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Hey, weirdos. Fuck.
Okay. Leave it in. Hey, weirdos.
I'm Elena. And I'm Ash.
This is This is morbid.
It's Friday, so we're like hella unhinged in the office.
We're very unhinged.
We're going cray -cray to dead day.
I also just pulled out of my pocket.
What is that? not a um picture of a cricket that my youngest drew for me and it's the most uh unhinged and adorable looking cricket I've ever seen I can't even see it from here because the green is very light I just see a long just a very rich perhaps a very happy little cricket she greeted me this morning she goes tt which cat do you like and just showed me a picture of two cats and I picked the one I like and she goes okay and then she just whips a pair of scissors out cuts it out and hands it to me.
That was her thing this morning.
I made this for you.
I made this for you.
I was like, all right.
Good morning. Thank you.
Yeah. Now that I just pulled it out of my pocket because I felt it like rustling.
And she had asked me and John this morning, like first thing, like welcome to parenthood, everybody.
Like first thing you just hear, would you like a cricket, a worm, a centipede, a spider, or a ladybug for a pet?
And me and John both go ladybug at the same time.
And she goes, only one of you can have it.
And John said, ladybug.
And I was like, damn it.
And I was like, all right, I guess I'll take a worm.
And she was like, worm is mine.
And I was like, why did you offer it then?
Okay. And I was like, I don't want any of those other ones.
And she was like, you get a cricket.
What about a cricket?
Crickets aren't bad.
Crickets are ugly. When you really look at a cricket, they're also loud.
Yeah. Like, have you ever had a cricket locked in your house?
Yeah. It's a form of torture.
I'm sorry. Do you remember the day that we were cleaning Ma's room and a fucking cricket just, like, dive -bombed at me?
Yeah. And tried to live inside of me?
Crickets are no joke.
That one was beautiful.
I love the sound of crickets outside.
Yeah. I don't want it in my house.
But Google a snow. Wasn't it a snow cricket?
Yeah, maybe that's how I get out of it.
Maybe I just be very specific about the type of cricket.
Yeah, it's called manifestation.
Look it up. There is like a cricket.
I didn't even mean to do this.
Like what a segue. I'm a segue queen right now.
There's a cricket infestation happening.
What? Somewhere in the United States right now.
it's like it's like a migration or something but they're like mormon crickets they're called and i think they're like reddish color they're like very tiktok it guys people are taking video of it no it's horrifying it's like the end times oh like people can't come out of their house people are a lot like they're literally like a blanket of crickets is covering the side of their house oh my god it's the end times don't say that to me i already know i mean like it looks like the the end times but it's not it's a normal thank you process of nature speaking of the end times though since we're on the fucking
subject and this is good i'm let me just from the jump here this is going to sound absolutely unhinged but it's a genuine concern of mine and it's a genuine thing that i have been experiencing lately and i need to know if other people are experiencing it i expect i've experienced it with you multiple times in like the past couple weeks birds are fucking wily lately yeah birds are being birds are just going right in front of your car like like, flying in front of your car trying to get you to hit them.
It happened to me this morning again on the way to your house, and I was, like, why are you trying to make me kill you?
I don't want to do that.
Yeah, you're right.
I've seen it happen a couple of times.
Like, bad lately. Bad.
I will say my crows are doing okay.
Yeah, no. They're acting totally fine.
They're not acting a fool.
I have a lot of crows in my neighborhood all of a sudden.
Because they're, like, hey, we're family.
Do you think they're, like, following me from your house?
Like, there's, like, multiple families of them?
Maybe. damn my crows are real guys no they are genuinely they're really my crows now yeah they are my family did you leave them anything um i started feeding them that's good yeah so i have little you i want you to like leave them a treasure though because they'll bring you back a treasure yeah i want to do that that's that's fun i want us to have that kind of relationship you know there was one that would bring like oh no i'm sorry that was a squirrel you're like we don't want those i don't want a squirrel no squirrels are far too common i want a murder of crows you know i just have a lot of cats
personally you were gonna say i just have a lot of feelings those two i do have a lot of feelings i have a lot of a lot going on all right but that's where we are on this friday yeah weird unhinged journey with kids crickets and birds yeah gross there you go and murders which we're gonna talk about ones here there you go segueing right in i have a very interesting case today it's uh veronica gideon and the easter sunday murders i do not know this no no you don't i do not um i looked up like 1920s 1930s crimes to get in a place of like i really was looking for something like ash like sociality
kind of thing and i ended up with a model oh veronica's a model okay but it begins with her parents okay so in many ways the lives of joseph and mary giddy and her parents were like a lot of other immigrants who had come to the united states just before the outbreak of world war one Joseph Gideon left Hungary in the early 1900s, and he moved to New York a short time later.
Not long after arriving in the U .S. in New York, he met Mary Karatosky.
I hope I said that right.
She also immigrated from Hungary, like, right around the same time.
So they bonded over that shared experience and culture.
And after dating for a little while, they got married in 1908, and they moved to Astoria in Queens.
A few years after marrying, Mary gave birth to the first of the couple's two children.
a girl that they named Ethel.
And then a few years later, in 1917, Mary gave birth to a second girl who they named Veronica, but she went by Ronnie, which I love.
Oh, that's really cute.
Also, this entire time, all I can think of is the Veronicas.
I feel so untouched.
You know that song?
I do. I remember that.
I also, it makes me think of a Gilmore Girls episode when she goes to, when Rory goes to college and they spell her name wrong on her ID and they call her, and it spelled ronnie and she was like ronnie is not even slightly short for any girl's name on the entire planet and laura says veronica but like that's not helping because she's like freaking out and it made me think of that i love that i also love that you can find any sabrina the teenage witch gilmore girls or there's another show too boy meets world yeah i can usually hit all those with references yeah i that the amount of like um like
movie or or tv quotes that stick in my mind yeah versus other things it's alarming isn't that the worst when like things like that stay like yeah like I can recite that entire scene we played out of your mind this morning I know all the words yeah that see that's wild and I don't even know when that song came out like early aughts but ask me what I had for dinner last night and I couldn't fucking tell you yeah anyway we are Ronnie is a nickname for Veronica and that's what Veronica used very cute the girls were both really beautiful in appearance but they ended up being very different in their
personalities. Ethel was always kind of somewhat stern, but Ronnie was more carefree, more fun.
