Lore 302: Bedside Manner

It takes a lot of compassion to care for the sick and nurse them back to health. And it takes a lot of trust to allow your well-being to rest in their hands. Thanks to a few terrible real life figures, though, it's safe to say that our trust…can sometimes be misplaced. Narrated and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with writing by GennaRose Nethercott, research by Cassandra de Alba, and music by Chad Lawson. ————————— PRE-ORDER EXHUMED TODAY: aaronmahnke.com/exhumed https://www.aaronmahnke.com/exhumed ————————— Lore Resources: Get Ad-Free Lore: lorepodcast.com/support https://www.lorepodcast.com/support Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music https://www.lorepodcast.com/music Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources https://www.lorepodcast.com/sources Official Lore Merchandise: lorepodcast.com/shop https://www.lorepodcast.com/shop ————————— Sponsors: MeUndies: Slide into game changing comfort and get 20% off your first order, plus free shipping, at MeUndies.com/lore https://www.meundies.com/lore with the promo code LORE. Squarespace: Head to Squarespace.com/lore http://squarespace.com/lore to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using the code LORE. HomeServe: Help protect your home systems – and your wallet – against covered repairs. Plans start at just $4.99 a month at HomeServe.com https://www.homeserve.com/. Mint Mobile: For a limited time, wireless plans from Mint Mobile are $15 a month when you purchase a 3-month plan with UNLIMITED talk, text and data at MintMobile.com/lore http://www.mintmobile.com/lore. ————————— To report a concern regarding a radio-style, non-Aaron ad in this episode, reach out to ads @ lorepodcast.com with the name of the company or organization so we can look into it. To advertise on this podcast please email: [email protected]. Or go to: https://advertising.libsyn.com/lore ————————— ©2026 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Your joints help you keep doing what you love. Give them daily support with Ancient Nutrition Multi-Collagen Protein. Two scoops deliver 20 grams of collagen from 10 types, including clinically studied eggshell membrane, plus vitamin C and probiotics to support skin, hair, nails, and joint health. Visit ancientnutrition.com/protein and use code PROTEIN for $15 off. That's ancientnutrition.com code PROTEIN.

• 0:27Speaker 01

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of 5-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:09Aaron Mahnke?

  Godfrey and Dalby were rivals. Both were competing for the affections of Victorian women. But before you imagine two dapper gentlemen with pistols raised at dawn, I should make one thing clear. Godfrey and Dalby weren't people. No, they were actually medicines. Just like Tylenol and Advil today duking it out in the headache aisle, Godfrey's Cordial and Dalby's Carminative were two popular patent medicines, both claiming to alleviate the same symptoms. Named for their respective creators, these tinctures sought to reduce colic, that is, to keep babies from crying. To quote advertisements for Dalby's Carminative, these "mothers' friends," as they were called,

• 1:53Aaron Mahnke?

  could "help infants affected with wind, watery pipes, fluxes, and other disorders of the stomach and bowels." Marketed largely to working moms and nannies, it's no surprise that the products were such a hit. After all, you could get a lot more done, and therefore... Bring home a larger income if you didn't have a crying baby to deal with on top of all the rest. And the truth is, the stuff worked, too. A few spoonfuls from one of the iconic green glass bottles and even the most finicky babies would quiet right down. How did they work, you might ask? Well, it had a lot to do with the main ingredient. Because, you see, both Godfrey's cordial and Dolby's carminative were primarily made of opium.

• 2:37Aaron Mahnke?

  All throughout history, the line between helping and hurting hasn't always been as clear as you might think. Then for the Victorian women who fed their children these so-called medicines, that fact became all too clear when their babies began to overdose and die. After all, the only difference between a medicine and a poison is the size of the dose. I'm Aaron Mahnke, and this is Lore.

• 3:20Aaron Mahnke?

  The skeleton was in rough shape, and not just because it was between 45,000 and 70,000 years old. Found in modern-day Iraq, the poor guy showed signs of head trauma and was missing an arm. But what had archaeologists buzzing wasn't what the injuries were, but when they appeared to have taken place. Because, you see, the Neanderthal in question had clearly survived his wounds. In fact, he went on to live for years after the fact, which meant something remarkable: early humans must have practiced medicine. They'd taken care of this man and refused to leave him behind to die. And this isn't a lone example.

• 4:00Aaron Mahnke?

