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- [00:00]
Cheap Caribbean Vacations
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Amazon One Medical
Amazon One Medical presents Painful Thoughts I.
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Patient in Waiting Room
Could catch anything sitting in this doctor's waiting room.
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Narrator
A kid just wiped his runny nose on my jacket and the guy next to me sitting in a pool of.
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Patient in Waiting Room
Perspiration insists on sharing my armrest.
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Amazon One Medical
Next time, make an appointment with an Amazon One medical provider. There's no waiting and no sweaty guy. Amazon One Medical Healthcare just got less painful.
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IKEA
The holidays are here, and so is the Ikea Winter Sale. Now's your chance to make the holidays a little more magical and less expensive. Save up to 50% off on select items in store and online now through January 7th. Plus IKEA loyalty members get an extra 10% off on sale items offer valid in the US through 17 mall supplies. Last selection may vary by store and online. See store in IKEA USA.com wintersale for complete terms for restrictions apply.
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Narrator
Diversion Audio A Note this episode contains mature content and description of violence that may be disturbing for some listeners. Please take care in listening. This is episode two of a two part miniseries. If you haven't listened to episode one of the Murder Factory, I'd recommend you press pause, go listen to last week's episode and then come on back here because episode one is crucial for understanding this case. But this finale is where we get to meet some incredible characters and watch them bring a monster to justice. Dr. Arthur Wolf is performing an autopsy on a disinterred cadaver that is two years old. It's a secret autopsy, so the body has been exhumed and carried to a tool shed where lanterns have been lit to guide his observations. The first thing Arthur notices is the smell. There isn't one, and there should be. Second, he notes, the face is turning brown and almost soft, soapy looking. This sheen is what Arthur calls grave wax, and it forms as a part of decomposition on a body's forehead and neck. Arthur cuts open the intact clothing with curved steel shears. Some decomposed flesh clings to the fabric as he peels it back. There are no boils or pock marks on the body's skin. He moves through the examination, cutting through breastbone and ribs with plier like shears to view the abdominal organs. Everything looks standard until he reaches the stomach. It's hugely distended, like a blown up balloon. That might make sense in a person who died days before and might still be holding gas in their stomach. But in a two year old cadaver, it's bizarre. The stomach is so inflated that as soon as Arthur releases some of the surrounding pressure, it kind of pops out of place. Something is preserving this organ. In particular, Arthur ties off the stomach to keep it distended and he puts it in a jar to test just what chemical is preserving it. Even after testing, he'll keep the stomach for evidence. Welcome to the greatest true crime stories ever told. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer. I'm a writer of true crime, which means I live inside the research wormhole. I'm constantly reading about crime and I'm always focused on the people behind the headlines by looking at their experiences. I'm interested in what we can learn about all of us. That's what I explore here every week when I dig into crimes where a woman is not just a victim. She might be the detective, the lawyer, the witness, the coroner, criminal, or a combination of those roles. As you probably already know, women can do anything. Today's episode is the conclusion of our two part miniseries the the Murder Factory. Last week we delved into the world of Archer House and the horrible pattern of secrets and death that infected it. This week we close in on the culprit with the help of an intrepid cast of determined investigators. Listen to how they circled in after the break.
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Patient in Waiting Room
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Cheap Caribbean Vacations
Discuss and celebrate savings. I know it's usually a master detective or a super sleuth who loves true crime as much as we do, but today it's better. It's cheap Caribbean's 25th anniversary sale. That means 25 good reasons to put up your away Message now until February 3rd. You can unlock up to $250 off all inclusive vacation packages site wide. You're definitely going to need a portable charger for all these vacation pics. Visit cheapcaribbean.com for up to $250 off. Offer ends February 3rd.
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Homes.com
You don't just live in your home, you live in your neighborhood as well. So when you're shopping for a home, you want to know as much about the area around it as possible. Luckily, homes.com has got you covered. Each listing features a comprehensive neighborhood guide from local experts. Everything you'd ever want to know about a neighborhood, including the number of homes for sale, transportation, local amenities, cultural attractions, unique qualities, and even things like medium lot size and a noise score. Homes.com, we've done your homework.
