joey. Yeah. You know, my Gemini nature. I like that. I don't know. Just ranting over here. We did yoga this morning.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Like, obviously... They've abducted you at knife point, first of all, and they're just being weird and creepy and quiet.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
And just as a woman, being alone with two men, you don't know, regardless of whether they're being threatening or not, I'm sorry, it just automatically is very, very scary. Yeah. For them to be this weird and threatening and to be driving you into an isolated area of a wooded area would be... I mean, like my nervous system is in orbit right now just thinking about it.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Even just being like not even like completely alone with two strangers that are men. Being like with friends and then two strangers that you don't know that are men is scary. Like I've had that experience. Because you don't know what they're about. Yeah, you don't know. Or what's going to happen. Exactly. I just I do want to I mean, some I think a lot of people know this story.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
But if you don't, I do just want to forewarn you that there's going to be talk about a very intense sexual assault and rape. Yeah, it is extremely graphic. Yeah, very graphic. I did my best to make it a little less graphic, but it's kind of impossible to take it fully away. Yeah. So and we got to tell the story for what it is.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
So Clinton brought the car to a stop under a cluster of trees and Teons got out, leaving Allison completely alone now in the car with her abductor. And Clinton sexually assaulted Allison at this point. Piece of shit. And this was all while Teons was just like sitting on the hood of the car.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Just like got out of the car, knew that this was going to happen. Fucking monsters. And then when Clinton was finished sexually assaulting Allison, he called Tianz into the car. And Tianz started to do the same thing, also sexually assaulted her. But moments later, he shouted, no, I can't do this.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
And he got out of the car and sat back down on the hood and just smoked a cigarette instead of like trying to stop this at all.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
He couldn't bring himself to continue assaulting her? But he wasn't going to be a good person and try to stop it? No. No. So when he finished his cigarette, he hopped down from the hood and looked back at the car. And looking at Clinton, he yelled, Franz! Franz!
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
oops yeah not not his real name clinton franz is his real name very bright it was the first time that allison had heard the name of her attacker so she just started repeating it over and over again in her head like silently determined not to forget his name but almost as if he knew what she was doing franz looked over at her and said if we take you into town now you're gonna go to the police
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
It was almost like he could sense it. She tried to assure him that she wasn't going to say anything to anybody, but neither of them would be convinced. And one of them then said to the other, what do you think Umnic would want us to do with her? What the fuck? Umnic, Allison recognized as another name for Satan. What the fuck? Umm is like a South African word.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
It basically, it's akin to uncle for us. It's like a sign of respect. So Umm Nick, they were referring to Satan. Satan's also known as Old Nick, which I didn't realize. That is weird. But I was looking into it the other night. Or like, I don't mean weird. I mean, that's different. Yeah, it's different.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
So he looks at the other guy and he says... What do you think Uncle Satan would want us to do with her?
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Yeah. And he doesn't exist. She's sitting there. Yeah, exactly. I don't think he's going to weigh in here. Well, and she's sitting there and she said she thought to herself, like, what does Satan have to do with this? Like, what the fuck? What the fuck are you talking about? But she didn't know what to do. So Tian's answered, I think he wants us to kill her. They're just having this conversation.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Yes. And they're just acting like this is all normal. Like, they're not acting freaked out or anything like that. Like, they're acting just like this is another Tuesday. A casual conversation. Yeah. So Franz then instructed Allison to get out of the car and remove all of her clothing, which she did. Because at this point, she's just, I would do the same thing.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
We really did. It was so nice. I know. We're getting back. I think like spring is coming, so I feel like we can get back into the swing of like...
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
I was going to say, I just don't know what else you would do. And remember, he has a knife and the two of them have just raped her. Yeah. So when she'd taken off all her clothes, he gestured at the rings on her hand and told her to even take those off. And Teons quickly grabbed them, like snatched them out of her hands.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
The next thing she knew, she was knocked to the ground and Franz was choking her. They made her take off those rings so she couldn't be identified. Later, she said, I was surprised by how strong he had become. This man knew what he was doing and he was determined to do it. And we will find out he knew what he was doing because this was not the first time they had attacked somebody.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Allison managed to get a few words out while he was choking her, just begging him not to kill her. But all Fran said was sorry while he continued violently choking her until she lost consciousness. So he's standing, like, straddling over her, choking her into unconsciousness and apologizing. But still doing it. But that adds such a layer of terror to this whole thing.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Apologizing while you're doing this. Yeah. And just continuing to do it. But not stopping. It's horrifying. So she regained consciousness just a short time later and realized she was still on the ground. She's looking around and she sees that she's surrounded by trash and broken bottles. One of the men was crouched over her and she couldn't see what he was doing.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
I really fell out of my workout routine in the winter. Well, it was so nice driving today and not having it be pitch black. It was getting lighter. It was like 5.30 probably when I left the house and it was already light out. Yeah. Which was sick. And then on my way home today. See, I said to myself, this is why you got to wake up early because you just don't know what's going on around you.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
All she saw was his arms swinging wildly back and forth in front of her face. Oh, God. But then it occurred to her and she thought, my God, he's slashing my throat. Holy shit. She couldn't see really what was happening, obviously, because it's like she can't look down and see it. And she didn't feel any pain in this moment, but she, quote, could hear the flesh split. Oh, my God.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
yeah what this woman has and this isn't this is just the tip of the iceberg oh this is just just that going through that i don't know what you do after that but like oh my god it would later be determined that they had slit her throat 16 times and she was almost like she was nearly decapitated The fact that this woman is alive. And what beasts. Truly. And just fucking wait.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
That's just unthinkable. This entire crime is unthinkable and it only gets worse. Humans, man. Sometimes it's like, what happened here? And these two just decided they wanted to do this one day. They just decided that they wanted to do this together. That's wildly fucked up. Just came up with the idea. And for two people to get together to do this kind of shit always really throws me off.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
It's scary enough when one person is able to do this kind of thing.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
But when they can get a team together that all... Because it's like... And we've said this before in other things like the Hillside Stranglers and all the other kind of teams that team up and do this like, you know, Ian and Myra Hindley. Where does that conversation start? That's the thing that you have to sit there and wonder.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
And where does it start? In what has already happened. You just see if the other person runs? What has already happened to make you feel confident that they're going to be cool with you bringing up that?
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
That's the thing because you have to feel real confident to say to somebody, do you think you'd want to just like randomly kill someone for sport with me?
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Like, you have to be very confident to do that. I would think. And it's like, because otherwise, like, what are you going to say? Like, no, I was just kidding. Like, then the person's going to be like, you're, that's crazy.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
I can never get over these things. I don't know where you find one person who's capable of this. Not that I'm looking. And then where do you find two? Yeah. And how do they find each other? Like, what fucking evil has to happen in the world for these people to be guided to each other?
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Seriously. Like, what ancient tomb was opened up that released the kind of evil that allows this to happen?
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
It's so true. So she could hear her flesh being split open. And I don't know if I said this already, but it was determined later that they had slit her throat 16 times. 16 times. 16 times. And that's not it. Suddenly, the attack stopped and her attackers moved away. And she could hear the two men muttering and pacing around near her.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
And then she turned on her stomach in an effort to protect herself. And she said, I tried to hold my breath, but I realized I had no control over my breathing. I moved my hand up to cover my neck. My whole hand disappeared into it, but it seemed to have worked. The sound was silenced.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
I can't. Like, this is so horrifying. It's insane. This poor woman. These people are depraved.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
So she lay on the ground now playing dead. She's completely – she has the – this woman has – her throat has been slit 16 times to the point of near being decapitated. And she has the wherewithal to play dead. That's the thing. It's like this woman throughout this entire thing –
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
You don't know what you're going to run into. You just don't know. This morning, I'm coming back from my yoga class and I passed a farm and there was cows that like escaped this farm and they were on the front lawn of the neighborhood. I love this so much. And there's just a cop like standing on this guy's front lawn. And I'm like, what's a cop going to do about a cow?
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
The sharp fucking mind on Allison is un-fucking-matched.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Like, she's... I can't say enough. Like, I just... I'm astounded.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
There's not a word to describe how incredible she is.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
My timbers have been shivered. Yes. I'm shook by her.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
All of the above. Like, she is... To have that kind of brain. I can't even. Every statement you think of, like I was just going to say she's a force to be reckoned with. That's not even it. That's not enough. That's not enough. So she just lays there on the ground pretending to be dead. She can hear the two of them talking over her. And they're talking in Afrikaans at this point.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
And they're rummaging around through her car. And one of them asked the other, they're like, do you think she's dead? And the other one responded, no one can survive that.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
except allison wrong bitches motherfuckers now a few seconds later she heard the engine start and then rev a few times of course yeah you gotta of course you gotta as the car just reversed swinging around kids yeah swinging around the car reversed and drove back out onto the main road she was finally completely alone but she was obviously in very bad shape such bad shape she didn't even know that she was in
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
at this point, and she was almost sure she was going to die here. So wanting to do anything she could to help the authorities catch her killers, she started writing in the sand as she's laying there nearly decapitated. And there's other stuff that I'm going to get into that happened that she hasn't even realized yet. But she's laying there writing in the sand. She wrote Franz.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Then underneath she wrote teens because I don't know if she knew how to spell teens or. Yeah. I mean, she's she's in a state right now. Yeah. And then just before losing consciousness, she wrote, I love mom. Oh, my God. And traced it in a square so that it would be like very obvious. Oh, yeah.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
oh my god the strength that that must have taken her body is actively shutting down and you're trying and she's writing down valuable information so that investigators so that they can't do this again to someone else exactly like exactly So later, she said she would remember this moment with remarkable clarity.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
She said it was as if I'd cut moorings, feeling like her spirit had left her body just floating. She said as I hovered there, I recognized the person down below. I knew it was me. And I felt such a strong connection to that bleeding, mangled girl lying on her stomach. Wow. And in that moment, she said it occurred to her that she'd only just started her life because she was 27 years old. Holy shit.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
She hadn't achieved really any of the things that she hoped she would do. So as thoughts just raced through her head, she suddenly caught a glimmer of lights out of the corner of her eye. During the attack, everything obviously seemed so far away, but it turned out that they actually weren't very far from the main road at all. She remembered, Wow. Wow. How?
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
As soon as she did, something felt very wrong. She reached down to her stomach and felt something she described as something tepid, wet, and slimy. Looking down, she could see that her intestines were exposed and hanging out of her stomach. Holy shit. Her intestines were literally falling out of her stomach. She said it was horrifying. There was just so much of me on the outside.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
I tried to scoop it all up with my hands, but everything just slithered away again. Because you're litter... How do you survive this? How do you survive this? Oh, I'm just like, I'm holding my own stomach just sitting here like, I... And how do you do that to somebody? Stab them to the point that their intestines are pouring out.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Is that something? He's been trained in bovine matters. Do they tell you what to do if a bovine escapes?
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
By the way, so in addition to her throat being slashed 16 times, they stabbed her in the abdomen over 50 times to the point that her intestines were now spilling out of her. How were they ever let out? And she's alive. How were they ever let out?
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
oh yeah because spoiler sorry spoiler like i think you should know right off the bat but they got let out like they got let out how were they let out i'll get to it i think they served 17 years maybe a little more and got out because there was uh it's similar to what happened here with the constitution where um life sentences became unconstitutional yeah it was it was i think it was literally the same year 2004 we'll get to it but yeah holy shit yeah
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
So she's crazy. She must have just been in complete shock. And there must have been like so much adrenaline coursing through her veins because of this. Like that's what your body does. So she still wasn't experiencing any pain. But the sight of her intestines and the considerable wound in her stomach unnerved her. And for the first time, the gravity of the situation struck her.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Possibly. That's crazy. That's crazy. It was so funny. I was laughing so hard. I was like cry laughing by myself. I love it.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
So she starts groping around with one hand just trying to find something because she had taken off clothes. So she knew maybe they were right there. They had left her shirt. Wow, that's lucky. I know. So she found that lying in the sand and used it to tie around her abdomen just to keep her insides in place. Literally tourniquets herself. Holy shit. To keep her intestines in place. Oh my god.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
And then she just started crawling toward the road. All the while, debris and bits of broken glass are cutting her knees and hands open as she's crawling. And her intestines are still spilling out of her. And she's having to, like, push them in place. Oh, and she's basically decapitated. And don't forget. On top of that. Yeah, exactly. In case you forgot, she's also nearly decapitated.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
And that's not hyperbolic. No, like, medically, she's literally. Like, half of her thyroid was sitting outside of her. Her neck.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
I swear to you, the next time I have a fucking complaint, some dumbass complaint, punch me in the fucking face.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Is beyond. It's beyond. I get to the point, like, I got to the point reading this. I was telling Drew about it when I was, like, putting it together. I was, like, telling him about it. And I just got to the point where I was like, I don't even have words left to say. That's the thing, like, you really don't. I don't even have words left to describe this story, describe this woman.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Like, it's truly unthinkable. I can't believe what she survived. In what she was able to walk away, like not walk away from, but you know what I mean. Yeah. So badly injured and only having one free hand at this point because one of them is keeping her neck together. Oh, yeah.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
And realistically only, she doesn't even have a free hand because she's keeping her intestines together and trying to keep her head together. So her progress was slow and exhausting because, again, her body is shutting down. But when she reached the clearing where the attack had first started, she collapsed on a pile of rocks and felt like she couldn't go any further.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
It really was. I was like, am I just in the Midwest? Where am I? Where am I? It was cute though.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Because you can't imagine what this had to have taken. And she's rapidly losing blood at the same time. Yeah. So then it occurred to her, though, she wasn't even thinking of herself in this moment. She said it occurred to her that if anybody found her there, like so far away from the scene, there would be a large trail of blood behind her and they would know that she struggled and suffered.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
And she didn't want that for her friends and family. Allison, are you a real, are you a person? She's like a saint. Like, what are you? She is a goddess.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
I'm so impressed with her mind. To think. Like, I'm just like, what, like that mind of hers and that like... I don't know. I don't know what she is, but like that mind and soul is something that I don't think you come across often.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
No. To have the capacity to think about the reaction of your friends and family and like just that you wouldn't want them to be that heartbroken and know you had suffered. And to know what you went through. Wow. Insane. Like in a good way. Yeah. Yeah.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or an Apple podcast or Spotify.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Just like three big ass cows just in somebody's front lawn. Hell yeah. I'd be pissed if that was my front lawn.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
yeah i feel like they'd fuck up your lawn real bad i would kind of love it though i would love it but then afterwards i feel like i'd be like yeah but honestly their manure is some of the best soil that's true but contributes to it i don't want to leave that on my yard because that'd be big stank stinky
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
So the crawling at this point was taking too long, and she knew that if she was going to get to the road, she had to move faster. So it took some time, but eventually she did manage to get to her feet. But as soon as she was upright, everything went black. Of course. Now, this moment was deeply confusing because she hadn't lost consciousness. She was still completely conscious.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
But for some reason, everything was completely wrong. She said, my head, I realized, had flopped backwards and almost rested between my shoulder blades.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
oh my god she said i hadn't i expected to feel something but was completely taken aback when my hand seemed to almost disappear inside my body as if i had swallowed myself so what most likely happened there elena and i was talking to elena a little bit about the details of this something had to have happened where the nerves that like help give you sight were so messed up in that moment that when she flopped backwards they weren't like
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Like maybe the flopping backwards like pinched the occipital or like, you know, any kind of nerve that makes it so you can see.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
And the lights literally just went out because there was a kink in the line.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Insane. Like that is... And when she says her head is resting between her shoulder blades. When you said that, I'm literally like, I keep grabbing my neck. Same. I'm just like, oh God. Same. I can't. That's like, like if you put your head back and look at the sky, hers was almost in between her shoulder blades. You couldn't physically do that because you're not decapitated.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
I ask my kids to look up at the ceiling when I wash their hair in the bath and they act like I am asking them. I've seen that.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Oh, so that's when she real because that's so that's why she had one free hand at that point, because she didn't realize how bad it was while she's crawling. So when she was crawling, she was crawling with one hand. The other hand was keeping her intestines together. Now, at this point, she tries to stand and that's what happened. So now she has no free hand. She's got to hold her head.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
She's literally holding her head and her abdomen. So yeah, holding her head forward with one hand and pressing her intestines into her abdomen with the other.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
If you could see a picture of us right now, I am clasping my neck with one hand and I have the other hand on top of my head, stabilizing my own head.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
But look at you looking through the bright side.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
But this is everything spilling out of her.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
And this is just listening to this. I am holding all of my body together.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Yeah. So now she's got... That's the other thing. Now she's lost all this blood. She's nearly decapitated. Her intestines are spilling out. And now she's standing and has to have the balance to walk, putting one foot in front of the other. Keep the lights on. I can barely do that. And I'm fully here. Yeah.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
You're all grounded and shit. I am. I'm very grounded. I love that. I had a good coffee. That's good. I had a great coffee. There's cool things happening. Yes. But I think you'll know about them by now.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
So she very slowly swung one foot in front of the other, just slowly moving in the direction of the main road. She said at various points she felt like she was just going to lose consciousness again. And after what felt like an hour, she considered giving up. But when she raised her eyes forward, she realized she made it to the road. Allison. But... Fuck yeah, Allison.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Now she realized she'd reached her destination, which was incredible. But what now? Remarkable in, like, beyond. But now she needed to get somebody's attention. Mm-hmm. every fiber of her being just wanted to lay down right there where she was on the pavement. But she was on the side of the road at this point, and she knew that by lying on the side of the road, she might not be seen.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
She'd be missed, yeah. Exactly. So instead, she took even more steps and made it to the middle of the road and just lay horizontally down across the road, ensuring that a driver coming in either direction would have to stop or intentionally drive around her. But literally thought that. Was like, I'm just going to, first of all, laying in the middle of the road. Scary. Horrifying. Scary.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
She didn't even think of that at that point. All natural instincts. She didn't even think of that. She just said, they'll have to swerve around me or they'll see me and they'll stop.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Because she's also thinking, like, people are humans.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Luckily, nobody runs her over, but people aren't humans.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
But I'm surprised after what she has been through that she can still trust in humans enough to be like... Honestly.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
It won't just run me over. Honestly. You know? So at this point, she's just relieved to finally rest. This has taken...
