Legends 74: Snake in the Grass

Trust holds much of the world together. When it's broken, it can lead to unspeakable crimes, which can often result in frightening legends. Narrated and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with writing by Alex Robinson and Aaron Mahnke, and research by Jamie Vargas. ————————— 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: BetterHelp: Lore is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp.com/LORE http://www.betterhelp.com/lore, and get on your way to being your best self. Tovala: Get a Tovala Smart Oven for just $49 when you order meals 6 or more times by heading to Tovala.com/LORE https://www.tovala.com/lore with offer code LORE. 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. SelectQuote: Get the right life insurance for you and save more than 50% at SelectQuote.com/LORE https://www.selectquote.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.

• 0:00Aaron Mahnke?

  This episode is sponsored by Bram Stoker's Dracula from Audible. A new full cast audio thriller starring Ella Purnell from Fallout as Mina Harker, Jonathan Bailey from Wicked as Dracula, and an A-list cast including Maggie Gyllenhaal from The Dark Knight as Van Helsing, Amy Lou Wood from The White Lotus as Lucy, David Johnson from Industry as Dr. Seward, and many more. Mina and a small, fearless band race against time to stop this ancient terror. Using her intellect, her resolve, and a gift for drawing the unseen lines between clues, Mina just may hold the key to bring down the Count if he hasn't already found his way inside her mind. Featuring a haunting original score by Lilan Ashkari

• 0:44Aaron Mahnke?

  from Audible's 1984, and spatial Dolby Atmos sound design, Audible's Dracula invites you to welcome literature's most shadowy figure into your home. Feel the terror of being hunted, and the thrill of the hunt. Don't miss this year's best new audio thriller. Bram Stoker's Dracula, Audible's new full cast original adaptation. Written by Robin Ahearn and directed by Mary Lambert. Now on Audible, listen to The Darkness. Go to audible.com/listen to Dracula.

• 1:13Speaker 01

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• 1:55Aaron Mahnke?

  It's fair to say that Ernst had very bad taste in friends. To be fair to him, he was quite literally the leader of the original Nazi Party. Those fellows weren't really known for their good judgment. Even so, not many people say that they had a close, personal friendship with Adolf Hitler. And when I say that these men were close, I mean it. In fact, Hitler was one of the few people who knew that his friend was, in fact, same-sex oriented. Ernst Rom kept that particular secret under wraps until his political enemies released his private letters to the public in 1932. Although, most historians agree that the evidence points to Hitler already being aware. Although, that wouldn't be enough to save Rom from what was coming next.

• 2:38Aaron Mahnke?

  In June of 1934, Hitler launched what has become known as the "Night of the Long Knives." It was a total purge of his political enemies, along with any of his allies who put his own reputation at risk, and that included Ernst Rom. On the night of June 30th, Hitler himself arrested him, alongside hundreds of other politicians. He had forged documents to make it look like his friend had accepted a bribe from France to overthrow Hitler. When he addressed his subjects, he called Rom's alleged double-crossing "the worst treachery in world history." In the end, Ernst Rom was given the option of taking his own life, but he declined.

• 3:20Aaron Mahnke?

  "If I am to be killed," he said, "let Adolf do it himself." He was executed just 10 minutes later, by a stranger, not his friend. Even between two of the most terrible people in world history, trust can be a special thing. And when someone takes a hammer to the trust you have for them, it can feel like the world has turned upside down. I'm Aaron Mahnke, and this is Lore Legends.

• 4:01Aaron Mahnke?

  As a kid, did you ever think that people on the other side of the globe had to be walking upside down? Considering typical kid logic, this made a lot of sense. Most of us probably live in the northern hemisphere, so our tiny child brains told us that we were walking right side up, while everyone on the bottom half of the globe must be doing the opposite. If you are still Operating under this misconception though, I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Residents of Australia and New Zealand stand completely upright, just like us, but that doesn't mean that their lives can't go topsy-turvy. In the earliest parts of European settlement, those two islands must have felt like a death trap. Intense heat, venomous animals, difficult terrain, there were a million things that

• 4:45Aaron Mahnke?

  could go wrong, just based off the environment alone. But sometimes, the most dangerous part of living there was the people. The white settlers of Australia and New Zealand relied heavily on their small communities, both for socialization and for survival. They had to be able to trust each other to watch one another's backs. Without mutual support, they wouldn't have made it for very long. Occasionally though, there would be a snake in the grass, and I don't mean the venomous kind. The only time anyone in Oceania has ever actually felt like they've been turned upside down was when they were betrayed by the people they trusted the most. 16-year-old Phyllis Ava Simmons had been fortunate enough to go her whole life without getting that sinking gut feeling of betrayal.

