Deviant Criminology
Dr. Richard Weaver Jr., Heather Kenney, and Rachel Czar take listeners on a journey through the world of true crime. With their unique careers in the criminal justice and academic world; they work to provide an entertaining and educational experience for listeners. This podcast examines many areas of true crime including; the formation of laws, cases that defined caselaw, and crimes that impacted the world. Please join us on this journey as we transition from professionals in criminal justice and academia to budding podcasters.
Deviant Criminology
Veronica Gedeon: Easter Weekend Triple Murder
Easter Sunday 1937 became infamous not for celebration, but for the shocking triple homicide that claimed the lives of model Veronica "Ronnie" Gideon, her mother Mary, and a deaf boarder named Frank Barnes. Their killer, Robert Irwin, was a talented sculptor whose descent into untreated schizophrenia revealed catastrophic gaps in America's mental health system.
Ronnie's story unfolds against the backdrop of Depression-era New York, where her Hungarian immigrant family struggled through Prohibition and economic hardship. Her career as a model for detective novels and "racy" publications made her a recognizable face—and later, allowed the media to subtly blame her for her own murder through sensationalized coverage that emphasized her "provocative" lifestyle.
The case raises disturbing questions about society's treatment of female victims, even today. While Ronnie and her mother were each worth only "20 years" in the killer's sentencing, Frank Barnes—the male victim—warranted 99 years, revealing deep gender biases in how the justice system valued lives. Meanwhile, Irwin's repeated attempts to seek help for his deteriorating mental condition went inadequately addressed, creating a perfect storm of tragedy.
What makes this case particularly haunting is how many opportunities existed to prevent it. Irwin had voluntarily committed himself multiple times, clearly aware something was wrong with his mind. Yet the primitive understanding of mental illness in the 1930s meant he was repeatedly released without proper treatment for the delusional thoughts that eventually turned deadly.
The silver lining—if one can be found amid such tragedy—is that the Gideon murders sparked significant reforms in New York's mental health system, potentially saving countless lives through improved assessment protocols and stricter oversight of psychiatric facilities.
Have you ever wondered what happens when someone recognizes their own dangerous thoughts and seeks help, only to be failed by the system? What responsibility do we bear as a society when warning signs are ignored? Join us as we explore this haunting case that reveals how far we've come in mental health treatment—and how far we still have to go.
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Speaker 2:So when we think of Easter weekend, we think of kids running through parks collecting finding Easter eggs. We think of kids running through parks collecting finding Easter eggs. We think of people going to church and family gatherings, and this is our Easter episode of Deviant Criminology. I'm Richard.
Speaker 3:I'm Heather.
Speaker 2:And today we're going to discuss the murder of Veronica Ronnie Gideon. This is kind of a tragic tale on multiple fronts and again kind of goes to the conversations we've had before about how multiple people can have different sides to them. So some people can be monsters and killers while also being victims themselves. This is a case that when we started looking at it, it was really interesting to me. We started collecting data, reading things about it, and then we did a Google search to kind of look at her pictures, because this is an individual from the 1930s and when I saw the pictures it brought back a memory.
Speaker 2:It's kind of like one of those light bulb moments that I had actually heard about this case before about this case before, because if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably also a true crime person and a criminal justice person, like we are, and there was an episode of the TV series A Crime to Remember that covered her, and this is really a sad story in so many ways that we'll get into. So, heather, if you would like to take it from there, Sure.
Speaker 3:Veronica was also known as Ronnie, was born in 1917 to Hungarian immigrants, joseph and Maryinarian approach, and he also had a successful upholstery business. During Prohibition he also ran a speakeasy from the family's basement and even though it was profitable, it eventually got raided and closed. The family dynamics were increasingly strained because during the Roaring Twenties and transitioning into the Great Depression, joseph's strict parenting style was conflicting with Ronnie or Veronica's free-spirited nature and she was described as boy-crazy and we'll talk more about how free-spirited she was here in a little bit. But this tension ultimately resulted in Joseph's estrangement from the family, although he did continue to come for holiday celebrations, and that will also be something that will be important in our conversation later on.
Speaker 2:I do think it's interesting at this time. You know, hey, we keep getting drawn back to the 1920s and 30s. I think it's because that is such a defining era from or before that era and then what would come afterwards, because so many organizations, laws and things came out of this time period. But how women were portrayed in this time is, even if you talked to another boy, you talked to two or three boys like you were boy crazy is almost kind of slang for like slut or, you know, being loose, as would have been used in like the 70s or 80s. So there's a lot of labeling this young lady as a very certain way. That unfortunately does almost cast type her in the episode that we are reading here.
Speaker 2:So in the early 1930s Mary Gideon moved the family to 316 East 50th Street in Manhattan's Turtle Bay neighborhood. I read that like I know where that is. I have absolutely no idea because I've never been to New York. But to support the family during the challenging economic times she began operating a boarding house welcoming a diverse array of tenants, welcoming a diverse array of tenants. There's also some connecting her to maybe some brothels, and I don't want to say prostitution but prostitution. So Ronnie Gideon attended William Cullen Bryant High School, maintaining connections to her Hungarian heritage through her immigrant parents. The family's move from Astoria to Manhattan marked a significant change in their living situation and social environment.
Speaker 3:So Mary, who again is the mother, was managing this boarding house at their East 50th Street residence until December of 1936. After this point, the property was overseen by a superintendent and, prior to running the boarding house, marriott operated several speakeasies during the Prohibition era, showcasing the family's adaptability in difficult economic times.
Speaker 2:So while there's no concrete evidence linking Marriott to prostitution or brothels, the nature of her boarding house, operating in the Depression era of New York, likely attracted a varied and sometimes questionable clientele. But also you already have some links to if you're running a speakeasy in New York at this time you've got connections to organized crime. You've got to be getting the alcohol from somewhere. So there is a lot more connections to illicit activity, even if it's harder to find in this specific case. So in this environment may have exposed young Ronnie to a range of influences and experiences that shaped her later life and career choices. I mean, you've got alcohol, a lot of people drinking. She would have been exposed to that. It was happening inside their home and inside the environments. They had the potential of short-term rentals by men with young women around. So illicit sexual acts and things like that definitely would have influenced especially her developmental age and her father's not around looking at men that are coming in and out for a different aspect of what men's behavior was supposed to be towards women.
Speaker 3:And, of course, their family story reflects the broader immigrant experience of the early 20th century in America, which encompassed the challenges of assimilation and the impact of major historical events like Prohibition, the Great Depression, and generational conflicts that often arose between traditional immigrant parents and their more Americanized children. We talked about a lot of this in one of our earlier episodes in relationship to Irish Americans.
Speaker 2:And that's a conversation that we even have today with a lot of South American families that come here, where their parents or grandparents that come with them have a more traditional view, especially Catholic view, coming from South America, then the kids born here that are more acculturated into American society don't share those same values and there's a conflict even in the family. So that happened even here, like she had those Hungarian roots, but she's also really starting to see America, which the same things that brought people to this country as immigrants were also sometimes their downfall, because the freedoms that were had here and kind of the more melting pot society did expose people to new avenues, new thoughts, new trends. America has always been kind of especially New York has always kind of been seen on the verge of a lot of growing trends that end up taking over a lot of cultures. So to me or immigrant families come to the U S, new York was probably like the one place that was going to be the most heavy exposure and quickly hard to adapt to environment.
Speaker 3:Quickly changing because of everybody who's coming in. So with all of those influences that we were just discussing, veronica or Ronnie ended up pursuing a career in modeling and that modeling career, at least for that time, would have been considered controversial and provocative. So a lot of those photographs which Richie was mentioning earlier we were trying to find some on the internet um were provocative or disturbing, or that time the pictures that we were able to find didn't look all that risque, I didn't think more like swimsuit type.
Speaker 2:I saw her ankles, ma'am, oh Lord, it gave me the flutters. Um no, they, they really weren't and some of the like doing research again. Like a lot of this stuff's been lost, like a lot of stuff that I read and even that I saw on, like some of the shows that were related to her before I linked it. There were fires in a lot of these old buildings that housed negatives and things, so it's hard to go back and tell, but some of the things show that there was what they called nudity or semi-nude. Those photos aren't around, if they existed.