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
everything and more out of her so she laid down for an indeterminate amount of time until finally she heard the hum of an engine from off in the distance and the hum grew closer and closer until it finally stopped and she could see the headlights from the car bearing down on her and it was just sitting idle in the road but the driver wasn't getting out she said i frantically waved as fast as i could i wanted whoever it was to see that i was alive and needed help
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
I think I'm going to stop teasing these things because I'm so confused about what episodes come out when. It'd be super dope if we could just like put them out when we wanted to.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
But the driver didn't make any moves to get out of the vehicle. And for a moment, a terrible thought flashed through her mind. What if this is them? What if this is them returning to make sure I'm dead? Luckily, it was not. But what felt like 15 or maybe even 20 minutes later, the engine revved slightly and the car just drove around her and continued down the road. Whoever that was.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
How do you live with yourself? Whoever that was. I hope you stub your toe every morning. I hope you've never had a good coffee since. I hope you have every shit-tastic thing happen to you every fucking day. I hope it's always raining on your side of the street. I hope that you don't like rain. I'm... Without words. I wish you the worst. Rarely am I speechless.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Person who just sat there for however long they did, because obviously she had no concept of time at this point. And obviously took a look at her. I wish you the very worst, which is exactly what you deserve.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Or just get out and comfort the woman in the middle of the road. Like, hello? That's what, like, call the police and get out and wait. All you have to do is be a fucking fellow human.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Like, holy shit. Did you just, like, go have dinner with your family after that? Who knows? Like, what'd you do all the rest of your day?
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
who knows did you tell someone did you go somewhere and just be like oh yeah i saw this crazy thing you hope that that person called the police but it doesn't sound like they did jesus so her heart is just broken as she's watching her what she feels is like her only hope drive away but yet the more she thought about it she had the wherewithal to have compassion everybody
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
The more she started to consider why a person might not get out under these circumstances, she thought perhaps it was a woman on her own who was scared to get out of her car. Maybe the driver sensed danger and thought it was an ambush and thought I was some sort of decoy. She still was able to have compassion for this person. And come up with, like, by no means okay that that person left.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
But to come up with valid reasons, too, to, like, excuse them of their actions is...
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
This right here is an eternal optimist. Truly. And just like, she's like, oh, you know what? I'll give you the excuses. Yeah. That I hope you needed. Yeah. So as she just lay there in the middle of the road, nearly decapitated, intestines filling out, she just considered all the reasons why the driver had left. And then she started hearing the sounds of another approaching car.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
And then she heard voices. Yeah. When she opened her eyes, there was a woman standing over her who just started screaming when she saw Allison's injuries, which you honestly can't even blame this woman. I think that was just, like, an instinctual response.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
I don't blame this woman in the least because I know that was probably awful for Allison, which, like, I feel awful about, but, like, I... I mean... You can't conjure this image in your mind. And to see a human, a fellow woman like that lying in the road, I can't... That would destroy me.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
No, it's, like, horrifying. She said later it was the kind of scream you hear in some cheap horror movie, and then I realized how awful I must have looked. So the woman's screams eventually stopped and Allison started to hear other voices. And then she saw the face of a young man who was a literal motherfucking hero kneel beside her. This man forever.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
He looked her directly in the eyes and was talking, but she couldn't really understand what he was saying because she's going in and out of consciousness at this point. And she opened her mouth and tried to speak, but obviously no sound came out. And the young man responded, telling her just to relax as best as she could and reassured her that help was on the way.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
i love this man it was 2 45 a.m by the time she was discovered in the street meaning this entire course of events from her abduction to her discovery had taken no more than 90 minutes oh my god all of that happened abduction to this point 90 90 minutes that is an hour and a half everybody I cannot... I can't conceive of that. They were able to do that to her in 90 minutes.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
That's how much her life changed. That must have been frenzied, that attack. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
And... even more badass of her you got all the way out there in that little of time yes and it probably which to her felt like hours oh i think it felt like days but she was out there yeah yeah in this in this fucking economy yeah like in this in this situation she's just suiting out to the road yep holy shit yep
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
No, Tian. I didn't know that. Yeah. Wow. Incredible. 90 minutes. Wow. So Tian, different than Tian. Tian. Oh, this is a different. This is a different person. Ehlert had been out with friends at a bar that night and was driving, just driving home around 2.30 a.m. when he came upon Allison lying there in the street. He was a veterinary student. Oh, thank goodness.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
So he was familiar with anatomy and immediately started checking her vital signs. And he also recognized the severity of her wounds and did everything he could to minimize any further risk. Oh, thank goodness, people. Yeah. Yeah, people peopled in a good way now. So there was only one people who peopled in the bad way. Yeah. Outside of the attackers, obviously.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Christ Almighty. Christ on a cracker. Christ on a biscuit. Jesus was a biscuit. Was a biscuit. Who said that on Drag Race? I have no idea. Oh my God. Everyone's screaming it. Who's a Drag Race fan? La, la, la, la, la.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
And even Allison was able to give them an excuse. Even Allison gave them the excuse. So somebody brought him a flashlight and he was able to get a good look at her wounds, seeing for the first time that her intestines were exposed.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
He said later, I was utterly amazed that this person was still alive considering this second major injury. So while they waited for an ambulance, Tian continued talking to Allison, both to keep her calm and conscious until the ambulance arrived. And meanwhile, one of the other drivers massaged her legs to keep the circulation going. Oh, my God. Yeah.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Like, this is, I'm like, okay. This is where the humanity is at. Oh, man, she saw them.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
She saw the opposite ends of the spectrum that night. Yep. So they could finally hear the siren of the ambulance wailing in the distance, but it still seemed so far away. But finally, the EMTs were beside them, and they loaded Allison onto the stretcher and into the ambulance. And instinctually, Tian followed them in and climbed into the ambulance. Oh, Tian.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Under the circumstances, nobody bothered to ask what his relation was. Come in, Tian. He rode all the way to the hospital holding her hand the entire way.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
I hope Tian became a vet. Yes. I hope he became something that cares for something. Because clearly that is his nature.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
That is your soul, sir. Yeah. Oh, my God. Incredible. I love him. Beautiful. It wasn't until they arrived to the hospital and a doctor appeared that anybody even paid any attention to him. And they just ushered him out of the way because she had to be brought to surgery. He finally let go of Allison's hand, but not before he leaned in and assured her he was not going to leave her alone.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
He would be there when she woke up. Oh my god. Yes. I know. I love, I love this. Years later, Allison would credit her survival in large part to him, who she described as her lifeline that night.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
So by the time the surgeon arrived at the hospital, the other doctors had managed really only to get Allison's name and her mother's phone number before she went, she lost consciousness again. Based on the extent of her trauma, the surgeon, Dr. Volodya Anjalev, was stunned that she had even managed to stay alive. Oh, yeah.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
After checking her vital signs, he did his best not to reveal a surprise to the patient, who was just slipping in and out of consciousness. And according to Dr. Angelo, Allison looked like a, quote, creature straight out of a Dickens novel. She looked like a corpse. Because you have to think the amount of blood she lost. She must be gray and just...
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
yeah dead literally like on the brink of death yeah once they cleaned her off and moved her into surgery they could see the extent of the wounds dr angelo said her neck had been split open almost from ear to ear i've seen many injuries as a doctor but the severe cruelty of the wounds really shocked me wow her thyroid had been sliced nearly in half and had tion not thought to push it back into her throat she would have died
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
If he hadn't done that, she would have died. This is teamwork. Her larynx had been separated from her trachea. Most of the muscles and tendons in the front and sides of her neck had been sliced and just retracted into the base of her skull.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Latrice. There you go. You know when it's like right in the forefront of your face and you're like, oh, God. Yep. All right. Well, we yoga'd, we cowed, we Jesus was a-biscuited. We did it all. All the important things. Yeah, we affirmated. Yeah. And now we're going to talk about a...
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
holy shit and the wound to her abdomen was equally horrific like we said her intestines had been exposed and you probably weren't even thinking now they're covered in sand dirt and other debris i actually as soon as you said she was crawling in the sand my first thought was like oh my intestines are covered and just holy shit but her intestines had also sustained several stab wounds
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Oh, yeah. You could go into septic in a hot second. It's incredible that she didn't. I'm astounded she didn't. Yeah. Additionally, the stab wounds to her stomach had caused her abdominal muscles to collapse around the area of that wound. Wow. But after three and a half hours of cleaning and stitching wounds, they finally had stabilized Allison and she was taken to the intensive care unit.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
While the surgeons worked to close Allison's wound, other hospital staff had contacted her poor mother, Claire. I can't imagine getting that phone call. But Claire started a kind of phone tree to inform everybody in Allison's life of what had happened. And finally, when she was out of surgery, the family was allowed to see her, and Claire rushed to the hospital to be right by her side.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
And when she entered Allison's room, she said she was shocked by what she saw. Claire said she looked frightened. She was filthy. Her face was swollen. Her eyes were filled with blood and bulged out of her head. And she had tubes and pipes everywhere. There was a cage over her lower body keeping blankets off of her. And there was this massive bandage across her throat.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Imagine seeing your baby like that. Like somebody did that to your baby. Ugh. There wouldn't be a safe motherfucking corner of this earth. In the galaxy. Nope. Just... You can't even... You could go light years away and I would travel there and find you.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
How about the atmosphere without me following? Yup. Like, that's... I feel...
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
immensely for her mother for having to see that so despite her injuries allison was awake and did her best to talk with her mom just because she's got to entertain her visitors yeah because she's a good hostess as well yeah that's all laying in the hospital under all of those circumstances and is like hi mom hey the fact she could even fucking talk is like her larynx was separated from her trachea yeah yeah she's like hey mom hey
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
So she tried to explain, she tried to sit there and explain what had happened to her mom, but her voice was too hoarse to say much. Gee, I wonder why. But she just insisted that the police needed to catch the men who had done this to her. And it took more than a few minutes before she realized that in addition to her mother, there was another young man in the room. It was Tian.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
wild survivor tale that i think is probably one of our most requested yes cases it is this is a doozy this is a doozy of a case and a doozy of a human i mean in the best way I don't think there's a single person more resilient. Bionic woman. Yeah, truly unbelievable tale.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
tion was tion oh the man who stayed with her while they waited for the ambulance so she just thanked him profusely and did her best to hug him oh my god outside the room the attending physician dr coleman detailed the extent of allison's wounds to her family explaining that her head like i said had almost been severed from her body She had also, remember, been sexually assaulted. Oh, yeah.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
He said, My goodness. Hey, weirdos. If you guys know one thing about us, it's that we love a deep dive. Well, if you're looking for a limited series that will completely consume you, we've got you covered. Those sketchy texts you're always getting? Sometimes there's something way darker behind them.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Imagine helping your brother land a dream job abroad, only to discover you've trapped him in a nightmare. We're talking armed guards with shoot-to-kill orders and thousands forced to scam others just to stay alive.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Wondery's new podcast, Scam Factory, follows one family's desperate fight to save their brother from a multi-billion dollar criminal empire, where the only way out is to become part of the scheme that trapped you. Are you looking for a wild story that'll keep you up at night? Follow Scam Factory on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
you can binge all episodes of scam factory early and ad free right now by joining wondery plus He explained that her outlook was not good because even if she survived the first few days, there was still an incredibly high risk of infection from all the debris found all along her intestines. And the injury to her throat was equally serious.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
It was very possible for the wound to develop a thick scar tissue that could potentially choke her airway. Oh.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
holy so even though they were able to get everything back i didn't even think of that scar tissue could have formed and choked her inside and literally like pushed back like blocked her airway yeah my god yep you don't even think of that no although the outlook was grim claire was confident that her daughter would survive she said she was confident that god had not allowed her daughter to make it this far only to take her a few days later wow
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Within a few days, visitors started to show up to Allison's room every few hours, including, of course, her father, her brother, and a ton of friends and family. And when she was finally stable, she was visited by two police officers. Now that she was out of danger and she was able to speak more clearly, she described her attackers to the police and told them that their names were Franz and Tjons.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Fortunately, one of the officers, Nadia Swanpole... thought that she actually might have had an interaction with these two men at a shopping mall a few days earlier, which was confirmed the following day when Allison identified them both in a photo lineup.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
What are the odds? Because they're just out here being fucking menaces in every way you can think. A few days later, another police officer, Melvin Humple, showed up at Allison's bedside and he explained that he was now the lead detective on the case and wanted to inform her that they had arrested Franz Dutoit and Teons Kruger and they'd found her car. Wow.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
They were already out on bail pending a trial for another rape charge. So Humple assured Allison that neither man would be eligible for bail now. So they attacked her when they were already out on bail for raping another woman. So they're just fucking monsters. Monsters. Pure monsters. Monsters.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
By that point, Allison had been in the hospital for almost two weeks and news about her attack had spread throughout the country. The press was obviously eager to talk to her and had been harassing Claire, which I'm like, really? Like, come on. Yeah. Day and night they're harassing her.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
In most cases, you would assume somebody in Allison's position would probably just want to avoid talking about this ordeal at all and not want to be anywhere near strangers. Yeah, you would totally understand that. Yeah, you'd give her every grace in the world. But she felt compelled to tell her story.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
She was still in such a fragile condition, though, that interviews had to wait, but she was willing to give them.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Let's get into it. We're going to be talking about Alison Bofa today. Alison Bofa, she was born September 22nd, 1967 in Port Elizabeth, South Africa to Brian and Claire Collier. Okay. According to Allison, her house growing up was a place of unconditional love, which she got from both of her parents. She said, Oh my god, I love that. I'm gonna do that shit when I have kids.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Just to make sure that, like, every word got out about this. That the story was told, yeah. So she remained in the hospital, obviously, for several more weeks. And during that time, her attackers were arrested and prosecuted for her attempted murder. Which, honestly, they should have just been prosecuted for murder. Because that's what this would have been.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
I hate attempted murder. We've gone through that before. But, like, this is murder. Yeah. This is murder. They walked away from somebody they thought was dead. After decapitating her and slashing her throat 16 times and stabbing her in the abdomen upwards of 50 times, exposing her intestines after raping her violently. Yep. In choking her as well. To the point of unconsciousness.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
If you tell me that is not murder, that's stupid as fuck. No, that is. That is murder, but Allison's just stronger than they are.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
And she should not be punished for being stronger than they are.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Because it's like, that's not attempt. That's not like, oops, I didn't do it right. No, they did it right. Allison's just stronger than that. She's just an anomaly. It's like, they did it. They overdid it. In fact, they overkilled her. They did. And for them to not consider that, like, there needed to be some kind of break from precedence. Yeah. Where they sat there and said, this is murder.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Because this case itself is a break from precedence.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Just because she survived it doesn't mean that this is not murder. Yup. Let's be real here. It drives me fucking nuts.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Attempted murder drives me nuts to begin with, but when it's this flagrant, it's a whole other level. There needs to be a different precedent. There just needs to be.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
There absolutely does. Because this makes me so angry. Yeah. Fuck. So she's in the hospital. She's reading updates in the papers. And she was surprised by how, quote, disheveled and terrified they both looked in the photographs. Because when they were around her, they were acting completely normal. But now they look like shit. I was like, you're not scared. You're scared you got caught. No.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
The press had dubbed the pair the Nordhoek Rippers, which is like, don't give them a nickname. And of course, there was reports that they claimed to be Satanists. To Allison, the claims of Satanism seemed like a ploy to lessen the severity of what they had done. Like they weren't acting of their own free will when they very much were.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Now, if friends and tions had hoped to influence the court with their claims of Satan's influence, only the press seemed interested in their religious or spiritual beliefs. The judge and the prosecutor couldn't give less of a shit. They had no interest in their beliefs and remained focused on the cruelty and the utter brutality of their crimes.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
After multiple days, the two finally went before the court, where they pleaded guilty to eight charges, including kidnapping, rape, and attempted murder. Okay. During all of this, Allison learned various things about her attackers from the papers. Franz, she learned, was the son of a police officer, which naturally came as a surprise to her. Wow. The son of a police officer.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
She also learned that they had attacked another woman on December 4th, but according to Franz, the urge to kill her had passed once he raped her. Wow. So he would have killed that woman. It was just the urge passed when he was done assaulting her. Wow.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
From their statements in court, she learned that they had just been out drinking earlier in the day and decided to prowl the streets looking for a woman to attack. Tian said, we wanted a nice car and a nice woman. Our goal was to find the woman, take her car, kidnap her, rape her, and then kill her. And he said this like he was just like rattling off items from a grocery list.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Just, like, take your child aside just to be like... I love that. Like you're so special. Yeah. But like you're not above anybody. You're not like more special than somebody else.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Well, like what we plan to do that night. Like, yeah, I was just going to go to the bar. I was going to run to the grocery store after, grab like apples, bananas, and oranges. Yeah. But he's like, we're going to kidnap a woman, rape her, and then kill her. What? Like, what? You just sat around and shot the shit about that?
