American Monsters: Earl Leonard Nelson

0:00 Warning. Kind of Murdery contains adult themes, explicit language, and descriptions of violence. It is not suitable for anyone, and we recommend you stop listening. Now. True crime with a dash of the paranormal, the garish, the strange in the darkly comic. A podcast that's about more than just murder. It's my very own pocket dimension, home to a curated collection of bizarre and compelling stories, the unsolved, the unsettling, and the unbelievable. I cover it all just so long as it's kind of murdery.

0:40 Hello everyone, thank you for joining me. I am Zevan Odelberg, and this is kind of murdery, and boy, have I gotten an American monster for you today. This is the terrible tale of the twentieth century's most prolific serial killer, a man who defined the label serial killer long before the label itself was invented. A murderer whose visceral and dastardly killings left a pile of corpses unrivaled by any serial killer in recorded history. It was not until the arrival of modern American horror household names like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy, the today's grim Grendel would see his confirmed kill count surpassed.

1:23 I'm speaking of a psychotic, homicidal maniac known to history as the Dark Strangler, or even more evocatively, the Gorilla Strangler. Newspapers dubbed him the Gorilla Strangler because of his swarthy complexion, wide forehead, protruding lips, and massive hands. His name was Earl Nelson, and he would inspire a film by the inventor of modern horror cinema, Alfred Hitchcock. But more on that later. Kind of Murderies American Monsters Earl Nelson starts now.

2:06 The first scene of our true crime gothic horror story takes place in the year nineteen twenty three in the most appropriate of settings. The NAPA State Hospital, known in nineteen twenty three is the NAPA State Asylum for the criminally insane. From the moment it opened its doors in eighteen seventy five until it was dynamited in nineteen forty nine, inmates escaping from the NAPA Asylum was an ongoing chronic problem, or perhaps an entertaining diversion, depending on your moral compass and your feeling about real life batman supervillains.

2:43 This is not the first appearance on Kind Ofmurdery for the NAPA State Hospital. I know it features prominently in The Horrible Truth About Hans, but I'm fairly certain that if you peruse Kindomurdary's back catalog, you'll discover that escaping from both the NAPA and the Mendocino Asylum is an ongoing trope in our show. Where Tonight's story begins in nineteen twenty three, the asylum sat on two hundred acres, and the asylum itself was a massive red brick Gothic castle that would seem more aptly described as the ancestral seat of Vlad the Impaler more so than a home for the criminally insane, although given the impressive resume of Count Dracula, both during his life and in the centuries following death, that may be a distinction without a difference.

3:34 This self same hospital still operates today, although with a much smaller modern structure and much less land. The majority of the land has subsequently become two public parks, as for Dracula's Castle, a Kirkbride building. That's krkbr Ide. Google Kirkbride if you're curious about the significance of the designation. I can only afford so many digressions. So yes, Dracula's NAPA Fortress was dynamited in nineteen forty nine because it had been declared a fire trap and too dangerous to house bedridden patients.

4:10 Well that was part of it anyway, that, along with the general push toward modernity and post war American government, the dynamiting of the original NAPA Asylum is a historical and architectural tragedy all its own. All post links to photos of NAPA Asylum's Kirkbride building in the show notes and on social media, but suffice to say it's a structure of truly gobsmacking proportions, vaguely reminiscent of a red brick Versailles, with added conical torrets, and all the spiritual charm of a crematorium.

4:41 I couldn't find an official listing of the square footage, but in a book entitled San Francisco in the nineteen thirties, Patricia Pestonary writes that after the original NAPA State Hospital was demolished, salvagers took away ten million bricks, one million border feet of lumber, two hundred and fifty square feet of one inch thick hardwood flooring. Now I'm neither a math genius nor a contractor, but I'm fairly certain that if you remove two hundred and fifty thousand square feet of flooring from a building, well, then that building was two hundred and fifty thousand square feet, which is frickin huge.