Speaker 2:But also slandering of people that were involved in this work at that time was not unheard of. A lot of what you see is more what we would almost call pinup style photos and then kind of provocative, but not anything that. I mean. I have the internet and everybody else has the internet, so not what we would call Instagram porn nowadays or anything like that, not even nearly as revealing as that. But she did a lot of covers of detectives novels, like a lot of people knew her face. She was very popular at that time because of so I think there is some slut shaming and definitely bias against her that starts to develop just in the definition of how we portray her career, but very beautiful woman, very talented, very friendly. From everything that people said about her before and after, which I think, at least for me.
Speaker 2:More disturbing were some of the titles that went along with her photos and the photos themselves yeah, that does like there's a few of those that definitely kind of make you think yeah, yeah, so I don't know.
Speaker 3:Um yeah, so I don't know, we get into some of those.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so some of the more notorious titles featuring Ronnie's work included Party Girl, which seems kind of now would seem not very.
Speaker 3:Racy.
Speaker 2:Racy, but back then definitely Racy is a great word for that Pretty but cheap. And now we're starting to get a little smuttish. And another was I am a white slave, which that's just icky. Yeah, it just comes off icky like, especially when you move 100 years forward and we talk about human trafficking now and everything like. There's some raciness there and some sleaziness to it.
Speaker 2:But these photo shoots depicted her in various states of undress and in compromising positions, reflecting the darker undercurrents of depression era society and the exploitation often faced by young women in the entertainment industry. You can say that about today as well, but especially the depression era, like a. There were a lot of these detective novels and stuff that were popping up because because, damn it again, but dillinger, bonnie and clyde van meter, like all these other people that we talked about, the gangs in chicago that were running like this was like popular. These were a popular um form of communication and almost anti-hero of the 1930s. So she was sometimes the victim, sometimes the harlequin, and that's how she was dressed. So it really does show that that was kind of the only work women could get back then.
Speaker 2:We've talked a lot about just even in the criminal justice system, how they weren't really allowed to be on juries. They were removed from situations. They weren't believed. So imagine not going into the workforce this time when there's not enough jobs. You're in depression, area of prohibition. You're looking at things like lounge singer, risque photo shoots, going into industry and having to do ungodly things. Just a shot to do something that may pay some bills and, at the worst case scenario, um sex work yeah, I mean hopefully she didn't have to do that part of it.
Speaker 3:I mean hopefully the pictures were paying the bills for her and a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2:I would like the. The place that she worked for was reputable in what it was and they seemed to really care about her and talked very highly of her and were actually very impacted by her loss, as we'll talk about later. The nature of Ronnie's modeling, as we're kind of alluding to, attracted a mix of fascination and moral disapproval from the public, of fascination and moral disapproval from the public. While it provided her with a steady income, it also contributed to her reputation as a wild and boy-crazy young woman and characteristics that would later influence the media's coverage of her murder.
Speaker 2:And again, like for lack of a better term, it's the slut shaming, it's you don't fit our moral code that we have placed on you. So we're going to kind of almost you are asking for it. Well, if you didn't want him to do that, why would you dress that way If you didn't? You know it's very much victim blaming and one thing that I think this case really brings oddly for an Easter episode but brings is even today just the way that we view women and shame women, and still in courts and in the criminal justice system we'll see victim blaming of women even in their own sexual assaults.
Speaker 3:And that happens far too frequently. And I also think it's interesting that there's the whole judgment of her pictures but at the same time people are buying them. So people on the one hand want to condemn her for allowing herself to be in these photographs, but then at the same time they're out there buying the magazines that her photographs are in.
Speaker 2:What was the? It was kind of like a Cheating website when men could go on and like it was supposed to be discreet and you could hook up with other people.
Speaker 3:But it was supposed to be Ashley Madison, maybe, yeah.
Speaker 2:So kind of like there were a lot of like Kind of middle well-known figures that when that whole list got leaked there were a lot of names, some really pure christian upstanding people that suddenly were like oh shit, because their names and emails were on those lists. It's kind of the same thing like look at that slut over there, those pictures she's taken, like that very double standard that we have of morality that ebbs and flows through this country.
Speaker 3:So, again, it's one of those tragic, ironic twists that she was a model for these detective novels and took all these pictures and, at the same time, the end of her life ended up with her and at the same time, the end of her life ended up with her being a victim of a crime in one of these similar type manners, because she does end up being strangled.
Speaker 2:And I mean again, I don't know, trying to go back and do psychoanalysis and crime scene analysis, especially when none of this stuff's on there. But what are the chances of this being a small community? And then we'll come to find out that the killer knew her, that he had seen some of these. So maybe there was, and this individual as we'll talk about was an artist himself and maybe he saw a twisted irony and art in doing that. I don't know, there may be more to it. That's me getting really philosophical about murder and death and kind of the things that lead people to do it. But, as you will present here shortly, there are some obsessions that go into this that could lead very well to this is what you wanted.
Speaker 3:And it's hard because we don't have a lot of information as far as his exposure to the photos. We don't know that he ever saw them, but we also don't know he didn't see them, so it's hard to say if that had any influence on his behavior or not.
Speaker 2:Exactly, ronnie's modeling career extended beyond magazine work. She had also appeared at an illustrator's society show for models which was rated by the Nework city police department on november 8th 1935 further higher, highlighting the controversial nature of her profession and this kind of like. Some of the portrayals I've seen of this like it call it a modeling show. Some of the description I've seen made it kind of sound like more of like a burlesque show, possibly so again, even in the media in this time and some of the reports that I was able to find and I know some researchers have been able to dig much deeper, especially some I've seen out of new york I'm not in new york, I don't have access some of the stuff, but that sometimes they kind of sugar-coated it almost to cover if people were seen there they shouldn't have been there.
Speaker 2:And of course we do know that sometimes raids in New York, especially there's time period Like this, may not have been about the girls as much as it was. Was there alcohol being provided and who ran that club and where people rating each other and selling each other out? That was extremely common. So but this does kind of take it to more that she may have been involved in more than just the simple photo shoots, maybe doing more burlesque or what we would know more as kind of like adult entertainment shows.
Speaker 3:So, with her having that background and those pictures being out there because, just like the internet, you put something out there and it's there forever these pictures are out there and had the crime not occurred, I don't know how many of those photos would have come to light and been so public. But because of the sensationalist nature of her modeling work prior to her murder, the media coverage following her murder used a great deal of those photos to spin this story. When they reported on it, the newspapers and the tabloids capitalized on her provocative images when they were reporting on the murder, running those pictures alongside the headlines, and that greatly contributed to the case's notoriety and the public fascination with this case.
Speaker 2:I think this is like we've talked about. We're like this is something that's gone on almost since photography was done, Like I make that joke, but it's kind of like one that was made, like I can see your ankle and people would be like ostracized from society from that, and I think even today, like you, have a lot of models that are out there on websites and instagram and all these, uh, social media platforms that are putting themselves out there because it does make quick money and it's a way to make money, not realizing the ramifications that'll come back. Like I don't know what that looks like. Like, nancy, what, like? What do you think about a situation like this? Like just the way women are viewed nowadays, especially with social media and things hello.
Speaker 4:Uh, this is nancy. I was going through and I was editing this episode and I didn't realize that in the original recording you could not hear my answer at all. So now I'm sitting here by myself re-recording it Not a fun experience, I've learned. This is not my job, but you know it is what it is. So in my opinion. You know, I'm a teenage girl, so I spend a lot of my time just going through TikTok and looking through social media. So for me, I have seen some sex workers that you know and honestly, I think there are a lot of people who look up to those women because they use their platform as a way to educate and empower themselves and other people.