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Narrator
Last episode we were in Windsor, Connecticut and I introduced you to a woman named Amy Archer Gilligan. She was the twice widowed matron and owner of the Archer home, the nursing home under suspicion. You might remember that she was accused of killing some of her, quote, inmates. I want to take a minute and remind ourselves that what Amy offered was not hospice care. It was not end of life care. What the Archer home offered was more like today's retirement community. Some of her residents were as young as their late 50s. One of her residents was young enough for her, a woman in her 30s or 40s, to marry. And these were not sick people. At least not before they arrived at the Archer home. What it was was a boarding house, mostly for people who were still mobile and mentally cogent, but who had retired. They maybe couldn't quite afford to live alone anymore, or maybe they just didn't want to keep their own house anymore. I mean, housework today can get out of control. Imagine keeping a house before there were vacuums and dishwashers and laundry machines. That's a hard pass even for me, and I'm a long way from retirement. Plus add that hand done housework to some in laws who are always underfoot and folding my shit the wrong way. It's frustrating just Thinking about it, even with modern appliances, I mean, how could you throw every color in the machine on a cold wash normal setting, and expect it to get clean? Did you just put my bra in the dryer? How dare you. I would have been lining up to go to Amy's too. You pay a small fee and she takes care of meals, laundry, housework and doctor visits. You mean I never have to argue a medical bill on hold for 40 minutes while this same Lionel Richie knockoff music plays on loop? Sign my ass up. My point is, a lot was different 110 years ago. But a lot is also the same. Which brings me to our most important point of similarity. Even in 1914, with pretty primitive medical science, the death rate at Amy's house was too high. These weren't people looking down death's gaping maw. They had decades left to really drive home this point. The death rate at the Archer home outnumbered the rate of other comparative nursing homes in the state six times over. Last week I also introduced you to a man named Franklin Andrews. Franklin was one of Amy's residents and he'd been there for just over a year when we left him. He stayed with a roommate in the only two bedroom at the Archer house. And he'd been watching the health of his fellow residents as the death toll grew. He never accused Amy of anything. But according to M. William Phelps's book, the Devil's Rooming House, he noticed the frequent fast onset deaths and he inferred that Amy had something to do with him. Especially after Franklin lost a close friend at the home. That was the able bodied 57 year old Michael Gilligan. Michael had also been married to amy despite being 20 years older than she was. Michael had also signed his last will and testament, leaving everything to Amy just 36 hours before he died. You might also remember how I really emphasized how healthy Franklin was. Despite having a disability that made him limp and being treated for rheumatism, he didn't have any major illnesses. Most notably, Franklin did not have heart disease, he did not have pneumonia, and he did not have indigestion. Those were the three different causes of death that Amy Archer Gilligan and the doctor she hired offered as causes of Michael's death. So Franklin's new roommate, Seth Ramsey, whom they called Ramsay, was surprised when he woke early in the morning to Franklin's moans, his complaints of burning in the pit of his stomach. Ramsay was even more surprised when Franklin projectile vomited all over himself. Ramsay ran straight to Amy and told her to call the doctor. Ramsey himself couldn't stand the sight or smell of his roommate's sickness. And his vomit was weird, too. It contained mucus and bile, and it had a coffee ground appearance. Ramsay walked outside to get some fresh air. He thought if he met the doctor outside when he arrived, he could brief him on what was happening. That way, when he got to their room, he could snap into action right away. Ramsey waited and waited, but the doctor never came. Ramsay watched as Franklin vomited and dry heaved all day. It was tortuous. He couldn't keep down any fluids or food. Dr. Howard King finally showed up in the evening, half a day after Franklin got sick, at which point Franklin was unconscious and clearly struggling to breathe. Dr. King had never treated Franklin for anything before. He had been on amy's payroll for four years, though Dr. King said Franklin suffered, quote, with what appeared to be acute indigestion. He prescribed the same nausea tablet of bismuth and cocaine that he had been prescribing at the Archer home for some time because Franklin was far from the first one to complain about these exact symptoms. Then the doctor left. At this point in the story, I was thinking, either this doctor is extremely stupid or he's been on the payroll in more ways than one. That evening, Amy called Franklin's sister Nellie. She told her that Franklin was sick and she wasn't sure he was going to get better. Nellie was shocked. She'd spoken to Franklin less than 24 hours ago and he had been fine. He had just painted a fence and he was about to cut the lawn and rake some leaves. When she asked what was wrong. Amy said the boils on his neck were troubling him. Nellie said Franklin didn't have any boils on his neck. But when Amy insisted that he was very sick, Nellie said she was coming up from Hartford tonight. Amy stopped her. She'd handle it. Nellie just told Amy to spare no expense and she'd be up first thing in the morning. Amy did call Dr. King back, but by the time he arrived around 9pm he found Amy standing bedside and he saw