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
And we're like this, you know what we should do tonight instead of literally anything else? What? I can't. I, I, yeah.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Not in my wildest, like, my brain just will not even attempt to comprehend that. No. So both men seemed arrogant and cruel to Allison and me. She said, Yeah. Yeah. I have the freedom to choose how I will respond to it. I have the choice to make of it what I must and learn from it. Wow.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
She also recognized the role that she played in her own survival, focusing on her will to survive rather than the randomness of luck. She was like, nah, I did that shit, which I love. Yeah, because that was not luck. No, that's not luck. That was 100%.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
anomaly of nature yes that i don't know if there's enough like how many allisons are there in the world one how many allison bosses are there not many truly so she told a reporter in 2006 believing that i could live the night of my attack and seeing the miraculous result of that belief is a great achievement for me yeah that's an understatement you can do fucking anything For sure.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Which I can imagine. Yeah. In time, she became a symbol of hope and resilience to countless young women across South Africa who themselves had experienced sexual violence but were denied justice or were unable to tell their stories. Damn. And it's those women that Allison wanted to make a difference with, and they became the central premise of her story.
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Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
She said, you must know that you are special and value yourself. It's what got me through my attack. wow and that was and her she said she grew up being told you're special pulled into the other room and said like you're special that stayed with her that stuck that was a foundation that her mother laid wow yeah i love that that came back around yep we do love that yeah that's amazing
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
now this i love in 1997 her life changed dramatically for a second time in a good way when she married teeny botha they met years earlier and had lost touch actually but they reconnected at a party one night where they ran into each other unexpectedly oh i love it so they got married in 1997 february 1997 and despite being told that she would likely be unable to have children due to her abdominal injury she has since given birth to two children
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Holy shit. She said maybe I survived because I was meant to bring these two boys into the world for them to grow up and to become special people.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
And what makes that even more amazing and special is that during the attack, one of the men said to the other one while they were stabbing her almost 50 times in her intestines and abdomen, they said they were purposely trying to mutilate her reproductive organs and destroy them.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
This is a two-pronged response. One, how fucking diabolically evil do you have to be to be purposely mutilating someone's reproductive organs while in the course of killing them?
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Like I love that. That's great. Sadly, despite the love and support and the happy household that they had, 10 years after Allison was born, Brian and Claire did end up divorcing. It was about 1977 when the divorce was finalized. And Allison and her brother Neil continued living with their mom. But luckily, they still saw their dad on a pretty regular schedule.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
On another level. Like, just... Because that's the other thing. They're trying... They thought she was dead. Yeah. So they were just doing that to do it. So they were adding insult to injury. Like, literally. Blatantly.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
And then two, for her to go on to have two beautiful kids... Despite... every odd. Despite that fucking asshole being like trying to mutilate her reproductive system.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
And then a doctor telling her like truthfully like with all the injuries that this may not happen for you. That is... A miracle. Two miracles. What is this story?
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Like this story is like unbelievable. This story is straight up inspiration. Yeah. Yeah. To do the most menial things at this point. Like I'm like this story is inspiration to wake up and do my workout routine. Yeah. To do anything. To do anything.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Like, it's literally like, holy shit. Wild. Now, despite her miraculous survival story and seemingly indomitable spirit, Allison spent years of emotional turmoil fighting to keep her attackers in prison, which is bullshit that she even had to do that. Fact. Bullshit. Yeah. That's disgraceful.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Because even though they were both sentenced to life in prison, I touched on this in the beginning, they had no possibility of parole. As early as 2012, there was talk of one or both of them being released. And people were saying they had earned their release. How?
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
In 2012, a new legislation was enacted in South Africa that allowed for any prisoner who received a life sentence prior to 2004 to apply for parole after serving at least 13 years of their sentence. By that time, Franz and Theons had been in prison for 17 years, so they were eligible for this. The potential release of these fuckwads, or really any potential killers, came as a shock to Allison.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Of course. She told a reporter in 2012, can you imagine if just 100 lifers are released into society who are not rehabilitated?
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
What do you do? Prison is supposed to be all about rehabilitation. If you have already sentenced somebody to life in prison without the possibility of parole... You've said they can't be rehabilitated. You've said exactly. You've said exactly that. And allowed back into society because you are literally saying they should never be allowed back into society.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
But now we're just, like, reneging that? But now we're being like, well, that wording makes me sad, so, like, let's change the wording. Like... Like, nope. What? That doesn't change what you did. Nope. That doesn't change that you sentenced them to be in prison for life because you didn't believe they could come out. What the fuck is that?
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
But now all of a sudden we're being like, yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah, it's fine. We decided that's unconstitutional. When I said life, I meant a handful of years. When I said life, I meant, like, less than a whole adolescent. Yeah. The fuck? Like, they can't even drive yet. Yeah.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
So, after hearing the news that they had both applied for parole now, Allison immediately spoke out against their release and used her platform to urge the government to keep them both in prison. Good for her. Her activism successfully kept them both in prison for another decade after the Correctional Services Act passed in 2012.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
But, in the summer of 2023, so recently, she received yet another shock when, without any notice to her, both men were released on parole. The fact that, one, they released them at all, and two, that they did not notify her is fucking shameful. Like, what if she wanted to make plans to leave the country? That's shameful.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
The divorce obviously created a pretty like less than ideal situation to raise two kids. But it sounds like Brian and Claire really made the best of it. They made sure that Allison and Neil always had what they needed and were always thriving. Good for them. Yeah, very mature. Allison led a pretty normal life in Port Elizabeth, where she went to collegiate high school.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Because I would want to leave the fucking country if those men had done what they did to her.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
And were now just out. Just bopping around. You think they give a fuck about being on parole? No. They literally took her intestines out of her body and nearly decapitated her and intentionally tried to destroy her reproductive organs. And you don't tell her that they're back out on the streets, quote unquote, on parole?
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
What does parole mean to them? Inform her. Are you fucking kidding me? In a message on social media, she addressed the news saying, the day I hoped and prayed for would never come. When I was asked, how will you feel if they ever get parole? My immediate answer was always, I'm hoping I'll never find out. But today, I did.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Now, I'm sure them being released on parole caused this next thing I'm about to tell you. More tragedy struck when in September of 2024, Allison suffered a massive brain aneurysm and was rushed to a hospital in Cape Town. The surgeons were able to stop the bleeding in her brain, and they were able to relieve the pressure that was caused by a buildup of fluid.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
But she was expected to face yet another long road to recovery. Oh, my God. No stranger to adversity, she met the challenge head on. Of course she did, because she's Alison Botha. And she's been exceeding her surgeon's expectations.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
But her mother, Claire, released a statement in October saying, I'm beside myself that my child, who was afflicted by a second death blow, has exceeded all expectations and has lived, talked, and remembered.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
And I agree with you that the stress of having them out. Absolutely. I guarantee you had something to do with that. Absolutely. Whoever signed the papers. Because that stress must have been immense. Immense.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
The kind of stress I can't even quantify with words.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
We'll never know, hopefully. Thoughts or creative writing. I can't do it in any space. No. Whoever signed the papers that let them out of prison should be ashamed of themselves.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
I don't know how you lay your head on a pillow at night. But yeah, despite their positive outlook and determination, the medical emergency put a huge financial burden on this small family. Allison doesn't have any medical insurance and has accrued a significant amount of debt since undergoing the surgery.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Because that's how the medical system works. And as of now, both the family is relying on the generous support of public donations made to a trust account set up with her name in Ned Bank in South Africa. So there is a fundraiser that you guys can donate to and we're going to donate to as well.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
I'm going to share the link, but it's backabuddy.co.za slash campaign slash help dash Allison dash Botha dash in dash her dash time dash of dash need. And I will post that link in the show notes. We'll post it on social media. You go to that and it might look like you can only donate in like a czar South African currency. But if you scroll next to the amount, there's an option for U.S. dollars.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
So definitely consider donating. We're definitely donating. She is halfway to the amount that they were trying to raise. And as of today, March 4th, it's back a buddy, which is basically kind of like a GoFundMe, it seems. And it's got 13 days left. 13 days. The fundraiser.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Well, I mean, by the time this comes out, We'll post on social media before this episode comes out.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
During her senior year in 1985, she was named head girl, which is an honor that kind of came as a shock for her. She really expected this at all. She said, I was always considered bright, but I knew I did not apply myself to the fullest in my last few years at school. I wasn't good at any sport and I didn't really shine in any one area.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
So that if you are able to and if you want to take part in that, that you can. So just in case the timing doesn't work out, I don't want to miss our window to be able to help here.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Definitely consider donating because this woman is amazing. Yeah. Beyond. She has survived so much. The fact that these two men were let out. I don't even want to call them men. Monsters, pigs, fucking swines were let out of prison. It's insane. I'm astounded by that. She deserves the world for what she had to face. And that's the thing.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
She probably had this brain aneurysm because she's sitting there every day looking over her shoulder, I bet. Yeah. Oh, I can't. Yeah. Who wouldn't? How did they get let out? Yeah. How did they get let out? How did this happen? And again, she's not the only, she's the woman that they attacked in such a brutal manner, but she's not even the only woman that they've ever attacked.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
They attacked a pregnant woman. That's the other thing. Oh, my God. Yeah. That's horrific. They are filthy. Truly. It's insane. It's unthinkable that they got let out. So we will post those links for sure. Because, I mean, like hearing this story and what she's been through, it's unthinkable. I mean, damn. And she just has such determination to live. Yeah. And she has empathy. Yeah.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
And she had empathy in some of her darkest moments. And so I think... This is a call back to it for sure. For sure.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Yeah. So with all that being said, please consider donating. Please share the link if you're not able to. Obviously, not everybody will be able to. And of course, we hope you keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird. But not so weird that you lack the humanity of those two motherfucking trolls who are just walking the streets now. Yeah. Fuck that. Take care of each other. Thank you.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
So I guess I thought I wouldn't be good enough to be a head girl. But whether she realized it or not, the teachers and the headmistress at collegiate high school thought very highly of her. They described her as a mature young woman of the utmost integrity and sound moral values.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Like the term head girl, it makes me think of like Harry Potter. Yes. And it just sounds so prestigious that I can't fully comprehend it.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Yeah. In school? Like, wow. That's like really, really impressive. Yeah, that shit did not happen for me. I made you head bitch in charge at my wedding.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Instead of maid of honor, I said head bitch in charge.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Well, when Allison graduated from high school, she felt that the honor she'd earned in her final year gave everybody this impression that she was a high achiever and would continue her education and pursue a very impressive career. But she said the truth was I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. Which I feel like a lot of people feel that way when high school is over.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
It's really not like that's not unheard of at all. No, you're 18 years old. Like most of the time you have you're still a baby. There's so many options at your fingertips. I feel like people are like expect you to have like exactly what you want to do figured out. And for a lot of people, that's just not the case. Yeah, for sure.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Hey, weirdos. I'm Alina. I'm Ash. And this is Morbid.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
When she was younger, Allison had always dreamed of becoming a writer or maybe a poet. But now that she was in a position to pursue whatever goal she wanted, she just couldn't figure out which direction to go in.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Well, because it really can feel like the whole world is your oyster.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Like, you know what I mean? Like when you're that young and you're just like, I can choose anything. Which is awesome. How do I narrow it down?