  A skeleton of a 15-year-old boy found in what is now Florida shows signs of severe spina bifida, which would have required extensive care from his community, a community which existed 7,500 years ago. And yet another burial at a 4,000-year-old site in northern Vietnam contained the remains of a 25-year-old man evidently paralyzed since before adolescence. Despite what would have been a strain on his primarily hunter-gatherer community, those around this man kept him alive by helping him eat, clean himself, and perform other basic tasks for at least a decade. So, there you have it. Caring for one another is part of what makes us human.

• 4:43Aaron Mahnke?

  And for much of human history, that fact was inextricably linked to magic. In the days before modern medicine, illness was often blamed on evil spirits. The sick were believed to be possessed, and to grow well again needed to have those evil spirits exercised via incantation, fumigation, or if you happen to be in ancient Assyria, casting the demon into a young goat which was then slaughtered. Actually, transplanting diseases outside of the body into another object was a common theme. In Cornwall, children with rickets were handed through the branches of a maple tree, and then the tree would take on their illness.

• 5:24Aaron Mahnke?

  In other parts of England, throat ailments could be healed by holding the head of a frog in your mouth, which would then hop away, carrying your sickness with it. While in Germany, simply holding a piece of raw meat over the afflicted body parts before giving it to a dog or a cat to eat. Meanwhile, if you're in the mood for some arts and crafts, South Sea islanders would create a model canoe occupied by a handmade doll and then set it adrift, believing that the doll would carry the sickness away. Sometimes, though, mythical spirits could only be combated by mythical animals. Medieval bestiaries often featured a creature called a chaladrius bird, a pure white bird said to be able to cure the sick.

• 6:07Aaron Mahnke?

  Simply have a chaladrius brought to your sick bed and stare it in the eyes, and when it flies away, it will take the sickness with it. But be warned, if it turns its head away from you, you are done for. Oh, and to cure blindness, you can always rub the dung from this bird in your eyes. Eye contact, it seems, is a bit of a theme in itself when it comes to magical healing. One Inuit deity, described rather adorably as a tiny man with a black face who lives in a pebble, was said to draw out illness with a stare. Be careful not to lock eyes if you're healthy, though. Disease, you see, can move both ways. The little pebble guy, though, is far from the only deity with healing powers.

• 6:49Aaron Mahnke?

  The Aztecs had Patekatal, whose name means "he from the land of medicines", and also happens to be credited as the discoverer of peyotes. And over in Ireland, the pre-Christian goddess Brigid was a deity of spring and fertility, as well as healing. In fact, about an hour and a half from Dublin in Kildare, there's a well associated with her, said to contain magical healing water. Today, many of her attributes have been Christianized in the form of Saint Brigid. On the eve of Brigid's holiday of Imbolc, which is now also Saint Brigid's feast day, believers leave a piece of cloth outside, which she blesses with her healing abilities for the year ahead. This cloth, called the brat brida,

• 7:30Aaron Mahnke?

  is wrapped around sick family members and seen as an essential help against headaches. Then there's Braheevi, the sun goddess of the Sami people. She returns each spring not just with light, but to bless those whose mental health suffered during the long winter. Basically, the divine version of those seasonal affective disorder light therapy lamps. But healing gods aren't all sunshine. Some deities are patrons of both medicine and disease. In Sumerian mythology, for example, the goddess Ninherzog cursed the god Enki with eight ailments, each corresponding to a body part, and then created eight healing deities to cure them. The Greek god Apollo could both cure illness and cause epidemics,

• 8:16Aaron Mahnke?

  and the same went for the Egyptian goddess Sekhmet. And looking back, perhaps that duality does make sense, because just like the mothers who swore by Godfrey's cordial and Dalby's carminitive, sometimes the people we trust to heal us end up doing just the opposite.

• 8:43Aaron Mahnke?

  Bertha Gifford was a beloved volunteer nurse in the small community of Catawissa, Missouri. From the 1900s through the 1920s, she tended to hundreds of sick locals with tenderness and compassion, or so it seemed. And then, she slipped up. You see, while caring for a middle-aged drunk, she made the teensy mistake of remarking that his mother would be better off if he died, which, yeah, was a horrible thing to say on a good day, worse, when the man did die shortly after. And that was all it took. Suspicion rampaged through Catawissa, and in 1928, Bertha stood trial for murder. What the courts uncovered was far worse than anyone could have ever imagined.

