Is This New York's Craziest Murder Case?

This week we're revisiting a favourite episode set in New York at the end of the 20th century. The year is 1897, and this murder case has it all: a villain, an incredibly useless police force, and a duck who saves the day. The incredible Dr Cat Byers (@heymorguegirl) joins Maddy and Anthony to tell this story. Edited by Tomos Delargy. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long. After Dark is a History Hit podcast. History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™ Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards. Click to place your vote on the Spotify mobile app: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:23Speaker 00

  Hello and welcome to After Dark. Now, we're going to open this episode with a quote from our guest today, all about the case that we're going to be discussing. And the quote is this: "This 1897 murder in New York was one of those stories everyone in the city knew about, as reporters battled it out to be the first to get the big scoop. It's got everything you could want in a salacious tabloid tale: jealousy, love triangles, baby farms, bathhouses, and of course, a violent murder. Oh, and a duck named Julia accidentally leading the police to a vital clue." To set the scene, here's Antony.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  The afternoon of Saturday, June 26th, 1897, was hot and humid in New York City. All around Manhattan's many piers, children splashed about in the cool water. James McKenna and John McGuire had jumped into the river at the foot of East 11th Street, when they saw something odd floating towards them: a large, brightly coloured package. Dreaming of treasure fallen from a ship, they swam out to it and pulled it back to the dock. Once retrieved, the boys could see that it was oddly bulky. A small crowd of onlookers gathered, and one of them passed a knife to the boys in the water.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  They scored a tear in the thick red and golden oilcloth, excited to discover what they'd found. Through the tear they made, they saw something white in sight, and drew out the blade, noting a sticky, tacky substance along its edge. Despite the humidity and the heat of the sun, a shiver passed through the boys, and the crowd realised what they had found. With urgency now, the package was hauled out of the water. Someone fetched a policeman. The parcel lay there for a while before anyone dared to peel back the red and gold wrapping any further. When finally they did unwrap the floating package, their worst fears were realised.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  Inside was the mutilated torso of a human being, the chest and arms, but no head, no stomach, or legs. Welcome to After Dark, where in this episode, we aim to piece together the history of the scattered Dutchman.

• 4:18Speaker 00

  Fantastic pun to start with.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 4:21Speaker 00

  I've also never had a more girl caption read back to me before. It was quite fun.

• 4:26Speaker 02

  Well, there we go. You might have guessed that in today's episode, we're joined back with Dr Kat Byers, one of our all-time favourite guests. We've just done an episode with Kat about the Guoffay murder case in Paris. And this is kind of a companion episode to that. But whereas France had, in the 19th century, a lot of very clever, very groundbreaking detectives, New York, we're about to find out, was a little bit more chaotic. Some might even say a bit farcical. Kat, welcome back to After Dark.

• 4:58Speaker 00

  Thank you. It's great to be back.

• 5:00Speaker 02

  It's so good to have you here. I am obsessed with this story, and obviously the duck, most importantly of all.

• 5:07Speaker 00

  Just for Julia, honestly. She's a star.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  She really is. Okay, so I just want to give us a little bit of context before we dive into the story here, because this is a really, really interesting moment for New York City, right? So we're in 1897, and this is a moment when the city, as we would recognise it today, is starting to emerge. So in Manhattan, the skyscrapers are literally taking off and shooting into the air. And the American economy is absolutely booming in this moment. This is the time that's known as the Golden Age, right? There's huge wealth to be made, and there's huge levels of immigration as well. So arriving from Europe and further beyond are hundreds of thousands of people who are all coming into the city through Ellis Island.

• 5:52Speaker 02

  And if you look at old photos of this time, what is so fascinating is you see the streets of the city are absolutely teeming. So people are, I mean, really almost piled up on top of each other, right? This is, this is an extraordinary moment of sort of busyness and bustle. The other thing that's happening in this moment is that in America, there's a newly-elected president, William McKinley, who is really famous for one thing, and that is being assassinated, which hasn't happened yet, to be fair. That will happen in 1901. So there we go. There's a little bit of a feel for what this time period in the city might look like and sound like. But let's get to the story. Kat, we have a body.

• 6:32Speaker 00

  Part of a body.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  Yes, very importantly, part of a body that's been discovered. These boys find it in the water. What happens next? Where is it taken?