Franklin, quote, practically dead. He said later, there was nothing I could do for him. Franklin drew his last breath around an hour later, on May 29, 1914. Dr. King cited the primary cause of death as gastric ulcers. According to this guy, after 60 years of zero stomach problems, Franklin Andrews died of gastric ulcers. Amy immediately moved Franklin's roommate Ramsay into another room. She started preparing the double room for her new clients, a couple named Lauren and Alice Gowdy. Then she ordered Franklin's body to be removed and embalmed immediately. When Nellie arrived the next morning, as promised, her brother was go. Franklin's sister, Nellie Pierce, arrived in Windsor at 7 o'clock the morning after Franklin died. She rushed into the Archer house to find Amy with Dr. King and started shouting questions. How long had he been sick? What was the cause of death? How could this have happened? All Amy managed to do in response was mumble that Franklin had been painting a fence the day before he got sick. And that was exactly the point Nellie had been trying to make. Didn't that mean he was fine? How had this happened? Amy finally started talking. She said that it was all very shocking. Franklin had been absolutely fine. As Nellie was saying. He actually didn't say he felt any pain until about 10 minutes before he died. In fact, he'd said she shouldn't even call Nellie because he thought he'd get better. He didn't want to worry his sister. Now, as Nellie listened to all of this, she felt enraged. This was all lies. It had to be. It just didn't make any sense. Plus, she'd been reading Franklin's letters. She knew that he was suspicious of Amy. There was foul play here. Amy was involved and Dr. King had to be too. Even if Amy was pulling the strings, the doctor should have detected the cause of death and now he was just standing there listening to this garbage. So she responded to Amy simply and clearly. She wanted to see the body. Amy replied that unfortunately, Franklin's body was at Smith and Sons Funeral Home in Hartford. She never kept bodies in the house after a death. That's when Nellie decided if Franklin wasn't here to hold Amy accountable, Nellie would do it her damn self. In the following two days, Nellie made two important trips. She went to see her brother's body and she went to the offices of the Hartford Courant Newspapers. When she arrived, Nellie said she wanted to report a murder. That's when she learned that the newspaper already had two reporters investigating. Amy Archer Gilligan, Connecticut had only just begun. A state run police department, it was in very early stages. One fun example of the department's newness was that all the police were plain clothes officers at the time because they were a skeleton crew, the local police relied on reporters to help with investigations by sharing their findings. And of course, the police would reciprocate by giving those journalists the scoop when it was time. If you were like me, wondering why Nellie went to the newspaper instead of the police, it's because the newspaper basically was part of the police force to Their credit. As Nellie discovered, Amy had been on the radar of these local journalists for a long time. In fact, they'd been keeping an eye on her since the very first time she and James, her first husband, were sued by a former resident and their family. But by the time Nellie got to their office, they were already ramping up from Amy's on our radar to a serious investigation. They were just waiting on hard evidence to break the. Nellie must have had mixed feelings when she realized this. Investigators had known something was going on, and they hadn't stopped it in time to save Franklin's life. Not to mention all these other lives. Still, she wasn't about to let her grief and what ifs stop her from helping bring down a killer. She started looking for evidence herself. To speed things along. She and her siblings combed through Franklin's things. They found a letter to him from Amy. It was dated just days before his death. In it, Amy asked Franklin for a loan. Apparently, Franklin had refused. To Nellie, this looked like as good a motive as any. But she dug further, scouring Franklin's financial records. That's when she saw that Franklin had apparently already given Amy a loan and that an additional $500 was missing from his bank account. That's around $15,000 in today's money. Nellie was livid. Amy had been using Franklin like a cash cow and then killed him as soon as he resisted. Perhaps thinking about the fact that investigators had so far failed to take this woman down, Nellie had an idea she would do this her own way and make Amy pay for this somehow. Or rather, pay for it literally. She lawyered up. Her attorney threatened Amy with a lawsuit in addition to a court bitter and humiliating public scandal that would eventually follow. All of which could be avoided if Amy paid back the money she rightfully owed Franklin's family. It worked. Amy caved. She agreed to pay up. But even then, it still took Nellie and her family forever to squeeze the money out of her. In the meantime, Amy sent several long, hateful, curse filled letters to the Andrews family. They're as trolling as you can imagine. With curses as wild as this one. I will pray this morning that almighty God, who knows how you and yours tried to destroy my home. May the curse of God come down on each one of you and punish you by doing for you what you never had the slightest cause to try to do to us. You know the kind of desperate redirection a con artist uses to divert attention. But in the meantime, while Nellie pursued her own justice, the journalists hadn't given up on getting Amy behind bars. The journalists understood Nellie's frustrations with their timeline because they knew they had to get Amy out of the game asap, too. So they took all their research on the case to the