Speaker 4:I think there is a vulnerability that comes with doing that job and there are a lot of risks that you have to accept. But for people who do that as their job and as a genuine way to make money, I think they know those risks. But there's another issue that goes alongside this. Unfortunately, I've heard stories in my own school. There was a kid who made AI-generated photos of girls in our classes and that's not becoming an uncommon issue and that's not becoming an uncommon issue.
Speaker 4:There are now ways for people to make explicit photos of people without consent and, honestly, I fear that that is the biggest worry that instead of sex workers being worried that oh no, my line of work is getting out and people are seeing it, there are people who are now having to worry that photos of them that aren't real are being sent around. I don't think there should be a demonization of people who genuinely use this for a line of work and to get paid, but for people who are being exploited without their own knowledge, without their consent. Honestly, I do have a lot to say about this and I don't think I have enough time for this in this episode, so hopefully we'll get another chance to talk about this and maybe I can share more, but for now, those are my thoughts that I can share. So, yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2:And I think that that's apparent in like there's some new stories that I've seen over the last couple of weeks of women that have done OnlyFans or had very risque Instagrams that were trying to either get into, like, certain events that they were trying to go to or get jobs, or their children found them on the internet and it's come back and had real world consequences that they didn't see. That really, in the end, I'm I'm pro sex worker, like if you, as long you know, as long as we can combat human trafficking and sex trafficking, like we're starting to see in some Indian-Avian countries and stuff where sex workers are actually given medical benefits and they're being treated as a real job field. But if we can give those protections, there shouldn't be a shame in that. It's a job, you're making money, you're bringing home income, um income. But even today we see that now in a much more sexually open world. I mean, we have a multi-billion dollar sex toy industry in just the united states, so obviously we're not a mirror to country.
Speaker 2:So if we can see the shame that we're still seeing in individuals now, I can only imagine what this poor young woman went through and the bastard and demonization that was done to her. And then, lo and behold, on easter sunday, march 28th 1937, she's one of three victims in triple murder and they use her lifestyle almost as a justification for her homicide. So, like I said, on easter sunday, march 28th 1937, horrific triple homicide occurred at 316 east 50th street in new york city. The victims were 20 year old veronica ronnie uh gideon, her mother mary, and a boarder named frank barnes. Joseph gideon and his other daughter, ethel so that would be Ronnie's sister discovered the gruesome scene when they arrived for a planned family dinner.
Speaker 3:That refers back to. We talked about how dad had left and he was separated, but he still came back for family events. This was one of those family events that he was coming back to, for them to come together as a family and unfortunately, instead of coming together in celebration, that day, he and Ethel discovered the rest of their family who had been murdered. Specifically, ronnie's body was found in her bedroom, in her bed, and Mary was also in her own bedroom and they had both been strangled. But Frank, who was somebody there as a border, he was found in a third bedroom but he had been stabbed multiple times. So it definitely shows that there was a difference in the way the victims were treated and the way the suspect was looking at the victims, because they were killed in different ways. I don't know if you've seen that also as a police officer.
Speaker 2:So there's certain like keys here I see in the three different ones. So one, ronnie A, she was found nude and strangled and posed on the bed. So I don't to me that's more of. I want to see this person where the mother is found clothed, strangled as well, and then she's stuffed under her bed like I don't want to see you. That could be guilt or that could be. You're not a key player in my fantasy.
Speaker 2:And then Frank, he's stabbed multiple times in the head and neck and that's just brutal. You are a threat he sees, and that's probably partially. He's not an unintelligent guy. We're just going to learn. He's got a lot of mental health problems. So he probably very much identified that frank was a threat trying to strangle somebody. You're going strength to strength but hitting him with a knife, especially going through the head, a. That takes a lot of energy and muscle but even from that first blow you're going to have them at a disadvantage or strangulation. It's very easy if you're a strong man to get through that. So I think it shows that ronnie was definitely the person he was most interested in and as odd as this is going to sound treated the best.
Speaker 2:Frank was a, a threat that had to be neutralized. And then mary was just an afterthought, like that was just getting rid of somebody that he didn't see as being part of that. And I do think we talked about the brutal nature. But really strangulation, strangulation, jesus is not brutal, it's very personal and it's very so. That's a very personal kill.
Speaker 2:The one with frank is definitely brutal. I mean with strangulations like they use brutal because it sounds sensational but there's no blood. Really you might get a little bit I don't want to get too graphic with Frank is definitely brutal. I mean with strangulations like they use brutal because it sounds sensational but there's no blood. Really you might get a little bit I don't want to get too graphic but through the airways and stuff, but it's not what you're going to see with bloody wounds from a knife. So I definitely think that showing Frank was a threat worth it, but the other two he wanted to treat a little bit more and also a strangulation. You don't have screaming and stuff, where Frank probably screamed at some point if he was being stabbed.
Speaker 3:And I think that another thing with the strangulation is you're usually face-to-face, so you're looking at the person as they're passing away, so I think that can sometimes be more intimate, whereas if you're stabbing them maybe they're in a dark room. You don't want to turn on the light and wake Frank up if you're trying to eliminate a threat. So you might not even necessarily know exactly what's going on with Frank, but with these women he's going to be face to face.
Speaker 2:I don't know I'd have to see the crime scene photos Because if I was, if I was going to do it, I'd come from behind, because it's a less chance for them to be able to make contact with me. So if I'm face-to-face with you, your hands are just as dexterous as able to move. If I come from behind, your ability to reach me is very hampered by just our articulatable abilities of our limbs. Your shoulders can't bend. The same way, your ability to try and reach me and make me stop is going to be a lot less than if I come at you from the back compared to the front. So I'd have to see on that one, because, yeah, that makes a big difference on the ease of it, that one Because, yeah, that makes a big difference on the ease of it.
Speaker 3:So on the strangulation thing, I think it's interesting your take of it, because I think of things in a different light To me. If I'm trying to take somebody down, like in the street, or somebody who I'm trying to, a target that I'm trying to take down, I would probably take that type of approach. But if it's something where it's personal, where it's somebody that you know, especially if you're having a confrontation and a conversation and you're face-to-face, then you're going to be coming at them from the front. So if you're lying in wait for somebody, it'd be more of an attack from behind. But if we're having a conversation or an argument or some type of a conflict, I would think that would end up being more face-to-face.
Speaker 2:And I think it depends again on the dynamics in the room. So, like, if you're having a face-to-face argument and I'm just going to use my bare hands, then yeah, probably coming that straight hands on. If we're having an argument and there's something that I see that I'm going to use you know a necktie, you have a scarf on I'm going to wait till you turn around or I'm going to try and spin you around. If you're behind and I don't have anything like that, then I'm going to go more for a choke hold from behind, either using a rear naked choke hold or, you know, getting my elbow in and really locking that in, or if you're using a grot or something like that.
Speaker 2:I think it all depends on what tools individual has on hand and how comfortable he felt. So if they're having an argument and it gets isolated and he comes at her from the front, then yeah, I could see in that being bare hand. If any evidence at the scene showed the use of some type of scarf device to garrote almost, then I would think that was more from behind, because you couldn't get the same pressure when you're doing it from the front. You're using those thumbs to try and crush that absent idol from the back You're trying to cut off. So that might've been a little bit more graphic than I meant to get into, but that goes back to my combat training.
Speaker 3:So Well, and there's also a difference too in reach, because, just like you were talking about not being able to fight back, if you are taking the person out front to back instead of face to face, if it's a male-female dynamic, then a lot of times the male's going to have a farther arm span. So if he's holding her by the neck, there's a possibility that even if she's reaching out, she can't actually reach his person, but could only get like arms or hands, and not actually to him, his person.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So the initial suspect and again this kind of boggles my mind was Joseph, her father and Mary's ex-husband and that was due to that strained family relationship. But at the same time, like it boggles my mind that you would look at Joseph and think you strangled your wife and stuffed her underneath the bed. You strangled your daughter and displayed her this way, killed the other border and then went and got your other daughter and brought her with you to discover the bodies together. Like that I don't know. That's like beyond anything I can comprehend.