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
It's awesome, but exactly. It's overwhelming. It's a great problem to have. Yeah. Yeah. Well, as always, Claire supported her daughter, suggesting that she just take a secretarial course while she considered some of her options. And she said, if nothing else, you'll learn some new skills that will apply with whatever you do.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
And it turned out that that course was a really good decision for Allison's future career, because when she finished it up, she took a job as an insurance broker, a job she enjoyed and was really good at.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Although she hadn't pursued a high-stress career as, like, a doctor or a lawyer, as several of her teachers and classmates thought that she might, by the time she reached her mid-20s, she was building a respectable career for herself, and she was really happy. Good for her. So she was, like, living her best life. She was just going for it. Yeah. Yeah.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Well, on the afternoon of December 18th, 1994, Allison met up with her friend Kim and Kim's son Devin and Jared for just an evening on the beach in Port Elizabeth, just like a nice little friend hangout.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
They hung out at the beach for a little while, and then they went back to Kim's apartment that night, and they were joined by their mutual friends Phil and Richard, who just stopped by unannounced. And Allison said it had been one of those wonderfully spontaneous evenings. Which I love. I love that. They chatted for a while. They enjoyed the nice weather.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
And then they decided to go to Allison's apartment where they ordered a pizza and played a board game. Just like a cute little night. Friends being dudes. Sounds like a fun night to me. Yeah. When the night finally came to an end a little after midnight, Phil and Richard left and Allison had promised Kim that she would drive her home that night. So she was driving Kim back to her apartment.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
And then she got back to her own house a little after or a little before, excuse me, one in the morning.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
She circled the block a few times looking for a place to park and the place where she usually parked wasn't open, which was like very close to the apartment. She finally spotted an open space just a few dozen feet from her front door. Now, the neighborhood that she lived in wasn't like a rough area, but the spot was further from her apartment than she preferred.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
And it was in a dark part of the street. There was like a tree covering the lights. I hate that you have to worry about this. Yeah, you shouldn't have to worry about that at all. So she hesitated for a few seconds and was like, maybe I should find something better. But she was like, whatever. She really wanted to go in and take a shower. Yeah, you just want to go to your house. Yeah.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
So she pulled in the spot, put her car into park. She said later, I had just turned off the engine and flicked off the headlights. It was so routine. I did it all in one swift movement. Before opening the driver's side door, she reached over to the passenger seat to gather up a pile of clean laundry, and she suddenly felt a gust of warm air rush into the car as somebody opened the door. Holy shit.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
She looked up just in time to see what she described as a scrawny, tallish young man with light blonde hair just push his head into her car. No. She also noticed a long, thin knife in his hand. I hate this. He immediately put the blade up to her throat and said, move over or I'll kill you. And she said his voice was quiet and controlled.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
She had never seen him before, but he seemed to know exactly what he was doing. So she just, without thinking, slid over to the passenger seat and he got in behind the wheel. That's horrifying. Which I feel like she did the best thing you could in that situation. You have to try to be as calm as possible. What are you supposed to do? He's got a knife to your throat. I don't know what I would do.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
I don't either. So as he drove he kept the knife close on the seat next to him close to the door. He fumbled with the dashboard trying to find the control for the lights and then asked her how to turn them on and told her don't worry I don't want to hurt you I just want to use your car for about an hour.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
I'd be like, I'm not saying I would do this. I'm saying like when he says something like that, you just want to be like, then take the car. Yeah, like why do I have to be in the car?
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Like why do I have to be here? You can just take it. You can just have it. You can take it for more than an hour. She basically said that. I was going to say, I'm sure she was just like, you can take this. Yeah, eventually she said that. But when he said it, she was so confused and also completely terrified. This is a horrifying situation. I can't even fathom your brain working in that situation.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
It's early. Felt right. I think we were listening to the Affirmation song with your friends today. Yeah, we were. And there was like weird ass voices in that. So I think I just became one. It's true. You know? Yeah. Today's going to be an amazing day. There's no one better to be than myself.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
No way. So she just didn't say anything. She was just sitting there like stunned. And she contemplated opening the passenger door and jumping out, but she said she felt strangely immobilized and just couldn't bring herself to do or say anything. Of course. Now, they hadn't been driving long when he broke the silence and said, you live in number one, don't you? So he knew exactly where she lived.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
What the fuck? And she said it was less of a question than a statement. Like he was clearly letting her know that he'd been watching her. Like, oh, I know you live here. Knew exactly where she lived. That's horrifying. He asked what her name was. And thinking on her feet, she told him her name was Susan. She didn't give him her real name. Even that. I don't know that I would think to do that.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
I don't think I would think to do that. I really don't.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Because you're just like... Because I'm nervous just listening to this. I can't imagine being in it.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
And to think on your toes like that already, I'm like, damn. Just smart survival skills, you know? Yeah. So he said his name was Clinton, which was not true. But hoping to appeal to his humanity, she started asking questions about him, figuring that if he could see her as an ordinary person and they could just strike up a conversation, he would let her go without hurting her.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Another smart tactic. Very smart. That takes a lot of like...
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
like wherewithal control and like keeping yourself calm to do because otherwise you're just gonna freak out i mean my voice would be shaking i'd be i'd just be crying and i don't think i'd be able to yeah i would definitely be like that's just out of fear and i wouldn't know what questions to even ask that's the thing like well unfortunately that plan didn't quite pan out because in a harsh tone he answered her and said i'd rather not tell you anything about me
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
just wouldn't say anything i hate that so when that didn't work she did what you were just saying and said why don't you just take my car i'll go i'm not gonna say anything to anybody just take the car yeah but he told her no and said he just wanted company i hate this so much terrifying he explained to her that he had a friend who stole his tv and he said he was driving to go find him and get some money that he owed him
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Which is just that story is strange. Yeah. So she grew increasingly fearful as they just drove further and further away from her apartment and further from the city proper until they ended up in a part of the city that she hadn't been to in several years and was almost entirely unfamiliar to her.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
They approached a large group of people on the sidewalk and quote unquote Clinton slowed down and started scanning the crowd, clearly getting more and more agitated and muttering under his breath like he was looking for somebody. And obviously he hadn't found whoever he was looking for.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
So he jerked the car down a side street and did a loop around and then slowed down to scan this crowd a second time. And then it appeared he found whoever he was looking for. So he slowed the car to a stop and a short man dressed in all black approached the driver's side.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Neither of them said anything to each other, but Clinton slid the driver's seat forward and the second man climbed into the back seat. I would be so scared. Oh my God, I can't imagine. Because now there's two men.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
Yeah. I get better every single day. Listen, if your kids are having a bad day, the affirmation song is great. It is. It gets them pumped up for the day. It does. And I dance silly to it. And I think that's the funnest part.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
In your car. I hate this. And it's after 1 a.m. So Clinton told the other man, meet my friend Susan, and just started driving back to the main road.
Morbid
Episode 656: The Attempted Murder of Alison Botha
so he gestured to the man now riding along with them in the back seat and told allison this is tian's and the man the two men talked as clinton drove but allison was too nervous to even follow what they were saying she just caught a few words here and there yeah and instead she was trying to keep her attention focused on the landscape outside of the car and was also hoping at the same time that she might catch the attention of another driver yeah but nobody seemed to be paying any attention to what was happening outside their own vehicles
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Yeah, I became the internet for a second. I was like, let me just spout something that's complete bullshit with nothing to back it up.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
It was common for murder victims to be dumped in various locations, like the lot where Elizabeth Short was found, especially around Los Angeles. It was just, you know, just the area. But from the moment investigators arrived at the scene, it was clear that this was not their run of the mill. No.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
There was a lot here. It was definitely not the killer trying to get rid of this body quickly. No. That is for sure. Like, this was not like, I just have to remove myself from this situation. Shock factor. They had arranged Elizabeth Short's body in a very particular way and had chosen a location where she would 100% be discovered very quickly. Mm-hmm. Like... Very quickly.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
And the way she was arranged, like the two halves of her body were placed close to one another with about 12 inches between them. And the upper half was placed somewhat asymmetrically from the lower half, like a little bit to the side. And her arms were raised above her head and both of them were bent at an angle. Okay. Very much so like you were posing for a photograph. Right. That makes sense.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
She was also completely nude. But it was very much like she was posing like you would lay on a bed to pose for a photograph. Yeah. Like you would see in a magazine at the time.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Like a spicy magazine.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
You know? Yeah. So it was very clear that they were trying to pose her in a way that it would shock and in a way that they they were definitely trying to send a message either about who they believed she was or about something else outside of something in their pathology. Exactly. The level of violence that the victim had been subjected to.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
I'm glad it slapped for you. That was my lunch. I like that for you. Thanks. I had some cottage cheese with garlic and some sun-dried tomato and basil wheat thins. You have to say wheat thins. Wheat thins. It was delicious. That wasn't like my lunch. That was just a snack. Like a pre-lunch.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
I mean, it exceeded what most veteran law enforcement officers and on the LAPD had ever seen or would ever see. Really saying something.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Detective P.W. Freestone told reporters at the scene, this is the most brutal example of a sex crime I have ever seen. She had been cleanly, and when I say cleanly, I mean cleanly bisected at the waist, which is shockingly cleanly. Absolutely insane. Yes. Whoever had done this, it felt like they had access to the type of tools required to do that in a surgical setting. Yeah. This is like...
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
This is kind of like when I go back to Jack the Ripper. Don't worry, I'll talk about the DNA soon. Thank you for tagging me and everything. But... This is kind of what I say with Jack the Ripper that I don't think, like, it's hard to understand how difficult it is to cut parts of the human body cleanly. Yeah, I can imagine. If you haven't tried to cut human body parts cleanly.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Can confidently say I've never tried.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
So it's like if you have not been in a profession where you have done that or been around that, it's a little hard to wrap your brain around.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Especially if you've only seen it in like TV and all that kind of stuff in movies. So like with Jack the Ripper, I was always saying, I do believe this person has medical knowledge because to be able to do that stuff in the dark, in the light, it would take somebody who knows where these organs are. Yeah. And then to do it in the dark. It's like muscle memory.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Just feels like you have to know precisely where these things are. It's kind of the same thing here. This isn't somebody who just happened to figure out how to cleanly bisect a body. They knew how to do it. And they knew how to do it because they know where things are because they are medically trained. That's how I believe this situation is going here. I think you're right.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
And there's also other parts of it that lead to that too, which we'll get to. There was also, and this is my next point here, there was a lack of blood at the scene. And it indicated obviously that this mutilation had occurred elsewhere and that she was likely killed elsewhere. But her body had also been completely drained of blood.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Yeah. Completely drained of blood. And it's just like, why? That's the thing. And I think it was.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
I think it very much to me is another point in the column of this was a surgeon.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
And just doing the most. Yeah. Almost like showing off their skills. Because it's like you have to have knowledge of vessels and the vascular system to know how to properly drain a body of blood. You also have to know how to do it, where to do it. You have to have the space to do it. And, you know, certain people that are suspects in this case have really big houses with basements.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
I'm fairly certain it's five liters. Like a little over five perhaps. It's like somewhere around that. Okay. I lost like a ton of blood when I had my twins. I had to get like two transfusions. I think I lost like two liters of blood. So that's the only reason it's stuck in my head how many.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
I said, are you going to eat something, bitch? And she said, I can't. I'm too excited. But don't worry. You will find out what this thing is. You will find out fairly soon, actually.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
And to think about the procedure and the process of that. Yeah, I can't go that far. Because normally to do that. It means, I apologize for getting graphic here, but it's really all I can do. Normally to do that, you're going to hang the person upside down to allow all the blood to drain out, just gravity. You're not just going to sit them in a bathtub or anything like that and let...
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
You really need some gravity to help you out here.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
To drain somebody completely. Usually it's like hanging them up over something.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
That are less blood in each to drain at once kind of thing. You know what I mean? Like it's less... And again, we're getting graphic here, but here you are. You clicked on this, damn it. It's less messy. Yeah. And it's less of a distance for the blood to travel to drain out of the body. Right. Because you're cutting the travel in half, essentially.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
So this would have to be somebody who has the capability of doing all of that. Right. Which is not your average Joe. Which is not just your guy on the street who was mad that she didn't date him. You know what I mean? Like, which is what they were really, like, going with for a while.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Hang tight. There's a couple of exciting things happening. I know we're being those annoying people who are like, we know something and you can't. But you will.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
I'm like, I don't think any of these fucking dickwads that were just, like, being assholes to her are really capable of all this.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
I think it's pretty safe to say that this person already had the knowledge because they...
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Yeah, I mean, like, this person, and, I mean, if they're, again, this is speculation, obviously, but, like, if this is a surgeon who did this, then it's, like, they've performed clean cuts on the human body. Like, obviously, that kind of cut is, like, a very specific kind of cut, but who knows? It's, like, it's similar to other things, so amputations can be similar. Yeah.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Yeah. The victim had also been beaten about the face and head. There was a ton of lacerations, especially on her face and head. And the thing that I think a lot of people really remember about this case, including myself, is that her killer had cut her mouth from ear to ear, creating... a Glasgow smile, a permanent, really ghoulish-looking grin on her face, essentially.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
It's a very, very disturbing thing to look at. It's horrifying. It... That's why, like, this is such a ghoulish crime scene because it's, like, there's so much shock to this crime scene. One, she's nude. Two, she's bisected. She's been posed with her body in the right place, you know what I mean? Placements. Yep. But, like, away from each other to, like, showcase that she's two halves of a whole.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
And even, again... But like a little to the side with her arms up like she's posing for a photo and then to see how horrifically she was beaten and cut and all kinds of things. But also she's got this ghoulish smile on her face that the permanent smile that has been chopped into her face. It's... Beyond. It's really beyond anything you've ever seen.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
There was also a ton of superficial cuts and scrapes, other parts of her body. And there also appeared to be ligature marks on her neck, wrists and ankles. Now, this is kind of important and kind of something that you can take in many different ways.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Period. Period. So we're going to be covering a case today that you might be like, wait a second. Did I see this before? You did. You did. But I want to cover it better. We've grown. We covered it a long, long, long, long time ago. It's no longer on there. This is one of the first ones. Yeah, this is one of the first ones. So, you know, it's a case that deserves another look and a deeper dive.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Obviously, it could mean that she was bound when she was alive and was being restrained, which I fully believe can be the case and probably was the case. But this could also be one of those things where you say, okay, is that where she was hung upside down to be drained of blood? That would leave ligature marks too. That would leave ligature marks somewhere. Yeah.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
I mean, her neck was also, had ligature marks as well.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Which to me says it was part of like a torture or restraining. Yeah. But it also can have to do with being hung upside down if that's the case, if that's how it went. Yeah. If you think too hard about all these things all at once and you start thinking about what was happening during all this, it can like fuck you up. Like it's just like thinking about what she went through. Yeah.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
And nobody knows how long she was going through this.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Yeah. It's like, it feels like it was at least hours and hours for sure.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
So police ended up fanning out, started combing the lot for any evidence they could get, but there was really little to be found. What they did collect, some of it was like a paper cement bag with what they thought was small drops of diluted blood on it. Investigators theorized that these cement bags were what were used to carry both sections of her body to this area.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
There was also tire tracks visible on the sidewalk and a slightly bloody heel print of a man's shoe. This is good evidence. Yeah. But according to former detective Steve Hodel, which becomes a very important member of this case. And we just talked about him in the Rodney Alcala case. We did.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
According to him, quote, these two important pieces of evidence were not secured or photographed by the on-scene detectives.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Why would you not photograph that? And they were not photographed or secured. No. Like, bizarre. Those are important pieces of evidence. Mm-hmm.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Yeah. Like, you can genuinely narrow down a suspect with that shit. You can tell what kind of tire that is, what kind of car it comes from. You could tell what that shoe is, what kind of shoe that is, how many have been sold in the area. You can tell all that shit. Yeah, lots. But we're just, eh. Like, LAPD. Come on. What are you doing?
