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- [00:07]
Vanessa Richardson
This is Crime House. We all know that concept in physics. An object in motion will stay in motion. Usually this law is applied to things like soccer balls or space shuttles. But it can also be applied to people. People who get so far into a thing it's hard to stop. Sometimes this kind of inertia can be good. You get lost in a book, a work project, or a long run. But other times, you might get into something bad. A lie you can't undo, a drug addiction, or even a criminal career. And once it's moving too fast, there's almost no way to stop it. The human mind is fascinating. It controls how we think, how we feel, how we love, and how we hate. And sometimes the mind drives us to do something truly unspeakable. When that happens, people wonder, how could someone do such a thing? Well, on this show, that's what we're going to try and answer. This is Mind of a Serial Killer, a Crime House original. Every Monday, we'll be taking deep dives into the minds of history's most notorious serial killers and violent offenders. At Crime House, we want to express our gratitude to you, our community, for making this possible. Please support us by rating, reviewing and following Mind of a Serial Killer Wherever you get your podcasts and to enhance your mind of a serial Killer listening experience, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get every episode ad free. And instead of having to wait for each episode of a two part series, you'll get access to both at once, plus exciting bonus content. I'm Vanessa Richardson.
- [02:20]
Dr. Tristan Engels
And I'm Dr. Tristan Angels. As Vanessa takes you through our subject's stories, I'll be helping her dive into these killers minds as we try to understand how someone could do such horrible things.
- [02:33]
Vanessa Richardson
Before we get into the story, you should know it contains descriptions of child murder and suicidal ideation. Listener discretion is advised. This is the last of two episodes on Amelia Dyer, a serial killer who operated an illegal baby farm in Victorian England. Last week we covered how Amelia's baby farming business turned from a questionable practice to neglect to outright murder. This week we'll track Amelia's last years as a baby farmer, the legacy she left to her own daughter, and the gruesome deaths that finally led authorities right to her door. And as always, we'll be asking, what makes a serial killer?
- [03:23]
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Vanessa Richardson
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- [04:41]
Vanessa Richardson
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- [04:49]
Vanessa Richardson
Or dsw.com In March of 1891, 54 year old Amelia Dyer disappeared. She left behind her husband William Dyer and four children, including her 18 year old daughter Polly. Amelia was the subject of an investigation into a missing baby. A governess had paid Amelia to take the baby in, but when the father came back into the picture, they decided they wanted to raise the child together. However, when they went to Amelia's to take the baby back, it was gone. Then the governess and her new husband got the police involved, but by the time they got around to following up with Amelia, she had disappeared and her daughter Polly claimed to have no idea where her mother was. There was nothing more to be done at that point. So the governess and her husband went on their way and the Dyers had to adjust to life without Amelia.
- [05:53]
Dr. Tristan Engels
There's a lot of different reasons why someone might flee the law. When they think that they've been caught, it could be one last hurrah and it could be that they are so emboldened and they're so arrogant that they think that if they left and they went somewhere else that they could start afresh and no one would know who they were and they can continue with what they're doing. We've already Seen Amelia do that, she moved to a more affluent area. She started targeting more wealthy clientele. This all occurred after her time in prison, because in moving, no one knew who she was or where she came from or where she'd been. And I think maybe that's something that could be going on here, but also it goes to show, really, did she really care about her own family to just abandon them the way she did, without a word?