• 6:41Speaker 00

  So as with any pieces of bodies found in New York, it's taken to the morgue. And then a couple of days later, another part of what appears to be the same body is found just outside of New York by a poor man and his son, blueberry picking. Got these two pieces, they take them to the morgue, and obviously, as you would assume, a police investigation starts.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Now, are they assuming this is the same body? Or are they like, oh, we're just finding loads of body parts? Or are they connecting pretty quickly?

• 7:13Speaker 00

  This one, they're connecting pretty quickly. I mean, they do find body parts fairly frequently, but these two, it's obvious that they're from the same body. So they're like, right, we've got two pieces. I mean, from just the one, you'd be quite clear that, you know, probably a suspicious situation, but having two, you're likely someone's tried to hide this. So it's at the morgue, and obviously trying to figure it out sort of begins. The first instinct is maybe it's a medical cadaver. So obviously, we've got this going. We talked previously about the New York morgue and body sales. So, you know, sort of a lot of body part business is going on at the morgue anyway. So first, they're like, maybe this is someone used it for a medical cadaver and just threw it in the river afterwards. But then based on the way that the body's been cut, they think, okay, this isn't from a medical scenario. But apart from that, they haven't got any clues whatsoever.

• 7:58Speaker 00

  It's a man who's quite muscular and well-built, but he has really smooth hands and manicured nails. So there's this immediate confusion of like, okay, he's got a, he looks like he maybe has a physical labouring job, but he's got these really smooth, sort of tidy hands. So at this point, they have absolutely nothing, like nothing to identify him beyond his torso and his hands.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  That is very confused. I mean, my mind can't come up with a, an explanation for that. So I can, I can totally, you know, we're saying like, oh, they can't solve this and this is blah, blah, blah. But actually, that's quite confusing. I'm confused by this. But the backdrop, of course, as you can well imagine, is that the police are involved, as we say, and as you say, Kat, they're connecting these threads pretty quickly. But then also the press starts to get involved. So what does the combination of the police involvement and the press involvement, how does that stir things up at the time?

• 8:54Speaker 00

  So also, very kind of you to be so generous to the police that not be able to figure this out.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Thank you. I am an empath. What can I say?

• 9:03Speaker 00

  It's not their fault. It's their job when they can't figure it out. So essentially, what's happening in this moment is that, obviously, this is announced in the press, and we're also at this moment where, as we've talked about before, like the press in the 19th century is really like, it's when you've got this real tabloid press happening and like big selling salacious stories, selling murder, selling crime. And so the press hears about this, and they are like, this is fantastic. So there's all these like massive stories, and you've got these big rivalries going on with massive newspapers as well, of like who gets a scoop. So that's adding to all this, and you've got reporters descending on the morgue, trying to figure it out, asking the police questions. And then at the same time, the police themselves are not the most professional outfit at this point. So the New York police is like a relatively young police force still.

• 9:49Speaker 00

  And it's also just incredibly corrupt. And you know, I'm sure there's some people in the police who are like trying really hard and good at their job, but in general, it's a really corrupt institution. And this is in eighteen ninety seven, and literally two years before Theodore Roosevelt, who then goes on to be president, has become the sort of head of the police. He's been brought in to try and sort out the police because it's so corrupt. And it's so embedded in all the different like institutions in the city. This is also the year when all the morgue scandal stuff kicks off. So like, this is the setup we've got is not only are the police and the morgue not very good at their jobs, everybody also knows that they're not very good at their jobs. So these are coming together. So there's an element where the press are like, we want to solve this mostly

• 10:32Speaker 00

  because we want a scoop. But actually, we're probably going to be a bit more imaginative and a bit more focused on solving it than the police. And you've got, yeah, so all these people start coming to the morgue. You've got palm readers, you've got occultists, you've got people being like, I'm a fortunate guy, I can communicate with the spirit. You've got a phrenologist, even though there's no head, like, you've got all these people coming and reporting who they think it might be. You've got all these women who are like looking for a missing husband or his missing lover. All these people descending on the morgue, but as of yet, they have not been able to figure it out.

• 11:03Speaker 02

  It's such an interesting contrast, isn't it, Kat, from the previous episode that we've just done about the Guoffe case in Paris, where the police are key to solving what's happening. And it's their incredibly detailed and groundbreaking forensic work that actually catches the two killers in that story. And if you haven't listened to that episode, listeners, do go back and listen to that. I have here a quote from a New York detective, presumably about this case, and it gives a real flavour of where the police are at and what the tone of policing in New York is, right? It's quite a long quote, but I'm gonna read it. It says, "I believe that this most atrocious murder was committed by a foreigner. In the whole history of crime in this country, murders which

• 11:48Speaker 02

  were done with like ferocity as this have always been committed by foreigners, usually those of a warmer climate than ours." All right. "I should judge, from what I've heard of this case, the murderer is Sicilian, or possibly a Spaniard or a Cuban. Maybe a Spanish spy has been put out of the way by Cubans." I mean, it's just, it goes on and on. I suppose, on the one hand, this speaks to what a diverse place New York already was at the end of the nineteenth century, and something of those class and racial tensions that were going on, and particularly those clashes therefore with the police. But presumably then, as well as now, this was an astonishing thing to say, surely.