superintendent of the Connecticut State Police, Thomas Egan. Egan was baffled. He asked the journalists, are you telling me that 40 Archer inmates have been murdered? They answered that it probably wasn't all 40 of them. If they went on probabilities and averages, five of these people probably died of natural cause causes, but that still left 35 murders. Egan was skeptical. He just couldn't wrap his mind around how this was possible. But he listened as the journalists went through their research piece by piece. It wasn't just the deaths. It was the abruptness of the deaths, the spiriting away of the bodies in the night, the complete ineptitude of the one Dr. Amy always called. Egan took it all in. And journalists waited. And then Egan nodded. This idea had legs. He was going to pursue the lead. Egan enlisted the help of Hugh Alcorn, the state's attorney, and Alcorn was just hesitant. If they were accusing a woman of killing 40 people, they needed more evidence than what the journalists had collected. They only had one shot to bring justice to 40 people. In fact, that number was low. In the end, the tally would land at 53 people murdered in the Archer house. They had to find that evidence. So the police superintendent and the state's attorney decided to try to beat Amy Archer Gilligan at her own game. This is when the state police called on one bad bitch, Zola Bennett. I love that name. That should be in baby books for 2023, for sure. Zola was in her late 50s or early 60s, and she had been working for the Connecticut State Police as an undercover private investigator for several years. The department sent Zola over to Amy's to ask for a room to rent. Zola said, I'm a wealthy, friendless widow. That's a bit on the nose if you ask me. But Amy invited her right in. Zola then watched from the inside as Alice Gowdy, one of the couple who had taken Franklin's former room, died the exact same way that he had. Zola also interviewed other residents when Amy wasn't around, and she snooped through documents like letters, diaries, and real estate papers. And she forwarded everything she found back to the state police. And she was the one who told them to interview another bad bitch, Dr. Emma Thompson, Alice Gowdy's primary doctor. Because Alice Gowdy, unlike most of Amy's residents, didn't use Dr. King. Dr. Thompson noted that Alice Gowdy had strange symptoms, including coldness and rigidity in her extremities. She had a feeling of constriction in the throat. It was difficult for her to swallow. Then her stool became watery. It looked like rice water. And finally there was the vomit, the liquid mixture of mucus, bile and that coffee ground appearance. Dr. Thompson knew that when acted upon by gastric fluid, blood in the stomach almost always yields a coffee ground appearance. It manifests in other symptoms as well. Sometimes resembling a hemorrhage, a person can become weak, dizzy, pale and shrunken. Their head hurts, they break out in a cold sweat. That's what Dr. Emma Thompson remembered when she saw Alice Gowdy. And she knew that the most likely cause of all this was was poison. Specifically arsenic. That's what Dr. Thompson told the state police who noted that Alice's symptoms were very similar to the ones noted in the other Archer home residence. It was time to get those bodies out of the ground.
- [30:56]
Patient in Waiting Room
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- [32:00]
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- [32:30]
Homes.com
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Narrator
It was nearly two years after Franklin Andrews death before his body got the autopsy it deserved. Part of that time was taken up with Zola Bennett's investigation at the Archer house. Part of it was likely due to the process of collecting the correct paperwork to exhume the body. But by May 1916, investigators were ready. They just needed the right person to examine the two year old corpse. The state's attorney, Hugh Alcorn, called Dr. Arthur Wolf. Dr. Wolf had a long list of credentials that included training as a physician in Germany and France, an education at Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York, and he had worked at St. Francis Hospital in Hartford for 21 years. But Dr. Wolf's most important accolade was that he also had 35 years of courtroom experience. A lot of the cases he testified in were murder cases, and a lot of those cases were poisoning cases. He was the guy. To avoid any press leaks, state officials set Dr. Wolf up to conduct the examination in a tool shed under the COVID of night. When he arrived, the stage had been set for him and he conducted the autopsy with the formality it deserved, moving over the grave wax of Franklin's face to observe that, as Nellie Pierce had said, Franklin did not have any boils. If you remember, that's what Amy told Nellie her brother had died of of course, Amy had mentioned several different causes of death, but Dr. Wolf ruled that one out easily. When he cut open the torso, Dr. Wolf did note the signs of Franklin's rheumatism. His lungs, although healthy, thereby ruling out pneumonia, adhered slightly to the chest wall. So far, everything was normal. His heart seemed normal, too. Normal size. No blockages, no tears, no trauma. When Dr. Wolf cut into it, though, a, quote, peculiar and penetrating odor from the body diffused itself through the room. It smelled pungent, vinegary, unique. But Dr. Wolf knew that smell. Arsenic. And that wasn't the smoking gun you'd think it would be at the time. Many undertakers used an Arsenic based embalming fluid. Some people speculated that was one reason why Amy insisted the people who died at the Archer home were immediately embalmed. Still, it was odd that the arsenic odor was coming from inside Franklin's heart. Meanwhile, Franklin's body didn't seem to be emitting any sense of decomposition at