- [06:46]
Vanessa Richardson
So with her mother gone, Polly had to become the household's new matriarch, caring for her siblings and needing to provide an income. Though the Dyers seemed well off, William had never made enough to support the family on his own. Without Amelia's baby farming business, they were in trouble. After just a few months following Amelia's disappearance, the Dyers were facing eviction. So Polly, who had kept in contact with her mother, devised a plan. With Amelia's advice, Polly sold off the family's piano, which could earn them a good amount of money at the time. The only problem, Polly didn't know that the piano had been bought on credit and her mother had never fully paid it off. The creditor found out and accused Polly of theft. She was arrested and her bail was set at 10 pounds, which was the exact amount of money she'd tried to sell the piano for in the first place. In the end, William Dyer had to borrow the money to bail Polly out, sending the family deeper into debt. Word of the Dyer's struggle made its way to Amelia and she came back home. But to evade the police, she moved them to a new address. She restarted her baby farming business and paid off the family's debts. Then she moved them again, just in case. And then again. But it didn't work for long. In October 1891, nine months after the governess asked the police to help find her missing daughter, they found Amelia's new address. The governess and her husband went with them, like they had the previous year. This time, they caught Amelia at home. Amelia told the same story as before. The baby had been adopted by a different family and she didn't have their address. The police might have suspected Amelia was lying, but at that point there was nothing they could actually arrest her for. So they left without taking her into custody. But Amelia knew it was only a matter of time until they came back. She feared that she might return to prison, only this time it wouldn't just be for evading registration laws. And if she was found guilty of hurting children, her sentence could be much longer than the six months that she'd already served. 12 years earlier. And so Amelia took drastic measures. Later that afternoon, Amelia's son Willie found her in the backyard. She was acting delirious, most likely from drinking opium. She'd also tried to slit her throat with a potato peeler. Willie was able to help in time, and Amelia's life was saved. Once she was well enough, she said she was hearing voices which told her to kill herself. The voices also said that her own daughter was out to get her, that Polly would kill her if Amelia didn't do it herself.
- [09:51]
Dr. Tristan Engels
There's a couple things here to really explore. From my professional experience working with various populations suffering from different levels of acuity, including those who are incarcerated and those who are not, there's a lot of things that could be happening here. Firstly, Amelia obviously has been abusing opium. And the dependency on opium or the effects of opium on the brain could, in fact, be causing some symptoms of psychosis. There is something called substance induced psychosis that could be something that's occurring. However, we also know that Emelia watched the decline of her own mother when she was ill, and that resulted in her having an altered mental status, which then resulted in her father putting her into an asylum. So there could be some mimicking here, or there could be an idea that, and this is very common in my professional experience, that if you can use impression management, or what in forensic psychology, we call malingering, which is feigning psychiatric symptoms for secondary gain in an effort to get a more favorable outcome. In this case, maybe she is trying to convince others that she's experiencing psychosis, and she's saying that she's hearing voices that are telling her to kill herself. In psychology, we call this command hallucinations. So she's saying she's hearing command hallucinations. She's making attempts to harm herself with a potato peeler. And in reality, that's not really going to do a lot, right? If she really was intending to do something, she would be using an instrument that would have more effective results. So I'm more inclined to believe that this is malingering and that the secondary gain would be that she would go to an asylum in lieu of prison, which would be much more favorable for her to serve out her time, because at this point, she's over 47 years old. So the onset of schizophrenia does not occur at that point. What we know about schizophrenia or organic psychosis like this is that the onset is usually for women around their early 20s. For men, it's earlier. It's around the age of 18. This is not something that Just develops when she's. So the fact that it's occurring now out of all of the time is pretty telling. That it might be intentional, that it might be manipulation.
- [12:25]
Vanessa Richardson
Whatever drove Amelia to do it, her illness only got worse after this. Over the next few weeks, Amelia grew increasingly violent and continued to take opium. At one point, she even threw a knife at Polly's head. And her struggle with suicidal ideation wasn't going away either. She made three more attempts at suicide.
- [12:47]
Dr. Tristan Engels
That month, and also really abusing the opium. So that's definitely playing a role in the reasoning as well as the impulsivity.
- [12:57]
Vanessa Richardson
By November 1891, William Dyer hit a breaking point and asked a doctor to examine Amelia. The doctor described Amelia as unkempt and filthy. She was speaking emphatically about how she had to die. He called her, quote, highly excitable and very voluble, meaning she was talking incessantly. The doctor declared her a threat to herself and others and committed her to a county asylum in nearby Gloucester. So once she got there, her demeanor completely changed. Only three days in, the doctor's notes read, quote, is quiet and orderly, industrious and doing sewing now clean and tidy in habits, appetite, good health, good. In other words, she seemed totally fine. It was as if she'd never had any sort of illness in the first place.