She had like a very wild soul.
Since Joe Gideon had arrived in the U .S. when he was still fairly young, he didn't have a ton of marketable skills.
And so in the early years of their marriage, he relied on kind of just various odd jobs to support himself and his new family.
He worked as a janitor, a bartender, an industrial painter.
And although the work was somewhat menial they were able to live modestly and after just a few years they were able to combine their savings with a small dowry that mary brought to the marriage dowry that's wild i know early 1900s bro and with their combined savings they were able to purchase a little bit of a rundown brownstone but nonetheless a fucking brownstone brownstone in manhattan yeah on east 53rd street so they moved into the first floor of the building and then they rented out the upstairs rooms to the borders and for a little bit of time i love this joe operated a speakeasy in the basement
because fucking 1920s anytime you bring a speakeasy easy into my world i'm just there for it there for it i love a speakeasy i love a speakeasy now and i love a speakeasy like there's i i'm sorry we're very tangent to you today but it's just it's friday you know friday uh i saw that there there's a vampire cafe in new orleans what yeah and you can drink like you get get a drink in a blood bag.
Okay. I told John this last night and he was like, I don't want to do that.
And I was like, I do.
Do you know somebody who does though?
And he was like, I do.
Do you know anybody?
I was like, let's be real.
She's sitting right in front of you asking you to love her.
Do you know someone who wants to drink out of a blood bag?
Yeah, you do. You married her.
But also there's a speakeasy associated with it that you get like a card and then you have to go to a separate place and like show them the card and they let you into the speakeasy.
That's so That's so cool.
And that is so fucking cool to me.
There's one in Hudson, and it looks like an ice cream shop in the front.
Like it is an ice cream shop in the front.
And then you have to go to this special door.
Me and Drew went to it one time.
I forget the word that you have to say, but you have to like – or it's like a question you have to ask, and they kind of lead you into it.
But you have to figure it out, and it's fun.
I love it. I love a speakeasy moment.
We need more. I know.
Let's make them everywhere.
Let's open a speakeasy.
Let's open a speakeasy.
No, that restaurant business is crazy.
Yeah, no, fuck that.
I mean, like, good for you if you own a restaurant because that's hard. Well, that's what I mean.
Like, that shit's real hard. That's cry.
Anyway, for a short time, he did operate a speakeasy in the basement, but unfortunately it was short -lived because that was when you, like, kind of weren't allowed to and that was the whole vibe.
Lame. Lame. Local police shut it down.
Prohibition. So, without the income from the speakeasy, Joe was forced to fall back on the only skill he really, like, had that he could maintain and was, like, actually very good at, which was upholstery.
So he opened a shop a few blocks from the apartment.
That is quite a skill.
It is, yeah. It really is.
Especially back then, that was a great skill to have. You could do a lot with that.
So in time, Joe built up his upholstery business.
And the income provided financial security for the family.
But behind closed doors, domestic life was, their specific domestic life, was one of conflict and dysfunction, unfortunately.
Oh no, I was really hoping that wasn't the case.
I know, because in the beginning it's like, That's so great.
Aw, you're really like putting your pennies together and making this work.
And you got two beautiful daughters.
And then, damn it, conflict.
Bummer. Yeah, because the thing was, like many men of his generation, Joe was a strict disciplinarian.
And he had a very rigid personality.
He saw little value in things like fun and social activities.
Oh. He said, what the fuck is that for?
He said none of that.
He said, no, get a job.
Live your life. Don't have fun.
What's fun? Jump rope?
Eek. As far as he saw it, the culture of his adopted country was far too permissive, and he rallied against the quote -unquote rotten American system where children laugh at their parents and start running wild before they cut their teeth.
I mean, yeah, like kids run wild.
It's giving Mrs. Kim from Gilmore Girls.
It really is. Like, what the fuck are you guys doing?
Like, what the fuck are you doing?
Get these kids together.
Yeah. Yeah. So, Joe's rigidity and personality usually caused tension in the relationship that he had with his very American daughters.
Because they were born there.
Born in America. Were being raised there and had friends there and everything.
Specifically, Ronnie.
She was a lot more stubborn.
She was wild. She was quote unquote boy crazy.
Far much more than her sister Ethel.
I mean, their names are kind of fitting for their personalities, I feel.
Like, you kind of just like did that to them.
That's on you, dog.
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But Ronnie, she saw her father as spineless and irresponsible.
That's a quote. And at times, it seemed that she may have gone out of her way to defy him by staying out past her curfew, coming home drunk, which her father responded to with with quote -unquote corporal punishment.
Oh. So he was physical.
Okay, so violence. Yeah.
Which was something that was going on at the time.
Yeah. You know, not okay in any way.
No, it was very much accepted at the time, though.
It was not outside of the norm.
Yeah. So desperate to escape her abusive and oppressive really father, Ronnie dropped out of high school after just three semesters and enrolled in beautician or what we would call cosmetology school today.
Her goal was to get training as a hairdresser, but where she went the molar beautician program they provided training on a wide range of subjects from hairstyling to treatment for scalp and skin diseases it seemed like a really good school but the program proved itself to be far more rigorous and complicated than what ronnie was really looking for so after just six months of training she quit and just kind of vibed in unemployment for a while she was still young at this point you know fun employment there you go Now, a few years later in the spring of 1933, Ronnie tried again to get away from her parents,
this time by marrying Bobby Flowers.
He was a friend of the family whose parents owned a bowling alley in the neighborhood.
Not surprisingly, the teenage marriage was something of a disaster.
You don't say. It's crazy.
And after just a few months, the couple had the marriage annulled and Ronnie ended up moving back in with her parents.