5:21 That means it's four times the size of the Hearst Castle. But remember it wasn't destroyed until nineteen forty nine, and that means that in the first of our murdery vignettes back in nineteen twenty three, Castle Drachcool West, the Napa State Asylum still stood and housed many of California's most dangerous, criminally insane patients and some less dangerous ones too. On Tuesday, November fifth, nineteen twenty three, the Petaluma Argus Courier reported that the town of Napa was on high alert and housewives all the flutter because three inmates had escaped from the Napa Asylum.

6:01 The escapees were ed a day. Criminally insane, transferred from Folsom Prison in nineteen twenty two. C. H. Reynolds from Calusa, California, committed in nineteen twenty one, and An E. Farrell from Mayor Island in Vallejo. The Argus Courier warns its readers that Dai and Reynolds are considered dangerous and that they had picked a lock from inside the quote department where the most extreme cases are kept. But as for E. Farrell, a former Navy serviceman, he's described only as a quote Mayor Island sailor, leaving the Argus Courier readers to no doubt assume that of the three men, seamen Farrell must be the least dangerous.

6:46 Now, what's that Sam Jackson quote about making assumptions? Everyone knows when you make an assumption, you make an ass out of you annuption. Yeah, that's the one. And this was certainly one of those assumptions. Because while Dally and Reynolds are lost to the sands of time, E Ferrell aka Virgil Wilson aka Adrian Harris aka mister Woodcut and who knows how many other names, would in fact become notoriously hideously legendary. His name was Earl Nelson, and nearly one hundred years after his first recorded kill, only seven American serial killers have more confirmed victims than human monster Earl Nelson, the guerrilla Strangler, a man who so horribly fascinated North America that he inspired the nineteen forty three Alfred Hitchcock film Shadow of a Doubt.

7:42 In fact, only five Americans have a higher possible body count than Nelson, and two of those are pop culture monolists Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy, who have unfortunately become something akin to the Starbucks and Walmart of soulless murderers. All of this is a long winded way of saying that the navyman E Ferrell was most assuredly not the least dangerous of the three escapees. Whoever was penning local news for the Petaluma Argus Courier one hundred years ago ought to be ashamed of themselves.

8:12 But then perhaps the wolf and sailor's clothing had not yet removed his sheep's will suit, or perhaps he had until murderous men like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy burst onto the scene. Earl Nelson was the most prolific known serial killer, not just in American history, but in history history. He racked up a kill count in the middle nineteen twenties that made London's infamous stabbing ghoul Jack the ripper look like a hobbyist, where the ripper has five canonical victims whose lives were brutally taken in the year eighteen eighty eight, making him the nineteenth century's most notorious killer.

8:53 Early in the twentieth century, Earl Nelson would rack up twenty two confirmed kills and many more, becoming the Encyclopedia injury for serial killer, a designation that had not yet been invented and so didn't have an Encyclopedia page, but that Nelson nevertheless defined to his bones. He was the most heinous and prolific serial killer of the nineteen hundreds, and he would remain unrivaled for more than half a century. And like the myriad monsters that would follow in his serial killing footsteps, Earl Nelson had a trademark murder method.

9:34 He would find a house with a sign advertising room for rents and pose as a prospective tenant. Then, if he found that the landlord was a woman and was alone in the house, he would strangle her and sexually assault her dead body. If serial killing wasn't stomach churning enough, Nelson added necrophilia to his profane in pursuits. When he had finished outraging a poor landlady's corpse, he would shove it under her bed and then steal any jewelry he could find, along with fine clothing, pawning, both to finance future homicide.

10:16 In this way, he delivered death and defilement to at least twenty two, likely twenty five or more unsuspecting women, women kind enough to open their homes to a stranger. Nelson left a trail of corpses from Philadelphia to Chicago, San Francisco, Oakland, Portland, Baltimore, Buffalo, Detroit, and finally Winnipeg, Canada. If you're anything like me, you'd likely prefer to get as far as humanly possible away from the memory of Earl Nelson, filing it in a mental lock box labeled do not open. Well.