• 12:29Speaker 00

  I think it was astonishing in the sense of, is that really all you've got to go on is there's a red and gold oil cloth? Maybe Spaniards love red and gold. That'll be who did it. So I think in that sense, it is kind of astonishing, but it's also, they just didn't have anything. It's interesting if we think about it compared to the last case we talked about, where you had this incredible forensic doctor who was able to be like, even based on a body that is so far decomposed, I can figure out who it is. In this case, it was like, yeah, we don't, we don't really have the ability or the skill or the technique to do that here yet. So we just don't know who it is. But unfortunately, some intrepid reporters step up. So they start pulling the clues together.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  And one of those clues, I've been really struck by the description of the oil cloth the whole way through. I've been kind of going, we're talking about this oil cloth an awful lot here. We're talking about the, the, the colours, we're talking about the blah, blah, blah. But actually, it turns out to be quite a key clue, right?

• 13:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, so obviously, it's quite a distinctive thing. And again, like the Guoffe case, if you've got at least a material object, you're like, we can go with this. And they figure out where it was purchased. So they find this little shop in Astoria, and this woman says, "Oh, I sold it to a German housewife named Augusta Nack."

• 13:45Speaker 01

  That sounds like a character's name.

• 13:46Speaker 02

  I know. It does, it does. But she's German, so she's foreign. So immediately, we're not trusting her in the context of this world.

• 13:52Speaker 00

  She is foreign, although there's a lot of Germans in New York at this period. But yes, so she's, this woman called Augusta Nack. And so they have this clue. So they start to be a bit like, okay, what was the situation with this woman called Augusta? And then they also have another reporter who has been thinking a lot about the body and about this idea of it being really muscular, but having these smooth hands. And he's like, this reminds me of something. What does this remind me of? And he often goes to one of the bathhouses to get like a scrub. And he's like, wait a second, this is like the guys at the bathhouse who obviously have very muscular.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  Stop it. That's the gayest thing I've ever heard.

• 14:28Speaker 00

  He just goes for fun. He's definitely, he's definitely a super straight guy. He just goes there after work. Anyway, he goes to his bathhouse like five times a week. And so he goes, and he questions all these different bathhouses. And then at one of them, they're like, oh, yeah, actually, we have this guy called William Goldenstap, this Dutch guy, who hasn't turned up for work recently because he went off to see this country house with his girlfriend. And so we haven't seen him. And so then they get him, like some employees in the bathhouse, to come to the morgue and see if they recognise the body.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  Well, that's kind of clever. Well, I guess it's not really clever. It's just they so, they happen by that information, don't they, really?

• 15:05Speaker 00

  I mean, it's clever on behalf of the reporters, not particularly clever. I mean, the police are like, great, thanks guys.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks so much for doing our work. Yeah. Okay, so the press digs up this woman, Augusta Nack, and we know that she bought the red and gold oil cloth. That's gotta be suspicious right away. I mean, she must be in our frame as a suspect, right, Kat?

• 15:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, because I mean, the body part was obviously wrapped in this, and it's not the most common thing in the world to be wrapped in. So this is when they start really looking closely into Augusta.

• 15:37Speaker 02

  And I have a picture of Augusta here, which I'm going to describe to you because it's, it's quite telling, I think, of how people were perceiving her. This is very clearly a newspaper sort of sketch of her. And she looks very severe. She's, I suppose, a middle aged woman. She's got white dark hair with these sort of, you've got very late nineteenth century curly fringe that's kind of in like two little curtains either side of your forehead. And she's got quite a sort of ugly elaborate hat on her head with some feathers and quite a lot of ribbon. And I don't know if it's maybe a fur coat or something, some kind of collar that's puffed out or something, but she just, she looks quite, not exactly overdressed, but like she's trying to look more respectable