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
But other than that, there was really nothing else of note at the scene and no means of identifying this body. So she ended up being labeled at first Jane Doe number one and transported to the coroner's office. The next morning, an autopsy was conducted by Dr. Frederick Newbar, who was the chief autopsy surgeon for the county of Los Angeles.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Newbar listed the cause of death as, quote, hemorrhage and shock from a concussion of the brain and lacerations of her face. My God. They believed that that was all inflicted while she was conscious, which means that Glasgow Smile was inflicted while she was conscious and alive. And those were deep cuts.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Oh, it tore open her whole face. When you're looking from the side, it's like her jaw has been removed almost. That's horrific. And it's hemorrhage and shock from that, which is one of the most horrific things I can imagine. She died in shock from bleeding out. From having her face ripped open. Yeah.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
There was an additional incision from just below the navel to just above the pubic area and several smaller cuts and small bruises all over the body that were likely defensive wounds. So she was fighting back for part of this. I'm sure. There was also evidence suggesting that Elizabeth had been sexually assaulted. But samples taken during the autopsy came back negative for the presence of sperm.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Got it. Newbar estimated the time of death to be somewhere within a 24-hour window before the body was discovered, but he couldn't be more precise than that because, I mean, his body's drained of blood and has been mutilated in a way I can't even fathom. And of particular note, though, at least from Newbar's perspective, was how precise the bisection was, like we were talking about.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
In fact, it looked like it was actually what's called a hemocorporectomy, which is at this time in the 40s. a relatively new surgical procedure that came into use after World War II, and it involved removing everything below the waist from a surviving person.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
The Dave touch. A little Dave touch to it. So we decided to revisit it. And it's also, it happened in January, which we didn't even mean to do. I don't even know if I knew that. We're fresh out of January right now. Check it. We are going to be covering the Black Dahlia murder, the murder of Elizabeth Short. So this case has so many layers to it. This is going to be a two-parter. Two-parter.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
As far as Newbar could tell, the procedure had been done after death on this victim, who we now know as Elizabeth Short, and the precision with which it had been done really suggested that the killer, or at least the person who performed the bisection post-mortem... Because it could be two different people. ...had some experience with medicine and surgery.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Newbar also noted that the body appeared to have been thoroughly washed before it had been left in the lot.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Because everything is clean, you have a clean field, you... He's not going to go through all of that to drain blood and to bisect in such a clean way and then leave it messy. Yeah. It's just not something that I see happening. This hemocorporectomy that he's talking about would be performed like it's like a radical surgery. Like it is like last resort, like all you have left kind of thing.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
And what you have to do is you have to cut between two specific lumbar vertebrae that makes it so that you don't have to cut bone. Okay. And they have to like reroute the spinal cord essentially. And they have to reroute because you're removing the genitalia, you're removing any of, you know, the rectum, all that stuff. So you're going to have to reroute everything.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Many different things for a living person. Right. It's a very intense procedure, a very complicated procedure. And again, this person cut in the same spot that you cut for this specific procedure. So that they didn't have to cut through a bone. Which is strange. And you, I'm telling you, you open up a body and you take a look at that spinal cord.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
It is not as simplistic as you think it's going to be to just chop through between a vertebrae. You know what I mean? So it's got to be someone who knows what they're doing and has seen this before. They didn't just open her up for the first time and just figure it all out. Right. It's just not something they've opened people up before and they've seen what's going on.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Knowing the cause and estimated time of death was pretty important, but for investigators, they really wanted to know who this victim was. They were like, this is the most important.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
During the autopsy, fingerprints were taken and passed along to the main offices of the FBI, and in their coverage of the story the day after Short's body was discovered, the Los Angeles Examiner included a lengthy description of who the girl was. They were hoping someone would see this description of her, the physical description, and come forward.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Among other things, though, the examiner described her as between 15 and 16 years old. Nope. With enameled pink toenails and a three and a half inch operational scar on the right side of her back. She was also described as, quote, rather well developed with small bones and trim legs. Okay. Okay. I'm like, you want to throw any other descriptors in there?
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
I'm like, I don't know if I would be able to be like, well, my cousin does have trim legs.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Okay. Very 40s. Truly. Fortunately for investigators, once the identification division of the Washington, D.C. office of the FBI got the photos of her fingerprints, they found a match within an hour. They identified Elizabeth Short from their card file of more than 104 million possible matches. Wow. Yeah.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
It must be. It has to be. It must. It must be. I'm getting into my transatlantic accent because we're going to Hollywood, baby. Yeah. Hollywood? Hollywood. We're going to Hollywood. And we're not in real life. I'm staying firmly planted over here. But yeah, this is a crazy case. It is the first case I can truly remember... Becoming unhinged obsessed with. I remember that.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
She had a tough life, right? She had a tough stuff going on.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
She was struggling. Now, Elizabeth Short was born July 29th, 1924 in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Boston, Ken.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
There you go. She's from our neck of the woods, Ken. Boston. She's a Boston gal. She was born to Cleo Alvin and Phoebe Short and raised in Medford. Oh. Medford? Medford, I said. Wait, I'm going to Medford tonight. Holy shit. Get out of here. Medford. Medford is a working class suburb about 10 miles outside of the city. It's true. It's true. We can confirm. I was just going to say can confirm.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
At the time of Elizabeth's birth, Cleo worked in construction, building miniature golf courses and, you know, other kind of attractions like that. I didn't know mini golf was a thing way back then. Mini golf has been around since the dawn of time. We love to miniaturize things. We do. We do. And I respect that. I also respect that.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
And when the stock market crashed in 1929, he became unfortunately unemployed and lost his savings. Oh, God. It was really bad for a lot of people. A year later in 1930, Charlestown police found Alvin's car abandoned on a bridge, and he was believed to have taken his own life by drowning in the Charles River. Wow.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
But a short time later, it was discovered that Cleo had faked his own death and abandoned his family and moved to California.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
With Cleo gone, Phoebe Short became the sole provider for Elizabeth and her four sisters. And she was working as a bookkeeper. With only one income, the family struggled, but did manage to survive the depression without an insane amount of hardship, at least. She kept them afloat.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
During her childhood, Elizabeth began experiencing chronic bronchitis and severe asthma, which ultimately required lung surgery at age 15. Oh, wow. I don't know if you remember, there was a scar mentioned by Nubar in the autopsy that was from that surgery on her lungs. Following her surgery, the doctor suggested Elizabeth would be better off in warmer, drier climates.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
So she began spending her winter breaks in Miami with family friends. Okay. This was kind of like that TB thing, like the tuberculosis thing where they thought like we just stick you out, you know, on a balcony and you'll get fresh air. Like that kind of thing.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
It is better for your lungs. After three years of wintering in Miami, Elizabeth dropped out of Medford High School during her sophomore year and moved to Miami Beach. And she quickly found work as a waitress. Yeah. On her own for the first time, she struck up a relationship with Major Matt Gordon Jr., who was an Air Force pilot stationed at a nearby base.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
A short time later, in January of 1943, Gordon was shipped overseas, and Elizabeth decided to relocate to California, where she wanted to live with her father in Vallejo. Oh, so they reconnected. They reconnected. It was during this period that Elizabeth worked as a clerk at Camp Cook. That's where the fingerprints came from. But her relationship with her father... quickly became very strained.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
And within a few weeks, she decided to move to Santa Barbara. Oh, wow, just weeks?
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Her father told a reporter after Elizabeth's death, I made her leave. I didn't want anything to do with her or any of the rest of the family again. Huh. You're an asshole.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Can you imagine? No. I didn't want anything to do with my child again or any of the rest of my family. My other four daughters who are living on the other coast. That's so fucked. You should have thought about that before you had a family. That's like wild douche behavior.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
It was there in Santa Barbara that she was arrested for violating juvenile court laws when she was picked up for underage drinking at a Santa Barbara nightclub. During her hearing, the judge agreed to sentence her with probation, provided that Elizabeth accept a train ticket and return home to Medford, Massachusetts, and she agreed. Okay.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
It was this and like Jack the Ripper that I really just could not stop. This one in particular, because I remember seeing, I believe it was one of those like E! True Hollywood stories or one of those like Mysteries and Scandals with A.J. Benza. They used to do the countdowns.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
So she agreed to return to her mother in Massachusetts, but instead she chose to go to Florida. Once she was settled in Florida, she resumed her correspondence with Matt Gordon, the Air Force pilot. And in 1945, Gordon supposedly proposed they marry when he returned home from active duty. And despite only having met him in person a few times, Elizabeth accepted. It was Lerv.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Unfortunately, this enthusiasm was going to be short-lived because on August 10th, 1945, his plane was shot down and he was killed in the crash. That's so sad. Which is like another traumatic event in her life. Yeah, and she's 20. Yeah. Now, following Gordon's death, Elizabeth found work as a waitress again.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
But within a few months, she decided she didn't want to stay in Florida and she returned home to Medford, Massachusetts. There, she found work in a local movie theater. And when she was back home, she really didn't feel like settled or satisfied like she thought she was going to feel. She thought she was going to feel some kind of comfort. She really didn't. She didn't love it here.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Yeah. And she was moving back when we were just heading into winter over here. Not the best time to move back here. No. But yeah, she wasn't feeling that great. And she knew she didn't feel really satisfied in Florida either. She was like, so neither one of these are working for me. So on April 17th, 1946, she packed up her few belongings and returned to California.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
This time she wanted to settle in Hollywood. Okay. By most accounts, it seemed like she struggled to find her footing in California for a while. According to Steve Hodel, Elizabeth was known to have lived as a transient at various boarding houses with a variety of roommates. She stayed at a hotel in Long Beach for several weeks during the summer months and then returned to Hollywood.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
There, once she got into Hollywood, she kind of bounced around a few times, staying at different places. And eventually she found an apartment where she lived with seven other young women, which, wow. I give you credit. That's like Ma, though. Ma lived with like, didn't she live with like four other girls when she was in Boston?
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
It's true. I think that was just like the easiest way to make it happen.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
I mean, we lived with a bunch of our friends in Quincy, so I can't really.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Yeah, we were living with a lot of people, so might as well. Before you have kids, before all that stuff. Now, during this time, Elizabeth was barely getting by on her wages from her job as a waitress at the Florentine Gardens nightclub. In a few weeks before her death, she had actually struggled to afford rent. She was really, like, had her last few pennies.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
yeah exactly and i remember it was one of those um i loved those i loved aj benza i don't know what he's up to now if he if he's good or bad right now i'm i'm not up on it and i bet he's fine i hope i'm gonna google it really because like i have fond memories of that show and him uh what's what if i just googled what's aj ben what's aj ben's up to
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Yeah. Her friend Ann Toth told detectives two or three weeks before Christmas, she said she was going to Berkeley. But instead of going to Berkeley, she went to San Diego. And she said just before Christmas Day, she sent me a wire saying she was low on funds and asking me to send her 20 bucks.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
She had been gone about three weeks when I received another wire saying she was coming back and stating that a letter would follow. This is the last I heard of her. The letter never came.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Yeah. Ann Toth may have never heard from her friend again, but Elizabeth did return to Los Angeles on January 9th. That evening, she was seen leaving the Olive Street entrance of the Biltmore Hotel. And this would be the last time anyone but her killer would see Elizabeth Short alive. Now, by 1947, people in Los Angeles had become pretty accustomed to seeing reports of violence in the press.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
But the story of Elizabeth Short's murder was truly unlike anything anybody had ever seen. The news of the discovery hit the papers that very afternoon and set off a media frenzy. And it's really due to what police historian Glynn Martin called, quote, the brutal, misogynistic and ritual nature that the murder contained. I mean, yeah. Now, again, it's true. She hadn't just been murdered.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
She'd been mangled. She had been mutilated. I mean, she had been posed. She had been humiliated by being left naked and exposed like that. There was clear evidence of what a Los Angeles Times reporter called, quote, an orgy of torture.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
That is honestly, as kind of like crass as that sounds, it is exactly what it seems to have happened here.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
But again... Probably a better way to say it. Pretty crass. Adding to the sensationalism, the members of the press were quick to emphasize the sexual undertones of the crime, labeling the killer as, quote, a sex maniac and a sex fiend, which... I guess you can somewhat understand because she was found... Because why are you focusing on only that?
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
I can understand that they're saying there's a very big sexual aspect of this crime, a very sadistic sexual aspect of this crime. But not hyper-focusing on it. But, like, my friends, she was also drained of blood, bisected, and given a Glasgow smile.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
I don't think we should focus on one aspect of this. Yeah, we should focus on all of it. But as was common at the time, journalists and law enforcement were kind of like intertwined in each other's work.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
And the press would really play, just like the last couple of cases we've covered, play a big role in this case, particularly when it came to shaping how the public viewed the victim and viewing the potential killer. Once the victim was identified as Elizabeth Short, the story really picked up some more steam. Thanks in part to the, you know, she was beautiful and she was very mysterious. She was.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
So it kind of, it lent itself very well to the time and people wanting to start salacious rumors and like dig into people's pasts and, oh, I think she was dating all these men. Apparently she had, she dated a lot of guys.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
She's beautiful. She's mysterious. She's, you know, trying to find her footing there. Why the fuck not?
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
The story quickly became what Martin called, quote, a sad cliche, the ultimate warning tale. Elizabeth Short had come to Hollywood to become an actress, but like so many young women before her, she'd only found disappointment, struggle, and ultimately death.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
It is. Now, within days of the discovery, the press began referring to Short as the Black Dahlia. It was a reference to Elizabeth's, you know, she apparently loved the flower, the dahlia, and she wore one in her hair often. And she also wore a lot of black clothing and she had jet black hair. Right. So it's a very good reference.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
nickname for sure because it's mysterious it's got sticks with you it's got like it's for the press it's a really smart one that they picked because it's like like we said mysterious it's easy to remember and it's got this like sexy kind of undertone to it so they were really like going with what they were trying to wrap up here gonna sell papers exactly it's also possible though that they were influenced by the popular noir film the blue dahlia which was released the previous year i'm sure it was like a mix of them
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Regardless of where the name came from, it definitely added to the sensationalism and mysterious tone of the case. And like we said, that's the reason why it's part of the reason why it has so much notoriety today is that when it's easy to remember the name of the case, the Black Dahlia murder. it's easy to reference, you know what I mean?