I think it was early 1934.
for. Now, even though the marriage itself didn't last very long, it did seem like it was the final act of defiance that Joe Gideon was willing to tolerate.
But rather than kick his daughter out of the house, he actually was the one who opted to leave the family.
He left the house. He told his friends that he was tired of the disobedience and the fact that his wife always took Ronnie's side instead of his.
So he packed a bag and went to live in a small corner of his upholstery shop.
interesting just did he was like interesting response you know what ladies i'm good ladies i've had enough of you women wow wow joe yeah here here i was rooting for you with your appellate with your speakeasy i know right you know i mean at least he didn't kick his teenage daughter out i guess yeah absolutely i mean that's a plus and he's still like like he maintained a relationship of his family he just stayed mostly at the upholstery shop okay so it was an interesting dynamic in the 30s in the 30s it was complicated yeah this is also like mid great depression too as soon as you said shit was complicated i
my brain just went 30s and it was like where are we depression yeah so you know everybody's feeling things walking on eggshells kind of vibes that we don't know what it feels like.
So, you know. Very oppressive time.
It is. So it turned out that Joe's departure was just the first major change for the Gideon family.
Not long after her father moved out, Ethel, who was actually coming off of her own brief teenage marriage, decided to start planning for her future and enrolled herself in secretarial courses at Hunter College.
Those courses actually eventually led her to Vanity Fair, where she quickly rose through through the ranks and became the personal secretary of the magazine's editor at the time, Helen Norton.
Good for you, Ethel.
Right? Just like, bang, bang, boom.
I love that Ethel just was like, you know what, I would like to start planning for the future, and then she was like, ba -boom, and just went on a trajectory to Vanity Fair.
Yeah, insane. And around that same time, she had been introduced to a man named Joe, I think it's Kuttner.
He was a friend of the family and an aspiring lawyer, so like, boy with a good head on his shoulders.
Hey, look at that. Now, Now, Ethel had recently been flirty with her mother Mary's last boarder.
Good for Ethel. Yeah, she was just young and getting it.
This guy was an unemployed sculptor, so she didn't really see him as a viable husband.
Yeah, but just flirt with him.
Yeah, flirt with the hot artist, or I don't know if he was hot.
For Ethel's sake, I hope he was.
Yeah, you know. But she was like, aspiring sculptor, aspiring lawyer.
What am I going to pick here in the mid -30s?
In the mid -30s during the Great Depression.
Lawyer. sure so in june of 1936 after dating for a while she and joe kudner were married in a small ceremony in manhattan and she said peace out sculptor bye now with joe and ethel both out of the house the multi -family brownstone on east 53rd street was way too big way too hard to manage for just mary and ronnie who had moved back home at this point so they moved to a much more affordable fourth floor walk -up on east 50th street their previous home like the bigger one on 53rd street it hadn't it wasn't a lot to speak of but honestly it was a mansion compared to the quote -unquote cramped and dimly
lit apartment on 53rd street that's tough yeah the new apartment consisted of three very small bedrooms a kitchen and a combination dining and living area so it was tight quarters in there yeah but despite that extremely limited amount of space mary still insisted on having a boarder to help with the rent she was like i'm not paying this whole fucking and run by myself.
Damn. All right. So the cramped accommodations of the new apartment probably would have been unbearable but Ronnie's new work and social schedule kept her occupied on most nights.
Through her sister Ronnie had actually made the acquaintance of a magazine publisher at Condé Nast. Oh shit.
Who was taken with her beauty and suggested that she model for his daughter an aspiring artist. Oh wow.
Look at these gals.
I know like just using their connections.
And at that point Ronnie didn't have a job so she was like Like, hell yeah.
Yeah. And literally within a few months she became a working model.
She was posing for artists, photographers, and her most lucrative work, serving as the model for lurid covers of detective fiction magazines.
Oh, yeah. So like a pulp model.
Very of the time. Yeah.
And very interesting where those magazines take some people.
Yeah. We've had many criminals who were very interested in those crimes.
What we just recently spoke of.
Ed Gein, for one. Yeah.
So interesting. And Harvey Glattman.
Yeah. Yeah, that's how he would lure people.
There's a few that were very into those magazines.
I mean, they're troubling.
It makes sense. Yeah.
And I don't know like a lot about those magazines.
Were they like, they were pretty like normal magazines where like girls were just posing as detectives?
It was just like, you know, detective fiction kind of thing.
So it was very like over the top, very like noir.
are like the old black and white yeah but it was just the um the visuals I think were we're starting a weird thing yeah like two things and making it weird I think it was like I mean it was obviously like people with a healthy mind could read those and move on with their life and people with an unhealthy mind took it to a place so it's not the magazines I would say it's like the person reading them yeah that makes sense so yeah that's what she was doing she was just modeling for a bunch of different stuff including those that was the heavy paying thing i'm sure yeah it sounds like it was so now
even though ethel had moved out and joe's relationship with his family was still challenging the gideons particularly joe and mary had actually made a point of staying in contact and insisted on spending major holidays together okay well that's nice yeah and i feel like really big for the time yeah i mean that's pretty that's pretty big yeah Yeah, like we're going to stay together for holidays.
Like our family unit is important.
But dysfunctional. Dysfunctional.
But definitely, yeah.
But it's kind of nice.
It's nice that they were trying to stay together in some capacity.
Yeah. And aside from that, Joe's upholstery shop also had no place to bathe.
So keeping on good terms with his wife meant that he could use her apartment to bathe every couple weeks when his usual routine of washing himself in just the sink wouldn't cut it.
Yeah. I mean, a bath is nice.
Stay on good terms for a nice shower every once in a while.
Yeah, I think that's valid.
Yeah. In the early afternoon of March 28, 1937, Joe woke up late and started making his way to Mary and Ronnie's apartment to have Easter dinner.
On this day, he was particularly eager to see everybody because he and Mary had recently decided to reconcile.
Oh, wow. And they were going to tell Ronnie and Ethel over dinner, like, we're getting back together.
Wow, I didn't see that coming.