- [13:53]
Dr. Tristan Engels
So, coming from professional experience, I have seen this countless times, especially when I worked in corrections. And it's very difficult because there are individuals who are incarcerated who truly are suffering from severe mental illness and truly do have periods of decompensation, whether it's because they're not taking medication or they are abusing substances, because in reality, they do get into prisons. We all know this, Whatever the reason may be, they do decompensate, and they do require intervention. Then there are a population of incarcerated individuals who feign psychiatric symptoms for various reasons. Most of the time, the driving factor is safety reasons. While incarcerated, they know that as a mental health provider, I have to assess them. And in assessing them, if they are very convincing in their symptomology presentation, we have no other choice but to ensure that they are not a danger to themself or others and place them in a crisis bed. Because the alternative is, if we misinterpret that, then we are liable. And individuals who have been incarcerated or individuals who have malingered, in my experience, have gone so far as to not bathe, like we described here with Amelia, has gone so far as to smear feces on themselves in their rooms, have even gone so far as to eat their feces to convince us that they are experiencing a significant decompensation requiring acute intervention. So we take the appropriate measures, Just like what happened here in Amelia's case. And what I have seen is the moment that individuals who have malingered get to where they want to go, which is the crisis bed, or in Amelia's case, a hospital or an asylum, they then are suddenly functioning optimally. They are bathing, they're asking for food, they're not eating feces, they're not smearing feces. They're staying well kempt, as we say. And they're also engaging in hobbies. It's like nothing had ever happened. And someone who's truly suffering from psychosis does not become stabilized that quickly like that, without a period of ongoing medication compliance and adherence. So this is another data point that suggests that Amelia has antisocial personality disorder, that she does not know how to be pro social, that she has no empathy or remorse, and that she is very manipulative, very cunning, very versatile, and a great chameleon.
- [16:32]
Vanessa Richardson
So Amelia's docile behavior, this normal behavior, continued throughout her stay in the asylum. She was discharged two months later in January of 1892. But her daughter Polly, didn't think Amelia was better. According to Polly, Amelia immediately moved them again to a different town, returned to her baby farming business, and seemed, quote, very downhearted and very peculiar in her manner. Over the next year, Amelia went back to her old ways. She returned to baby farming and continued to take infants at a high rate. Most died almost immediately after she was paid for their care, though it's not clear how they died. Amelia also returned to opium and also drank a considerable amount of brandy. Meanwhile, the governess and her husband hadn't given up on finding their child. In December of 1893, they managed to track down Amelia's last address and showed up at her doorstep for the third time. Most likely, Amelia told the same story to make them go away. Then the next night, on Christmas Eve, she seemingly attempted suicide again. On this occasion, she swallowed a large amount of opium. Polly found her soon after and called the doctor. By the time he arrived, Amelia was awake but angry. When the doctor attempted to examine her, Amelia grabbed a hot fire poker and charged at him. Once she'd been subdued, Amelia again blamed the voices and reiterated her wish to die. And again the doctor had her committed to an asylum. She stayed for about a month until January 1894. This pattern, the governess and her husband showing up at Amelia's door with a police officer, followed by mania or a suicide attempt. Then a quick recovery in an asylum occurred two more times that year.
- [18:36]
Dr. Tristan Engels
So there's definitely a pattern here that we've already outlined, that anytime Amelia gets close to being caught, she makes attempts of suicide or asserts to others that she's experiencing a mental health crisis. This, I think, is a combination of things. One, since it's conditional, it only happens when there's a condition of her potentially being arrested and sent to prison. But two, she does continue to abuse opium and obviously now brandy throughout the time. So those two things together can exacerbate the impulsiveness, it can exacerbate the erratic behavior that she sees, the anger she had when she was awoken by a police officer. The mood symptoms that she's displaying, I think are better explained by the substance abuse and I think the suicide attempts are better explained by trying to avoid prison. And I think her assertion that she's hearing voices is her trying to use impression management so that she's sent to an asylum.