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
And again, like you said, it's going to sell more papers, which means it's going to sell more books, which means it's going to be something people want to talk about. It's just a catchy name. It really is. So like the crime scene itself, the canvas of the neighborhood offered really few clues to guide the investigation.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
One local man, Bob Meyer, told detectives he'd seen a late 1930s model Ford sedan stop in front of the lot around 630 a.m. that day. And he said it lingered near the area where the body was found before driving away.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
But he couldn't recall any of the other details.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
To me, that seems like somebody who's dropping off a body. Yep. Fortunately for detectives, the identification of the victim offered several new leads because now we could start connecting people to her. So they started with her mother, Phoebe, and they talked to her.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Investigators set out to learn everything they could about Elizabeth with Phoebe in the hope that something in her background would help lead them to her killer. Phoebe actually learned of her daughter's death when she received a call from a Los Angeles examiner, which was soon confirmed by LAPD detectives. That's awful. So she found out in an awful way.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
According to Phoebe, Elizabeth traveled to San Diego a few weeks before her death and had found work with the Naval Hospital there. She said she left Hollywood because of the movie strike, which made it difficult to get work as an extra. Phoebe didn't know why her daughter had returned to Los Angeles on the night of her disappearance, and she really couldn't offer any insight.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Now, given the sexual undertones of the murder, the investigation definitely turned to Elizabeth's romantic life. According to her mother, Phoebe, Elizabeth's only serious relationship was with Matt Gordon, the Air Force pilot who she planned to marry. Other than Matt Gordon, Phoebe Short knew really no other serious relationships that Elizabeth had been in before her death.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Her mother didn't know about serious relationships, but her friends and roommates definitely were like, she definitely had some relationships, but not serious.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Yeah. According to Los Angeles Times article filed shortly after her death, she was known among her friends as, quote, a girl with a different boyfriend every night.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Good for her. Several roommates and others who knew her claimed she had a fondness for sailors and often visited the nightclubs where soldiers were known to visit.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Oh, yeah. I think it's great. The aesthetic of that time. That's the thing, the aesthetic. The aesthetic, but not the vibe of what was happening.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
The aesthetic of the time is for sure. It's like a movie. Yeah, it really is. And her former roommate, Linda Rohr, said she was always going out and she loved to prowl the boulevard. Let's go, girl. Let's go, girls. In their interviews with those closest to her, investigators learned of several men they believe could have played a role in her death.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Of the men Short had dated, investigators were very interested in one boyfriend who Elizabeth had confessed to friends she was, quote, deadly afraid of. Oh. According to Elizabeth's former coworker, Cheryl Mayland, there was a, quote, tall, sinister, elderly man who approached her at a bar where she works a few weeks earlier and asked about Miss Short's whereabouts.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
And Maylong thought it was possible that he could have been responsible for her death. Oh, wow. Other roommates told detectives about a radio announcer with a British accent named Maurice, whom they had heard Elizabeth talk about a few weeks before her death, but they didn't know anything else about him. Hmm. And I was like, some of these guys, you're like, wow, I feel bad for you. I know.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
They're just like, that guy? I just went on a date with her. Yeah, he's like, ugh. There were other mostly unnamed men who came up early in the investigation, including a man in Beverly Hills who had offered to pay Elizabeth's rent, and another in San Bernardino who asked her to move in with him. But those tips really went nowhere. They weren't involved. They were just trying to get with her.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
AJ Benza, what are you doing? What are you
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
So, yeah. And then we have a lead detective on the case telling reporters... She probably went too far this time and just sent some guy into a blind, berserk rage. That's nice. And he called her a tease. Oh, of course. Yeah, it's her fault. What was she wearing? To which I ask that man, so how many women have you chopped in half because they supposedly teased you? Jesus Christ, sir.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
up to i just i when i mentioned him i was like you know you always got to be careful to be like oh fuck i don't because you don't want the only thing for anyone to hear out of this it's h.a benzo he's a bad guy and you're right it was mysteries and scandals mysteries and scandals i remember it was like he was the host and i remember him standing on us on a very rain sodden sidewalk yes it was dark there was lots of fog around him at all times and he would walk out
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
You fucking psychopath. Truly.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
What kind of blind... Not all of them, but what are some men? What kind of blind, berserk rage makes you do that? Drain the blood from someone and perform a highly complex surgical procedure? What a dumb thing to say. Like, he probably went into a blind, berserk rage and then went to medical school real quick and learned how to do that. Like... That's the dumbest shit I've ever heard someone say.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
That's not a blind rage, my friend. That's a shameful statement. She was tortured. That's a shameful statement for so many layers. One, oh, okay, it's her fault. She's a tease. And two, that's just dumb. Yeah. That's just a dumb statement. Don't be silly like that. Don't be fucking dumb.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Okay? Don't. Don't be a dumb bitch. He already was, though. What was... On the rewatch.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
It feels like 2025 is just bringing out the dumb bitches. I don't know what it is. We were so hopeful. We were. But you know, it's okay. It's still great. Yeah. In some ways. In like one. One way. One way, sure. Yeah, or another. Yeah, one way or another. But yeah, go listen to Scream if you want to. Hey! You know? Anyway. But yeah, that was a dumb bitch thing to say.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Among the more promising leads, though, was a tip from another, about another former boyfriend, Joseph Fickling, who she met in California in 1944. Like Matt Gordon, Fickling was a former Air Force pilot living in North Carolina, and the two had been writing back and forth as recently as Elizabeth's time in San Diego.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
So very, very, like, recent to when she died. Yep. Fickling told detectives, she told me not to write her anymore at San Diego and that she was in Chicago, or that she was going to Chicago, excuse me. Oh. In April 1947, Fickling started to suspect he was only one of Elizabeth's romantic interests. Well, And that her expression of love for him might have been disingenuous.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
He wrote in April to her, you say in your letter you want us to be good friends, but from your wire you seem you want more than that.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Now, based on the letters between them that investigators discovered among Elizabeth's belongings, Fickling's confusion and Elizabeth's ambivalence eventually led to the end of their relationship. Yeah. He wrote in one letter, in your letter, you mentioned a ring from Matt. You gave no further explanation. I really don't understand. I wouldn't want to interfere. OK, well, he seems respectful.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
He does. Like, that's a pretty respectful thing to say. Like, hey, you just mentioned that another guy gave you an engagement ring. So, like, I don't want to interfere in that. I'm going to I'm going to bow out.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
The letters indicate that Elizabeth had told Fickling about her proposed marriage to Matt Gordon, but failed to mention that Gordon had died two years earlier. Okay. That's an interesting play.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Yeah. In an interview with Charlotte, North Carolina detectives, Fickling said he'd last heard from Elizabeth in a letter dated January 8th, 1947, the night she left San Diego. Oh, wow. And he hadn't heard from her since. Yeah. And given that he was on the other side of the country when she was killed, he was quickly ruled out as a suspect.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
But they just got like a little more insight into what was going on in her life, I guess. A few days into their investigation, detectives learned that when she returned from San Diego, Elizabeth had been traveling in the company of, quote, an unidentified red-haired man.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
On January 20th, detectives picked up 25-year-old Robert Manley, a salesman the press described as, quote, slender, neatly dressed man with carrot-hued hair. Not carrot. Not carrot-hued. Not carrot top over here. And he was believed to have been with Elizabeth on the night she disappeared. Uh-oh.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Manley admitted to police that he had casually dated Elizabeth since first meeting a few weeks before Christmas and that he had dropped her off at the Biltmore the night she disappeared. But he flatly denied having anything to do with her murder. He told detectives, my wife and I had had some misunderstandings. I guess so.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
and start telling you the story. And I can, it is, right?
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
I thought I'd make a little test to see if I were still in love with my wife. So he picked up Elizabeth at a nightclub and they hit it off.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
You know what your hair is? Carrot-hued. Okay, ginger. All right. Okay, no soul. All right.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
According to Manley, he picked Elizabeth up at a Pacific Beach motel on January 8th and drove her back to Los Angeles. But he had not connected Elizabeth with the stories in the papers, and thus he did not come forward to the police.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Well, investigators were also unconvinced by this, and they asked Manley to take a polygraph examination, and he agreed. But after the long drive from San Diego and many hours of intense questioning by police, he couldn't keep from falling asleep during the exam, and it was postponed. That's giving rude. That's giving... That's giving what?
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Adrenaline would be shooting me into the Kuiper belt.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Well, and the thing is, here's the thing. He was very forthcoming with information, regardless of falling asleep during the polygraph. He was very forthcoming when he was conscious. Yeah, when he was conscious, he was forthcoming with information. And he told police the last time he'd seen Elizabeth, he noticed several scratches on her upper arms. Huh.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
And she attributed them to an intensely jealous boyfriend. Ooh. And she described him as an Italian with black hair who lived in San Diego. Okay. So we're like, who's that guy? Yeah, who is him?
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
So although he appeared to be telling the truth, Manley's story was inconsistent with other statements gathered by police, particularly that of William Sullivan, a railway express clerk who claimed to have seen Elizabeth on January 14th. According to Sullivan, quote, a woman resembling a woman resembling short visited the office about noon on January 14th, accompanied by a red haired man.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
and inquired about shipping a trunk and some suitcases to Ketchkin Hospital. When asked to whom the items were being shipped, the woman said to herself and gave the name Elizabeth Short. Okay. The same couple was seen about an hour later by Jadel Gray, a waitress at a cafe in San Diego.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Gray described the man as, quote, very fair complexioned and said his hair was quite straight and he was slightly freckled. Okay.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
See, it's, it has a special place in my heart. Core memories. Core memories. And I remember seeing the Black Dahlia case and I remember them showing some version. I don't know if my mind is like twisting. No, it's not because I remember it too. Some version, maybe it was a sketch or something of her autopsy photo.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Sounds like a ginger. Based on these witness identifications, Manley was beginning to look like a pretty strong suspect. He sure was. But the following day, Sullivan admitted to detectives that he had been mistaken in his identification of Manley and in fact did not believe it was the same person.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Sullivan changed his story when police told him that another young woman matching Short's description had come forward to say she had been at the express office with her red haired boyfriend on January 14th. Oh, shit. When he was shown a picture of the woman, he immediately recognized her as the one person he'd seen that night. And remember, he said that she used her name. So he just lied.
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Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Oh, what the hell? Like, what the fuck? And with Sullivan's identification now recanted, the mystery of the red-haired man proved to be a dead end, and Captain Jack Donahue ordered Robert Manley released from custody immediately. All right.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Now, only one week into the investigation, detectives who had been certain the key to finding Elizabeth's killer was in her love life had now begun to accept the boyfriend angle was probably a dead end. Yeah, it seemed like it. They weren't going to find him in there. And that is where we are going to end for part one. You butthead. Because we have some real suspects coming in part two.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
I know who they are. And it's going to get crazy. The story just gets wilder as you go.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Because I remember seeing the Glasgow smile. I remember seeing that vividly. And I remember that being the point when I said, what?
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Yeah, it's like from the... It's that classic photo where you can... It looks, you know, the crime scene looks like there is a mannequin laying in the grass. Yeah, yeah. And of course, we're going to get into the specifics of this because it was not a bloody crime scene. She was drained of blood. Yeah. In part two, we will get into all the theories. We're going to talk about who we think did it.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Hey, weirdos. I'm Alina. I'm Ash. And this is Morbid.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
We're going to talk about, you know, a lot of the people that they were going after for suspects. So don't worry, we'll get more into that. And I think in part two, too, we'll kind of go through even more of some of the nuances of this stuff. But right now, we're going to tell you about Elizabeth Short. I'm going to tell you about the crime scene. I'm going to tell you about how she was found.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
And we'll get a little bit into some of the suspects.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
So strap in AJ Benza. I hope you're listening. Oh, my God. Hi, AJ Benza.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
You know, we're live Googling right now. We're taking us back to a cool and very overcast day, January 15th, 1947. All right. This is when Betty Bersinger and her three-year-old daughter, Anne, left the house for a nice little morning walk. Just a stroll. Yeah, just a stroll.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
So the Leimert Park area of Los Angeles, which is just five miles south of Hollywood, was a very newly developed and planned community. And there were still a lot of vacant lots in it. They were along Norton Avenue. And people would use these vacant lots a lot of the time because people are always going to people.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
To dump garbage everywhere. Other stuff, you know, like be the dumb part of people. So when Betty caught sight of a pale white thing in the tall grass in the empty lot, she thought, oh, someone left a broken tailor's mannequin in the lot rather than just getting rid of it properly. Yeah.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
You know, it was just one of those things that she kind of walked by and was like, can people stop peopling, please?
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Exactly. But then Betty got closer to the object, which was just a few inches from the edge of the sidewalk. If you have ever seen the crime scene photos or anything like that or been to that area, you know that she was right up out in the open. To think that she was with her three-year-old daughter. Yeah.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
That shakes me to my core. And, I mean, Elizabeth's body was right on the grass next to the sidewalk. I mean, all of it was intentional. And she immediately realized she was not looking at a mannequin at all, but a horrifically mutilated body of a young woman who had been bisected at the waist.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
I think that's what initially really drew me to this case, like made me just like morbidly fascinated and absolutely horrified by this case was just the extent of the mutilation that was done to this woman. Yeah. I could not conceive of it. I still can't conceive of it.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Even to this day, it stays as one of the most horrific cases of mutilation. Oh, yeah. You can conjure. Now, at the sight of this poor woman's absolutely mangled body, Betty immediately grabbed her daughter and ran for the nearest phone. And she called the University Division of the LAPD and reported what she had seen.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Now, she was fully panicked, obviously, and absolutely horrified, going through complete shock. So she didn't adequately describe what she found. She wasn't able to convey it in a way that it would be a little understandable. How would you? So the communications officer on the other end noted that it was a, quote, possible 390, which is a stuporous drunk down in the lot at 39th and Norton Avenue.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
It's like, dude, why would she be that horrified if it was just a drunk person stumbling around? That's the thing. Like, I'm like, I feel like you even if you note that as like, I think this is what she said, you should be like, but she sounds really upset. So it could get there fast. There's other things going on here.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Now, whether because of confusion or poor communication, the officer also neglected to get the caller's name or phone number. So didn't know her name was Betty, didn't know how to contact her after that. Oof. I don't really know why. Maybe because they were thinking it was like a stuporous drunk situation. Maybe like first day on the job type vibes. Very first day on the job.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Training and their overseer was like in the bathroom. A lot of this scene was manhandled in a very bad way, which I think led to the reason why we don't have definitive things even today. That was the opposite of a bang-up job. Yeah, not great at all. In fact, it was going to be a full 10 days before investigators were able to track Bersinger down through notices in the papers.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Like, they couldn't find her anywhere. Wow. All they had was that initial call, and then that was it. So they just came up upon it and were like, okay. Jesus. Now, expecting to find someone sleeping off a night of drinking in a lot, the dispatcher sent a single patrol call to investigate the call.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
And countless journalists and press photographers had heard the call go out over the police radios that they all kept in their cars. So they all kind of followed just to... See if there was any story there. Yeah. Los Angeles Examiner reporter Will Fowler and his partner Felix Pagel were the first to arrive at the scene before the LAPD had arrived. Oh, shit.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
I haven't had Subway in a long time.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
So the journalists arrived before the police. And y'all know how that goes.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
That's never good. They were shocked. Because Fowler said, there's something about a dead body you couldn't mistake. It's difficult to describe two parts of a body as being one. However, both halves were facing upwards. Her arms were extended above her head. Her translucent blue eyes were half opened. So I closed her eyelids.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Now that's really sweet. Don't touch a dead body. Why the fuck did you touch a dead body? Yeah. Don't be the hero. I'm sorry. Beautiful. Beautiful sentiment. Love that for you.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
That you were trying to be respectful. Here's my thing to everybody. Don't fucking touch a dead body if you find it.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
You don't disturb that. No. Don't disturb the scene. You don't know. anything about what's going on here you don't know if something was injected into her eyes you don't know if something was put it like you don't know yeah so just sweet boy don't touch again the sentiment love it he's respectful very empathetic i wanted to close her eyes don't don't do that yeah don't involve yourself
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
Now, the patrol officers arrived a few moments later and quickly called the division to let them know, no, it was not a drunk sleeping off a night of drinking in a vacant lot, but a horribly mutilated dead woman. Thank you for fucking that up on the highest level you possibly could.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
I would think so. Like you're not sending the homicide division to a sleeping drunk. Yeah, exactly. I'm just a little confused. And again, I've never been in this situation. How the person on the other end confused what she said so hard. Yeah. And like you said, with the amount of anxiety and panic in her voice... I feel like you would question.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
She's not going to be that upset about a drunk sleeping. It's like, I don't know. I feel like there should have been a little, maybe, I don't know if she hung up quickly and maybe they couldn't get anything else. I don't know. But I'm like, wow, this really, this game of telephone busted up right away.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
The news, of course, brought more reporters and soon the crime scene was absolutely overtaken by reporters, photographers, additional LAPD officers. Probably just onlookers. Just chaos.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
And in order to keep as many people as they could out of the crime scene now, detectives told patrol officers and some of the reporters at this point, because they needed however many people they could, to make a human chain around the perimeter to keep people out. Dear God. But by this point, the scene had been absolutely trampled by so many people coming and going.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
And honestly, it remained open to the press long after investigators left as well. So whatever evidence was maybe there, totally tainted.
Morbid
Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)
exactly most likely and it's like after investigators left that scene should have been cordoned off and somebody should have been stationed there and that way they can go back to the scene if they need to something comes up you go wait let's get back to that scene and take a look again yeah and they didn't do any of that so people were just trampling right through it right after they left it's like guys what were you thinking i don't i don't get it at all
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
The fact that she was like, you fucking bums. No, no, no. She didn't say that. An innocent girl. You dirty fish peddling bums. Dirty fish peddling bums. You got the wrong girl in there. Looks like you got the wrong girl.
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
You know, I was looking up 1920s slang because I'm going to try to throw it in here as we go. I love you. To go on a drinking spree on a toot. On a toot. Just, oh, you know, he's a, you know where apples is. He's just on a toot. On a toot. That's what your kids call a fart. So it makes it even funnier. It's so funny. Like everything was funnier.
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
Like I know life was not funnier because like, you know.
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
She's, I'm not condoning anything that she has done. No. It's kind of iconic. No, it's truly iconic. It's kind of iconic. She said. She's like, I was right in your face. She said, LOL. And you got the wrong person. I'm telling you, you got the wrong person and you're still not letting her go.
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
Which obviously, like, that part is not great, because you're like, these grocers do not deserve to be... Terrorized. ...losing their...
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
I'm like, sir, she's been seen. She's been... She's been witnessed by several people who have been held up at these stores.
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
Yeah, they just don't want to admit that. It's a hoax? You know what this is? There's a lady that's making us run for our money here, and we're not happy with it.