• 16:19Speaker 02

  than she maybe is. And she's also very suspicious, got this very high, kind of dark brow that's, yeah, kind of looming over these quite sad looking eyes and this very sort of sharp, severe face and nose. And then, on the other hand, we have a little illustration of William, the Dutchman who's missing. And this is interesting considering there's no head to this body. But the newspapers have given it a go anyway. And he, unlike Augusta, is, I would say, good looking. He's got this lovely neat sort of central parting with his hair combed down the side. He looks very respectable. He's got a nice cravat right up under his neck. And he's got the most fantastic moustache, quite fancy

• 17:01Speaker 02

  and late nineteenth century moustache. So I'm quite into that. But it's interesting already, the portrayal of some of the people involved in the case by the media, not only are they kind of picking up these clues and following the trail, I suppose, but in some ways actually sort of rewriting or making assumptions about the stories they go along as well.

• 17:20Speaker 00

  I mean, I think a little bit, and I think there was definitely a lot of that in the nineteenth century of kind of like, looking like a criminal versus not looking like a criminal. I think, and like in case of Augusta Nack, it might have just been quite accurate. They described her at one point as pleasant yet repellent. And she seemed to be like very seductive, and she did have like various sort of men circling around her. But I think that maybe, she also was only in her thirties, and I think she looked pretty hard worn for her thirties, no offence to her. The impression I get is that she was quite a terrifying woman. And so she, they basically, they traced that Goldenstap had been, you know, that had been his girlfriend. And so they go and they interview her, and then they track down her husband because they think, oh, maybe her, maybe it was like a jealous husband

• 18:03Speaker 00

  situation. And her husband, who's this baker called Herman, is like, "We broke up a year and a half ago. She was cheating on me. I have nothing to do with her. Please keep me away from Augusta."

• 18:11Speaker 01

  This is Augusta's husband?

• 18:13Speaker 00

  Augusta's actual husband. She does have an actual husband.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:16Speaker 00

  And it turns out that William had moved in with them as a lodger. And then she'd just taken up with William.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 18:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  He sounds like a bit of a ride. And he has a girlfriend. Then we have this picture of Augusta, who, who I'd be like, I know, like, yeah, I don't want to cast any, she must have been very funny, put it that way. She must have had a great personality.

• 18:39Speaker 00

  Look, I think the charisma doesn't necessarily come off the page.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, no. But let's not doubt that it was there.

• 18:45Speaker 00

  It was, it was there. Like, Augusta was, well, she literally had men fighting over her.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  Yes. So this is how they're connected. William and Augusta are in knocking boots.

• 18:56Speaker 00

  Yeah. And they're like, okay, this is where, and she's like, oh, no, it was nothing to do with me, nothing to do with me. And then there's a third man that's involved. Because it turns out that after Augusta left her husband to be with Bill, they got another lodger, this also is like a whole theme, called Martin. And then Martin and Augusta start getting together.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  Go on, Augusta.

• 19:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, New York, there you go. And then William finds out, beats Martin up, and Martin's in the hospital for a while, and then he gets fired from his job as a barber because he comes in with two black eyes. So now the police are learning about all this, and they're like, okay, there's this whole setup going on with this Augusta woman in the middle. And then all these rumours start swirling that Augusta is not in fact a midwife and is actually an illegal abortionist. And so we have all of this going on. And the newspapers, it's the newspapers that are picking all this stuff up, and they're like running around interviewing people, they're like running after Herman's, like Baker's truck, and he's like, please leave me alone. I left that woman. I'm already a girl. Took up with the lodger in my house, like, leave me alone.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I feel bad for Herman. Wow, okay.

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• 22:28Speaker 02

  Wow. So presumably this was not an untypical situation for a lot of people living in the city, right? You know, we think of the 19th century as adhering to very strict sort of marital boundaries and all of that.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  No, stop for a second. Stop for a second. Wait. People chasing around trucks, a lover with no head and no arms and whatever it is.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  Murder aside.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  Run of the mill, run of the mill stuff here.

• 22:53Speaker 00

  Normalize 19th century throuples, guys.

• 22:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 22:56Speaker 00

  It's the story that people aren't getting.

• 22:59Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 22:59Speaker 00

  This is what's been happening.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  Okay, fine. There's, look, let's just take the headless guy out of the equation for a second. But I do think that, you know, people had affairs all the time. People broke up with their spouses and had strange and unusual living arrangements all the time. And I think that's, I mean, we often talk about, you know, this is why true crime is so useful and interesting to historians because it gives you a way into and a record of the lives of people who might otherwise have disappeared from the written archive, right? And I think this is exactly that. This is just, we're sort of laughing. It's quite a sort of hilarious setup. And yeah, kind of Victorian throuple. But the only reason we know about this is because one of them turns up dead. And I think that's, it's just so amazing that we have that information.