- [19:46]
Vanessa Richardson
To the governess and her husband and the police, it must have been obvious that Amelia had done something wrong. But they still had no hard proof that Amelia had done anything illegal. So Amelia continued adopting babies. And by the spring of 1895, Amelia's baby farming operation became a family business. Her daughter Polly, now about 22, and Polly's husband, Arthur Palmer, started advertising in the papers just like Amelia did. And just like Amelia, none of the children they took in were ever tracked down or heard from again. Except one. That child's name was Queenie Baker. She was 4 and her parents paid a significant amount for Polly and her husband to adopt her. At the time of Queenie's adoption, Polly and Arthur Palmer were living with Amelia. Soon after, though, they moved out and rented a home in another city. They treated Queenie terribly, locking her in a small room without food or water for hours on end. Then in May 1895, Polly and her husband simply abandoned her. Four year old. Queenie was eventually taken to the police by a stranger. The little girl told them everything she'd been through, but said her adopter's last name was Patson, not Palmer. Amelia's daughter and son in law were using a fake name. Authorities tried to track down the Patsons, but they were out of luck. They issued a warrant for Arthur's arrest, although it was of little use. The couple, like Amelia had done so many times, had fled. The authorities didn't know that Polly and her husband had moved back in with Amelia Dyer to a house in Caversham, a Suburb on the edge of the River Thames outside of London. The three of them were adopting babies at an extraordinary rate. They often had five children at once, and at least two died that year from malnutrition. And this was difficult to trace because again, Amelia and her kind were using fake identities for advertisements and burying the children under more fake names. But fake names and new addresses could only take Amelia so far. In 1896, Amelia did something so horrific it sent shockwaves throughout the United Kingdom. And this time, there was no escape.
- [22:31]
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- [23:06]
Dr. Tristan Engels
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- [23:33]
Vanessa Richardson
From the late summer of 1895 into the early months of 1896, between 30 and 40 infants were found in the River Thames close to London. The babies were believed to have been dead for at least a week, leading police to assume they'd been tossed into the river from somewhere far upstream. They suspected the infants had been killed by baby farmers, but they couldn't figure out exactly who had done it. But on March 30, 1896, they finally got their breakthrough. That day, a bargeman was boating down the river when he noticed something strange floating in the water. It was a brown paper parcel that was sodden and wet. He took out a hook, fished the parcel over and began to open it, wondering what was inside. It was the body of an infant. The child was wrapped in linen and various pieces of paper with white tape around its neck. There was also A brick in the package, most likely an attempt to weigh it down. The psychological impact of finding a dead body, especially a young child, how does someone process that?
- [24:55]
Dr. Tristan Engels
That's going to vary, as most things do when it comes to human behavior and psychology in general. It's going to vary by the person. It's going to vary by their experiences, their perceptions, their age. I do think, though, that from finding that body being part of the recovery efforts, being part of helping to bring closure to the family who's missing the person that was found, I think that in and of itself can help a lot with that trauma. However, I do know that, at least for me personally, I would be worried about any time I'd go hiking or I'd be afraid of finding another one. You know, there's acute stress reactions. So for some, that's within a month. So within a month of a trauma or exposure to a trauma within that month, if you're having PTS symptoms, that's more considered an acute stress reaction. If those symptoms don't wane by a month, now we're looking at full blown post Traumatic stress disorder. And so that's when it's really important to take what you're experiencing to a professional and get the coping skills and the tools needed to treat what's going on.
- [26:12]
Vanessa Richardson
Well, as soon as that bargeman discovered that child's body, he left the parcel with his mate and rushed to the police station. Obviously, back then there were no telephones or cell phones. He had to physically go.
- [26:24]
Dr. Tristan Engels
Yep, the old fashioned way.