Speaker 2:So the fact that they immediately thought it was him, to me just it's crazy to think that they would think it was him initially but isn't that kind of what we always do in any domestic killing like this, you usually look at the closest first to find the suspect, like who had the most intimate connection to want this person dead? Was it a spouse, was it a lover, was it a family member? Because we do know that most especially, murders and violent crimes are committed by somebody that somebody knows. So he just happens to show up after the murders bringing the daughter. But then there would be other aspects of this that, like you you said, would make you question that that like he did bring the daughter and where was when did he meet with the daughter? What was his relationship like with? There's a history of him coming to these type of events. There doesn't seem to have been any animosity.
Speaker 2:But again, sometimes, especially from the law enforcement standpoint and just the psychology of it, you just found three people murdered, two people dead, one beautiful young woman dead. You want somebody to punish, right, then, like you're just angry, you want so and you want answers and this is like okay, here's the answer, it's got to be this. Like this is who? Because you just want that quick resolution, you want answers and this is like okay, here's the answer. It's got to be this Like. This is who? Because you just want that quick resolution, you want to. I don't think people think about how much toll just being on that crime scene and seeing those things and the social emotional damage it does to officers day in and day out, and just I want to solve this. Here's the most likely suspect. We're going to grill this guy until he confesses and just.
Speaker 3:I want to solve this. Here's the most likely suspect. We're going to grill this guy until he confesses. I could definitely see that as playing a factor which they end up with Joseph. They question him for over 30 hours, which I mean that's a long time to be questioned.
Speaker 2:It's a good way to get a false confession.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, exactly. And they end up arresting him under an unrelated gun charge. And at one point they thought it might be one of Veronica's ex-boyfriends because they found a diary where she wrote something about beingboyfriend whose name was Bobby. But as luck would have it for Bobby and for her dad, they ended up finding a little soap, like a little piece of soap that had been carved into a little figure. So this little sculpture of soap at the crime scene is found, and I'll let you explain why that was so significant.
Speaker 2:Okay, and before I get into that, one thing about Joseph Gideon. I think didn't help is he had a history with law enforcement. It included, like some organized crime issues running these Speakeasies, so speakeasies and potentially connections with brothels and stuff, and potentially connections with brothels and stuff. So, unfortunately, usually police do also see patterns and oh, if you're a shithead in this area, then what's the potential that you're a shithead in this area? So, but in this case the little sculpture was important because it linked them to a potential new suspect. So what we're going to do is now we want to take this narrative to talk about Robert Irwin. This is because, though he is the suspect at this point in our narrative, he also has a very troubling life history and severe history of incarcerations and mental institutions and institutionalization that kind of spin, a tragic tale of his own, let alone of what happened to Veronica, mary and the border. So Robert George Irwin was also known as Fenelon Aurora Seco Irwin. He was born on August 5th 1907 in Aurora Seco Park near Pasadena, california. If I pronounced any of that wrong, send me an email. His unique birth name was inspired by the nearby river and one of his father's favorite theologians, francisco Francisos Penelon, and I know I pronounced that wrong. I apologize, but Erwin's parents were very devout evangelists. His father was a reverend named Benjamin Hardin Irwin, a nationally known figure in the holiness movement who had founded a racially integrated radical holiness denomination in 1898. So very open to society and working with other people, but very evangelical at the same time. So this created kind of a tumultuous upbringing for Irwin. Um, it sounds great. You have this great religious family. He's really about bringing all different cultures together and then fucker bails on you when you turn three years old. So when robert was three, his father just ups and leaves the entire family, leaving them impoverished. This early abandonment likely contributed to his later mental health struggles and we'll talk about the links there between attachment and developmental statuses of youth and how it can lead to mental health. But at a young age Robert volunteered to spend 15 months in a state reformatory after a family court judge suggested that he could learn a trade there. It sounds very interesting to me.
Speaker 2:I don't really see anything about what brought him into the court system that led to this decision, but also a lot of research that I was trying to do. In different sources there's information about his upbringing and his father and stuff, but it's all superficial, it's not really in depth, so not really sure how he ended up in this situation. But he ends up going into this institution and finds that he has a knack and almost a natural ability for sculpting and he develops that skill and it becomes part of his identity. That skill and it becomes part of his identity. So Irwin demonstrates artistic prowess from an early age, developing skills as a sculptor, and his youth he worked with renowned sculptor Gutzon Borglum who was known for creating Mount Rushmore, and during the late 19th and early 20th century he is Gutzon is a booming um um sculptor and really a great mentor for erwin. This experience likely honed his artistic abilities and provided him with valuable mentorship. Later erwin's talents led him to work for a wax studio in los angeles where he carved commercial bus of public figures, including president Franklin D Roosevelt.
Speaker 2:So at this age we're seeing somebody that's had a little bit of trouble. Obviously he's ending up in the court system. He's voluntarily turned himself into a mental institution. I believe he said at the age of 15, no, I didn't, it just is. At a young age Again, it was hard to find things for 15, but for 15 months. So he obviously was having some type of mental struggles at a young age, but by the time he's 17 he started to develop an obsession with achieving godlike powers and knowledge through visualization techniques, which is kind of, um, something that's done with sculpting and really had to do with being able to make life like sculptures and himself becoming a god and being able to make these unique, very vivid statues, and this fixation would play a significant role in his criminal actions later on. Oren's mental state was described as brilliant, if erratic at some times, and also violent, indicating that he did have a volatile personality that struggled with the ability to be stable.
Speaker 3:So his first documented encounter with mental health institutions occurred when he consented to be committed to a state mental hospital, where he initially stayed for a year, and that voluntary commitment suggests a level of self-awareness regarding his mental state. Unfortunately, he was discharged and then moved into the rooming house owned by Mary Gideon, which, of course, that decision would have very fateful, fatal consequences.
Speaker 2:During the time of the Gideons' rooming house, irwin became infatuated with Mary's daughter, ethel, so this unrequited attraction would later become a central element in his delusional thinking. After he stayed with the Gideons, irwin underwent further mental health treatment at Rockland State Hospital in Orangeburg, new York, for two more years, and then he was released in the summer of 1963, approximately nine months before the murders.
Speaker 3:You said 1963, 1936.
Speaker 2:1936. This is why dyslexics have problems reading numbers. I apologize, my dyslexia sometimes does kick in when I'm reading fast. One of the things that this continues to show is that he has an awareness that something is not right with him and he's trying to seek help. But I think the problem is coming from a mental health professional now and somebody that has studied mental health and psychology kind of over the last 120 years and the development of where we're at.
Speaker 2:They just weren't there at the time. They probably at this time really couldn't understand what was wrong with him, and even today we don't have treatments for the type of things that he was showing. So at some point if people couldn't afford to pay for his treatment, the state wasn't going to keep him. Like the state's got a finite number and we already know from kind of some of the stuff we've done on some prisons and these institutions were already being overran. They weren't very safe, they weren't healthy. There was a lot of infections, abuses that were happening, so it wasn't an environment that was going to help him anyway with what he was already dealing.
Speaker 3:So, as you said, he left approximately nine months before the murders and at that point in time, following his release from Rockland State Hospital, Irwin attempted to pursue higher education by enrolling as a student at the Theological School of St Lawrence University in Canton, New York. However, his mental instability continued to manifest, which led to his expulsion on March 18th 1937, which was just 10 days before Easter due to his instability.
Speaker 2:And this very well may have been a triggering moment for him, Like it seems. Unfortunately, in the 1930s. Mental illness is still very new. It's something that you know, yeah, Freud had talked about 100 years before probably not that long but we were trying to understand it, but we really didn't have any scientific basis for it. It was still very kind of in the voodoo phase of mental health.
Speaker 2:And, of course, the university, they're not at all equipped for this. They just see that something. You know, I couldn't find anything that said what led to this expulsion, just that he is expelled, uh, just 10 days before easter due to some type of instability. So I don't know if that's lashing out, if he was living in the dorm, like there's just a lot of missing information. But this kind of leads up to now. What I see is a really unfortunate life for this man. He's at this point he's 30 years old, he's continually trying to get help. His father abandoned him as a child. They haven't made official diagnoses yet and he just continues to end up back on the streets. And now he's back on the streets, not even out of a mental institution where there may have been some resources that were provided to him when he was let go, Like, hey, here are some places you go. This is just a university Like no get out.