I know. So he reached the apartment building around 2 p .m., arriving just a couple moments before Ethel and her husband showed up.
and joe rang the bell for mary's apartment waited to be buzzed in but nothing happened he was just about to ring the bell again when one of the tenants was leaving the building and held the door open for them to enter so unsure whether or not his wife and daughter were home joe joe told ethel and her husband just like hang on wait in the lobby and i'll run up the four flights and see if they're home like why climb the four flights of stairs if you don't have to yeah so he climbed up the four flights knocked on the door when he reached mary and ronnie's apartment and when no one answered he tried
the door which wasn't just unlocked but also slightly ajar oh that's always a bad sign yeah inside he was greeted by another pretty awful sign um tucci ronnie's uh pecking knees job dog i think that's how you say it peckinese peckinese came over to him like nervously and then just crawled beneath the living room couch oh no so like clearly was off something was off now mary 100 knew that the family was coming over and would have at least started preparing dinner by this point but in the kitchen joe found only the ingredients for dinner which seemed to have been sitting out on the counter all night
oh no so like something was very off here and the abandoned feeling of the apartment was starting to make him feel really uneasy but what he really noticed was how eerily silent everything was like Like, you could hear a pin drop in there.
So he moved to the main bedroom, where everything was equally undisturbed.
The bed was neatly made.
Everything was as orderly as he had come to expect from his wife.
She was a very neat person.
Yeah. But there was, however, what appeared to be a broken up bar of soap on the floor.
And that was strange.
Now, stepping over the soap, Joe walked from the main bedroom to the adjacent room and pushed the door open slightly, which is when he saw the nude body of his daughter lying dead across the bed.
Oh, no. ronnie joe didn't need to touch her to know that ronnie was dead her skin at that point had taken on a slightly blue tinge a stark contract to the bruises on her neck and her eyes were open just staring lifelessly at the ceiling oh so absolutely horrified he quickly backed out of the room and entered the third bedroom where he found the body of mary's boarder frank burns dead in his bed He had a blanket covering everything but his head, which was just caked in blood and gore.
What the fuck? So Joe ran down the stairs from the apartment, where his daughter and son -in -law were still waiting in the lobby, and he screamed to them, They're all dead.
Murdered. What the?
Where's Mary? You'll find out.
Oh no. So they went back up to the apartment all together, and Ethel just sat in the kitchen, sobbing, while her father and husband continued looking around the apartment, because nobody knows where Mary is.
After just a few minutes, it dawned on Ethel that, wait, nobody knows where Mary is.
Like, what's going on here?
So they're trying to figure it out.
And Jo suggested maybe she went to the nearest precinct for help.
Like, maybe she came upon this scene too and ran to get help.
Damn. So it was then decided that Jo would go check for Mary, his wife, at the station, while Ethel and her husband called the police and waited at the apartment for them to arrive.
arrive which I can't imagine having to sit in that apartment because remember it's a tiny cramped apartment yeah where your sister's dead in one room a border is dead in his bed your mom's missing and you're just waiting for the police to show up and that poor dog was scared and he was so scared yeah so detective Martin Owens and William Gilmartin were the first to arrive at the apartment just a short time later among the first thing they noticed was that other than the two dead bodies, the apartment appeared to be completely undisturbed.
There was no sign of forced entry, really no sign of a struggle.
It was like the killer had been let into the apartment and the victims really didn't offer any resistance when he attacked.
Detective Gilmartin entered the room where Ronnie's body lay, and as he looked around, he noticed that something was sticking out from underneath the bed.
Crouching down to look beneath, he found the body of Mary Gideon.
Oh, no. She was fully clothed, but it did look like her underwear had been torn, and she, too, had been strangled.
Holy shit. Less than an hour later, the apartment was packed with detectives, patrol officers, the district attorney, and, of course, because it's the 1930s, a slew of photographers.
Some of them with the police, but most of them just from the press.
Of course. Aside from the bar of soap crumbled on the floor, nothing seemed to be out of place or disturbed.
But Ethel did notice that a small green alarm clock that Ronnie kept on her dresser was missing from the room.
Otherwise, nothing had been taken and anything valuable was just literally sitting right out in the open.
All things considered, the investigators were quick to conclude that whatever this was, it wasn't motivated by robbery.
That was very clear.
That's interesting.
So a preliminary examination of the bodies revealed that Frank Burns' death had been quick and likely happened while he was sleeping.
He'd been laying on his side when the killer crept into the bedroom and delivered 11 quick stabs in the head and neck with a long pointed instrument that they believed to be an ice pick or something very like it.
Damn. There was no way to determine the order in which the wounds were inflicted, but the fatal wound was delivered to the base of the skull, quote -unquote, just below the foramen magnum.
Foramen magnum, that's hard to say.
And that's where the spinal cord enters the skull.
So that would have killed him instantly.
Yeah. Later, it was learned that he was deaf in one ear and he was laying on the side of his good ear.
So he didn't even hear?
That's why he didn't wake up when the others were being murdered.
Oh, man. Yeah. both Mary and Ronnie died by manual strangulation and it says the killer's hands applying such force force that Miss Gideon's thyroid cartilage was torn while Ronnie's throat so showed signs of hemorrhage in the larynx and muscles of the neck holy shit that takes a lot of strength and a lot of like determination yeah do that and to think at least one of them was was being strangled while another was nearby, you know?
And to think that they weren't able to stop that person, you would assume that's a big, scary fucking person.
But Mary's knuckles were really badly bruised, indicating that she put up a big fight against this attacker.
Oh, man. And finally, although they wouldn't be able to know for sure until an autopsy had been completed, given that Ronnie was discovered nude and Mary's underwear had been torn, detectives assumed at least one, if not both women, had been sexually assaulted.
Oh, that's awful. Unfortunately, with the exception of the missing clock and a few strands of gray hair found in Ronnie's hand, the scene was very light on evidence and leads.
But there was one thing that investigators found curious.