- [26:25]
Vanessa Richardson
Exactly. An officer returned to examine the body and determined that the little girl had been strangled. So they kept looking through the contents of the package. There were diapers in the package and even an infant's cloak. It wasn't until they pulled out the final piece of paper in the wrapping that they found something useful. It looked like the remnants of an envelope. It wasn't easy to read because the paper had become wet, but the police were just able to make out an address. The letter had been sent to a Mrs. Thomas, which was the last name of Amelia's first husband. And although this Mrs. Thomas was no longer at that address, a mail clerk was able to confirm that she had moved to the nearby city of Reading and that her real name was Dire. He passed along her new address. With this information, a detective named Sergeant Harry James was able to learn that Amelia had been under surveillance for some time for having unregistered children and that her real name was Amelia Dyer. The detectives saw how often Amelia had moved and correctly realized she often fled from the police, so he knew he couldn't just show up on her doorstep, because if he did, it was likely she'd just run away again. Sergeant James knew he'd have to trick her in order to confirm she was hurting children. So James found a woman to act as a decoy. On April 3, four days after the package was found in the river, the woman went to Amelia's house. She said she had a baby, she needed to be adopted. A friend from London had referred her and she was willing to pay. Amelia didn't seem to suspect anything. She negotiated payment for the baby and told the woman to return with the child that afternoon. This was all the police needed to confirm they had an illegal baby farmer on their hands. And likely they'd found the baby farmer who had sent the unidentified infant girl into the river, as well as the many other children they'd found that year. So later that day, police arrived at Amelia's household and confronted her with the evidence. When asked about the name on the packaging, Amelia first went on about her previous husbands and which names she had used and why. But her explanation was confusing and desperate. As for how the packaging was found with the baby, Amelia had a hard time answering that too. She said the last time she moved, she'd thrown everything into the trash. She implied that somebody else must have fished the packaging out of her garbage and used it to wrap the infant. The police didn't buy it. They searched her house immediately, and it was clear that Amelia was running a place designed for housing multiple infants. There were piles and piles of baby clothing, forms for infant vaccinations, and stacks of letters. These letters were Amelia's correspondence with the mothers of the children she took in. But only one child, a three month old infant, was in the house. Even so, it was clear this was a baby farming operation. But the police needed something more definitive to tie Amelia to the babies in the river. They found their proof in a sewing basket. The basket contained string and white tape like those used on the baby in the package. And in Amelia's bedroom, they found an infant sized tin box with the unmistakable odor of death and decay, like a dead body had once been stored in it. Again, Amelia tried to lie and say that the box was used for old musty clothing. But this got her nowhere. That afternoon, police officers arrested Amelia on murder charges.
- [30:32]
Dr. Tristan Engels
When somebody is caught and she's caught, they've got the smoking gun, they've tied everything to her. They used a decoy. This detective went about this in a very intelligent way. In A very strategic way. And I think if it was anyone other than Amelia, and it was anything other than a string of serial killings of infants, a normal person would probably concede, probably not say anything, probably just comply, wait till they have an attorney. And we're also. I mean, I don't know how this really worked in the late 1800s with attorneys or not, but a normal person would know that they needed to be quiet and just comply, right? Not answer questions, not try to find ways to explain away the evidence. Definitely not lie and definitely not confess. That's what a normal person would do. And deep down, a normal person. And when I say normal, I'm meaning somebody without the pathology of Amelia would probably be panicking, like, truly panicking, knowing, oh, my gosh, this is it, this is the moment it's all over, and knowing what they're facing ahead. But in Amelia's case, somebody who has, like, very clearly that the pathology of somebody with antisocial personality disorder, somebody who is not pro social, somebody who does not know how to follow societal norms and rules, somebody who is arrogant and emboldened, I think because for so long, moving and changing names and changing husbands and using her own children to help in her enterprise has gotten her as far as she's gone. It has gotten her this far. She has not been caught, not really. And anytime they were close to catching her, she went back to the same old tactics where she would feign being mentally ill or suicidal, and that would get her into an asylum in lieu of prison. And then when she was cleared from that asylum, it was almost like any investigation into her disappeared. I think in this case, we can expect that Emelia is probably not very panicked in this moment that she thinks, all right, I gotta use the same tools from the toolbox that have worked in the past to get me out of this, and I'll be right as rain in a couple months. I'll move and I'll be able to carry on with my business.
- [32:55]
Vanessa Richardson
However she felt about getting arrested, just like you anticipated, the moment she got the chance, she turned back to her old ways and she tried to take her life again. Seated in an exam room at the station, she pulled a pair of scissors out of her pocket. They were immediately taken. Then, when nobody was looking, she pulled a shoelace out of her boot and tried to tie it around her neck using the same knot as seen on the infant in the river. But she was caught before she could hurt herself.