10:51 You have the freedom to do that if you wish. But as for me, I find that stories, regardless of their ugliness and sometimes because of it, stories have a terrible compulsion all their own. And the top line is not enough. I'm in too deep to turn back now. So sip some ginger ale, take some dramamines, smoke some reefer, or whatever it is you do to quell the nausea, and come with me as we get to know Earl Nelson a little better. Sadly, the first stop on our dark, magical murdery tour is a place where human depravity and perversion is most often birthed.

11:33 I'm speaking, of course, of childhood, in this case, the broken and tragic childhood of the monstrous mister Nelson. Earl Leonard Nelson was not born the Gorilla Strangler. He was born Earl Leonard Ferrell in the year eighteen ninety seven in San Francisco, California, the only son of James Ferrell and Francis Nelson. Tragically, for baby Earl, his father, James had infected his mother with syphilis, and when Earl was only ten months old, his mother died of the disease. And then seven months after that, when Earle was not even a year and a half, James Ferrell died from the same syphilis with which he had doomed Earle's mother.

12:16 Still only a baby, Earle was taken in by his maternal grandparents, Lars and Jenny Nelson. Although Earle had sandy blonde hair and Ferrell is an Irish name and Nelson is Swedish. The law enforcement officers hunting him some thirty years later, presumed that the dark Strangler was Greek. But it's too soon for the adult, murderous Dark Strangler. Let's return to the upbringing of baby Earl Nelson. The Nelsons were Pentecostal and puritanical in their beliefs, in particular in regards to the evils of sex and the temptations of the flesh.

12:54 Of course, given that their daughter Francis had, in the Nelson's view, been murdered by a syphilitic Satan, perhaps their beliefs on sex and the sensual delights of this world were little more than a logical conclusion supported by evidence. But from wherever those beliefs arose and strengthen, there's little doubt that they had a powerful impact on young Earl. In the Nelson's home, sex was a dirty thing that would lead to hell, fire and damnation, and the furious, fiery, and yet oppressive energy of his home life turned Earle into a traumatized, silent, and submissive child, so submissive that he was unable even to defend himself when attacked.

13:35 There's no doubt that the Nelson's extreme religiosity had a mighty impact on young Earl, who later in life would become obsessed with biblical prophecy and in particular, passages that encouraged or justified violence against unfaithful women. Near the end of Earl Nelson's life, a prison guard reported that Earle had become obsessed with one passage from the Bible, in particular, Proverbs twenty three, My son, give me thine heart, and let thine eyes observe my ways. For a whore is a deep ditch, and a strange woman is a narrow pit.

14:14 She also lieth in wait as for prey, and increaseth the transgressors among men. At this point in our story, Nelson was only a child, but those words from the Bible serve as grim foreshadowing of his serial killer trajectory, and it seems clear he found in them some perverse justification for unforgivable violence against women. The emotional wounds of his tragic childhood were deep, and perhaps they would have birthed the guerrilla strangler inside of Earl Nelson all on their own. But a second parent would arrive soon enough, barely a year after living through the cataclysmic earthquake and fire of nineteen o six, at the age of ten, Little Earl was out riding his bicycle when he collided with a streetcar.

15:02 And if dead parents and a home full of furious religiosity were the Gorilla Strangler's mother, the streetcar accident, though it may have been the last thing Little Earl Nelson deserved or needed, it was exactly the deadbeat dad that the Gorilla Strangler required to be conceived and brought forth into this world, howling with fury and forever hungry for sex and death. You see, after colliding with the streetcar, little Earl Nelson was knocked unconscious and carried home unconscious with a bleeding hole in his temple.