• 23:43Speaker 02

  Now, Kat, let's get to the important stuff here because where does this duck come in? There's a duck in this case. Come on, what's going on?

• 23:51Speaker 00

  Where does the duck come in? Rather than what you've just said, I think that's so true. And I think that we always have this idea of the 19th century as like people living these really prim lives. And obviously there is this very strong kind of like moral and social ideology of what appropriate and inappropriate ways to live. But it doesn't mean that most people are actually living that way or that people really cared that much when you got down to it. Because I think the idea of like, turns out your neighbour's having an affair, apart somewhere, throuple, like, I just don't think people would have cared that much. And I think these things are normalised and I always find it sort of frustrating when you read things and people assume that everyone around that person would have behaved a certain way to an affair, to an unwed pregnancy, whatever it was, when you're like, I think a lot of people were just kind of getting by. And like, maybe there would have been some external judgement or like some illusion of judgement, but also people just sort of lived their lives.

• 24:36Speaker 00

  But anyway, yes, the duck, the vital part of the story. So, all this stuff is going on and the police are now, are now actually involved and they're investigating and they're interviewing people. And then we have, like, I think it's before all this, so Martin is also just not the smartest guy in the world and he just cannot stop mouthing off. And he goes to his barber shop. So also for like months leading up to this, he kept going to the barber shop and being like, hey, random question, guys, like, do you know much about poison? Like, hey, do you know where I can get like a massive knife? So he's like, been doing this for like, for ages. And also, everybody knows that he hates this guy, William, because of the whole situation and that William obviously beat him up. And he's kind of like feeling, he's like sort of threatened by him and he's like, oh, I can't believe this guy, like, I should get rid of him.

• 25:21Speaker 00

  So he's literally going around town being like, you know, making it known that he hates William, the handsome Dutch masseuse guy. And then police don't have the crime scene, so they've got all the stuff, it seems really, really suspicious. They also go to Augusta's apartment and search it, they find a pistol, all this stuff's coming together, but haven't got a crime scene. But then, the duck comes into the story. So, what happened is that they had rented a house, Gasset's said in New York, in a place called Woodside. And Augusta had said to William, who I think she was still involved with, this is also very murky, like, I think she was still involved with both of them. And they set up this plan and so she says to William, like, oh, I'm thinking of starting this baby farm, do you want to come up and see the house with me?

• 26:04Speaker 00

  Like, we could live there and like run it together. She's also telling Martin, like, oh, you could run a baby farm with me and you can have a barber shop slash baby farms. And he's like playing them off.

• 26:13Speaker 02

  And Kat, just for our listeners who haven't heard our episode on Amelia Dyer and baby farms, can you just tell us briefly what a baby farm is in the 19th century?

• 26:21Speaker 00

  So, it's basically somewhere where if you couldn't afford to take care of your child, you would pay a woman, use your woman running a quote baby farm to take care of that child, maybe ongoing or maybe just you'd give the child totally to them for a lump sum of money. And obviously, a lot of people running these farms had no incentive to take care of the children and they would just take the money and so let children die or in some cases, murder them. So that's the kind of setup we've got going over here. It's also like Augusta's like, she's, she's not a great girl, like, she's got a lot of terrible criminal activity going on. Anyway, so she, they lure William up to this house and shakes him upstairs and Martin

• 27:01Speaker 00

  is hiding in a cupboard and he leaps out and shoots William, stabs him and then like cuts him up, so like really just very much kills him. And then they dismember the body, pack it up in these oil skins. And then to clear out the house, Martin turns the taps on because he doesn't really know much about cleaning, leaves the tap running and it's like, that'll just sweep all the blood out of the house, it'll go down the drain, it'd be great. What he doesn't realise is that this actually just creates a puddle outside the house for days and days of this kind of like bloody water. And nearby this house, it's a farm. And on this farm, there's a duck called Julia.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  Are you making up that she's called Julia?

• 27:41Speaker 00

  Genuinely, she's called Julia. This is part of the narrative, like, she's, she is a big part of the story. Her name is actually Julia. It's a great name for a duck.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  Great.