all, which was very odd for a two year old corpse. Unless it had been poisoned by arsenic. Dr. Wolf kept moving. It seemed like all of Franklin's organs had been faultlessly preserved as if they'd been buried two days ago. Franklin's liver, intestines and fat were all in flawless condition. Then he arrived at Franklin's stomach and the condition he found it in was really out of the ordinary. It was distended like a balloon full of gas. Dr. Wolf removed the organ. This was evidence because all of these perfectly preserved organs, and especially that distended stomach, confirmed for Dr. Wolf exactly what Dr. Thompson had suspected. Based on Alice Gowdy's symptoms, this was the work of arsenic. The state ordered the exhumation for four other potential victims in a matter of days. The state police were sure of five murders, and they had two suspects, Dr. Arthur King and Amy Archer Gilligan. While it was hard to believe either of them was capable of such atrocities, the investigators went after Dr. King first. I mean, not only was he a man, but he was a doctor. Surely he was more likely to be responsible for these murders. Once reporters got wind of this, they stampeded the doctor's front porch looking for comment. Dr. King said no. He shouted. There was nothing unusual about Andrew's death. True, he appeared a well man, but he had a history of ulcers. King also said that Franklin likely severely overtaxed his stomach during dinner, which caused a violent recurrence and put too great a strain on his heart. Basically, Dr. King said that Franklin Andrews ate himself to death. Even at the turn of the century, that diagnosis was preposterous. An educated person would never buy it. A reporter fed Dr. King the next question. What about poison? Dr. King yelled. Ridiculous. I'd have noticed the symptoms. None of this made Dr. King sound particularly clever, but it didn't make him sound particularly innocent either. Investigators were still suspicious of him, and I am too. I'm actually going to ask William Phelps for his thoughts on it in our interview, which, by the way, stick around for that. But the fact is, as investigators started thinking about the motive, Amy had far more motive to set this deadly plot in motion than Dr. King did. Whether or not Dr. King participated. So investigators ended up refocusing on Amy, journalists checked out purchases at the local drugstore. They saw that although Amy hadn't purchased much arsenic herself, she had sent her residents to purchase it for her. That meant, yes, she sent her victims to buy their own murder weapon. All counted. Amy's residents purchased a total of two pounds of arsenic. That's enough to kill thousands of people. When Franklin Andrews organs officially tested positive for arsenic, as expected, investigators had their last bit of concrete evidence they needed to move in. And they made Amy's perp walk a full spectacle. For the first time in the state, automobiles aided the arrest. Two large black pope cars waited outside the county building, engines running to arrest Amy. Everyone turned out to see what was going on. When investigators arrived at the Archer home, Amy invited them in. And this quote's recorded in historical documents Phelps found When researching the devil's rooming house. Amy said to the cops, I know of the gossip about me and of the home that has been going around Windsor, and I am indeed glad you have come. Okay, girl? They told her that anything she said could be used against her in court. And she said, all right. Before proceeding to anyone answer a bunch of questions. After an hour of questioning, investigators told Amy she was charged with the murder of Franklin Andrews by poisoning, and they took her to the town hall. The motorcade that followed her there was spectacular. While Amy was booked and further questioned, police searched the Archer home for evidence. The search yielded several contracts, Despite Amy saying she destroyed the contracts after her tenants deaths, they also found bottles of mislabeled fluids, letters, notebooks, and bank records. A crowd watched while officials carried boxes of evidence out the front door and into waiting cars. Speaking of finding evidence, Dr. Arthur Wolf had also examined Michael Gilligan's corpse. His stomach had enough arsenic in it to kill five men his size. Amy was also accused of killing her first husband, James Archer. His symptoms were consistent with arsenic poisoning, too. While she awaited trial, the prosecution, led by state's attorney Hugh Alcorn, brought offenses. In addition to killing five residents and two husbands, Amy had violated the law by removing a dead body from any home without a permit. Transporting the body over state lines was another offense Amy had committed. Both. Meanwhile, Amy spoke out about her innocence, and Dr. King rallied for her, too. While Amy waited in jail, King went off, and he looked stupid doing it. One theory he presented was that Franklin Andrews body, quote, could have been twice exhumed. He claimed that someone could have already dug up the body and planted the arsenic on the cadaver. A doctor said that articles appeared in newspapers that noted King was not only employed as the in house physician at the Archer home, but he was the medical examiner for the town as well. So the man who treated Amy's residence was also assigning reasons for their deaths. In one later interview, King finally questioned his own judgment, saying that maybe he should have paid closer attention. He admitted that his diagnosis of Franklin Andrews death as the result of gastric ulcers could have been incorrect and the real cause could have been arsenic poisoning. The symptoms might have looked similar. He told the interviewer, quote, maybe I ought to have analyzed the contents of the stomach, but I certainly did not suspect that there was anything wrong. There was nothing suspicious