15:38 He remained unconscious for six days, and when he awoke, he seemed returned to normal, except that he would sometimes complain of blinding, headaches and memory lapses, and some doctors believed that the accident was when Earl Nelson's psychosis began in earnest There are those who have described Nelson's early teen years as full of day dreaming and compulsive masturbation, as though those two activities paved the way for his eventual arrival as a full blown serial strangling, sex murderer, and necrophiliac.

16:15 To be fair, if daydreaming and compulsively masturbating were reliable evidence of future serial killing necrophilia, then literally every single teenage boy in America would be doomed to mature into the guerrilla strangler. And so, to be honest with you, as provocative as the label of daydreaming compulsive masturbator may be, I personally don't put too much stock in those activities as evidence of future murderiness. When Nelson was fourteen, his grandmother passed away and he went to live with his aunt and her husband.

16:50 It was after moving to this new home that Nelson began to interrupt his endless daydreaming and masturbation with actual criminal activity. He may have interrupted his masturbation with other activities as well, because later blood test evidence suggested that in his teen years, Nelson had contracted gonorrhea and then the same disease that killed both his parents, syphilis, which likely hastened his descent into violent madness. In nineteen fifteen, at the age of eighteen, Nelson was arrested for breaking into a cabin he thought was abandoned.

17:28 He was paroled from San Quentin in nineteen sixteen and joined the Navy, and then in nineteen seventeen, America entered World War One, but while in the Navy, Nelson refused to do anything but lie on his cot and deliver fiery, nonsensical sermons about the Great Beast of revelations. He was confined to a naval medical institution until the end of the war, and then discharged. It was in nineteen eighteen, at the age of twenty one, that Earl Nelson began the descent into sex crimes and murder that would lead him to immerger arge, fully deformed from his grotesque chrysalis as the infamous Guerrillas Strangler.

18:06 In May of nineteen eighteen, Nelson went to the house of San Franciscan Charles Summer, posing as a plumber, there to fix the radiator. Once he was admitted to the house, he descended to the basement, where he found Summer's twelve year old daughter playing with dolls. He attempted to sexually assault the girl, but her screams brought her brother running to her aid, and after a brief struggle, Nelson fled the house. Later that day, Nelson was arrested by San Francisco police, but because of his bizarre behavior.

18:35 He was transferred to the NAPA State Asylum, where attending doctors tentatively diagnosed him as being in a constitutional and this is a quote psychopathic state. In Layman's terms, that means he was the very essence of a psychopath, right down to the marrow of his bones. However, there was no cure or treatment for this diagnosis. Well, Nelson was put with the other mental patients and forgotten about. But Earle had no interest in being simply left to vegetate, and he quickly escaped. He was recaptured, but he kept escaping until finally the hospital simply discharged him on paper so they wouldn't have to keep recapturing him during one of his escapes.

19:19 In nineteen nineteen, Nelson adopted the alias of Evan Lewis Fuller and married a woman nearly forty years his senior, fifty eight year old Mary Martin. However, he continued to behave like a constitutional psychopath. He was unable to hold down a job for more than a few days because of bizarre behavior. He would sometimes get up in the middle of the night tell Mary he was going out to look for work. He would put on one set of clothes before he left leave, disappear for several days, only to return wearing a different set of clothes.

19:55 He would offer no explanation for his disappearances, and sometimes simply claim that he had never left the house at all, although these strange episodes were occurring some six years before Nelson's first recorded victim. Later, as we explore some of the gory specifics of Nelson's crimes, you'll learn why these bizarre nighttime disappearances and costume changes suggest that Nelson was already murdering unsuspecting women way back in nineteen nineteen. But for now, let's stick to the story of Mary Martin.

20:29 It had come as no surprise that Mary was unable to rationalize her husband's exceedingly odd behavior, and given that Nelson was not a rational being, he himself was unable to offer any explanation. He made Mary's life a living hell. He became possessively jealous and would fly into rages whenever she talked to another man, including her own brother. He would direct his violence and rage at inanimate objects rather than at his wife, who was left to just stare in horror. Mary Martin was well off, matronly and had strong maternal instincts, which made her the unwitting templates for the majority of Nelson's future murder victims.