• 27:49Speaker 00

  Anyway, she, I imagine perhaps that she hadn't been named prior to this case happening and then when it all blew up, her neighbour was, the guy who owns her was probably like, she's my favourite duck, this is her name, it's his moment for the spotlight.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 28:00Speaker 00

  He may have just been calling her like the duck beforehand. Anyway, Julia like goes on a little walk as he did in the countryside and then comes back and her owner notices that she's like covered in what looks like blood.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  Julia, what have you been doing?

• 28:13Speaker 00

  So Julia's been committing crimes in the countryside. He inspects her and finds that there's no injury. So he is like, obviously in my imagination, he's like, Julia, lead, lead me to the crime. I think he probably just like follows like he's been.

• 28:26Speaker 02

  She waddles off.

• 28:27Speaker 00

  Exactly. She's like, come with me. And then he finds this pool of blood and goes into the house and is like, oh my god, there seems to have been a murder here because they haven't cleaned up properly. And then contacts the police and then the police obviously tie this all together. And they're like, right, well now we've got the scene of the crime and we've got some murder weapons and we've got two people who clearly did this or were absolutely involved in this and we can prove that they knew him and they both had a motive. Because it also comes out from Martin and also from ex-husband Herman that Augusta was nervous about William giving away her whole baby farm, illegal abortion business

• 29:10Speaker 00

  things and he, she was maybe being blackmailed by him. So she definitely had a reason to want him killed. Apparently, he also tried to get someone to murder her ex-husband, but that obviously didn't work. And so then they are put on trial.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  Now, one thing I just want to inject here while we're going through this is, this is a message for producer Freddie, producer Stu and senior producer Charlotte. The next time we have Kat on, can somebody vet her stories that they're actually true? Because I think she is making shit up just to come on this podcast. This is the most bizarre thing I have heard some stories over the last two years on this podcast, but a duck genuinely kind of helping to solve a murder has to be right up there with, with some of the best material we've had. You're welcome, After Dark listeners, you're very, very welcome.

• 29:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, Julia the duck and she, I think she just hasn't had the recognition that she deserves for this case.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  She hasn't had the mini-series, being played by Saran Jones.

• 30:07Speaker 00

  Exactly, she did so well. Yeah, ducks solving crimes. Yeah, and I think it is one of those things where obviously they had all the other pieces and, you know, they probably would have found the house eventually, but it's a great way to get to the house. But I mean, I'm sure you guys have experienced this because of all the episodes you've done that sometimes there's stuff that is absolutely stranger than fiction. And if something you read about it in a fiction book, you'd be like, massive bit on the nose. That wouldn't happen like that.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  We can't, we can't put that in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They won't buy that, yeah.

• 30:33Speaker 00

  There's no way they would buy this woman with her illegal baby farm luring one of her lovers in her throuple up to this house to murder him.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  If you submitted this as a novel to your editor and the big twist was a duck found the blood and therefore the crime was solved, the editor would be like, we have a bit of a plotting issue here, like this, this, you know, we're not doing this.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  Did you lose interest in the last third of the book?

• 30:58Speaker 02

  Did you give up and just thought, what could possibly solve this? It's interesting for me because I think when we started this conversation, I was thinking this would be, I was kind of picturing like the set of something like, I know it's set a bit earlier, but like sort of gangs of New York style, like, you know, kind of gritty city streets and poverty and lots of immigrants kind of living cheek by jowl in this very tense environment and the police kind of being on the exterior of that and, and sort of bussed up against it in terms of that tension. But actually, we're looking at this place on Long Island, just outside of New York, but also like, it's so bucolic, there's a farm next door and... It's so, I suppose it would have been so shocking at the time to think that in this respectable,

• 31:39Speaker 02

  at least semi-rural setting, where there are lovely named ducks that are beloved by their owners, flopping around in puddles, that there would be a couple who, A, were plotting and capable of carrying out a murder, but also that planned to move into that neighbourhood to run a baby farm and possibly provide illegal abortions. That must have been so salacious for the 19th century reader coming across this story.

• 32:05Speaker 00

  This thing about the countryside, this is why I'm scared of the countryside, because you just don't know what people are up to. But I think there is that, and I think at the time, like, I don't know if people would have been shocked at this happening, because also, I mean, like, so many cases in the 19th century, you know, ones that didn't really make it out of the local area and ones that were a massive deal, were scenarios of like, you know, a murder happening somewhere where people didn't expect. Or, you know, the tiny town, we know, it's that classic trope, and it's a trope for a reason of like, you know, in this tiny, beautiful town, something dark was lurking. It's like the entire, like, David Lynch filmography. Like, I think there's, there's an element of, obviously, the story was surprising, there's a reason why