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
I'm going somewhere with this. Me and Mikey both were like, no, no, no, it's not that. I was like, for me it is.
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
It makes me think of in Scream 1 when Stu is like... No, there's no way a girl could have killed him. And Randy's like, it takes a man to do something like that. Oh, my God. It's so true. That's the perfect quote for this. That's the vibe that I'm getting. It takes a man to do something like that. I love it. That's exactly what this is giving. That's the vibe.
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
She's getting out there with her glad rags. What's a glad rag?
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
We're five days out. It's the new year for you. It's 2025. What's it like in the future? It's been the new year for you. Yeah. Is it cool there? I hope so. Is everything better?
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
I was going to say they won't because it's not aliens. It's the government. So I don't want them to abduct me.
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
I'm just kind of complacent now. That's like scary for you, though. Yeah, I'm like numb to it.
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
wow fond of fun you're a shitbag he was like you're having too much fun i'm gonna make them think you're a bandit you have a fuck-ass bob i'm gonna put you in the big house men suck like you're the worst are you kidding he's like and it's like her brother it's like shut the fuck up yeah shut the fuck up shut the fuck up sibling like get the fuck out of here yeah she's having too much fun i gotta throw in the big house you're not my dad yeah get the fuck out of here
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
They do have such zest and flair. What else do they have? They're very hotsy-totsy. They are very hotsy-totsy. And you know what? We got a lot of bob-haired patsies sitting in the big house right now. Tell me everything. What? Bob-haired patsies? Yeah, patsies are people who are set up. A fool, a chump. A chump? And they're sitting in the big house in jail.
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
I'm wearing sweatpants. We need to do a listener tale that's 1920s themed so we can go. Literally yesterday. I don't know how we do that, but we'll figure it out.
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
Just encouraging their hair to grow. Like, please grow, please grow, please grow.
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
I immediately thought of a bunch of fuck-ass bob-haired flappers just walking in, flashing about. Freeze!
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
Yeah, she's got a transatlantic accent. Yes, 100%. Yeah, she's got the bob haircut.
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
You know, they were doing these little ones that were going well. At night. And they got two. They were putting on the Ritz. They were high-hatting. I know what that's all about. High-hatting. They were getting swelled. They were. Throwing on the side. Acting high-toned.
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
Hold on. You know, simmer down. You've got to cool your jets. Hold your horses. Keep your shirt on. I like keep your shirt on. Take it easy.
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
It was, honestly, it was, oh, Mikey's worried that everyone's going to come after me, probably. Listen, they love me, so you better pull it. No, it was awesome. That was such a good transition. Oh, now they're really going to come after you because that was fake as fuck. No, but I wish everybody saw the finger guns that went along with it because it really added to it.
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
Oh, if you shoot me in the arm... Like, I would have come out and I would have been like, next time I'm getting that gun.
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
She does look 20. She looks younger than that, to be honest.
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
And in that sense, you're like, obviously being in the position of robbing people. Whilst pregnant. Already. You lose that argument. Like, you know what I mean? Like, that's it. But now you almost believe her when she says, like, we didn't intend to hurt anybody because they never tried to before.
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
You know, like, it seemed like the intimidation tactic was what they were going with and it seemed to work. Yes. Which is wrong. And throwing people off kilter with her being the first one going in there with the gun, I think was their intention, like throwing them off completely at first. Yep. And then Ed can saunter in all tall and like, you know.
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
But it's not okay. They had put themselves in that position to begin with. So it's like precisely your argument falls flat.
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
You don't say. Jesus Christ. I love how it's just like automatically. Like that is the wildest story. Like she's talking to Joe Bonino. These men with Italian names, they're definitely part of the underworld. They have to be.
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
The image of her is falling slowly. Yeah. Now a little faster, actually. They're making an example of her. It's hitting the skids.
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
I love how they're like, that's not womanly. I'm like, yeah. Excuse me?
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
She was very lost. She was very lost. And what she did was wrong. Very bad choices.
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
Because you think she, I mean, she obviously grew up with nothing. With nothing rough. Yeah, with nothing. And it's like she clearly fell into these, like, you know, detective magazines and all that. She fell into her own deluge. And thought it was going to be this glamorous, like, yeah. Yeah.
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
Yeah, because while she was obviously lost and like thought it was going to be this whole glamorous thing, she also wasn't thinking about the people whose lives she was completely destroying. And putting at risk. That kind of money, taking that from somebody like a grocer or somebody who owns a business. That's their whole livelihood. That's it.
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
And they have families, too, that they need to take care of. So it's like, yeah, you may be pregnant. You may be trying to feed your kid. Right. Taking it out of somebody else's mouth who's working hard for it is not the way to do it.
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
Yeah. That was a swell, a Jake, a Nifty, the cat's meow, the cat's pajamas, the bee's knees. I was having a ball. It was a whoopee. And with all that being said, we sure hope you keep listening.
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
Yeah, she's like, you think I want to leave that in the sink? Fair enough.
Morbid
Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit
Oh my God, they're like going, they're like, let's communicate with the cops. Full send. Yes. Yes.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Hey weirdos, Elena here. If you're looking to kick back and relax with Morbid, Wondery Plus is the way to go. It's like having a cozy seat in our haunted mansion. No ads, just you and early access to new episodes. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or in Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Not all of them are in there for like killing people. You know what I mean? Like, it's like petty crimes are there. Right. And it's like they're just sitting there waiting to be bombed now. So in response, the government implemented a policy where any inmate with less than three months left on their sentence and boys who completed at least six months of their sentence would be released.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
The result was a massive, massive uptick in criminal activity at a time when law enforcement was already overworked and their attention was understandably in many other places.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
So during this period, police relied on support from civilian volunteers who were instrumental in coordinating air raid precaution efforts and could be identified now, like these volunteer citizens, they could be identified by their helmets and air raid precautions armband. So you could know who you could trust, quote unquote. Mm-hmm.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
But unfortunately, as people are going to do, they're going to people. So petty criminals quickly realized those armbands gave the wearer considerable power. And according to an article by Duncan Campbell, criminals began to kit themselves out with an ARP warden's helmet and armband and smash their way into shops when no one was looking. So they just started using it.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
It's like Ted Bundy carrying around a police badge. Exactly. Exactly. Under the circumstances, law enforcement and the public had to make distinctions between what was and what wasn't behavior worth prosecuting, because they can't go after everybody now. In simple terms, stealing a blanket from a shop would ordinarily be considered theft.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
But during wartime, most people would probably agree with you that stealing a blanket from a shop to cover a body in the street was probably not criminal behavior. Yeah, fair enough. So things were, lines were being blurred, which makes it very scary. It's never great.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Now in wartime England, looting and shoplifting alone were such huge massive problems that the court set aside two days each week just to prosecute those charged for those crimes. But they were not the only crimes that were clogging up the courts.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
I was going to say, it's a trend. I have no idea where we are. You know what? You know where I'm at.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
The less scrupulous business owners, for example, were known to exploit the rationing of wartime goods by selling additional products at like crazy over, like price gouging, essentially. And even some doctors were more than happy to disqualify a young man from military service just for a few extra bucks. So everybody's suddenly tilting in the wrong direction on the moral scale here. Yeah.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
With the British justice system just so bogged down with additional crime and a dramatic increase in public need, other crimes were kind of ignored. Like sex work, for example, was a big crime back then, considered a big crime, and it flourished during the wartime years. In part because it was obviously, like, way less important of, like, who is it really? Like, what are we doing here? You know?
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
But also because these women provided what some were arguing was a valuable service to the military men. Yeah. So... You're going to prosecute them? Like, come on. Just let everybody live. There's a lot of way worse shit happening in here.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
In London's Piccadilly Circus, for example, the so-called Piccadilly Commandos, as the area's sex workers were known, catered to thousands of young men about to ship off to the front lines, all of which went largely ignored by the police. They just let it happen. You know, they're going off to war. Yeah, you know, whatever.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
With that said, the lax attitudes around sex work at the time and law enforcement turning a blind eye to the whole thing allowed for at least one man to quickly and easily find victims with who he could get very close to very easily and act out his murderous fantasies that he had very clearly been having for a long time. Yeah. So it's like, it's a double-edged sword for real. Definitely.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Now, given the tensions and frustrations being felt across Britain in those days, murder seemed like an inevitable thing that was going to happen. In fact, within just two weeks of the announcements of the nightly blackouts, the report of the first murder came in from Edinburgh on September 15th, 1939.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
And this victim, in this case, 52-year-old Isabella Ralph, had no fixed address and did make her living sometimes doing sex work. Okay. Now, in the case of Isabella Ralph, the press reported the death and gave like a brief overview of the circumstances. That was really it. Just a quick little mention.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
You know, with cities being ripped apart by German air raids and families being separated by evacuations and displacement, it seemed like everyone just kind of moved on from this murder of this woman, this, you know, like nomadic woman in Scotland. Fortunately, Edinburgh police got lucky and a few days later they arrested John Henry Connell. A 24-year-old bricklayer that was living in Edinburgh.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Damn, 24. Yeah. Upon being arrested, Connell told police he'd taken a room at a boarding house, and the next day he realized that he had some money that was stolen. So he confronted Isabella Ralph, with whom he'd had... Relations. Relations with the previous evening. Okay. And he managed to retrieve his stolen money.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
But in the process of this whole thing, the two got physically aggressive with each other. They started struggling. And he said he grabbed her throat in order to stop her from screaming. And oops, he killed her. I think we all know by now how long it takes to manually strangle someone. Uh-huh. So that's bullshit. You don't just go, oh, oh, I tried to make her stop screaming. It's so crazy.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
I held it there for like, you know, many, many minutes. At the very least, it's three minutes, right? At least like four, I think.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Yeah. And it's consistent pressure, too. It's like if you let off even for a second, it starts the clock again. Yeah. Now, at trial, Connell's lawyer claimed his client had never intended to kill Isabella, and he had only wanted to get his stolen money back. Despite the evidence showing that several of Isabella Ralph's ribs had been crushed in the process...
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Indicating a very much higher degree of violence than he was talking about. The judge accepted the lesser plea of culpable homicide and sentenced Connell to three years of penal servitude. Wow.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
In handing down the sentence, Lord Justice Clark told him, I'm satisfied that the result of your conduct was the very last thing you anticipated, but you took this woman's life through violence, which you inflicted upon her. So he's like, I'm confident that you didn't mean to kill her, but you did.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
essentially okay now the murder of isabella ralph which was definitely a violent homicide like yes good try illustrates two important things about the press and the judicial system's understanding of murder at the time especially of the lower class persuasion during this time period first regardless of the brutality or sensational nature of the crime the
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Page space was limited and editorial and journalistic priorities were given to coverage of the war at the time. So they were just not going to focus on this. And second, the justice system, particularly the resources of the police and the court system, had very limited bandwidth and were eager to process what they considered lesser crimes as quickly and with as little attention as possible. Right.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
these two realities are definitely going to be an important factor in why there was relatively little coverage of what would end up being a serial killer operating in London during these blackouts. Especially when you consider the obvious comparisons to none other than England's most notorious and mysterious killer, Jack the Ripper. There's a very obvious, like, you can compare them.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Yeah, definitely. And it's like... It shows you how fucking bonkers it was at the time. That they're not talking about, like, a Jack the Ripper 2.0. A second Jack the Ripper, essentially, is kind of going unnoticed and not really talked about. It's like, that should have been literal. Like, Jack the Ripper at the time... Was all anyone was talking about.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Literally all they were talking about. All the press was talking about. Anybody on the street. And this one, which is essentially the same, like, M.O., but somehow more sadistic, is not even being talked about.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Yeah. And it wasn't being reported on. Now, by the winter of 1942... The war had been dragging on for more than a year, and violence had honestly, for the residents of London, had just become a normal thing. They just dealt with it every day. Violence, violence, violence. Still, even the most hardened of Londoners would have been absolutely shocked by the first discovery.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
This discovery was made by plumbers William Baldwin and Harold Batchelder on their way to work on the morning of February 9th, 1942. So as the two men passed through Montague Place in Marylebone, I looked this up, Marylebone, that morning, they noticed what looked to be a broken flashlight laying in the snow just outside of one of these windows. They're like basically handmade air raids shelters.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
I have a feeling I know what happened to you because it might have happened to me as well.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
If you look it up, it's like a little kind of a half circle, like a half sphere. Kind of made with notes, kind of made with like a tin almost with like a little opening so you can scoot in and hide essentially. Okay.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Next to it, they found a woman's green wool turban-style hat, some matches, and some Ovaltine tablets. Then, as they got closer to it, they saw what looked like the pale leg of what they believed was a mannequin sticking out of the doorway of the shelter.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Harold Batchelder ran to the nearest phone and called the police and PC John Miles arrived a short time later. They discovered this was a human body because initially they thought it was a mannequin, but they were like, let's call it in. Yeah, just in case. With all like the objects that clearly belong to a woman, we're not going to check ourselves.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
So upon seeing this woman's body, Miles knew it was not an accidental death. Yeah. So he called for additional officers and he secured the scene. Now, as far as the officers at the scene could tell, the woman in the air raid shelter had been brutalized by her attacker. Her face and neck were badly bruised.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Her clothes were torn, her skirt had been pulled up to her thighs, and she had been violently sexually assaulted. The following day, the pathologist, Sir Bernard Spilsbury... Spilsbury. I love this name. Sir Bernard Spilsbury. It's a very important name. It is an important name. He concluded his post-mortem examination, and he reported that...