21:09 When he eventually started threatening her life directly, she had him recommitted to the NAPA State Hospital. Back at NAPA, the other patients dubbed Nelson Houdini because of his frequent escapes. By nineteen twenty five, he was gone for good and was once again discharged on paper in absentia on March tenth, nineteen twenty five. His family last saw him in October the same year, and then the career of the guerrilla Strangler began in terrible earnest. On October eighteenth, nineteen twenty five, not long after Nelson had last seen his family in the Bay Area, the body of missus Ala McCoy was found strangled to death in her Philadelphia home.

21:54 Nineteen days later, on November sixth, missus May Murray was likewise found strangled, and three days after that, the body of Lilian Wiener was found dead sprawled across her bed. A room for rent sign had hung in the window of each woman's home. Rather than walk you through a rubber necking horror house of more than twenty grizzly strangulations followed by outrageous acts of necrophilia visited upon the bodies of the deceased women. I'm going to save us a large portion of that trauma and fast forward to the last few murders that got Earl Nelson caught.

22:34 Don't worry if you're here for the depraved details. There are many more upcoming that are really too horrific to explore, but we're going to do it anyway. Just over a year and a half after the start of his killing spree, Nelson murdered his last American victim. On June second, nineteen twenty seven, the body of if missus Mary Systema of Chicago was discovered by her husband lying on the floor of their Chicago home. Mary's clothes were torn and disheveled, and she had been strangled with an electrical cord.

23:12 Mary was the twenty fourth woman to be strangled and then raped by Earl Nelson in less than twenty months. By this time, he had murdered and violated women all across the United States, leaving victims in Philadelphia, San Francisco, San Jose, Santa Barbara, Oakland, Portland, Oregon City, Seattle, Council Bluffs, Iowa, Kansas City, Chicago, Buffalo, and Detroit. Among women with rooms for rent, it seems no one and nowhere was safe. And if you're surprised by Nelson's mobility, know that he financed his demon's journey with money stolen from his victims or obtained by pawning their belongings.

23:53 And as was hinted at by his early disappearances in San Francisco while he was still married to Mary Martin, he became adept at changing his appearance and identity simply by donning the clothes of his victim's husbands or other male family members. If there were no husband's wardrobe to pilfer, Nelson would simply use some of his ill begotten gains to buy a new suit of clothes at a nearby second hand store. And this is why I said earlier that his habit of disappearing from Mary Martin's home in one set of clothes, only to return days later wearing another with no explanation for the change, suggests that Nelson was already murdering women as early as nineteen eighteen, some seven years before his first recorded victim.

24:40 Back now to June of nineteen twenty seven, after strangling Mary's Systema in Chicago, Nelson donned a blue suit, sweater and a pair of sandals that belonged to her husband. On the eighth day of June, mister W. E. Chandler of Canada was driving home to Winnipeg from Detroit. When walking along the road somewhere in Minnesota, he spotted a hitchhiker wearing a blue suit and brown sandals. He picked up the man and drove him to Winnipeg, and that one small act of kindness by mister Chandler would bring rivers of woe to the families of Winnipeg, because, of course, the man in the blue suit and sandals was none other than the Gorilla strangler.

25:24 After mister Chandler dropped him off, Nelson went straight to Jacob Garber's second hand store at two eighteen Main Street in Winnipeg and traded in Martin Systema's blue suit, sweater and sandals for a blue herringbone coat, pants, black boots, and a gray felt hat and one dollar in cash. Then walking down Broadway to Smith Street, he saw a sign for a room for rent hanging in the window of missus Catherine Hill's home at one thirty three Smith Street. He introduced himself to missus Hill as mister Woodcott, a religious man, stating that he was looking for lodging.