• 32:49Speaker 00

  they said sort of trial of the century, although they say that like every other year. But it also, I think, just, I don't know, there was very much this gritty life in New York at the time, like you're saying, this kind of gangs of New York thing, that really was a reality, that people lived incredibly hard, incredibly difficult, brutal lives. Not everybody, but there was, it was like a really brutal time. And so I think that, you know, obviously, this is an extreme example, but I also don't think that people would have been shocked at what other people around them were capable of in that way. And again, these stories are drummed up, like, they're made bigger by the tabloids, and there's huge full-page spreads, and people get really obsessed with it. And the duck really adds a whole other dimension, but I don't think it would have been

• 33:34Speaker 00

  really shocking in that way.

• 33:37Speaker 01

  Hmm, it's so interesting to think about the ordinariness of murder, and that's an odd phrase, and I don't, I don't mean it to sound glib, but actually, it's a very interesting thought exercise to think about the ordinariness of murder. That's, that's really, really interesting.

• 33:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it's something that I think with the morgues, like, I come across, obviously, all the time, that, you know, you have these big cases, and again, some of them are massively blown up, but the vast majority of cases, even the ones that are blown up, are about, like, a domestic dispute, ultimately. You know, I mean, they're like a romantic entanglement, they're about money, they're about jealousy, they're about all these different things. Even, you know, the one that we did last time I was on about the Goofy case, is it financially motivated? There's three people in this, caught up in these circumstances. So I think there's that as well, is that, like, murder, it's not ordinary, but it is, most of the scenarios are like human interactions and like human complexities that end up just being pushed to the extreme or like absolutely blowing up. But you can, I think, is one of the reasons we're all fascinated by

• 34:36Speaker 00

  your crime is because it's like what happens when humans are pushed past the limit, or when they break the social code, which says you don't do that, even if you have been betrayed, blackmailed, all these other things.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  And that's why, as well, I suppose, we're so obsessed with detective stories of this era and later, because those are the people who come by and put that order back together again, and say, no, no, that was a blip, everything is fine, you don't need to look beneath the surface of other people's lives, it's all good. You know, which is very kind of Agatha Christie, right? This idea that in every, again, like you were saying, Kat, you know, every picturesque village in England, there's someone waiting to shoot their husband or poison the housekeeper or whatever it is, that everyone has the capability, I suppose, within them to do that.

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• 36:40Speaker 02

  So obviously, thanks to Julia, the crime is solved. And you mentioned that Augusta and Martin are arrested. So presumably, they're taken to trial. What happens at that trial? And is it a big sensation, considering it's such a big story in the press?

• 36:56Speaker 00

  The trial is a massive sensation, and obviously, it's reported on all day, every day, and also internationally. So again, like, you see with all these kind of cases, there's, you know, they're reporting on in the UK, they're reporting on wherever, and everyone is like absolutely gripped. And I think especially, it's another case where everyone fits into, like, really great stereotypes. And so obviously, the more that people fit into a stereotype, the more people are like, this is, this feels like reading detective fiction. So they have this trial, and they both kind of turn on each other. So Augusta also has been really, she's just kept her cool the whole time. There was this one moment before the trial when they, so they found some legs as well, at some point, they found some other part of the body, they never found the head, but they found some legs, and they like, present her with the legs, and she's like, I'm not bothered that, I'm not having any reaction to these. And I think apparently,

• 37:41Speaker 00

  she also starts charging people in prison to come and see her. She's like, oh, you can come see me, like, 25 cents. And then she, like, refuses to say anything, and then Martin kind of gives his whole version of the story, which is that she made him do it. And then her story is like, he was all his idea and she was an accessory. So obviously, it's that kind of classic thing of being like, you know, whose fault is it gonna be? And he gets this amazing lawyer, who, I really wish someone would write a book about this guy, but he destroyed all his own records, obviously, because he was a crooked lawyer. And he was like this really flamboyant guy at the time, he was famous for defending, like, all the, like, sort of lowlifes of New York. And apparently, once managed to get this woman acquitted, who'd shot her lover four times,

• 38:26Speaker 00

  because he said that she pulled the trigger accidentally, four times, like, every single time was an accident. So this guy is like so good to Martin, but I think he thinks he's gonna go.

• 38:33Speaker 02

  He sounds like, um, who's the lawyer in Chicago in the 1920s, right?