- [33:25]
Dr. Tristan Engels
I'd also like to point out that a shoelace isn't going to do that.
- [33:28]
Vanessa Richardson
Exactly.
- [33:29]
Dr. Tristan Engels
She's not going to have any success with a shoelace. And it's also noteworthy that all of these attempts are done when there's somebody around to intervene, so she can't actually go through with it. And the overdoses that she's experienced were obviously not extreme enough to be fatal. And so maybe we're just her misusing drugs, too. I have seen individuals who are incarcerated who are trying to convince me that they were suicidal, needed to go to a crisis bed. But I suspected that there was some secondary gain to this because how they were presenting and what they were telling me were not congruent with one another. I have seen them take shoelaces and wrap it around their neck and try to use that, but it's not going to do anything. It is not nearly enough to have the effect that they're hoping it would. And so in this case, it is very obvious to me that this is a desperate attempt to appear as if she is not in her right state of mind and needs intervention.
- [34:32]
Vanessa Richardson
So Amelia was sent to Reading Jail while she awaited trial. Evidence, however, was thin. All they had was her address on that paper found in the package and the string and ribbon. They had little else connecting her with the baby that had been found on March 30. But in the week after Amelia's arrest, five more infants were found in the river, this time instead of in a parcel. Two of them were found in a carpet bag, a type of luggage. A boy and a girl had been stacked on top of one another with two bricks to weigh them down. And based on the water soaked into their bodies, they'd been in there for a while. In due time, police would learn their names, and these children would give them much more than that. They provided the crucial evidence that the police needed to finally put Amelia Dyer behind bars.
- [35:33]
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Vanessa Richardson
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Vanessa Richardson
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- [36:25]
Vanessa Richardson
Edu Just as the two babies in the carpet bag were found in the River Thames, investigators were sifting through some of Amelia's recent letters. This led them to a woman named Evelina Marmon. Evelina said she'd recently left her child in the care of a woman named Annie Harding. She'd completed the contract and exchange on March 31, 1896, just a few days before Amelia was arrested. Evelina expected her daughter would be put up for adoption and well cared for. But when police brought her to the morgue, Evelina was able to identify one of the two deceased infants from the carpet bag as her daughter, Doris. Evelina's identification and testimony about Doris was the kind of thing police could use to put Amelia away for life. The other child from the carpet bag was later identified by his former caregiver. His name was Harry Simmons. On the 16th of April, 1896, as Amelia was awaiting trial for the murder of Doris Marmon and Harry Simmons, she did something completely unexpected. She wrote a letter to the lead magistrate on the case alluding to the crimes she'd committed. But Amelia swore that Polly and her husband Arthur had nothing to do with it. Arthur had been charged with accessory to murder in her case, and Amelia was likely trying to help them avoid punishment. But the rest of the letter was effectively her confidence.
- [38:10]
Dr. Tristan Engels
So this is a very interesting turn of events, because up until this point, it doesn't really seem that Amelia really cared about what happened to her daughter, Polly, or her husband, Arthur. She didn't care that Arthur was being charged as an accessory up until this point. So why now? And to me, it feels a lot more calculated that there's something to be gained for her by doing this, by not only confessing, but to help her family avoid any type of punishment. So whenever I have a question like this, what I'm looking at is what are they seeking to gain from this? In this moment? She's charged, she's going to go in front of a jury or a trial. Maybe she's trying to show to the members of the court that she does have a conscience, that she's trying to appeal to the humane side of those people and show her humane side there's something to be gained. What does she think that would accomplish for her? Would they take pity on her? Would they think, oh, she actually is a human in this? Was she trying to avoid a more severe punishment? I'm looking at what she's trying to gain from this, because it doesn't seem like she's doing this out of the goodness of her heart. Again, everything she's done has been based on secondary gain. When she's suddenly mentally ill, it's always to avoid imprisonment. When she attempts suicide, it's to avoid her arrest. Like everything that Amelia has done throughout her life has been in Amelia's best interest and her best interest only.