• 9:26Aaron Mahnke?

  Over the course of years, she had murdered not only that one man, but at least 17 of her patients, all poisoned with arsenic. Suffice to say, the trial was a media sensation. Newspapers dubbed her home a "murder farm." Bertha Gifford was found insane and spent the rest of her life in a state hospital. But when the smoke cleared, one question remained: Why did she do it? And the truth is, no one knows. But the county sheriff did have one theory. He believed that Bertha, and I quote, "attributed some mystical healing power to arsenic." In other words, maybe she really had been trying to heal her patients all along.

• 10:09Aaron Mahnke?

  But hey, not all caretaker poisoners are quite so well-meaning. Enter Amy Archer Gilligan, proprietess of the Archer Home for Elderly People and Chronic Invalids in Windsor, Connecticut. She and her husband James had run the home together, but when he died in 1910, he left her with a slew of back taxes and bills to pay. But don't worry, Amy quickly devised a doozy of a get-rich-quick scheme. First, she began offering a lifetime care service at the home. For a thousand bucks a pop, the equivalent of about 30 grand today, patients could insure care at the Archer Home for the rest of their lives. Not a bad deal, right? Her patients must have thought so as well, because they jumped at the opportunity to

• 10:54Aaron Mahnke?

  occupy one of the home's limited 20 beds. Unfortunately, Amy's patients failed to notice a glaring problem with the meth. That is, the shorter their lives were, and thus the quicker a bed opened up for a new paying customer, the more money Amy would make. And wouldn't you know it, the Archer home suddenly had a remarkable turnover. In 1916, Amy was remarried to a man named Michael Gilligan. Just a few months later, Michael mysteriously died, but not before leaving everything to Amy. Handy, right? Well, it might have been, had Michael's death not caught the eye of a local journalist. And when this guy started digging, he found a rabbit hole straight down to hell.

• 11:39Aaron Mahnke?

  To start, the journalist learned that Amy was in the habit of buying arsenic at a local drugstore, which she claimed was for rat and bedbug problems at the home. Which, sure, was a common use for arsenic at the time, but he also found something else. Between 1911 and 1916, a shocking 48 residents at the Archer home had kicked the bucket. Exhumations confirmed it, too. The bodies were chock-full of arsenic. In 1917, Amy went on trial for mass murder. And just like Bertha's case, this, too, was a big old media sensation. While Bertha's house may have been called a murder farm, the papers labeled Amy's place a straight-up murder factory.

• 12:22Aaron Mahnke?

  After five years in prison, though, Amy Archer Gilligan was found insane and transferred to a mental hospital, where she passed away in 1962. Oh, and if parts of this story ring a bell, it might be because a popular play-turned-movie was loosely based on it: arsenic and old lace. Today, of course, there are countless podcasts and Netflix specials about serial killers like Ed Gein and Ted Bundy. But a century ago, poison-wielding women were the true crime trend of the day. And while Amy Archer Gilligan and Bertha Gifford were big names, no one exemplified the genre more than legendary murderess, Lydia Sherman.

• 13:02Aaron Mahnke?

  According to certain folklore, girls who are born on Christmas Eve are known as sorrow children, bad luck from birth. And for at least one little sorrow child named Lydia, born in New Jersey on December 24th of 1824, she would more than live up to that name. Lydia was just a teenager when she married Edward Struck, a widower 20 years her senior, and over the decade that followed, the young bride gave birth to seven lovely children. From the outside, they looked like one big happy family. But then, that family started to die. First, 22-month-old Josephine died, supposedly from measles. Then in 1863,

• 13:43Aaron Mahnke?

  Edward lost his job at the NYPD and fell into a depression. He grew paranoid, refused to leave bed or see his friends. But luckily, his loving wife Lydia knew exactly what he needed. On May 23rd of 1864, she waltzed into a local drugstore, paid 10 cents for a bottle of arsenic granules, and back home, she mixed enough into Edward's oatmeal to kill an elephant. The man writhed in agony all night long. By morning, he was dead. The official cause, according to the doctors, was consumption. Yes, Lydia had gotten away with murder, suspicion free. But now she had another problem. She was a 40-year-old widow

• 14:27Aaron Mahnke?