As soon as detectives arrived at the apartment, Tucci, the dog, had been barking nonstop in a loud, shrill tone, to the point where the ASPCA actually had to come remove him from the apartment.
And according to the neighbors, this was a common occurrence any time somebody new or unfamiliar came to the apartment but none of them recalled hearing that dog barking at any time the previous evening that's interesting so it supported the theory that whoever the killer was they had been to the apartment before at least enough that they would have been recognized by the dog and assumingly let into the apartment because no sign of a struggle Hey there, my weird weirdos.
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In September of 1992, 14 -year -old Misty Copsey leaves the Washington State Fair with her best friend and is never seen again.
Her body is never found.
At the time, Western Washington is home to prolific serial killers like the Green River Killer, which leads to different theories on who's responsible for what happened to Misty.
Over the course of eight episodes, host and cold case investigator Sarah Kalin speaks with Misty's friends and family, looks at police records and different anonymous tips to try to figure out if Misty's disappearance is the work of a serial killer or someone who knew her.
No suspects are ruled out.
After 33 years, Sarah Kalin hopes to answer the question, who took Misty?
You guys are going to love this.
If you listen to Morbid, we know that you love a cold case, and we always tell you a cold case is never cold.
So definitely give this a listen.
Definitely look into the case.
Listen to Who Took Misty Copsie wherever you get your podcasts.
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but like the lack of evidence in the apartment a canvas of the neighbors proved pretty equally unhelpful one man who lived two floors below mary recalled hearing a scream around 11 p .m followed by a brief scuffle it's always wild to me when people are like yeah i heard this woman scream yeah that's crazy i didn't do anything and it's like okay what and this guy was like not quite sure what he heard so he stuck his head out the window to listen for further sounds like he heard something enough that he was like wait what the fuck was that yeah but then he didn't hear anything following that so he
just went back to bed just like i could i feel like i couldn't go back to bed after hearing either i don't know maybe that's just me yeah maybe that's just us another neighbor charles robinson reported that he'd come home late a little after 2 a .m and noticed that the Gideon's door was ajar, and this is so fucking creepy.
He said as he passed by, the door slowly began to close as if someone were behind it.
Oh, shut the fuck up.
And he said, I don't know, there was something about the way that door started to close that gave me the creeps and I beat it to the sixth floor as fast as I could.
And that's a grown -ass man.
Yeah, not a blame on that one.
I would do the same thing.
Because there's no, like, violence that you can hear, you're just like, something about that.
That's just like...
I just don't like that.
That's strange and so creepy.
So while the apartment yielded frustratingly few clues, detectives did find Ronnie's diary, which they hoped might include some information on who she was with the night of the murder.
In addition to containing a long list of phone numbers, the diary entries actually dated back to 1932, and they were surprisingly detailed.
But most importantly were the most recent entries referring to somebody that Ronnie only referred to as B.
Just the letter B. Who's B?
yep as one of the detectives slipped through the pages of the diary the phone in the kitchen actually rang so detective charlie mcgowan was standing closest to it and picked up the receiver and the man on the other end asked to speak to ronnie mcgowan explained that she wasn't available and after identifying himself as an nypd detective he asked for the names the man's name and address the man said his name was stephen butter and he had been out with ronnie the night before Oh.
So, thinking that they may have found the bee referenced in the diary, detectives rushed over to Butter's apartment just a short distance away and immediately brought him down to the precinct for questioning.
Who are you, Butter?
Who are you? But because the detective on the phone and the officers who escorted him to the precinct had given him literally no indication about what this was all about, he had no idea why they wanted to see him or talk to him.
But when they got to the precinct, he could tell from the reporters crowded around out front that something awful had happened.
Oh, no. Once inside, it was Ethel who finally told Stephen what happened to Ronnie and the others.
What a way to find out.
I know, from her sister.
From that moment that he sat down in the interrogation room, Detective Lyons and Commissioner Valentine could tell that Stephen Butter was not their subject.
No. No one who's last named Butter seems like they could do something that horrible.
I know. Butter, you know?
Yeah. Like flowers.
Yeah, you know, those are just nice last names.
There is a Flowers.
Yeah, I remember you mentioning the Flowers.
I was like, did I already say that?
You did. I remember hearing the Flowers name.
Yeah, Butter and Flowers.
Yeah. Now, he was obviously and very genuinely distraught by the news of the murders.
He was scared of the veteran detectives peppering him with questions, and he seemed eager to help in any way that he could.
According to Butter, his best friend, Lincoln Hauser, had gone out of town for the weekend and asked Steven to, quote, keep an eye on his girlfriend, Ronnie.
while he was away because he had no other plans and because it wouldn't hurt to be seen with a beautiful model stephen was like sure meanwhile stephen's like jesus yeah right what did i do he's like what a weekend for you to go away sir originally ronnie and stephen's plan was to get together with another one of ronnie's friends for dinner but when ronnie arrived to stephen's apartment a little after eight she was alone and just said that her friend had to cancel so abandoning their previous plan ronnie and stephen met up with one of his friends and they all had dinner at a local restaurant.
They had some drinks.
Stephen's friend left at about 2 a .m. And at that point, he and Ronnie went to the Monte Carlo Bar and Grill for another drink.
And he walked her home at about 3 a .m. Wow.
He told investigators he walked her right up to her apartment door on the fourth floor.
And they made plans to attend Sunday Mass together at 10 a .m. And then he just walked back to his apartment.
Man. He returned right at 10 a .m. the next day and rang the buzzer for Ronnie's apartment.
But when nobody answered, he returned to his apartment and tried calling a few times throughout the afternoon.
Oh, that's why he was calling.
That's why he was calling.
Convinced that he was telling the truth, the detectives let him go a little after 9 p .m., and as soon as he stepped down onto the sidewalk, reporters essentially pounced on him.
Oh, yeah, I'm sure.
Trying to get any information.
Thinking he's the guy.