- [39:46]
Vanessa Richardson
And after Amelia's confession, the rest of the case against her fell into place. Doris Marmon's mother identified Amelia in a lineup of prisoners as the woman who had taken her baby. She also identified a box of her baby's clothing from Amelia's house. And doctors who examined Amelia found her sound of mind capable of understanding what she was doing to those children. Ultimately, a jury found Amelia guilty of murder in the case of Doris Harmon and Harry Simmons. But as for the murders of the other infants found dead in the river, there was not enough evidence, but it was still enough to deliver the ultimate punishment. Amelia Dyer was hanged on June 10, 1896, less than two months after she was arrested. It's not known how many actual murders she committed, but it's estimated to be in the hundreds. In the decades following Amelia's trial, the British Parliament passed several laws to better regulate baby farming. One was an update to the Infant Life Protection act, passed the year after Amelia was hanged. Another was the Children's act of 1908. The first gave police greater control in monitoring the registration of children staying with nurses or other caregivers, like foster parents. The second gave them authority to remove remove children from homes with neglectful caregivers. And much later, there was a better regulation around fostering and adoption. This meant that by the early 20th century, baby farming in Britain largely disappeared, but it is still a major part of Victorian history. And I think that's what makes Amelia's story so haunting. On the surface, the story of Amelia Dyer, the baby killer, feels so completely evil, but when you get into it, it's hard to say whether she started out that way, whether the evil was groomed into her or innate.
- [41:57]
Dr. Tristan Engels
Yeah, she's definitely a different level of evil than what we've talked about so far on this podcast. She is somebody that I think was created more so than, you know, when we go back to the nature versus nurture debate and how you say whether this evil was groomed or if it was innate, I believe that this was groomed. I think she was. This was a product of her environment, of survival, of desperation, of exploitation. And because of that she just continued to learn how to be more versatile as a criminal. She continued to be emboldened in her actions and that allowed her to become much more arrogant and much more selfish. She was. Everything she did was for Amelia. It wasn't for anybody but her. And she put on a great facade initially in that it was about her family. It was about financially, you know, supporting her family. Her husbands weren't able to be the sole providers requiring her to go to work. So initially it started out seemingly as a desperation to be able to survive. And that the idea of baby farming, like you said earlier on in episode one, Vanessa, was that this was an appealing thing for her because she could be making money while also raising her own children. She was not having to go work 16 plus hours as a nurse, unpredictably different hours. She was able to be at home. So it seemed like it came from a place of desperation. But as we know about individuals who are groomed into becoming criminals, as we say, she learned throughout this how to become better at making the money and at being versatile, at exploiting different people, at capitalizing off of other people's tragedies, oppressing the already oppressed. She knew where the weaknesses were and she preyed upon it, making her that much more evil.
- [44:05]
Vanessa Richardson
When Harry Simmons, caregiver testified at Amelia's trial, she told a chilling story. She detailed how she paid Amelia, then handed her infant over with a few coats to keep it warm before walking away. Likely heartbroken, she told Amelia, you'll be kind to him. Amelia replied, trust me for that. Harry's body was found in the river just over one week later. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back next Monday as we explore the mind of another serial killer.
- [44:55]
Dr. Tristan Engels
Mind of a Serial Killer is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on social media at Crimehouse on TikTok and Instagram. Don't forget to rate, review and follow Mind of a Serial Killer wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference and.
- [45:20]
Vanessa Richardson
To enhance your listening experience. Experience. Subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get every episode of Mind of a Serial Killer ad free along with early access to each thrilling two part series and exciting bonus content. We'll be back next Monday. Mind of a Serial Killer, a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios is executive produced by Max Cutler. This episode of Mind of a Serial Killer was produced and directed by Ron Shapiro, written by Stacey Niemek, edited by Alex Benedon Fact Checked by Claire Cronin and included production assistance from Paul Libeskind, Sarah Carroll and Kristen Acevedo. Mind of a Serial Killer is hosted by Vanessa Richardson and Dr. Tristan Engels.