• 5:30Aaron Mahnke?

  So far, life had been good for her. She had five other brothers and sisters, she was close to her parents, she was relatively popular at school, though it may not have been her favorite place in the world, seen as her mother once described her as, and I quote, "rather backward in learning." Unlike a lot of teenagers in the 1930s, Phyllis had led such a comfortable life that she had been allowed to keep, as her father put it, "her childish ways." When construction began on the nearby Mount Victoria Tunnel in Wellington, New Zealand, Phyllis's mother started serving tea for the construction workers at their family home. After all, people were calling it "the project of the century," so Mrs. Simmons felt that it was only right to support all the workers with free beverages whenever she could.

• 6:15Aaron Mahnke?

  And that is how Phyllis met George. George Errol Coates was 29 years old, two Phyllis's 16. He was also a widower with six children to feed. But Phyllis didn't care about any of that, and neither did George. The two hit it off when he came to her house for tea in 1930, and from that point on, they were seen together all the time. Then, one Sunday in March of 1931, Phyllis suddenly ran away from home. A few days later, she sent her parents a letter claiming that she was staying with a friend for a little while. What she didn't mention was that her friend was George, and that the two were now living together. For the next several weeks, Phyllis and George hopped between boarding houses.

• 6:57Aaron Mahnke?

  And then, in May, Phyllis discovered something else: she was pregnant. Unfortunately, it would not be an easy pregnancy. It's not clear whether she was suffering from severe morning sickness or something more serious. All she knew was that she was miserable. Despite that, though, the couple planned to move house once again. The night before that, one of George's friends hung out with them, and then went home around 11:00 PM. And that was the last time anyone saw Phyllis alive. George immediately fell under police suspicion, and not just because of the bad relationship optics. According to relief workers from the Mount Victoria Tunnel site, George had acted odd during his shifts at the dump. He was frequently seen digging much higher up in the dump than anyone else,

• 7:42Aaron Mahnke?

  creating a deeper hole than they needed, one that was roughly 5 feet by 3 feet. And when his coworkers asked, he said that he was going to bury a dog. That was all the authorities needed to hear before they started searching the Mount Victoria Tunnel dump. Over 100 relief workers assisted them in digging up over 2,000 tons of soil. After six days of hard labor, under the July sun, they found her. During George's trial, a pathologist testified that she had been knocked out with a blow to the temple, and that her head had been wrapped in a scarf afterwards. But the head wound hadn't been the thing that killed her. Now, her cause of death was asphyxiation.

• 8:24Aaron Mahnke?

  Phyllis, you see, had been buried alive. After the trial, a remarkable tradition took shape. As motorists drove through the Mount Victoria Tunnel, they let out a cheerful honk of their horns. It started as a sign of respect for the girl who lost her life there, but as of today, it's second nature for almost everyone. At one point, the government even tried to crack down on the unnecessary honking, but nobody listened. Because for those who remember Phyllis's story, there is hope that the constant greetings will keep her spirit company, wherever she may be.

• 9:10Aaron Mahnke?

  Fred Fisher was a criminal. Mind you, he wasn't a particularly dangerous one. He'd simply been convicted of possessing forged banknotes. He hadn't even forged them himself, he just owned a few. So in the grand scheme of things, he was relatively harmless. But back in the day, the British government often punished petty crime nearly as forcefully as major ones. Fraud might not have gotten you hanged, per se, but it would certainly get you shipped off to prison. Or, worse, shipped out of the country entirely. So instead of a slap on the wrist, Fred was given a 14-year sentence in Australia. And it has to be said, this was a penal system that targeted the most disadvantaged members of society.

• 9:52Aaron Mahnke?

  So when Fred joined the colony in 1816, he stood out for one very important reason: He had not grown up poor and uneducated like so many others there, which meant that he was literate. This was such a rare skill set that almost immediately after he landed in Australia, the colonial administrator hired Fred as a clerk. Within two years, he had become head of the Waterloo Flower Company. As far as jail sentences go, I'd say that he managed to find a fairly lucrative one. Halfway through his 14-year sentence, Fred had actually saved enough money to purchase a farm in Campbelltown, and over the next three years, he brought that number to four. But his good luck couldn't last forever, and it ended as soon as George Worrell walked

• 10:37Aaron Mahnke?

  into his life. George was Fred's neighbor, and at first, they seemed to get on swimmingly. In fact, Fred actually lived in George's house. Oddly enough, Fred had never actually built a home on his new farmstead, and so, at the end of the day, he would just go sleep at his neighbor's. It was an unusual arrangement, but they seemed to get along just fine. By 1825, Fred had started a brand-new company, dipping his toes into the construction industry. Like most of his financial ventures, Fred's new business seemed to do well, making him even more wealthy. Unfortunately, Fred's old fraudster habit chose this moment to return. One of his clients accused Fred of deliberately withholding money.