Right. So the next day, as investigators started digging more and more into Ronnie's background, the story of the murders hit the paper in an insanely sensational way.
in 1937 americans were still feeling the crushing effects of the great depression and welcomed any story that could distract from the reality and the press of course was more than happy to deliver which it's like the fact that this was like an escape from the reality of the great depression is like here listen to this pulp model's horrific murder in her apartment oh her mom was also killed and another man yeah that's an escape from the bleakness of the great depression Well, just the way they went about this was so fucked up.
That's the thing. Like the press is so sensational about it.
Like there's like, hey, everybody, it's a pulp model.
Like, you know, like, you know, that was the number one thing here.
It's just so gross.
Yeah. Now, although three people had been murdered and investigators couldn't say which, if any, was the primary target, the press instantly zeroed in on Ronnie's beauty and her career as a model.
I knew it. Of course.
The New York Daily News dedicated the entire front page to a provocative photo of Ronnie, with an inset photo of her lifeless dead body being removed from the apartment.
Alongside a headline that read, three murders in model's flat, she opened the door for death.
First of all. Motherfucker, you don't even know if she opened the door.
It's also not her flat.
Yeah, you don't know anything.
It's like, it's not even, it wasn't just her flat, first of all.
Like she was living with other people.
And to just be like, she opened the door for death.
And it's like, what?
Do you open the door when somebody knocks on it?
back then yeah today my god it's like in my story that i just had last time where like the press just says whatever they want yeah just make shit up talking about marion parker's kidnapping and how they just like made up that she was like horrifically tortured and all this shit yeah it's like you didn't even verify that information and it was wrong and it's already bad enough why are you making it yeah or dramatizing it whatever the fucking word is now i'm making it cray you're making it cry cry in a lurid melodramatic tone the article detailed what they referred to as the murder of the artist's
model and the other two murders that is so fucked up awesome that's fucked up and they all but declared that ronnie was the target and mary and frank were just collateral damage just like how do you know that you don't she's a model that has to be the reason like no one else had any kind of life also could have made this happen spoiler alert it's not the the reason she so it's like you're really just actually wow wow the daily news reported as she stepped into the apartment the killer was thought to have dragged ronnie into the bathroom throttled her and started ripping off her clothes the dying
beauty was born to the room where her mother lay lifeless and thrown on the bed it's like so crazy that you guys have all this information that the detectives don't who told you what the that just made that shit up like detectives had no fucking idea what happened there was actually no actual like signs of violence other than the bodies i was gonna say because part of the whole thing was like nothing looked like it was tough nothing looked out of place nothing looked victims like like wow exactly wow yeah almost every last article was written next to pictures showing ronnie in various straight
states of undress because of the kind of modeling that she did and actually would have been more at home in the pulp magazines that she modeled for versus the metropolitan newspaper.
Like, what are you guys doing?
But the salacious story of a beautiful model murdered under mysterious circumstances was just too good for the press to resist. It was like right out of one of those detective magazines.
Yes, very much that.
Soon, every photographer who had ever shot Ronnie came out of the woodwork, hoping to sell their nude and semi -nude photos to the highest bidder, which was always the tabloids with the lowest standards.
Nerds. People are always going to people.
It's the theme of every single story.
At least one of the underlying themes is people are always going to people.
And they've always been people in.
It's just fucked. People have been people in, in the best of times and in the worst of times.
In all the times. There's always going to people.
Always. That's, imagine, imagine being one of of those photographers and being like hey I got a nude picture of that dead girl it's like fuck is wrong what goes through your brain on the front page of your tabloid and pay me a couple of dollars for it and it's like yeah I understand that this is like a tough economic time but like do you have fucking morals you don't have like a soul like come on like jeez like that's not lost on me that people were like very very desperate of course clearly but I mean selling nude photos or semi -nude photos of a murdered girl to be splashed onto an unethical
tabloid cover is not the way to do it.
No. But within days of their deaths, the story had become almost entirely about Ronnie and had a noticeably misogynistic tone that basically just blamed her for her own death before anyone knew the details of the actual case.
Yeah, I mean, she was the one who opened the door to the killer, right?
Yeah. In reality, anyone who met Ronnie immediately liked her.
But for those who didn't know her, she became another low -class nude model with a diary full of men's phone numbers.
Yeah, though we've heard that story before.
And actually, even Ronnie's own father didn't hesitate to pretty much slander her in the press.
Joe, what the fuck?
On March 30th, just one day after he'd found his wife and daughter dead, Joe Gideon gave an interview to the Daily News and told them, Ronnie made fools of lots of men.
One of them killed her with my wife and the rumor.
And in an article that more or less placed the blame for the murders on his daughter, he continued on, saying, it's hard to say now, but Ronnie was wild and willful.
Girls Ronnie's age don't realize it, but you can't treat men that way.
Oh, Joe. Oh, Joe. Yikes.
Yikes. Joe, I have a string of things that I would like to let out of my mouth right now that I'm just going to piece up.
He's a quiet asshole.
Yeah, you know what?
Just, Joe, shut the fuck up.
What? Shut the fuck up.
You can't treat men that way.
What kind of grieving process is this?
Slandering your child in the press, your dead, murdered child.
And essentially blaming her.
And saying that she did it because she made fools of men and she shouldn't have treated men like that.
Not men, if this is a man, also.
That's the other thing, assuming this is a man.
Which I know, statistically.
But it's like, we're just assuming this is a man that Ronnie made a quote -unquote fool out of and that you don't treat men like that.
this is what happens.
It's like, you get murdered.
Oh, so we're not going to say men shouldn't murder people.
We're going to say, like, don't make men feel bad.
Women, be subservient or else you'll get killed.
Because then, if you make them feel bad, they'll come and murder you.
And it's like, can we maybe say don't do the murdering part?
Yeah. No? Okay. Got it.
Okay, we're just going to stick with this, like, fantasy world that everyone's living in.
Yeah, it's really awesome.
Love it, love it, love it.
Wowzers. It'd be so hard to be alive back then.
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But while the press continued their campaign of slander, investigators were really struggling to find viable leads that could move the case forward. Given the lack of evidence, the lack of a forced entry, and the fact that the dog was never disturbed, investigators believe the killer could have been one of the many former boarders.