  with six mouths to feed, and so she thought, wouldn't it be easier if that number was smaller? She started with the littlest, six-year-old Martha Ann, four-year-old Edward, and nine-month-old William, all fed to, quote, Lydia herself, "the same kind of gruel their father had eaten." Three children, dead. But in the 1800s, child mortality was so common, no one blinked an eye. Now for a while Lydia seemed placated. One of her older sons left home to make his own way in the world, and was henceforth not her problem anymore. Meanwhile, 14-year-old George even started bringing in an income as a painter's assistant. But when he developed "painter's colic", a weirdly cute name for lead poisoning,

• 15:12Aaron Mahnke?

  and had to quit his job, he too just became another mouth to feed. And by now Lydia knew what to do with those. This time she mixed arsenic in with George's tea, and poof, the kid count was down to two. For a whole beautiful year, no one else was murdered. Which isn't the most impressive number, but we will take what we can get here. Lydia lived with her two remaining daughters, a teenaged Lydia Junior and 10-year-old Aunt Eliza. But then Aunt Eliza fell ill during a brutal winter of 1866, forcing her sister to quit her job as a clerk to care for her. Money got tight, but luckily for Mama Lydia, she still had some arsenic kicking around. Bye-bye Aunt Eliza.

• 15:57Aaron Mahnke?

  And then, there was one. Mother Lydia and daughter Lydia lived alone for months, until one spring day Lydia Junior came down with a fever. Within weeks, she was gone. And look, while Lydia Senior swore to the end that she didn't kill her 18-year-old daughter, let's be real here, her track record was not great. And neither were the girls' symptoms, which looked a heck of a lot like poisoning. And there she was, Lydia, completely miraculously alone. No mopey husband, no pesky expensive children depending on her. She was finally free, with a trail of bodies in her wake. But then again, that was only the carnage from her first marriage.

• 16:57Aaron Mahnke?

  It was a classic meet-cute. Girl goes to grocery store, meets 72-year-old widower in the produce aisle, and quickly marries him. Then girl puts arsenic in new husband's cider, and inherits $10,000 and an entire farm. Talk about a hallmark movie ending. That's right, Lydia remarried. And then she killed the guy within a year, and walked away with a pretty penny. As she later recalled, "He told me that if I would marry him, all that he was worth should be mine." Basically, the worst possible thing anyone could say to this specific lady. So, what was next for our horrible heroine? Surprise, surprise, more poisoning. Now you would think that people would stop marrying Lydia by now,

• 17:42Aaron Mahnke?

  but never underestimate the power of feminine charm. She had always been pretty, with blue eyes, dark hair, and porcelain skin. And as such, it didn't take long for her to pick up husband number three. It all started when the friends of her very dead second husband offered her a spare baby. Yeah, you heard that right. They looked at Lydia, a lady who famously had a good half dozen kids die in her care, and thought, "You know what she needs? More kids." You see, a local woman had recently died in childbirth, leaving her husband Horatio Sherman with a sickly infant and three other children to raise. Not only that, but his mother-in-law was hanging around and being a general nuisance, getting into all-out screaming fights

• 18:26Aaron Mahnke?

  with Horatio's 13-year-old daughter. In short, Horatio needed help. And given that Lydia was recently widowed herself, it seemed like the perfect match. Lydia and Horatio were married in September of 1870. She was now officially Lydia Sherman, the name by which she would go down in infamy. Her first victim in the Sherman house was tragically that infant. Lydia was convinced that the only reason Horatio's mother-in-law was still there was because of the baby. And so she figured, no baby, no mother-in-law. Two birds with one stone, right? All it took was a wee smidge of arsenic mixed into baby Frankie's milk. He died that very night.

• 19:09Aaron Mahnke?

  To Lydia's annoyance, though, it turned out that it wasn't care for the baby keeping the old woman around at all, but a continued insistence that Horatio owed her money for a piano. The priorities of everyone in this story, by the way, not the best. Exasperated, Lydia gave her the money, and the mother-in-law finally took her leave. But that didn't mean that life was all roses in the Sherman house. Horatio drank heavily, was out of work, and had a habit of not paying his bills. And then, Christmas Eve arrived. While the sorrow child herself celebrated her 46th birthday, her 13-year-old stepdaughter Ada took ill with typhoid fever. And Ada would be sick for days. The doctors didn't believe that she would ever recover.

• 19:54Aaron Mahnke?