• 38:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. Called Howe. Anyway, so he's the lawyer, but at the end of the day, the evidence is just too strong against the fact that, like, Martin did it, like, Augusta was definitely involved, but Martin did it. Um, and then he's sentenced, he's sentenced to the, I think it's the electric chair, so he's executed for it, and she gets 20 years in prison. And obviously, it's on those trials where they bring in all these different witnesses, they bring in her husband, they bring in the morgue keeper, like, all these other people involved. But in the end, it's, uh, it's Martin that is executed for the crime.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 39:10Speaker 00

  And then she gets out of prison after, I want to say, 15 years. And then for a bit, she tries to get a job as a prison warden. So she's like-

• 39:19Speaker 01

  She really enjoyed her time there.

• 39:21Speaker 00

  But literally, she was like, I really understand how this whole business works, like, I should be a prison warden now. But she doesn't get a job as that. And then she changes her name and like sets up a shop, but she stays in New York, so we think she'll leave, and she was like, no, no, I'm staying.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  It's interesting, Kat, because I've got a picture of her here, and, you know, often when we have, you know, we're talking about the illustration earlier, and we're like, oh, well, you know, often when we are faced with these things, we have to take them with a pinch of salt. Well, this is a photograph, and it ain't a million miles off what the drawing shows, to be perfectly honest. She, she seems like a serious, a serious woman, actually, but I suppose a woman of a certain age, yeah, she's, she's a really interesting character. And another, another person who seems to have a savviness about her position in this, it almost seems sometimes, I'm gonna say this, and I'd just be interested to know what both of you think, actually, but it sometimes it seems that even contemporary minds, as much as they

• 40:14Speaker 01

  maligned women, and God, did they, they sometimes couldn't quite get to the ends of the thing of going, and she was monstrous, and she potentially was somebody who is capable of murder, is capable of manipulation, is, it was, it was almost like their misogyny extended so far that they couldn't possibly put women in some of the most extreme situations that they are capable of going to. Do you think that's fair, or do you think that's, that's a bit of an odd reading?

• 40:45Speaker 00

  Oh, no, I absolutely agree. And I think there is that extent to which it's like, it's like a weirdly protective misogyny or something. And it's this idea of like, they can't be an entire person, which extends to them not being able to be evil. But it's like, real feminism is women can also be evil.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  Go off, queen.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  Welcome to 2025, guys.

• 41:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, please, cowboys. But his lawyer, so Martin's lawyer at the trial, described as Lady Macbeth and the Borgias all rolled into one.

• 41:12Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 41:12Speaker 00

  And I was like, I mean, obviously, he was, you know, he had a reason for saying that, because he was Martin's lawyer, but I told, I think there is, and I think there's, it's interesting with this case as well, because they do, you know, like we said, there was a massive amount of misogyny at the time, and I'm sure there was more complexity to her and her relationships and all of that. But like, there's basically nothing redeeming about her whatsoever. I mean, even the fact that her side business was like, I'm gonna set up a baby farm. And the whole thing with the illegal abortions was that she also wasn't, she trained as a midwife in Germany and failed her training. So she also was, like, literally just killing people. She wasn't even, like, capable of giving abortions. And there's all these other things that came out about her that may or may not have been true. But yeah, there's definitely

• 41:54Speaker 00

  a sense of, like, people almost couldn't believe how terrible she was, but also were so fascinated, because they're like, this woman is stone cold. You know, there was a bit where, just before the trial, she was like, oh, I've found God, I'm really remorseful now, I'm really, really sorry. Again, maybe she had, but maybe the timing was that she was trying to not get the same sentence.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  Savvy.

• 42:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:17Speaker 02

  It's interesting as well that she, all the way through, she's making a life for herself that is kind of on the periphery in terms of how she makes her money. And even when she's still in prison, she wants to be a prison warden, because I suppose there's not any other option available to her possibly, that she can't go out and just find herself a job, no one's gonna employ her in their home, she can't resume the service of abortions that she's offering, because who would go to her for that, you know? And yeah, I kind of think it's so interesting, she just exists on the periphery in so many ways. And often, she's sort of put herself there as well, which is, is fascinating. If you've enjoyed this episode, then get in touch with us, hashtag justice for Julia, please, and let us know your thoughts. If

• 43:02Speaker 02

  you want to go back and check out the other episodes that we've done with Kat, we have done the Paris Morgue, the New York Morgue, and as we've mentioned in this episode, the Goofy Case as well last week. So you can check that out ASAP. If you have ideas for topics that you would like us to discuss on the show, then you can email us [email protected]. See you next time.

• 43:31Speaker 06

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• 43:44Speaker 07

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