to me about the death and no reason why I should have gone any further with the examination. Did you ever hear of death by arsenic being disposed, discovered as such immediately after death? I never did. But neither Dr. King's excuses nor his regrets made any difference for Amy. In September of 1916, the grand jury charged Amy Archer Gilligan with five counts of first degree murder. These five victims, who were only a small portion of the victims she actually killed, were Franklin Andrews, Alice Gowdy, Michael Gilligan, Charles Smith and Maude Lynch. When the trial commenced, the courtroom was standing room only. Many witnesses testified against Amy. Frank Smith, undertaker at Amy's funeral parlor of choice, testified that none of the Red Falcon brand embalming fluid he used ever contained arsenic. And he said that he always had permits to remove a body in the middle of the night. Except for Franklin Andrews and Alice Gowdy. Dr. Wolf spent two full days explaining his findings and how he reached his conclusions that all five exhumed bodies had died by arsenic poisoning. Even Franklin's banker took the stand. He entered all the bank account records as evidence and verified the transactions. The all male jury, because women could not sit on juries in most states until 1917, soon reached a verdict. The judge said Amy Archer Gilligan is guilty of the crime of murder in the first degree. She is remanded to the custody of the sheriff of Hartford county and that she be conveyed by him to the Connecticut State Prison at Wethersfield. And that upon said 6th day of November 1917, before the hour of sunrise within the walls of said prison, by warden of said prison, she be hung by the neck until she is dead. Amy's lawyers tried to appeal with an insanity plea. They claimed she was addicted to morphine. That may well have been true after looking at the records of her druggist. But the verdict was not overturned. She was granted a different sentence. Rather than being executed by hanging, she would live for 50 years in a prison for the criminally insane. I always try to leave these stories with a bit of reflection. Reflection. For me, the biggest takeaway from this case of multiple murders is the importance of looking out for the vulnerable. Until this series of horrific murders, private sector homes for the elderly had no one watching them. Not on a local level or anything higher. Anyone not acting right really only got punished if a resident's family member hired an attorney or made a complaint. There was no watchful oversight. That meant it had to be bad enough for a resident to snitch out their primary caregiver. Think about how bad that would have to be. It also required that the residents have a family member to tell their problems to to advocate for them. And that wasn't always the case. But thank God for Nellie Pierce, right? She was Franklin's sister and she was just not having it. And thanks to the journalists and to Zola Bennett and to Dr. Emma Thompson. A lot of badass people looked out for justice in this case and a lot of them were badass women. So I think the takeaway here is twofold. One, thankfully private sector nursing homes are regulated now and two, be on the side of the badasses who fight for the truth. Whether that's as an investigator, like so many people in this story or in whatever it is, that's your walk of life. And that's how I think of the writer M. William Phelps, author of the Devil's Rooming House, who uncovered so much truth while writing this book. I'm so lucky to have the opportunity to ask him a few more questions about this case. That's right after the break. Stay with me. This.
- [50:17]
Patient in Waiting Room
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- [52:25]
Mary Kay McBrayer
Oh, Matthew, I'm so happy to talk to you about the Devil's Rooming House. Thank you so much for coming to talk to me. I wanted to ask you first, what drew you to Amy Archer Gilligan in particular?
- [52:38]
M. William Phelps
Well, I had my eye on the Amy Archer Gilligan story for many years. I mean, I grew up as a kid maybe four miles from the house. It wasn't a talked about story then. But what got me interested in it was I was writing a lot of contemporary true crime and I wanted to do an historical true crime book. And the fact that the Amy Archer Gilligan story is the true basis for the famous play Arsenic and Old Lace really drew me to it. The thing that worried me was why hadn't a book been done on it already? As a journalist, that always worries me. So the first inclination is, oh, there's not enough research available. So I began to look into that. So I started to poke around and I knew that the trial was a huge spectacle in Hartford, Connecticut at the time, at the turn of the century when it happened. So the first thing I did was went to the Connecticut Historical Society and they were like, wow, we don't know, we don't have much, you know, let's see. So that process started and I'll never forget, it took some time, but they poked around and in the library itself was a bunch of books about Connecticut historical crimes, et cetera. But within that were, like, these encyclopedia type of books that someone had transcribed all of the trial transcripts and kind of put it in a book form, but it wasn't printed. It was, like one book. So I was able to get hold of that. But what else I found, which I found very interesting, was in the basement, in the vault, they had more Amy Archer Gilligan research. It was in a box, and the boxes had all these scrolls in them of paper. And around the paper was charcoal. There was a band of charcoal around the paper, which I thought was odd. And there was charcoal bits all in the box. Well, come to find out, old rubber bands turned into charcoal after a period of time. So what that told me was very significant. It told me no one had looked at those documents.