Speaker 2:So in the days leading up to the murder, Er, like no, get out. So in the days leading up to the murder, Irwin's mental state appears to have deteriorated rapidly. Again, this is a triggering event. I want to go be a sculptor I've gotten into school, finally, I'm trying and they just kicked me out. And he may not even understand what he did wrong because he's in this mental fritz. So he rented a room for a single day in a house on 52nd Street in New York City, several blocks from the Gideons' rooming house. During this time, he contemplated suicide, considering drowning himself in the East River before ultimately deciding to visit the Gideons' residence.
Speaker 3:And, unfortunately for the Gideons, that's where he ends up going In a confession. We'll talk about the way this confession came about later, but just to make the events seem more clear, we'll talk about the confession now, just because it'll make the murder make more sense. In his confession he stated that he went there to kill Ethel because she was the dearest object in the world to him and that he accidentally killed the others instead. Now how you accidentally kill people, I'm not really sure. Luckily for Ethel she had moved out of the house and was, I believe, married at that point in time with somebody else, so luckily she wasn't there. But he went there with the intent to kill ethel and his plan was to behead her and then make a death mask for her once he had killed her.
Speaker 2:So I got a question on that. Uh, did you look to that more than I did? Um, are we talking like ed gain style, like taking the skin off and making a mask, or are we talking about the old hollywood style where you would make a like a plaster cast?
Speaker 3:okay, so he wants to make a plaster cast of her, okay right right, which again doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, I think it again, being a sculptor, I would think you might say something like hey, can you model for me so I can make a bust of you, like I did for the president? But you know, no, that wasn't where his mind went for this particular art project.
Speaker 2:Well, do you want me to go off that one for a second? Because he wanted to own her. Yeah, he knew he couldn't have her, but he could make something out of the cast that would forever be his. Because one thing that it talked about is and you see it like a couple times in different stuff that was condensed down but he was obsessed with her. So if he couldn't own her, he could own her face and her soul. So that's why I asked, like the two difference, because if you can cast her face, especially with his skills, you could make hundreds of her. He needed that mold to be able to control and have and own her. In his in I'm going to say it like I usually I wouldn't use her, but in his diluted, insane mind that made perfect sense. And if it meant killing her, that's fine, because I still have. You is your essence, is your beauty, that's what attracted.
Speaker 3:That would be one of possible profiles on that which is very scary, I mean, and and it's again that like scary, interesting thing, ethel's one of the ones who later say he couldn't have done this, he's too sweet, he couldn't be the one who did this and to think that he was wanting to behead her, Like it. Just it's, it's scary and mind-boggling that she didn't even see him as a threat, like not even possibility on the radar blip at all.
Speaker 2:Even after they come to her with the evidence she still says, uh, he's too sweet, that couldn't have been him that did it I think that's something that you see with like family members and stuff, and I it's probably one of the creepiest things that comes out of when you start backtracking, especially serial killers and mass murders and things like that is, oh, they were the sweetest person, I never thought they could ever do something like this.
Speaker 2:They walked the old lady across the street and stuff, but then they went like massacred four people and you're like just never saw that coming. Nobody's ever like, oh, that dude was a psychopath and I just waited for the day that he took out. The entire community just always seems that it's like, oh, we never saw that coming. But then once you start kind of doing more research, you're like, yeah, everybody should have seen that coming yeah, yeah, well, especially with number of times he went in and out of mental health yes care facilities I was identified as already being violent and volatile, but the question is is that the mask that they saw or was he ability?
Speaker 2:did he have the ability to mask some of that in front of them? Right like here's a girl I like I'll hide my crazy everybody at work and at school and stuff sees me lose my temper yes, and maybe from what we're going to learn here in a minute and one of the psychological diagnosis it gives.
Speaker 3:He saw them as the safe side where everybody else was a threat side so in his confession um, you know again, he said he went there for Ethel and then when he found Mary there, he strangled her after she told him he needed to leave. And after he strangles her at some point, veronica arrives. There's also, at some point a neighbor closes a door, and I'm not sure if that happened before or after Veronica arrives. But Veronica arrives. I read someplace it was from a date and that she was intoxicated. I don't know if that's true or not, but she comes home.
Speaker 3:And when she comes home the two of them have some type of a confrontation. And when he hears her say his name and he realizes that she knows who he is, he decides he has to strangle her because she can identify him. And then, once he strangles her, he realizes that Frank is in the back bedroom and he's worried about leaving a witness. So at that point he goes back and stabs Frank. And the irony in this is that Frank was deaf. So if he had just walked out the door, frank wouldn't have been a witness to anything, because he didn't hear anything, because he was deaf, and he was asleep in the back room with the door closed. So he was like the third victim in this where just wrong place, wrong time.
Speaker 2:And a mentally unstable person and the complete throes of their disorder.
Speaker 3:So at that point in time, after he's killed them, he goes on the run. So I don't know if you want to talk a little bit about his time on the run.
Speaker 2:Well before that he did have some interactions with a Dr Bernard Gleck, who was a prominent psychiatrist who evaluated Irwin, determining that he had developed schizophrenia 14 years prior to the murders and was still suffering from it at the time of the crimes. And Gleck's assessments indicated that Irwin's actions fit with the parameters of a consistent delusion related to his obsession with achieving transcendent knowledge and power. So again, as we talked about with this over, like he wanted to become a God almost in his abilities and schizophrenia is uh. So one thing I thought is like, when we're looking at this, if we're going to go this far, let's take it to a little bit of an educational session on kind of what schizophrenia is and is not. So very few people with the disorder of schizophrenia will ever be violent. Most of the time they are more of a threat to themselves than ever to the outside.
Speaker 2:So and schizophrenia is a severe neuropsychiatric disorder. It typically manifests in late adolescent or early adulthood, which kind of fits what we're seeing with him. It's up to 17. He's doing decent, he's learning, sculpting, but then something changes. So maybe that's the onset of the schizophrenia. The average onset again of symptoms is around the 20s. The predominant symptoms may appear up to nine years before diagnosis. So before you've hit full-blown schizophrenia, you may already start showing some of these symptoms that I'll talk about here in a second. And for men, like I said, it's going to be late teens, early 20s, where with women, schizophrenia usually onsets late 20s, early 30s. So he's in that frame of what we're talking about. If they're talking about 14 years before, he's within that schizophrenic window.
Speaker 3:Which said he was 30 at the time of the murders, and I also thought it was interesting that in 1907, he was born in 1907 was also when her parents came to the United States.
Speaker 2:Those weird time frames are so interesting.
Speaker 2:And with him he's got this onset of disorder, schizophrenia, and these are new diagnoses at this time. There were some of psychopathy but he doesn't really fit that as much as some of the things that because of his extensive time in mental health facilities that we kind of know. But with schizophrenia, some of the positive symptoms. So these are things when we say positive we're not saying they're a good thing, we're saying that these are added things to his mind and body. So he's now having hallucinations, he's having delusions and then a thought disorder. So you have disorganized thoughts. You have either audible or physical hallucinations. You're having delusions of maybe grandeur, of godlikeness. So some of the symptoms we've seen reported, some of the negative symptoms. So these are things that he's losing, that normal people have. So he's having a reduction in the expressions of his emotions, so he's not able to express his emotions well. So that's why we're maybe seeing these violent or volatile outbursts, his inability to really explain his affections to people, like he's trying to with Ethel, and maybe he comes off just a little weird or elusive or a little sporadic. It's decreased motivation. Now that one I'm not sure about because we don't really get into it. We know he's still carving statues and stuff, um, but something happened at school that he was thrown out, so I don't know if there's anything there. And again, social withdrawal it does say like he kind of checked into a hotel by himself. They don't really mention other people in his life. So, and then finally, cognitive symptoms impaired, impaired working memory. I don't know if that's here Again. I'm just reading what they are. I don't know if I had that or not, but he was diagnosed by a psychiatrist, so we're going to say yes, he had it. Difficulty with attention and concentrating that seems to be here. The sporadicness with even the different victims, the casualty of what's going on, and then problems with executive functioning. That's 100% here. I mean he's murdering people. He doesn't have the ability, it seems, to control his emotions or realize what he's doing. He knows it's wrong. These are people he cares about, so there's definitely something there. So early onset schizophrenia again occurs before age 18, which would have put him around 15, 16 is what the doctors are saying and it may present with additional signs in children, such as language delays, motor development issues and difficulty distinguishing between reality and imagination. So some of that could have been there and he may have already been feeling that when he's willingly going into institutions he's already noticing something's not right. And the ages, if we look at that, match up. That schizophrenia is definitely something that was going on here.