And within a day of the murders, they had publicly identified 45 -year -old chauffeur.
I don't know why I said it like that.
Chauffeur. George Gray, I believe it is, as their prime suspect.
At the same time, they also identified 20 year old mary bako i think as a person of interest gray had been a tenant at the gideon's previous boarding house on east 53rd street before moving out the previous december and mary bako i think it is claimed to have been living with mary and ronnie as recently as a week before their deaths interesting yes which also imagine knowing that you were living there a week before.
Hmm. Like, that's intense.
Yeah, like, that's...
And it's just interesting that there's a there's a woman involved here.
Mm -hmm. Imagine that, Joe.
So, Joe. Now, police detained and questioned Gray briefly, but let him go after a few hours later without giving an explanation to the press, which they didn't need to.
Chief Inspector John Lyons told reporters, we haven't a thing to hang our hats on.
And not long after, Mary Bacow was also cleared of any suspicions.
So the lack of evidence or any kind of lead was frustrating.
But investigators, they still had Ronnie's diary and they were convinced that the killer's identity had to be somewhere on its pages.
Among the more intriguing entries were those related to that man only referred to as B.
Oh, yeah. I forgot about that.
And from what the detectives could tell, Ronnie had known B for at least a year and in that time, the relationship had gone from friendly to fearful.
She never said why, but there were a number of entries reads where she made it clear that in the weeks leading up to her death, she had very much come to fear this man and worried that his behavior would escalate to violence.
Interesting. Now, while the references to Bee were a promising lead, police still didn't know the man's identity, so they turned back to Ronnie's personal life.
And before long, they found out about Ronnie's ex -husband, Bobby Flowers.
Flowers, that's where, I was like, I knew I heard that name in this thing.
Yes, Ronnie's ex -husband, B -B -B -B -Bobby.
B. O with a B. Mm -hmm.
According According to Flowers, he and Ronnie had gotten into a handful of arguments during their relationship, and one or two of them may have gotten physical.
Oh, no. Here I was, saying your last name is Flowers.
I know. But he swore that all of that was in the past. It was true their relationship had come to an end, he said, but not because of any animosity.
They just got married too young and for the wrong reasons, so they decided that it was best that they parted amicably.
His explanation seemed reasonable, and in addition to that, he also had an alibi for the night of the murder.
He'd been working as a hot dog vendor in a very public location, so that could have easily been verified by hundreds and hundreds of witnesses.
So he's not the B. Okay.
Now, by March 30th, more than 200 NYPD officers had been assigned to the case and dozens of potential witnesses and suspects had been interviewed, but no new leads presented themselves.
Having ruled out Garay as a suspect and confirming Bobby Flower's alibi, detectives were back at square one.
All they could be reasonably certain of was that these murders, or at least the murder of Ronnie, were a crime of passion.
And in addition to that, much to the chagrin of the tabloids, the test results of the vaginal swab showed that neither woman had been raped.
Oh, okay, I mean, ugh.
Yeah, so it seemed unlikely that this actually was a sex crime.
But if not the ex -husband or her companion for that evening, Butters there, the most likely suspects, who would have had such anger towards Ronnie that they would have wanted to kill her?
In absence of any new suspects, detectives turned back to the person who had reported the crime in the first place.
Father and husband, Joe Gideon.
I was wondering if they were going to ask some questions.
They did. When detectives Owen and Gilmartin arrived at the apartment right after the family's call to the police, they both seemed to notice that Joe's behavior seemed out of the ordinary for what one would expect in those circumstances.
Unlike his daughter and her husband, Ethel, they were sufficiently shaken up, but Joe, they felt, seemed unaffected.
Their suspicions were raised again in the days that followed when he gave those interviews to various tabloids, where he pretty much slandered his daughter and spoke quite frankly about his wife and their separation.
They were like, what the fuck?
This is a little weird. So, also, when Ronnie's body had been processed, technicians found several gray hairs on her body, which they believed might have come from the killer, and Joe Gideon had gray hair.
So during their initial interview with him, he claimed that on the previous evening, like the night before the murder, he'd gone out to a bar, the night of the murder, excuse me.
He'd gone out to a bar around the corner from his upholstery shop where he stayed all night drinking beer and playing ski ball until 2 a .m so detectives went to this bar this cafe to check on his alibi and the bartender did remember seeing him that night and actually even had joe's uh ski ball high score recorded on the board for the night oh wow but he said he didn't remember seeing joe around closing time he was like yeah he definitely was here but like i don't know i don't think i saw him around closing closing time.
So that meant that Joe had been where he said he was that night, but he very well have could have left early and gone to his wife's apartment to commit the murders.
Yeah, like the time frame is a little shaky.
So no longer to verify Joe's alibi, detectives returned to the upholstery shop on April 1st to ask him some follow -up questions.
The officers confronted him about what the bartender had told him, but Joe insisted that the man was mistaken and he He had definitely been at the cafe, the bar, all night.
So while one of the two detectives asked the questions, the other looked around the shop, and that's when they came across the upholsters kit lying on the counter.
Oh, no. The kit contained everything somebody would need to upholster furniture, including several large needles.
Oh, I'm worried about this.
Curiously, one of the needles, the largest one that most resembled an ice pick, appeared to be missing.
thing. Based on the unconfirmed alibi, his obvious anger towards his daughter, and his being in possession of what could have been the murder weapon, as well as a pistol without a permit that was also found, Joe Gideon was taken to the local precinct for further questioning.
I'm really hoping that this is not what I think it is.
Well, at the precinct, Joe stuck to his story about playing skee -ball and drinking all night on the night of the murders, and offered his own theory as to the identity of the killer.
According to Joe, a, quote, millionaire from Boston had been infatuated with Ronnie and had vainly offered her a car, an apartment, and some money.
When Ronnie rebuffed his advances, the man became, quote, frustrated and had hired somebody to kill her.
That was Joe's theory.