- [54:58]
Mary Kay McBrayer
No one looked at it.
- [54:59]
M. William Phelps
No one had looked at them. No one. Yeah, that fired me up. And then I just, you know, started the journey from there.
- [55:06]
Mary Kay McBrayer
Well, I love that story so much, not only because it was successful, but also because you got to go, like, down into the library, like, the bowels of the library, which sounds so cool. And it's like, things are, like, ossifying and stuff.
- [55:22]
Narrator
Yeah.
- [55:23]
Mary Kay McBrayer
On the forums, so. Oh, that's so cool.
- [55:27]
Narrator
Yeah. Wow.
- [55:28]
Mary Kay McBrayer
So you had a lot of material to sift through.
- [55:31]
M. William Phelps
Yeah. I mean, within the trial documents were forensic reports, testimony from early forensic scientists, all the law enforcement, Amy Archer, Gilligan herself. So I was able to bring that book to life. I mean, there it was, the trial. The whole story was right there, you know.
- [55:52]
Narrator
Yeah.
- [55:52]
Mary Kay McBrayer
That's incredible.
- [55:53]
Narrator
I'm sure that there were a lot of surprises when you were reading that.
- [55:55]
Mary Kay McBrayer
But is there one that kind of jumped out at you as, like, because.
- [56:00]
Narrator
Of the time period of it being.
- [56:02]
Mary Kay McBrayer
Bizarre and, like, sticking with you? Is there anything like that?
- [56:05]
M. William Phelps
I mean, what was striking in the transcripts were when law enforcement was explaining how they would exhume bodies in the middle of the night, bring the body to a tool shed in the cemetery, open the body up and test it for arsenic right there. And it was a simple test. I mean, you could almost tell someone was murdered by arsenic just by opening them up and seeing their stomach kind of bloated. So, yeah, they did autopsies right there on site. That was pretty bizarre, but I understood it.
- [56:37]
Narrator
That's such a great scene.
- [56:38]
Mary Kay McBrayer
I mean, I know it's not a scene scene. It's like, it happened.
- [56:42]
Narrator
Right.
- [56:42]
Mary Kay McBrayer
But, like, it sticks with you.
- [56:44]
Narrator
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [56:45]
Mary Kay McBrayer
On the topic of writing somewhat narrative, true crime and historical True crime. I also love to write narrative true crime. And I feel like, what. And historical as well. And I feel like the question that I get asked so often is, like, the dialogue. Like, how do you know they said that? Or how do you. What kind of artistic license went into it? What's your approach to writing the dialogue?
- [57:08]
M. William Phelps
Well, I mean, dialogue is dialogue that's said. You know, I'm not making it up. I'm just looking at court documents. I'm looking at interviews people gave. And during interviews, people will say, well, when she approached me, she said, so that's dialogue, you know, But a lot of times dialogue are quotes from someone on the stand who's given testimony or something that's said in a police report. You know, I walked up to the counter and I said, hey, give me all your money, you know, so that turns into dialogue. I don't use any artistic license at all. I spend a tremendous amount of time looking, digging.
- [57:51]
Mary Kay McBrayer
So speaking of the dialogue and some of the characters and the actual people in this book, Dr. King, the one that was on the payroll at the Archer home, he seemed so fishy to me the whole time. I was like, he's in on it. He has to be in on it.
- [58:07]
M. William Phelps
Of course he was.
- [58:08]
Mary Kay McBrayer
And I just.
- [58:09]
Narrator
Of course he was. Right.
- [58:10]
Mary Kay McBrayer
Yeah.
- [58:11]
M. William Phelps
He was being bought and paid for. I mean, he was the town coroner.
- [58:15]
Narrator
Thank you.
- [58:16]
Mary Kay McBrayer
Thank you.
- [58:17]
M. William Phelps
Yeah, he was the town coroner and the doctor in town. So Amy employed him as the doctor for the residents of the elderly home. So he would come over there and diagnose people, and when somebody died, he would pronounce their death and sign off on the death certificate. So she was paying him already to come over. Right. So of course he knew what was going on. He had to know what was going on, and he turned a blind eye to it. He should have been charged himself in some respects.