Speaker 2:So oran's mental health struggles um culminated in the brutal easter weekend murders of 1937. His descent into violence was driven by his delusional belief that killing elfo, uh, gideon would allow him to achieve a higher spiritual plane and realize his artistic potential. And that's because one of the things was he thought that death mask of her that he could create his perfect masterpiece. Because that was how he saw her. So big delusions not only of his godlike status, but she was almost this angel that would take him to that next level. So failures of the mental health system really did help to not address his, did not help to address his mental health, leading to untreated mental illness, putting him back on the streets and unfortunately now we're about to get to of the aftermath of the crime so after the crime happened, he went on the run In June of 1937, he was in Cleveland at a hotel and one of the people noticed his resemblance and mentioned something to him and he took off.
Speaker 3:And again, because of all these pictures, ronnie, all these headlines are going across the whole country talking about the murder with her picture, and all of this is being sensationalized and the media is selling it because it makes some money. And so this is now something. You know that, even though it happened in new york sorry, even though this is something that happened in New York we're over in Cleveland now and people there know about it and are saying, hey, you look a lot like Robert Irwin in Chicago. He's the lead story day after day on all these newspapers. He contacts the Chicago Tribune and basically says hey, if you want to pay me, I'll come in and give you an exclusive interview before I turn myself in. And they think, ah, it's just, you know, crank call, and they ignore it. So he calls the Chicago Herald Examiner and makes them the same offer and asks for $5,000 and they say OK. So they end up paying him $5,000 and he turns himself into them.
Speaker 3:And it's that point, that that confession I was referring to earlier is made. It's to the newspapers, newspapers. So one of the things that you know ethically we can talk about or think about is we now have a paid confession from him that's going to be used against him in his criminal case. How ethical is it to take something like that where he you know, for $5,000, he told these people that he knew were selling news a new story before he turned himself in? Is that really going to be an accurate confession at that point, because he's getting $5,000 for it?
Speaker 2:I mean maybe I mean that's a little bit more of a I know I'm going to get caught so I can use this money to at least maybe have my. I mean I don't think he's thinking that clearly, but I think he knows he's screwed. But I also think there's a bigger question about ethics and journalism. That is not my area to talk about, but I know some people that I could reach out to that could give some information. But I think another thing about this manhunt is this spanned eight states and became the largest manhunt since, at this time, the Lindbergh kidnapping, the Lindbergh kidnapping.
Speaker 2:So even though this is a woman that they demonize and they lambast and they morally bankrupt her in the media, she's still getting this much attention. But I think it shows almost an outward like oh disdain, look at this porn star in their terms that was killed. But yet there was a lot of reverence for her by some people that really cared and wanted to bring justice to this situation. And then maybe also some people knew who this guy was and they feel they screwed up, letting him back on the street.
Speaker 3:So I think there's a lot of different facets to this case.
Speaker 2:And that's why, you know, usually we cover the victim and a little bit about the case, or we cover like a killer and then their victims in between. But here I thought it was important to give details for both because in a weird way they are both victims. Yes, we can and will never excuse what he did, but both of them came from very broken lives and unfortunately, a system failed multiple times and failed him when he was trying to get help. It led to this woman's death and even when we're talking about this manhunt asking for $5,000 and in his mind he may have not been looking for much as money, as protection. If he's schizophrenic and thinks if the cops get a hold of me, they're just going to kill me, that could be too.
Speaker 3:So after he gives his confession to the newspaper, they sent him back to New York. And when he gets back to New York City he crosses paths with Samuel Leibowitz, who is the defense attorney we were just talking about in one of our other episodes. So it was just kind of funny that his name popped up in this case, when I didn't even realize that he was going to be making an appearance in this one.
Speaker 2:That guy makes a lot of appearances as defense lawyer for some really big cases.
Speaker 3:But yeah. So when I was looking up more about Samuel, it said that he saved 123 murder defendants from the death penalty, which is what they were wanting to do with Irwin. They wanted to seek the death penalty against him. And to me it was interesting like from again, like that public safety standpoint people who are in charge of these things the detectives, the prosecutors, things like that In the beginning they're saying that he's crazy, and then they flip around and they say he's not crazy, he can stand trial.
Speaker 3:But then after he's incarcerated they say again that he's crazy. And there's just that flip-flopping back and forth Whenever it's convenient they say he is, and when it's not convenient then he's not. And you know there was Inspector Lynn and his initial view was that he was insane. And you know, with this detective he was convinced that he was crazy but at the same time thought that he, once he was caught, said oh no, he was normal at the time of the murders and he knows exactly what he was doing. So that person alone made two different statements and flip-flopped when it was convenient for him.
Speaker 2:Or if there might've been political pressure on him.
Speaker 3:And that's the other thing I was going to say is that I'm sure there was some type of political pressure going on, because now you have those three murders in New York City at a boarding house.
Speaker 3:You have people who are coming to stay in New York City at boarding houses, so I'm sure that having three people killed and making the front page of all these newspapers is not a good thing for tourism or people moving to the area.
Speaker 3:You also have a district attorney's election going on, because at the beginning of it is district attorney William Dodge handling the case, but then there's an election and he loses and district attorney Thomas Dewey takes over and resumes the prosecution after the election. So there's a lot of different moving factors behind the scenes with other people in this story. But because of his defense attorneys I mean brilliant work really. I mean he really, really, really went to bat for him on this case and he was able to get him a plea where he pled guilty to three counts of second degree murder in exchange for avoiding the death penalty and he also, as part of the plea negotiation, wanted a promise of the return of a pair of trousers that he had abandoned in a suitcase at grand central station in 1937, so the the year prior, so that again.
Speaker 2:The ramblings of a stable genius.
Speaker 3:Exactly, exactly. Don't put me to death. And oh, by the way, please find my lost pants.
Speaker 2:Which is weird, Totally off base, but I'm going to throw it out here. I've arrested a lot of people that had drugs or guns and stuff in their pants and they were first to say those aren't my pants. This may be one of the first criminal that was like no, those are my pants. So props to him for being like no, those were my pants and I'd like them back, Cause most criminals like those aren't my pants. Those drugs were in those pants when I to party last night and you're like uh, what?
Speaker 3:so props so yeah, crazy it definitely was, because first they say he's crazy, then he's not even in the middle of the um case's procedural. The judge postponed the trial in september of 1937 to try to get a finding from a three member commission evaluating his sanity. But they come back and they say he's sane. He takes the plea agreement. He gets sentenced to 139 years in prison. There was 99 years to life for Frank, 20 years for Mary and 20 years for Veronica, which I thought was interesting. I didn't know why he deserved 99 years versus the other two were 20. Like what? What factor was in that?
Speaker 2:You got 99 years for the person he killed that had a penis. Yes, and 20 years each for the women who did not.
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 2:That seems to be the only difference. I don't know if maybe there may have been an aggravated, because the guy was deaf.
Speaker 3:He didn't know, he was deaf.
Speaker 2:But do you have to? I mean, is lack of knowledge take away the actions of your crime?
Speaker 3:It depends on what it is Like. If it's a hate crime, like if if you're charging me with a hate crime saying I killed you because you were of this subset and I didn't know you were a member of that subset, it's kind of hard to say I did it because you were a member of that subset if I didn't know you were of that subset, but if I present that your victim was more vulnerable because of their disabilities, Right, then, that would be a difference.