• 11:19Aaron Mahnke?

  Fred denied the accusation, but the two ended up in a physical altercation, and Fred ended up arrested for assault. Concerned that he would end up in an actual jailhouse this time, he signed over his power of attorney to the man he trusted most in the world, his neighbor and landlord, George. And with the stroke of a pen, George was now allowed to act on Fred's behalf in regards to his property. Now thankfully, Fred was only given a six-month sentence, but the entire time he was in prison, George bragged to the entire town, "It's all mine now." When Fred returned, George was visibly upset to give his temporary stewardship back, but despite his reluctance, the two men picked right back up where they left off, living together under the same roof.

• 12:04Aaron Mahnke?

  That is, until June of 1826, when Fred went missing. In the days that followed, when he was asked where his roommate had gone, George told everyone that Fred had moved back to England and had left his property in George's care. Of course, people found this odd, but they quickly shrugged it off. No, what made folks suspicious was when, three weeks later, George started selling all of Fred's belongings. To the people of town, it seemed that if anyone was going to sell Fred's things, it probably should have been Fred himself. It seemed odd that George would get to cash it all in. Plus, why was George wearing Fred's clothing? It was all weird enough that a few nosy neighbors felt compelled to do some digging.

• 12:46Aaron Mahnke?

  They looked into the ship that George claimed Fred had taken back to England, called the Lord St. Vincent. But it didn't take long to learn that no boat by that name had ever docked in Sydney. At this point, authorities had enough probable cause to arrest George, but since there was still no smoking gun and no dead body, they couldn't technically convict him of anything. That is, until the following month. One night in October of 1826, a local farmer by the name of John Farley was on his way home when he saw something strange. Sitting on the fence that enclosed Fred's farm was the missing man himself, Fred Fisher. Only, he wasn't alive. Head bleeding and skin glowing eerily,

• 13:29Aaron Mahnke?

  Fred's corpse apparently moaned at John, pointed a finger toward the creek on George's property, and then faded into thin air. Terrified, John ran straight to town to tell the authorities what he had seen. Of course, nobody believed him. That is, until a few days later when some kids found traces of blood and hair along the fence between George and Fred's properties. Unlike the tip from beyond the grave, this one actually launched an investigation. And just up the creek bed, right where the ghost had pointed, they found him, Fred Fisher's murdered body. George, you'll be glad to hear, was arrested, tried in courts, and declared guilty. He was sentenced to death by hanging after just 15 minutes of deliberation.

• 14:12Aaron Mahnke?

  To the very end, George professed his innocence, that Fred's death had been an accident. But the evidence and the ghost quite literally pointed to the truth. Fred Fisher had placed his trust in a neighbor who promptly broke it for personal gain. A mistake that George ultimately paid for.

• 14:43Aaron Mahnke?

  When Minnie emigrated from Scotland to New Zealand, she arrived without a past. Within a decade, though, she had found a husband, Charles Dean, who worked as an innkeeper in a booming old mining town. But when that boom ended in the 1870s, it crushed their business. And so in 1878, they packed up and left for greener pastures in the town of Winton. Once settled, Charles took a job as a laborer while Minnie became a teacher. But even on two incomes, it was tough to get by. Which is why, on May 13th of 1879, Minnie published her first ad in the paper in hopes of bringing in some extra money. The ad read, "Wanted: A baby to nurse, or one or two young children to bring up, or

• 15:28Aaron Mahnke?

  a baby to adopt. Thoroughly comfortable home in the country, terms very moderate." And thus, in 1880, Minnie Dean had become a baby farmer. Now, for clarification, baby farming was a grotesque term for what should have been an honorable profession. You see, back in the Victorian era, women who became pregnant out of wedlock didn't have many options, and sometimes they were even disowned by their families and kicked out into the streets. The solution was brilliant in its simplicity. Baby farmers, respectable women who lived out in the countryside, could raise these babies themselves for a fee. And in theory, it worked.

• 16:10Aaron Mahnke?