He told detectives about this theory on the day of the murders, and it was investigated and quickly dismissed as unfounded.
So he's been saying this from the jump.
So they weren't very receptive when he repeated it at the precinct because they pretty much ruled it out.
Yeah, they're thinking you're just trying to get out of it.
Exactly. By the end of the day on April 1st, a spokesperson announced to the press that Joe, quote, would be arraigned on a formal charge sometime before morning.
However, by the following day, he had yet to be arrested or charged with any crime.
But finally, on the morning of the 2nd, he was charged with being in possession of an unlicensed gun, a pretty minor charge, but enough to hold him for further questioning.
Yeah, easy. Yep. So detectives intensely interrogated Joe, keeping him awake for nearly 33 hours denying him food threatening and physically assaulting him but by the end of the interrogation his story remained exactly the same wow nothing was breaking him I didn't see that I thought you were gonna be like and then wow now convinced that the police weren't doing it and this is crazy convinced that the police weren't doing enough to find the killer the editor of true detective magazine where Ronnie actually posed as a cover model sent one of his writers to Joseph's building to ask whether neighbors
had seen him come or go that night.
The editor? Yes. Did the police work?
Yes. Okay. This actually wasn't the first time that the magazine had gotten involved in the story.
When the press and tabloids started printing all these slanderous lies about Ronnie, the magazine published a full -page editorial intent on combating those lies and telling their considerable readership about what a good person Ronnie had been.
Oh my god, that just gave me chills.
Yeah, I know, same.
Like, that gave me chills.
and it still gave me chills oh i love that they did that yeah they were like no fuck all of you yeah like this is who she was she was our friend yeah oh my god that like really gives me chills yeah especially back then yeah they didn't have to do that and it's like the fact that he's sending he's like fuck that they're not doing enough i'm gonna send my own investigation going out here like they're not asking neighbors whether they saw joe i mean come on like this guy's figuring it out and be like let's figure wow i love that it's amazing what a turn no it's unclear how much which the editorial
influenced the case, but this second intervention would prove to be a critical move.
The writer from True Detective had knocked on only a few doors before he found a neighbor that said he absolutely saw Joe Gideon come home drunk at 3 a .m. Holy shit.
Since investigators knew Ronnie had been killed a little after 3 a .m., that meant Joe Gideon couldn't possibly have been the killer.
Wow. The editor of the True Detective magazine cracked that.
Just knocked on a couple doors.
At least that part of it.
and it was like one of the first couple doors he knocked on so it's like why didn't I have to wonder if they were getting frustrated and they had to and felt they could place the blame yeah and felt if they beat the shit out of this older man that he'll admit to it he'll crack like a false confession and we'll just go with it and people will buy it because he kind of has been slandering his daughter in the press like he's kind of made it easy right oh my god I'm like wow this is amazing but then I'm like but who the fuck killed them who is it well with the neighbor having confirmed his alibi by joe
was released from custody on april 3rd having suffered more than two days of brutal and not to mention illegal yeah interrogation tactics according to their press reports upon his release he had quote numerous black and blue spots swelling cuts and abrasions on his face and head and his lawyer claimed that he had been kicked and pulled and dragged and slapped for hours and he's innocent and he's innocent wow and no matter what he's saying in the press that is his wife and his child like that's he feels something deep down there i hope yeah so having lost their prime suspect detectives were right
back to where they started days earlier when the bodies were discovered detective walter harding told reporters there are four or five different angles we're working on now and when we've cleared these up we'll have a complete and direct case but the truth was they were no closer to catching the killer than they were on day one with no other leads to pursue they turned again to that diary which is when they discovered an entry where ronnie made it clear that whatever feelings whatever her feelings for b might have been his attention was clearly focused on her sister ethel wait according to the diary
and the weeks leading up to the murders ronnie had been concerned that b had become obsessed with ethel and she was worried that he might do something irrational to ethel okay i have a couple of things here one why didn't they read the whole diary that was my immediate question like oh we we did some some work and we found this thing we didn't read before it was i mean read the whole thing read the whole thing i think it was a lot to get through because it was five what yeah five years of entries hire get some interns in here start reading this shit or like give people parts and make you have a book
club exactly all of you read different different parts of it and get through it because i'm like why was this so long coming but and also i'm like wait a second i'm immediately thinking something but i don't want to like slander someone before i know so i'm gonna let you tell it good for you yeah good for you i think you might be onto something because i'm like wait a second uh so armed with this new piece of information detectives went to fl gideon and asked her whether she knew the identity of the man referred to as b somewhat surprised she said she didn't just know his identity she knew him
quite well the entire family did his name was robert bob irwin a former boarder at mary's boarding house who'd become somewhat infatuated with her but moved out and left the area when ethel rejected his romantic advances and married joe kudner and that is where we're going to pause and wrap up up part one and we'll see you for part two i know who it is i think if you if you listened pretty good in the beginning you might yeah pretty carefully in the beginning you might have a clue yep i think i know but you'll find out in part two oh no this is such a sad case it is especially if this is the the scenario
where this person was obsessed with ethel and then when mistaken a identity it's like holy shit yeah damn that's brutal it's really rough and there really is like for lack of a better way of saying it a lot of collateral damage yeah absolutely almost the entire thing is collateral the entire case yeah wow but we will talk about the rest of this in part two so we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird but that's where they don't go listen to part two bye Thank you.
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Hey, weirdos. You know Ash and I have covered some seriously dark tales about romance gone gone really wrong oh yeah there are so many cases where too good to be true turns out to be exactly that well get ready for a love story that's gonna blow your minds because this one is happening right now and get this it's hosted by our friends hannah and saruti from red handed meet travis he falls head over heels for lily rose she's gorgeous she's understanding and she's literally perfect and she's not human that's right lily rose is an ai companion a computer program designed to be Travis's dream woman and at first
it seems like a perfect relationship but when Lily Rose's behavior starts getting strange this love story takes a dark and twisted turn that no one saw coming follow flesh and code on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts you can binge all episodes early and ad free by joining Wondery Plus