  Horatio, by the way, was decidedly not helping. When the doctors prescribed Ada medicinal brandy, her father guzzled it down himself. As for Lydia, none of this was how she had hoped to spend the holidays. She was miserable and tired of waiting for Ada's illness to run its course. But, you know what really hits the spot? A steaming mug of arsenic tea. Lydia may have grown a year older that December, but Ada would forever be 13. I think it's fair to say that the death of his beloved daughter did nothing to help Horatio's drinking problem. What little money the family had quickly disappeared into a bottle, and the couple's marriage had entirely deteriorated.

• 20:35Aaron Mahnke?

  Finally, after he returned home from a day-long bender, Lydia had had enough. And staying true to the old adage of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," she turned to her trusty tool of choice: arsenic right in her husband's brandy. And pretty soon, he wasn't doing so hot. His doctor, Ambrose Beardley, was called and told Horatio that he had alcohol poisoning. Horatio only shrugged and took another swig from the arsenic-laced bottle. Child after child after child had died. One husband, and then another, and now a third. Only seven months in the Sherman household and Lydia had already destroyed the entire family. And all the while, no one so much as glanced her way.

• 21:19Aaron Mahnke?

  At least not until this time. Because as Horatio's condition worsened and his symptoms grew stranger, Beardsley began to suspect his diagnosis of alcohol poisoning might have been a little too literal. By now Horatio's breathing had become labored. He was unquenchably thirsty, and his skin had gone hot and dry. No, these were not the markers of a drunk. These were well-known symptoms of arsenic poisoning. Cautiously, the doctor asked Horatio if he had taken anything else besides his normal prescriptions, and Horatio insisted that no, his oh-so-lovely-wife Lydia had been a very careful pharmacist. Horatio soon died, but the good doctor wasn't letting this one go.

• 22:03Aaron Mahnke?

  He ordered the body autopsied, and three weeks later, the results came in. Horatio's liver contained enough arsenic to kill three grown men. Suddenly, Lydia's past was cracked open like a rotten egg. Body after body was exhumed, Ada's and her baby brothers, Lydia's second husband, and all of them testing positive for arsenic. It was April 16th of 1872 when Lydia first entered the New Haven courtroom where her trial would take place. She was draped in a silk-trimmed, black alpaca dress, her face obscured by a thin, black veil. Her story had already appeared in papers across the country, where she earned new

• 22:45Aaron Mahnke?

  names, ones like "The Arch-Murderess of Connecticut", "The Woman-Monster", "The Champion Husband-Killer", and despite it all, there before a packed room of jeering spectators, she insisted on her innocence.

• 23:00Aaron Mahnke?

  But it was far too late for that. Lydia Sherman's reign of terror was finally at an end. Another Christmas Eve came and went. Until on Christmas Day of 1872, while awaiting her final sentencing in her jail, Lydia gave the courts the best present they could have ever asked for: A full, gory confession. Or, well, almost full. She admitted to murdering just two of her three husbands, and only six of the children. But most believe that she was responsible for the whole Grimm collection. And don't worry, I've kept count for you. That final number of victims would be 10. Lydia swore that she'd had a religious epiphany, that she'd been saved and was changed as a woman,

• 23:43Aaron Mahnke?

  and was more than happy to die in prison if it meant atoning for her sins. Which, based on the life sentence that she soon received, was exactly what would happen. And you know what? With all that prayer and piousness, she almost fooled them. If not for the fact that, after five years of playing the repentant murderess, Lydia Sherman did what innocent people rarely do: She escaped.

• 24:24Aaron Mahnke?

  So much of Lydia's story feels like a dark fairy tale. She's an evil stepmother worse than Snow White's, a spouse killer to rival Bluebeard, and she even fulfills that strange superstition about little girls born on Christmas Eve. That date, by the way, I can't help but notice that it tends to pop up at significant moments throughout the story. Yes, her birth, but also the night that Ada falls ill, marking the start of Lydia's downfall, and the night before her final confession. It's almost like she escaped right from the pages of a Grimm brother's story. But most frightening of all was the way she killed. Not the poison itself, but rather by targeting those that she was meant to keep safe.

• 25:06Aaron Mahnke?

  Lydia, Amy, Bertha, these women were all caretakers. And their victims, the very people they were supposed to protect. It's true, we have been caring for the most vulnerable members of our society since ancient times. The 62,000-year-old skeleton from Iraq proves that. So what Lydia and her kindred killers did, it wasn't just evil. It went against one of the most essential parts of our humanity: our instinct to take care of one another. You'll be happy to know that Lydia's prison break didn't last too long. It only took a week before she was caught and placed back behind bars.