  Children found a home, and their mothers got a chance to rebuild their lives. Minnie began by taking in a five-year-old girl named Margaret. Before long, though, there were nine or 10 children under her roof at any given time. And for the first few years, she managed to stay under the radar. Yes, she occasionally got some side eyes from her neighbors and the local police when they realized how many kids she had living with her, but she wasn't technically doing anything wrong. The first red flag came when Minnie tried to take out life insurance policies on a few of the babies under her care. In the end, she was denied, but, just asking, had raised a few eyebrows. The scrutiny became more intense in 1889, when one of the babies fell ill and then

• 16:54Aaron Mahnke?

  died three days later from convulsions. Two years after that, another of the newborns in her care died of congestion and inflammation to the heart, and local residents began to suspect foul play. The police were suspicious as well, but the only thing they were able to charge her with was never officially registering her house. She quickly paid the four-pence penalty, and then kept operating as if nothing had happened. Neighbors continued to report that Minnie was severely neglecting her underage tenants. The children looked unkempt, underfed, and unhappy. And although no one could prove anything nefarious was going on, they whispered that her turnover rate was unusually high, and that children vanished regularly.

• 17:38Aaron Mahnke?

  In 1893, the authorities finally stepped in when the owner of a local boarding house called the police. Minnie had been staying there with an infant, and the landlady noticed that the baby had been drinking spoiled milk. The authorities forced Minnie to give the baby back to its mother. She had only had custody for three days, and yet the mother could already see how much her baby had wasted away. Nobody was able to pin down Minnie's misdeeds until May 2 of 1895, when she boarded a train with a hatbox and a baby boy, and then returned without him. For some reason, an observant railway attendant took note of Minnie's comings and goings. When she returned without the baby, carrying what he identified as a "suspiciously heavy

• 18:21Aaron Mahnke?

  hatbox," he got the police involved. They launched an investigation, which included searching the garden at Minnie's cottage. In the end, three bodies were discovered: a toddler and two infants, one of whom was the boy from the train. An inquest proved that none had died from natural causes, and as a result, on June 21 of 1895, Minnie was charged with murder, quickly convicted, and sentenced to hang.

• 18:48Aaron Mahnke?

  While she awaited her fate in jail, she wrote her own account of what had happened. She admitted to giving one of them too much laudanum and accidentally dropping another, but she maintained that none of the deaths that had happened under her watch had been intentional. Each and every one was an accident. On August 12th of 1895, Minnie Dean was escorted to the gallows. Once there, she announced to the crowd, "I have nothing to say, except that I am innocent." As the executioner placed his hand on the lever, she cried out, "Oh God, let me not suffer." And then, she dropped.

• 19:41Aaron Mahnke?

  Trust is a delicate thing. We build our lives around our relationships with others: parents, grandparents, siblings, spouses, and friends. They all work together to create the social tapestry upon which we weave our lives. And weaving is all about tension: two forces holding each other in check and keeping the pattern straight. That tension is trust, and without it, we lose everything. Now, in theory, we should be able to trust the mother figures in our lives more than anyone else, but obviously, life doesn't always work out that way. It certainly didn't for the children under Minnie's care. Somehow, she seemed to be missing that vital internal voice that normally would have told her to care for the children under her roof.

• 20:26Aaron Mahnke?

  And for her betrayal, she has earned herself a permanent spot in New Zealand's folklore. Even today, she's still remembered as one of the most evil women to have ever lived there. Of course, sensationalism has twisted the truth of her story just a little bit since the 1890s, and now she's described as "a monster who murdered children by the scores, only with a hat pin." Because of that, she's frequently invoked as a sort of "boogie ma'am." Misbehaving children are often told that if they don't straighten up, they'll be sent to Minnie's farm, where they'll never be heard from again. And apparently, even the natural world wants to avoid her. According to locals, "nothing dare grows atop her grave."

• 21:08Aaron Mahnke?

  No grass, no ivy, and no wildflowers adorn the ground beneath her tombstone. "She was such a terrible mother," the legends seem to whisper, "that not even her decaying body can nurture the soil."

• 21:35Aaron Mahnke?

  Some legends give us monsters of massive stature and deadly shape. The vampire, the wendigo, or maybe the chupacabra come to mind. But I hope today's tour of a monster of a different kind still gave you an interesting glance at the legends of our world. Admittedly, stories of broken trust are hard to listen to, even more so when children are the ones betrayed. But if you're able to handle one last example, there's one little girl whose story deserves to be heard. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.

• 22:07Speaker 02

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• 24:43Aaron Mahnke?