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Aside from the bruising on her face and neck, there were, quote, a number of small abrasions to her upper, including a small amount of abrasions to her exposed right breast. The cause of death was listed as manual strangulation. She ended up being the least brutalized of all of his victims, if you can believe it. Just to give you a heads up for what's to come. Okay. Okay.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
The only blood found on the victim was her own, but the bruising on her neck and fingerprints found at the scene suggested that she'd been killed by a left-handed person. Ah, interesting that they could figure that out back in the 30s. Isn't that interesting? A few days later, the victim was identified as Evelyn Hamilton, a 41-year-old pharmacist from Essex. Oh. So she was just going to her job.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
stock of the frosted sugar cookie creamer and i second that please please please show that that requires it please i've only had one bottle of it because that's the only bottle i've been able to find this season me too and it's making me upset and you know we gotta shoot our shot here That's the thing. We got to shoot it.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
But unfortunately, no one at the Lions Corner remembered whether she was joined by a man that evening. So they couldn't really determine whether she'd been lured to the shelter or simply attacked on her way back from the hospital or the hostel. Detectives had only just begun investigating the Hamilton murder when a report of a similar murder was reported on February 10th.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
This is just the next day. Right. That morning, two meter readers from the electric company were doing their rounds, you know, just going from rooming house to rooming house. And they were trying to go into one place in a rooming house on Wardour Street in Soho. So the men knocked on the door of 34-year-old Evan Oatley's room and they got no reply. The manager was like, no, she's home.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Like, I know this. I saw her. Like, she hasn't left. So the manager was like, you know what? Did you try the door? And they were like, well, no, we can't just like walk into people's houses. So we didn't. And he was like, no, I know she's home. I'm just going to like see if I can open it and yell for her. Yeah. So he jiggled the door and it was unlocked.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
So they ended up going inside, and as they entered the apartment, they found Evelyn lying face up on her bed. They later said they believed she had a red scarf around her neck, but found out it was just that her neck had been violently slashed open. Wow. Yeah. The men ran into the street to find the nearest police officer and returned with Inspector John Hennessy.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
In his report filed later that day, Hennessy described what he saw when he entered the apartment. This is rough. I flashed my torch and saw a woman believed to be Evelyn Oatley on her back on a divan or single bed in a transverse position. We looked it up in a divan. I didn't know what that was. No, me neither. It's apparently like a chaise lounge, essentially.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Her head was pointing north and was hanging over down the side of the bed. She was naked except for a slender garment which covered her breasts. I saw that her throat had been cut and a hand torch was wedged in her private parts. Oh, my God. It gets worse. Yeah. Yeah. Now, Superintendent Fred Sherrill is kind of like a fingerprint expert as well. Oh, wow. So he was like really big in this case.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
And even he couldn't, he was the one that determined that they were probably left hand, this person was probably left handed and tried to run these fingerprints alongside like known offenders and couldn't find a match anywhere. He was the one that determined. Person wasn't known.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Things that had been used in this murder and on Evelyn were a razor blade, a can opener, parts of a broken mirror, a flashlight, and curling tongs. Oh, wow. Yeah. It's literally unthinkable rage and sadism in this case. That's why I was saying that there's a different element here than there was in Jack the Ripper case. Yeah.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Not worse per se, but it's a different level for sure.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Yeah. It's sadism and it appears to be that the killer is taking a lot of time to torture and inflict pain and mutilations on these victims while they are alive.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Like the Hamilton murder, there was very little evidence found at the scene, and no one could think of any reason that someone would kill Oatley. At the time of her death, Evelyn was married, but had been living apart from her husband Harold for some time while she pursued an acting career in London.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
According to Harold Oatley, Evelyn was, quote, "...fascinated with West End life and would not leave it." But while it was true that she was hoping to make her way in the theater, she had worked at a nightclub for a little while, but while her husband was away, she had been supporting herself as a full-time sex worker since 1939.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
I did just realize that this is going to come out after the holidays and maybe it won't be available.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
The last time anyone had seen her was when she was with a dark-haired airman the night before. This dark-haired airman had approached her, somebody said. And according to... This really cool YouTuber, he's fascinating. His channel, he's called Well I Never.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
And he's just this British man who will tell you all about these amazing things and horrifying things. Love it.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Apparently her friends, and this like really will like break your heart when he said it, her friends later said she had turned to sex work, you know, obviously for income while her husband was away, but also because she was afraid of sleeping in her apartment alone because of the blackouts. So like she just wanted company.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
She was just lonely and scared. It's like really sad. According to the medical examiner, Evelyn Oatley had been, quote, beaten and strangled to unconsciousness and then suffered extensive sexually motivated mutilations inflicted by the killer using a safety razor, curling tongs, a corner fragment of a broken mirror, and the tin can opener.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Evelyn's cause of death was the five and a half inch wound on her neck that severed her carotid artery, which was believed to have been inflicted with the two inch razor blade. Right. Now, among the evidence that was found in the room were unidentified fingerprints on the fragment of the broken mirror and the tin can opener. And they again indicated that the killer was left handed.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
So we're relating these two cases. Even though they are very different. Yeah. Otherwise, it looked like there was obviously a huge struggle, but that there was also only one thing missing. And it was like a silver cigarette case that was in her purse. Just a trophy. But her bank books and her money were still there.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Now, that makes me think that in the first case, the Hamilton murder, they said they found her purse close by, but on the sidewalk. I think somebody passing by just stole her shit.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
I don't even know if he did. He maybe took her identification, but I don't know if he took her money.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
And he doesn't. It doesn't look like he brings these things with him. Yeah. It looks like he finds them where he is. Oh, okay.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
So I think he just didn't have anything available to him. I think if he did, it probably would have been the exact same thing. Yeah. But it was outside. Yeah. What's even worse is a neighbor told police later that a little after midnight the night before, they had heard a radio suddenly turn up really loud from that apartment, enough that they could hear it through the walls.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
We always say how much we hate that. Fucking hate that. He literally was doing it to drown out her screams. Yeah. Now, on February 12th, a sex worker named Catherine Mulcahy nearly lost her life to this man. Oh, God. She got away? Yes. Apparently, a very nice-looking, clean-cut man approached her while she was soliciting on Regent Street, and she agreed to work with him.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Once they were at her apartment and the whole thing began, he got on top of her and attacked her immediately. He dug his knees as hard as he could into her abdomen and started trying to strangle her manually, but she fought back hard.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
And apparently she still had her boots on and she kicked him as hard as she could off of her and ran the fuck out of there to her neighbors completely nude. He ran after her and threw money at her claiming he was drunk and he didn't mean to and then he ran away.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
But he left something behind. What do you mean? He left a belt behind, a Royal Air Force belt specifically.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
And remember, the night before, Evelyn had been seen being approached by a nice, clean-cut, dark-haired Air Force man.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
And then they're this. They're this. Scary. Yeah. Now, he went right on that evening to kill again after this, what he would consider a failure. Yeah. But that victim would not be discovered until February 13th. So we're going to get there, but I'm trying to go in order of the discoveries while maintaining the timeline. Okay.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Because I want you to get the idea of how bloodthirsty this fucker really was. Like he barely went a day, sometimes even hours between murders. It was like a spree. And when one failed, he would immediately find another woman to kill. So he does go right to another one, but she is not found for a couple of days. Okay.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
So the police and press had honestly barely begun to even process Evelyn Oatley's scene when a report of yet another body came in not 24 hours later. On the afternoon of the 13th, 15-year-old—and it's not her who died— A 15-year-old Barbara Lowe went to visit her mother, Margaret, at her apartment in North Soho.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
When Barbara's knocks, didn't get an answer, she asked a neighbor if they'd seen her mother, Margaret. But the neighbor was like, you know what? I haven't seen her in a couple of days. And there is a package that's been sitting on the step for a couple of days. So it was not her mom's character to go away without saying anything or to, like, just abandon her in any way.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
So Barbara called the police, who dispatched an officer to the apartment. They used a spare key and were able to get inside. But when they went inside, D.S. Leonard Blacktop was very surprised to see that the blackout curtains were still drawn and everything was completely dark. And he was like, are you sure she's in here?
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
And he switched on his flashlight and started making his way through the place. And in the kitchen, he saw a woman's purse was laying on the floor and everything in the purse was strewn across the floor. So finally, he reached the last door in the apartment, which was Margaret's bedroom. The door was locked, but Barbara gave the detective permission to force the door open so they could get inside.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Fortunately, he was able to stop Barbara from coming into the room. which spared her a lot of horror. Margaret Lowe's body was on the bed, completely nude, and having probably been there for at least a day or two. Her face and head were brutally beaten, and beaten with what the detective assumed was the fireplace poker that lay in two pieces on the floor beside her. It broke. A fireplace poker.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Those things are usually like wrought iron. Later, the autopsy would show that her jaw had been shattered by the blows. One of her stockings had been tied tightly around her neck and knotted. It had dug into her skin. And her body had been badly damaged.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
badly mutilated um with among other things a razor a potato peeler and a kit and a table knife and and this is horrifying not that everything else hasn't been there was a large serrated bread knife protruding from a wound near her groin and a wax candle had been inserted into her vagina Yeah, everybody is literally in this room in a state of absolute shock.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
When I tell you that I was not ready for this case to be as brutal as it is, I had no idea. I don't know if we've heard anything that brutal back to back. The fact that this... Has gone largely kind of like under the radar even now.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Like I've said we're going to cover the Blackout Ripper to a couple people and they're like, oh, what's that?
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
You had never heard of it. Nobody had ever heard of it. And this is what it is. A potato peeler.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Because he's using just kitchen items. Oh God. Like he's just using what is around. This is brutal. Which is even more fucked up that this man is coming in. He knows he can strangle them to death. So he's not worried about, he doesn't seem to be worried about like the end result. He knows he can probably get the end result, but he's just coming in there being like, I'll just use what's around.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Like, potato peeler, razor, fucking candle.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
She's using sweet cream instead of frosting.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
And her mom had been like, you know, just trying to make ends, like just trying to, and keep her in boarding school too. Like pay to keep her in boarding school. Because, so fingerprints were found in the apartment and again, left-handed. So they're connecting it. now. But that wasn't, and obviously she had some commonalities with the other victims.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
But until the early 1930s, Margaret and her husband had been relatively wealthy, living off an income from the dry goods store and boarding house that they had owned together. But her husband died in 1932 and the income quickly went away. And Margaret found herself desperate to support herself and her daughter. So she turned to sex work.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
What am I going to do? Thoughts and prayers. Thank you. Those are useful. So to gain some much needed perspective, we're going to shift into something that's Honestly going to shock you, I believe, everyone listening. The case that I am covering today, so I'm going to be covering the Blackout Ripper. Oh, I haven't heard of this one. His name is Gordon Cummins.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
This was not, and again, her daughter was going to boarding school and she wanted to keep her in boarding school. So she did this to keep her daughter where she was safest. Yeah. Now, this was not the first time that she'd relied on sex work for income, but she was kind of hoping to have left it behind when she met her husband and like started a family.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
And she did until he died. Right. Which is really just, like, heartbreaking. I feel so bad because, like, you know she didn't want to. No. Now, the similarities between the victims weren't lost on the press. One reporter wrote, the three West End murders have all been discovered within an area of just over one square mile.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
As each woman was strangled, the possibility that all three were the victims of the same person cannot be ruled out. There were, of course, other details about the cases that the press hadn't even been aware of at the time, and it probably would have only strengthened their belief that the women were victims of the same man.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
But there was really not a lot of time to consider all the connections between the cases because another victim was discovered just hours after Margaret Lowe's body had been found.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Yeah, just one after the other after the other. Yeah. And that's where we're going to end part one, just because I think there's a lot in here and it's very heavy. But this is, I mean, luckily, you know, he gets caught. That's the good thing.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
It's shocking when he's caught because he's not a walking monster on the outside.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
It's just... The Jack the Ripper case is so brutal and, like, so vicious and, like, it's shocking when you go through it bit by bit and find out the injuries to these women. And then, like, this is just, like, because you can't help but compare the two because they're in the same, you know, relative, you know, corner of the world. Sure. Not, like, you know, too far away in time from each other.
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Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
And it's the same kind of victim profile. It's the same... Motive. Almost, like, frenzy when it comes to, like, how quickly and how many victims he was ranking up here.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
But it's, like, there's just, like, so... He has to be such an evil fuck. Yeah.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Like, he has to be such an evil fuck.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Yeah, and part two, there's more. He's not done. So part two is not, you know, just the arrest and all that. He's not done. Right. And he's as brutal.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Yeah, he's definitely assuming. But this guy... I knew, I had heard of this case, but I didn't know the details. And when I looked further into it, I was like, whoa. So he, this happened after Jack the Ripper. Okay. Also happened over in Europe, though. And... Many Rippers in Europe. Many Rippers. We have a few over here, too, but... These ones are rough.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
And the thing is, I hesitate to say any ripper is worse than the other because they're all fucking terrible. That's why they are literally called rippers. Yeah. But the thing with the blackout ripper that we're going to cover today, this is going to be a two-parter, by the way, because there's a lot. But he is, like, with Jack the Ripper... Sorry, I'm, like, everywhere.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
My thoughts are all over the place. It's because you didn't have the right coffee cream. I didn't. That's very true. So Jack the Ripper was pretty methodical about the way he went about things. Seemed like he had... almost like a plan when he went into each murder. He did it quick. He did it relatively, you know, clean isn't the word, but like very quick and smooth.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
He also did his mutilation post-mortem for the most part. Really, the only one that you can point to is Mary Kelly at the end that was like frenzied and out of control and totally off the map, which some people even wonder if... Obviously we went into that if that's all connected and all that, but we won't go into that. But the blackout ripper, Gordon Cummins, he's a mutilator.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
But he is like sadistic because his mutilation is not done post-mortem. Okay. It seems like he enjoys hurting women and he enjoys hurting women when they can feel it. Like torturing them. Yeah. He mutilates and tortures while they are alive. And it's so – well, I hesitate to say he is worse because obviously it is all awful. Yeah. He's different. He's a different brand of Ripper.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
He's a different level of Ripper, I would say. It's very upsetting. I'm giving you a trigger warning up front. And this is very graphic, and there is a lot of really fucked up, gruesome things that he does to his victims. So please be aware of that. Okay. Good news is, though, they caught him. That's good. He's not a Jack the Ripper. He's a Gordon. He's a Gordon. He got caught.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
He's Gordon the Idiot. So let's take it back, shall we? Let's take it back, back, back. We're going back. How far? into when German bombing raids were happening during World War II. That's far back. Taking it back. We're in the 30s, late 30s, early 40s. So in response to the onset of German bombing raids during World War II, a lot of England's most vulnerable citizens were evacuated.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
And temporarily, they were taken out of the urban areas to be safer in the more rural parts of the country. Because it was a really, really dangerous time and very unprecedented and very, like, unpredictable time. But those who stayed in the cities would spend years enduring blackouts. So scary.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
And these were periods where the city was intentionally plunged into darkness to prevent German bombers from easily identifying urban areas.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
areas to bomb that's so sad that they even had to do that to avoid being bombed oh and it's all that in and of itself is an awful awful thing if you research into these blackouts yeah horrific and they were sick they were a huge inconvenience and obviously like tough to deal with in a myriad of ways, but they were also a safety risk for everybody.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
But for at least one person, they offered the perfect opportunity to enact what was clearly his darkest fantasies. This man clearly had been thinking about this. You don't just go and do this. And he didn't have a criminal record.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
So he went straight. He must have been thinking about this for a long time. And this gave him the opportunity. Yeah. So when the German army invaded Poland in September 1939, like we said, countries all over Europe were forced to take a position and develop a strategy just in case they were drawn into the conflict.
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Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
In England, where attacks from Germany were kind of, everybody was just waiting for it. It was imminent, essentially. The war secretary just quickly mobilized the British armed forces and began evacuating 1.5 million citizens. Wow. Those citizens were mostly like women, children, the elderly, the most vulnerable, like I said.
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Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Taking them out of the cities, bringing them to the countryside, that's where they were going to be safer. But these would end up being super traumatic for a lot of people because they ended up being relocated to the homes of strangers often. And they also wouldn't know what happened to the people that they left behind. The homes.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Like fathers, you know, brothers, all like husbands, all kinds of people. Yeah. And that was for like many years they dealt with this. Under those circumstances, when the bombs began falling a few months later, many of these people chose to just return home instead of being separated from their families and just dealt with the chaos that was about to ensue.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
During this time, all lights, electric or natural, were to be extinguished.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Straight up blackness. So scary. I don't think any of us can truly appreciate how dark that was happening here. Because we are, no matter what, there's lights around us at all times. Always. It's like when we covered Jack the Ripper, we talked about how I don't think people take into account how wild it is that he did what he did with such precision. In that darkness. In how dark it was.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
There wasn't street lamps. He was doing this by the light of a small flame up in a corner. Right. Like, that's insane. And then here, there's no light whatsoever. It is a black that you can't even conceive of.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Because it takes away all your senses. It totally like, it puts you in a place of like... Just complete vulnerability. Yeah.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
I don't think, I feel like it would make me crazy. Yeah, I feel you. Not having any kind of like perception of what was around you. That's what would scare me the most. That would fuck you up.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Hey, weirdos. I'm Alina. I'm Ash. And this is Morbid.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
And it's not like this was something you could just like not do because if you violated this blackout, you were going to be subject to fines of various amounts. And it was as simple as like lighting a match would get you a fine. And these people couldn't afford this stuff and they couldn't afford to be thrown in jail. And also you don't want to be the person who fucks it up.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Yeah. And obviously, like you said, like you don't want to be the one to fuck this up because what they were doing was trying to stay hidden from German bombers identifying them as targets during air raids. But while it was like strategically made sense for the time because like what else are they going to do? It had obviously added risks with it. It's like, yeah, you are safe from air raids.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
You're not safe from each other. Right. And that's a problem. Yeah. In the first month alone, traffic deaths doubled, and by January 1942, one in five people had sustained some form of injury from the blackouts.
Morbid
Episode 635: Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper (Part 1)
Now, as all this chaos was unfolding, the question that came about was, what do we do with the nation's countless prisoners that are now, yeah, unlike the free British citizens who could evacuate or hide during an air raid, people in prison and youth detention centers were just sitting targets. It's like, what do you do? Do you just let them be sitting?