Speaker 2:Then that would be like he didn't even have a chance to defend himself, right that?
Speaker 3:would be a difference.
Speaker 2:Almost like you attacked a child. They can't defend themselves. You attacked a handicapped person that couldn't hear in the middle of the night, in the middle of the night, so that aggravates the.
Speaker 2:It may have played on heartstrings a little bit more than they were able to sell these two women that they probably lambasted and just terrorized us because their connections this boarding house and these things. This was a hard-working man. These were two women involved in sex trades and pornography and alcohol and alcohol and all this other stuff. So, yeah, he murdered them, but they're not worth as much as this hard-working man that unfortunately had um a disability and he massacred for no reason yeah, so that's, that was something I just thought was kind of interesting.
Speaker 3:No, it's extremely interesting yeah, and it's a huge quality it's not like 30 years and 20 years, like 99 versus 20 and 20 yeah, that's very interesting but then at that point he sent to sing sing prison and there with his psychological evaluation they ruled him very definitely insane and sent him on to the state hospital and I think that's something that is again a whole nother conversation.
Speaker 2:You could probably teach classes about this at the graduate level, but just how the court systems and the people that work inside that side of the criminal justice system view mental illness and mental health compared to the psychologists, social workers and psychologists that work on the other side of treatment and with people that are already inmates or could become inmates, maybe in probation or something like that. Because I think they're probably going to look at those two very different where the people that are working with already judged offenders or people that could become offenders or that could be, you know, get worse, they're seeing treatment possibilities and the people in the court system for like they're monsters. We need to put them away as much as possible. He knew what he did.
Speaker 2:Like the person's obviously to anybody else is, has some type of a psychotic break or something, but you so much want the prosecution to they will never see the light of day again. You're like no, they can stay in trial. And the people with the degrees were like no, like this, this person has mental health disorders and needs treatment, but on the other side, you want that prosecution. You're like no, no, they're perfectly mentally fine. They knew everything they were doing, and it's just a battle between two sides that both I don't even say both want the same thing, both have the education, but they're coming in from a different.
Speaker 3:And I think maybe in some ways they do want the same thing, because at the end of the day, we want everybody to be safe.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:And I think that's the goal. We want everybody to be safe, whether he's in a hospital getting treatment or a prison, as long as he's not killing anybody else. That, or a prison as long as he's not killing anybody else. That's the goal at the end of the day is that he can't kill anybody else. From you know, at least for me as a prosecutor. Um, but the flip side of it is I'm not a mental health professional. I don't know. I don't know if you're faking, I don't know if you're real. I'm relying on all these other people to give me that information. And on the flip side, if somehow, like we don't do a plea, like, let's say, we decide that you are not mentally capable of going to trial or entering into a plea agreement and you're going to go to the hospital instead, if you're treated for 20 years and now they say at the hospital well, he's better now.
Speaker 3:Well, now, what happens to you? In theory, at that point you should come back to be tried for your crime. Well, now it's been 20 years. What evidence do I have? How many of my witnesses have died? You weren't able to cross-examine them, which is your right under the Constitution, something you know that they recorded because they're not subject to cross-examination. So at that point he can't. You don't have a case that you can win, so then at that point he could potentially get released from prison and, like he was 30 years old when he did this, if he goes there for 20 years then he's 50. I don't want him to walk out the door at 50, you know, and not have any accountability.
Speaker 2:You know probation, no parole, no, nothing but he's now spent 20 years in mental health getting treatment. Is that person that's getting out even the same person that went in there?
Speaker 2:it's an interesting question with if, if, under treatment, non-proper medications and getting all the things that erwin didn't get, is the person that walks out from there 20 years later better than the person that possibly could walk out 50 years later that never got any treatment whatsoever? And that's literally like the debate that I think we're still having in the entire prison criminal justice system in the US, ireland, england. They're well ahead of this. Like I think it's really sad that when you look at the criminal justice system and we've gotten a little off topic, but I think it's an important conversation to have happy Easter is that in the end, we have always been reactive to what other people have already done, and it's usually decades after.
Speaker 2:Like our system started based off the Irish concept we when it came in, that was in the early, late 17, early 1800.
Speaker 2:And it's usually decades after like our system started based off the Irish concept we when it came in, that was in the early, late 17, early 1800s. And then when Ireland, england and Nordic countries started going into a more redemption and more, less punitive, more rehabilitation system, 20, 30 years later, the US did that as well, and now we're seeing like these really great prison systems and corrections facilities in Denmark, sweden, europe, england, ireland, but we're still 30 years behind and being much more punished and you're just creating people like this and we're still seeing people that are going into prison, getting no treatment for mental health illnesses, that have done very violent crimes and put right back out on the street untreated and they committed again. And then the criminal justice system. So well, we didn't see this coming. They did 20 years in prison but they're mentally ill and they're not understanding because you haven't gotten them treatment. And unfortunately, erwin and we'll get to this he kind of, in a sad but positive note out of all this kind of helps us start to address this back in the 1930s.
Speaker 3:And I think that's where your key was about. Is he a different person when he comes out? And I think that's as a prosecutor sitting and looking at the case today I don't know if 20 years from now, if when he comes out, he will be a different person or not. And so I think that's the fear. The fear that you have as a prosecutor is, if I don't figure out a way to get this guy that 99-year sentence, what if? What if he finds a way to get out? And what if he kills somebody else? Because then that will be my fault, even though we all know it's not, because other people make their own decisions.
Speaker 2:And the jury makes their own decisions and the judge makes a decision about what counts.
Speaker 3:So I think that that's always something, though you know, when you're going back and forth with those dilemmas, something that's in the back of your mind is you want to make sure that something doesn't happen to another victim, and I think anytime you have somebody re-offend on some level, you feel like you failed.
Speaker 2:And what's even kind of weirder at this time and I was kind of looking at this is one of the treatments for this back then would have been frontal lobotomies at the time and the treatments that they would have done at the same time, probably, what are the chances they could have made it worse? Shock therapy, frontal lobotomies yeah, he wouldn't have been the same man. He may have been no man, he may have been a complete vegetable. So that's not what we're here to talk about today.
Speaker 2:But Erwin really, unfortunately, was in a very bad time for mental health treatment in this country. Institutions were starting to be really ramped up but not staffed. Understanding of mental health was still in its infancy and I would go to say that we are still very much in the infancy of mental health and the prison system wasn't at all aimed for this. Colleges weren't ready for this. So Veronica, mary and Frank really much were the victims of a much broader system that was failing one individual that was actively seeking help, and I think that's one of the big takeaways from that. This wasn't a sick, deranged monster that was out trying to kill people. This is somebody very aware that there was something wrong with them, and when, system after system after system. Let them down. The delusions just finally got to them.
Speaker 3:And I would agree with that. And to me this case it's interesting because it brings up so many ethical things, like the paid confession, the role that media played in this case as far as the attention they gave the case, the headlines, the pictures that they sent out, all of those things, um, you know, and and they nearly he nearly ended up in the electric chair because of all of the publicity and everything else and the confession that he gave for that $5,000 payment. And another interesting thing that came out of this is when people were reviewing the initial list of jurors, there were 841 names on the potential juror list and none of them were women and I don't know who figured that out or how that came to somebody's attention. But when that was found out again, because this case had so much press associated with it that people looked at this case and said wait a second, this is a problem. And the day after that the court began making sure that women were on the jury list for cases like this.
Speaker 2:And, like you said, one of the things that I think really tainted was, again, almost victim shaming. Like I said, they're putting all these pictures out there or they're calling her boy crazy and they're basically, again, as I did, in modern terms slut shaming. And did she ask for this? It in modern terms, slut shaming and did she ask for this? Um, it's really, it's really disgusting, and I think we've talked about this, as in other cases too, where sometimes the media has to step up and value their own ethics, because sometimes either they indirectly lead to the very crimes that happen or they're so quick to make money, paying a murderer five thousand dollars because you're so desperate to get their story sensationalizing and shaming a victim to sell more articles instead of you know your headline, you know pen pen up nudist, salacious woman murdered by crazy man. It should have said you know beautiful, young, caring woman, family person, working lady, murdered by untreated mentally ill patient who would ask for help?