- [58:50]
Mary Kay McBrayer
Okay, so switching gears a little bit, you've gone from writing true crime to working in true crime audio as well. And what has that been like, the transition? Do you like the differences in the storytelling aspect?
- [59:05]
Narrator
How do you approach the research?
- [59:07]
M. William Phelps
Well, you know, I've kind of prepared for this in the way that I've written books for 22 years, I've done television for 22 years, written for television, produced documentaries that. So bringing the two together for podcasting, for me, it was a challenge, but it was a good challenge. It allows me to dig deeper into stories than I would for television. It allows actual people, their voices to be heard, and I love the investigative part of it. It's just a new form for me to tell these stories of victims and their families. And now I've really gotten into missing people more, trying to offer new information to cases in books. You can't really go down that road. Book editors want a beginning, middle and end. With podcasting, certainly you can bring people along for the journey.
- [60:03]
Mary Kay McBrayer
Yeah, I like that. It seems like not necessarily that podcasting is more forgiving, but you can continue to add to the story.
- [60:09]
M. William Phelps
Right.
- [60:10]
Mary Kay McBrayer
Whereas once it's in writing, it's out there.
- [60:14]
M. William Phelps
That's a great point. I can update my podcasts than I have at any time. I can add another bonus episode or add another episode to a narrative season. So I like the format a lot. I just started full time on a new season of Paper Ghost, so I'm looking forward to paper Ghost Season 4. I'm heading out in a couple weeks on a research trip, actually.
- [60:36]
Narrator
Where are you headed? What you gonna do?
- [60:37]
Mary Kay McBrayer
That was my next question is what are you gonna do next? Or can you tell me is a secret.
- [60:42]
M. William Phelps
I can say that I'm heading out to the Ozarks.
- [60:45]
Mary Kay McBrayer
Okay.
- [60:45]
M. William Phelps
And I'll leave it at that.
- [60:46]
Narrator
Okay, sounds good.
- [60:49]
Mary Kay McBrayer
My last question is, what do you wanna leave us with? Like, what's our biggest takeaway from talking about Amy Archer Gilligan? What do you want your readers of this story, listeners of our podcast, to get from it?
- [61:01]
M. William Phelps
Well, you're gonna take away from this, I hope you do, is that a psychopath a hundred years ago is really no different than a psychopath today. The mentality, the mindset, the psychology may have evolved, but it's the same. Right? And I think in this country we have this Hollywood cartoon version, if you will, of the serial killer who wears a clown suit or drives a Volkswagen or, you know, Dahmer. That's not really what serial killers are like. Those are anomalies. There are Amy Archer Gilligans out there today who are killing that we just. We haven't caught yet.
- [61:43]
Narrator
Right.
- [61:43]
M. William Phelps
You know, so we have to keep our eyes and our ears always open.
- [61:51]
Narrator
Many thanks again to M. William Phelps for coming to talk to me. For more of his insights on the Amy Archer Gilligan case, check out his book, the Devil's Rooming House. And for more of his voice and incredible research and podcast form, I know I'll be eagerly awaiting the results of his trip to the Ozarks in season four of Paper Ghosts. Join me next week on the greatest true crime stories Ever told, where we tell the story of love, greed and murder. The story of The Deadly Gold Digger, Celeste Beard. In addition to M. William Phelps book the Devil's Rooming House, I'd like to shout out all the court documents from the trial and the articles from the vigilante journalists mentioned in the episode itself. They were all crucial in helping me tell this story. For more information about this case and other cases we cover on the show, visit diversionaudio.com Sign up for Diversion's newsletter and be among the first to hear about our special behind the scenes features with the hosts and actors from Diversion's podcasts, more shows you'll love from Diversion and our partners, and other exclusive tidbits you can't get anywhere else. That's diversionaudio.com to sign up for the newsletter. The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told is a production of Diversion Audio. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, I wrote this episode and our editorial director is Nora Battelle. Our show is produced and directed by Mark Francis. Our development team is Emma demuth and Jacob Bronstein. Theme music by Tyler Cash Executive producers Jacob Bronstein, Mark Francis and Scott Waxman Diversion Audio.
- [63:56]
Cheap Caribbean Vacations
This week we discuss and celebrate savings. I know it's usually a master detective or a super sleuth who loves true crime as much as we do, but today it's better. It's cheap Caribbean's 25th anniversary sale. That means 25 good reasons to put up your away Message now until February 3rd. You can unlock up to $250 off all inclusive vacation packages site wide. You're definitely going to need a portable charger for all these vacation pics. Visit cheapcaribbean.com for up to $250 off. Offer ends February 3rd.
- [64:26]
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Homes.com
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Amazon One Medical
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