  One of the first safety lessons any of us heard in life could be summed up with two words: stranger danger. When we were kids, it wasn't safe for us to trust anyone off the street. Small, weak, and naive, we were particularly vulnerable to the more unsavory members of society. Granted, I grew up in the 1980s, in that Stranger Things era of riding my bike for miles without supervision, but the risks were no less real. All that said, we don't know if anyone ever taught this particular rule of life to Isabella. In fact, we actually know very little about her or how she was raised. All we know is that she was born in 1863, lived in Littleton, New Zealand, was just shy of 12 years old, and her father was a shipwright.

• 25:26Aaron Mahnke?

  On January 9th of 1875, her father sent her out on an errand at 4:45 PM. The school was selling tickets for a picnic, so her father had given her some money, told her to buy the family a few, and sent her on her way. An hour and a half later, though, two boys found Isabella's bloody corpse on Ripon Street. The scene was a gruesome one. Her throat had been slit before her body was dumped under a dense row of sharp thickets, which scratched and punctured her all over. The only clues nearby were a bloody handkerchief, her misplaced hat, and two picnic tickets. Once her body was taken by the authorities, her father had to come in and identify her. I can't even fathom what was going through his mind as he stared down at her.

• 26:10Aaron Mahnke?

  With a voice choked with grief, though, he eventually confirmed that yes, this was the lifeless body of Isabella. Police began their investigation by questioning recently released convicts, but when they provided solid alibis, they were cleared of all involvement. So at first, the only thing they had to go off of was a tip that Isabella had been seen leaving the school building in the company of a man dressed in gray. But as word of her killing spread, they were soon able to gather more helpful information. At 5:10 PM, a shipmate named James Allen saw Isabella with a man that he identified as John Mercer. Another witness saw the same man just a few minutes later, although by then, he was alone and looking disheveled.

• 26:52Aaron Mahnke?

  But the tip that really sealed the deal came from a sailor identified as Captain Russell. He reported to the police that the day Isabella had been killed, his vessel's cook had some kind of mental breakdown, throwing out food and breaking the kitchen cabinets. That cook's name, it turns out, was John Mercer. When the police finally arrested him, there was still blood and thorns on his clothing. The initial inquest was quick and efficient. There was no doubt in anyone's mind who had killed little Isabella. Multiple witnesses took the stand to testify that they had seen Mercer that evening, covered in blood. One of his fellow sailors even testified that the morning of the murder, he had run into Mercer who told him, "I want to get a girl, and if I don't get her here,

• 27:36Aaron Mahnke?

  I will in Christchurch. And if I don't get what I want, I will cut her throat." It was so obvious that Mercer was guilty, that on the second day of his inquest, his legal counsel didn't even bother showing up in court. A short while later, on February 2nd of 1875, he was found guilty for the murder of Isabella Thompson. His sentence was death. Local legend claims that Isabella still hasn't found peace in the afterlife. Her body might have been buried in an unmarked grave in the local cemetery, but her spirit is believed to still haunt the place where she died. Over the years, many people have reported seeing a young girl lingering right in the area where the murder took place. And sometimes, they've even heard her scream for

• 28:20Aaron Mahnke?

  help. But whenever they stop to ask if she's okay, she never gives a reply. Instead, she simply disappears, only to repeat it all in the exact same way the following night.

• 28:47Aaron Mahnke?

  This episode of Lore Legends was produced by me, Aaron Manke, with writing by Alex Robinson and myself, and research by Jamie Vargas. Today's episode topics were actually submitted by our listeners. If you have a local legend that you love, and you want us to possibly mention on a future episode of Lore Legends, email us here at [email protected]. My team and I can't wait to see what you send our way. Don't like hearing ads on Lore? Well, there's a paid version of Lore available on Apple Podcasts and Patreon that is 100% ad-free. Subscribers there also get weekly mini-bonus episodes that we call Lore Bites, and Patreon members specifically get discounts on Lore merch and access to my inbox. Learn more over at lorepodcast.com/support.

• 29:31Aaron Mahnke?

  To follow this show on YouTube threads, Blue Sky, or 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.

• 30:00Speaker 06

  What's that?

• 30:00Aaron Mahnke?

  My fresh detector.

• 30:02Speaker 06

  Uh, your what?

• 30:03Aaron Mahnke?

  There it is.

• 30:04Speaker 06

  What is it detecting?

• 30:06Aaron Mahnke?

  Fresh produce, fresh meat.

• 30:08Speaker 06

  Okay, what happens if it detects something really fresh?

• 30:14Aaron Mahnke?

  Apparently, we celebrate.

• 30:16Speaker 07

  At Food Lion, you can count on fresh food at fresher prices. When your fresh detector is going off, head to your local Food Lion or shop at foodlion.com.

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