Speaker 2:who had asked for help repeatedly, but instead it was a lot of shaming her and it's sad today and it makes me fearful. You know, as a father of a daughter and stuff, you know, even today we see women not being taken seriously, um, and often, well, they asked for it, or or how do we know what they're saying is true? And a lot of that does go back to media portrayals and how quick people are to latch on to things without knowing the facts and just demonizing people. That's my soapbox. On that we'll get back to ronnie. But just looking at her picture, like even just looking at like, there's a little bit of sorrow, like even looking at that for me, I mean, I know I'm a little bit more attuned to like victim feelings because, having worked with victims and stuff, many times you're just you look at her especially in just the light that's in her eyes, like what could you have offered if somebody had protected you?
Speaker 3:I think there's an interesting quote from the uh new york daily news publisher, joseph patterson, when he was responding to the criticism like you're talking about journalistic ethics and he said that murder sells papers, books plays, because we are all fascinated by murder. And he went on to talk about at the time there was some news about President Roosevelt's trying to hack the Supreme Court. And he went on to say perhaps people should be more interested today in the Supreme court than in the Gideon murder. But we don't think they are. So it it comes back to us too.
Speaker 2:I would say I would. I mean I would agree with that, and I think there's multiple things. I think a we are a true crime podcast, so we totally support people's interests and like true crime and stuff Don't cancel us. But a like the Supreme court like to a point, of course, people aren't going to be interested in that because at this time period and I think now to a point, not getting political but just being realistic is a lot of people don't think they have any control over that Like, especially like stuff with the supreme court, because we don't elect those people. They're just going to do what they're going to do. They're seen as the most corrupt institution in the world by many people. I think they have a favoritism rate of like 10 or less.
Speaker 2:But here's a young, beautiful woman that's murdered. How, why could I be a victim? And and again it's very interesting a lot of statistics also show women are like the people that are most interested in true crime and stuff. So I think there's always that fear of an interest in how, why, what leads people to do this. I mean, half of my industry is based off of why do people do the things they do and how can we keep it from happening and then also a little bit of that fear factor. One thing I'm getting way off topic, but this is kind of good because I like having these conversations because one of the cases that we're going to do here later is Ed Gein. And one thing about Ed Gein is that's like, if you would think of all the things you see in the media about him now and how much he's been covered, that he was this monster of a person. He did some like graphic things, but he wasn't a serial killer, he wasn't a mass murderer, he was just a guy and we'll talk about that. But his influence led to this culture of fear in this country that engulfed and infatuated enough people that it set off whole genres. So there is something, and I don't know if it's the fear of death, if it's the fascination with death, and maybe not murder but just death, the afterlife, because you do tend to see the people that are really fascinated with true crime. Also, there is a kind of crossover into other genres, like like um, hauntings, ghosts, the paranormal cryptids, mothman's the only thing that's real Um, and UFOs and stuff like that Mothman forever, um, that people are more interested in, like who's and why's, and I think some people look at a different things. You'll see people that are very interested in like the people that did it, and they almost become obsessed with them and unhealthy obsession. Um, that's not how I got into this, that's not why I got into this, that's not why I'm into this.
Speaker 2:I'm very much into it in the victims and I think that that's probably the bigger group, and especially women. It's more of trying to understand the victims and how not to be a victim, and I think the media never portrays it that way, as much as they focus on the killers. But I think one thing that we need to get better at and I think true crime podcasts, and especially some true crime podcasters out there that I don't name because we're not affiliated with them and I really kind of don't know the guidelines on calling people like you're good or you're bad, um, you're all great, I love you, but is teaching how not to be a victim, like fuck the fuck the killers, like we'll tell you what they did, but they're the pieces of shit. How do we protect the people that weren't? So, going back even now and I'm going to get into this in just a second, not like in this case I'm a little bit more coming from the social work side, like Irwin, like fuck, we let you down, man, like we let you down as a society. You were asking for help and we just let you down. And at the same time, veronica, I'm sorry like we fucked up, we let you down. But can anything good come from this? And the reality is that from this case there were a couple of things that came out of it.
Speaker 2:So after the trial and everything was done, there were some legislative changes that happened in New York. They tried to answer some of the problems that they saw. So first there was a legislative hearing and what I could find was late 1938, after Erwin was adjudicated as mentally ill, the state legislator held hearings that were set up to investigate the treatment of individuals with mental disorders. These hearings focused not only on treatments for individuals but also examined the nature of psychiatric treatments and the hospital system's effectiveness of providing adequate services. There were also some psychiatric reforms. So, like after the Bleakman Hills murders case, resulted in far reaching psychiatric reforms in the state of New York.
Speaker 2:While specific details of those reforms were not easy to find, they did include improvements and assessments and treatments of potentially dangerous psychiatric patients. So kind of what that would have done for Irwin is if he would have been brought in and talked to a psychiatrist, he would have gone through an assessment. They would have used evidence-based tools to say, okay, what is he on these scales? It could have led, maybe, to ability to hold him longer. Those scales would have looked much different than the ones we use now. But and then there was a lot more put on hospital scrutiny because he was obviously having mental health issues, he was obviously very volatile, there were problems and he was just being thrown back out on the street. So this case led to intense scrutiny of the hospital system, resulting in several top doctors losing their positions, actually for having allowed Irwin his freedom. And then the suggestion was also given for tightening policies regarding the release of potentially dangerous patients from psychiatric institutions. So, yes, there were some lights and rays of hope that came out of this case.
Speaker 2:Um, there's not a Veronica's law, there's not an Irwin's law, but there is a legacy there. And again, like this case has been immortalized in multiple different cultural areas. The one again I saw was the episode of A Crime to Remember Great series. If you're into true crime, it covers a lot more older crimes, kind of like we do. Or the old people podcast suddenly it covers a lot more older crimes, kind of like we do, where the old people podcast suddenly Just kidding Love the 1930s but and then a Mystery at the Museum episode as well. So it's a really sad tale. I mean, this was a beautiful young woman, her mother and a hardworking man that were taken way before their time because so many failures of the psychiatric and mental hospital.
Speaker 3:On a side note, Douglas and Irwin apparently were friends at St Lawrence university. They were in Canton, New York, and used Vincent Van Gogh and when he did the Vincent Van Gogh film lust for life used Irwin as his model when he was portraying Vincent Van van gogh.
Speaker 2:The couple pictures I've seen of erwin again a lot of like. I'm trying to empathize with that, but he looks like the fucking basis for the joker, like he very much the smile he almost has that paleness. Now again, these are kind of black and white photos, but if you see pictures of erwin that is the joker just saying so. But I guess to end this out like this was our easter episode because the the massacre of veronica, mary and frank happened over easter weekend. But the bigger takeaway is, like you know, maybe there's a chance to find redemption for individuals if we give them the chance and the resources that could keep them from committing violent and horrific crimes like this, and that we need to take mental health seriously in this country and provide better services and be better humans. I want to thank you all so much for listening to our little podcast. This is created with love and passion for criminal justice and true crime.
Speaker 2:So if you're enjoying the podcast, please follow us, like or rate us on whatever system you're listening to us on, subscribe to our podcast and download episodes. Downloads are important for our growth, as is growing our listeners. So if you wouldn't mind, take the time to ask your friends, family, co-workers, tell them about us through word of mouth, social media. I don't care if you even scream at strangers on the streets. To help us kind of get out there who we are. If you're interested in learning more, you could visit our website at wwwdeviantcriminologycom. There you'll find some stuff about our backgrounds, references, show notes for each episode. You can also follow us on our Facebook page at Deviant Criminology. We also have an Instagram page, which is Deviant underscore Criminology. Or find me at Drrichardweaver on Instagram. And as we grow, we hope to develop a community that will grow with us. So again, thank you for taking the time to listen and have a good week. Thank you.