• 25:45Aaron Mahnke?

  She would die, less than a year later, on May 16th of 1878, right there in her cell. Oh, and one final thing. According to newspapers from the time, she spent her last days suffering from horrible nausea. She couldn't keep food down and vomited up all the medicine the prison tried to give her. Call it coincidence, call it karma, call it poetic justice. All we know is that, in the end, when her final moments arrived, Lydia Sherman was forced to endure the very same symptoms that she had once inflicted upon all her victims.

• 26:37Aaron Mahnke?

  I hope you enjoyed this journey through one of the biggest true crime trends of yesteryear. And while I can't speak for everyone, I personally find the breaking of trust to be the most frightening part of this legendary trope from the world of murder. Caretaking, of course, is often stereotyped as women's work, but the truth is, a lot of men do it as well. And if one story from history is to be believed, one of those men chose to abuse that very same trust roughly a century ago. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.

• 27:10Speaker 03

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 27:38Speaker 00

  Wait, have you heard about these yet? Hershey's just came out with something new, and I'm kind of obsessed. Hershey's Creme Bars. A new treat featuring the classic Hershey's Milk Chocolate everyone loves with rich layers of Salted Caramel or Affogato Creme. Two bold flavors made to match your taste, your vibe, and whatever you're into. For a more textured, more flavorful, more elevated eating experience. Try the new Hershey's Salted Caramel and Affogato Creme Bars. Available wherever you shop for snacks.

• 28:07Speaker 04

  Breathe in and reset with Lincoln Rejuvenate. An available multisensory feature in the 2027 Lincoln Navigator SUV. Experience the luxurious massage, visuals, and sense to help you relax in the driver's seat. It's your time for a reset. Visit lincoln.com to learn more. Lincoln Rejuvenate does not operate unless the vehicle is in park, when the vehicle is off, or if any doors open. Do not use the feature in a closed garage or in other enclosed areas. See owner's manual for important operating instructions. Lincoln and Navigator are trademarks of Ford or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

• 28:53Aaron Mahnke?

  It was a cold February day in 1915 when a striking man marched into a New York District Attorney's office. The 25-year-old stranger had a dark beard and wore a heavy corduroy hunting costume, complete with knee breeches, golf stockings, and a small alpine-tipped hat with a jaunty feather. Chain-smoking Egyptian cigarettes, the man frantically waved down the policeman on duty, and then in a thick Austrian accent, he began to confess. To what exactly? Well, that would be mass murder. He worked, this man explained, as a nurse at the German Oddfellows' home in Yonkers. And in his time there, he insisted that he had killed eight people under his care,

• 29:37Aaron Mahnke?

  and even listed each victim by name. His own name, he said, was Frederick Morse, a name that he had bestowed upon himself after arriving in New York the previous year. Morse, he explained, meant "death." "I wanted my past to be dead," he told the bewildered police officers. "I wanted to begin a new life." And at first, no one took him seriously. They figured that he was a bit off his rocker, so to speak, and sent him off for psychiatric evaluation. But figuring that it was better to be safe than sorry, the police did give that odd fellow's home a call and said, "Hey, have you noticed any murders lately?" And the surgeon there, he flat-out laughed at

• 30:17Aaron Mahnke?

  them. No, the home insisted all the patients that Frederick had named were dead, but of natural causes. Nothing to worry about. And still, Frederick was unshakable in his story. "I am no more crazy than you are," he told the detectives on the case, and then he urged them to interview his former coworkers. Which, amazingly, they did, only to find the nurses singing a very different tune than the surgeon had. In short, they corroborated every word Frederick had said. More than once, they said, rooms in which Frederick was attending to a dying resident smelled strongly of chloroform. One colleague said that Frederick had shown him a bottle

• 30:58Aaron Mahnke?

  of chloroform and announced, and I quote, "That's the stuff that puts them out of the way." Another recounted an incident in which he asked Frederick why he was shaving an elderly resident, to which Frederick replied, "To save the undertaker the trouble." Yeah, not an ideal thing to say. Worse yet, the fact that the man died just two hours later. Frederick had also been heard to threaten several residents. In one particular colorful example, an old man complained that his room was too cold, only for Frederick to reply, and I quote, "If you don't stop making so much trouble, I'll send you to where there will be more heat than you want." Now, you're probably wondering why on earth anyone would let this guy work at a nursing home for so long.

• 31:43Aaron Mahnke?

  Heck, he didn't even have any formal medical training. But Frederick claimed that his actions had been ordered by a higher up at the hospital, a fact that was never proven, by the way. Furthermore, he insisted the killings had been done not out of cruelty, but compassion. "When you give an old person chloroform," he said, "it's like putting a child to sleep. It frees them from all pain. It is humane and kind-hearted." He even claimed that several of the people he killed had asked him to help them die peacefully, and that he only killed people who would have died anyway. Although, I'll be honest here, given the deeply creepy vibes his colleagues described, I'm not really sure that I buy that.

• 32:24Aaron Mahnke?

  Officially deemed "not well mentally," which is an understatement for sure, Frederick was sent to an asylum to await deportation back to his native Austria. Oh, and it's worth noting here that he repeatedly asked to be given a position as an orderly, a request that was, for obvious reasons, very much refused. This asylum, by the way, happened to be a low-security facility, which is an important detail because when, in May of 1916, Frederick learned that his deportation was imminent, he immediately escaped, never to be found. Flash forward a few years, it's 1919 now, and a factory worker in Torrington, Connecticut,

• 33:05Aaron Mahnke?

  is flipping through a magazine when he sees a familiar face between the pages. It's a photograph of a man who the caption identifies as a "Frederick Morse, Escaped Mass Murderer." But that can't be right, because the factory worker knows this guy. Actually, he used to work with him, up until just a year prior. It had been a whole to-do, in fact. This fellow that the factory worker spotted in the magazine, a guy who had been known as Dr. Frederick Maurice Benno, had fled Torrington after coming under suspicion. Not as a murderer, by the way, but as a German spy. He vanished overnight, leaving behind a letter stating his intent to take his own life.

• 33:45Aaron Mahnke?

  And now, here was his face, in crystal-clear black and white, Dr. Frederick Benno, who, it turns out, had been one and the same as Frederick Morse. And it seems that, once again, Frederick had killed his past and started a whole new life. In 1923, a skeleton believed to belong to Frederick was found in the woods near Torrington. It was sun-bleached and stained by forest fire smoke. His clothes had long since rotted away, but still, certain items remained intact. A pair of shoes, a few odds and ends, and most importantly, a medicine bottle, which most assume contained whatever substance the man had used to take his life.

• 34:28Aaron Mahnke?

  It seems Frederick Morse's final poisoning victim was none other than himself. By the way, back in that factory, it's worth mentioning which department Frederick had worked in, because you see, he wasn't simply assembling machine parts or sealing packages. No, Frederick Morse, aka Dr. Benno, worked to produce something deeply ironic: life-saving first aid supplies.

• 35:07Aaron Mahnke?

  This episode of Lore was produced by me, Aaron Mahnke, and was written by Jenna Rose Nethercott with research by Cassandra DeAlba and music by Chad Lawson. Just a reminder, I have a brand-new history book coming out on August 4th called Exhumed, which explores the roots of the New England vampire panic through the lens of centuries of folklore, medical advancements, pseudoscience, and philosophy. It's available for preorder right now, and if you preorder the hardcover, my publisher has a cool webpage set up where you can submit your receipt and get a free gorgeous tote bag. Head over to aaronmahnke.com/exhumed to lock in your copy today. The link is in the description. Don't like hearing ads on Lore? Well, there's a paid version on Apple Podcasts and Patreon that is 100% ad-free.

• 35:51Aaron Mahnke?

  Subscribers also get weekly mini-bonus episodes called Lore Bites, and Patreon members get discounts on Lore merch. Learn more over at lorepodcast.com/support. Follow the show on YouTube Threads, Blue Sky, and Instagram. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 36:53Speaker 04

  Breathe in and reset with Lincoln Rejuvenate, an available multisensory feature in the 2027 Lincoln Navigator SUV. Experience the luxurious massage, visuals, and sense to help you relax in the driver's seat. It's your time for a reset. Visit lincoln.com to learn more. Lincoln Rejuvenate does not operate unless the vehicle is in park. When the vehicle is off or if any doors open, do not use the feature in a closed garage or in other enclosed areas. See owner's manual for important operating instructions. Lincoln and Navigator trademarks of Ford or its affiliates. All rights reserved.