26:00 He then paid her the one dollar he'd received from bartering mister Sistema's clothes and sandals as an advance on his twelve dollars a month rent. That same night, a fourteen year old girl named Lola Cowan walked down Broadway towards Smith Street selling paper flowers that were made by her sister Margaret. Ever since Lola's father had died suddenly from a ruptured appendix, the Cowan family had been struggling to make inns meet, and Lola was doing whatever she could to help. She encountered mister Woodcot, who informed young Lola that he would very much like to buy some of her flowers, but that he didn't have the money to pay her with him, and she would have to accompany him to his room to get it.

26:45 Hope and desperation make a potent dangerous cocktail, and young Lola Cowan found herself filled with both, so she followed the kind mister Woodcot to his room. Woodcott took Lola to Catherine Hill's house, which was empty, and then led her upstairs where his room was located. Like a gentleman, he opened the door and ushered Lola into the room ahead of him. As she stepped in front of him, he struck her on the back of the head to stun her, wrapped a length of strong fabric around her neck, and throttled her to death.

27:18 Next, he repeatedly sexually assaulted her, and then stuffed her naked body under his bed and went to sleep. Following Lola Cowen. Following Lola Cowan's murder, Nelson stayed in his room for nearly three days. We can only pray that he spent that time sleeping. Then, on June tenth, he vacated Missus Hill's house and found his way to Saint Boniface and the home of William and Emily Patterson, a young couple recently arrived from Ireland who were renting a room in their home to help make the mortgage.

27:55 Emily answered the door to find Nelson's standing there with his hat in his hand. He informed her that he would like to rent the room, but that he didn't have any money. He offered to make an advance on payment by helping out with chores and odd jobs. Emily Patterson was disarmed by Nelson's poverty and helpfulness and agreed, asking him to please fix their broken screen door. That day, several neighbors saw Nelson working on the Patterson's front door, but thought nothing of it. As for the gorilla strangler himself, he wasted very little time before unleashing his inner beast.

28:33 There arrived a moment in the workday when Emily Patterson was in the kitchen with her back to Nelson. He immediately sprung into action, striking her in the back of the head with the same hammer he had been using to fix the screen door. A furious life or death struggle ensued, and Emily Patterson managed to tear some of the hair from Nelson's head before his massive murdery myths had wrung the last breath from her lungs. Although she could not save herself, Emily's bravery and toughness would be the beginning of Nelson's undoing.

29:11 When he had finished satisfying his unnatural urges upon Emily's lifeless body, earl Nelson shoved the body under the bed, as he was wont to do, along with his own clothes, then donned a poor fitting whipcord suit that belonged to Emily's husband, William, and made his way back onto the streets of Winnipeg. He went straight to sam Waldmen's second hand store and traded the whipcord suit for one that fit better, and then he walked to Nicholas Tabor's Central barber shop to see about evening out the damage that Emily had rot upon his hair.

29:51 The barber noticed bloody scratches, cuts, and fingernail markings in Nelson's scalp left there by Missus Patterson. When he questioned his customer about the markings, Nelson became highly agitated and ordered Tabor not to touch them. Nelson left the barber shop and hitched a ride to Regina, Saskatchewan, where he rented a room from Missus Mary Rowe under the name of Harry Harcourt. By now, the murders of Lola Cowan and Emily Patterson had been reported in Winnipeg, and word was circulated throughout nearby towns and provinces.

30:28 When Nelson awoke on the morning of June thirteenth, nineteen twenty seven, to his dismay, he read a fairly accurate description of himself and the clothing he was wearing in Regina's morning paper. Alarmed, Nelson immediately vacated his room and went to the department store, where he purchased a pair of blue overalls, a khaki shirt, and a cap. But the sharp eyed department store clerk noticed the Winnipeg labels on Nelson's clothing and matching Nelson to the description of that morning's edition of the Regina Paper, he called the police department.

31:01 Luckily for Nelson and unluckily for everyone else, he slipped out of the store while the clerk was making his call and hitchhiked a series of rides to a copa, where he stopped into a general store for a bite to eat. The owner, sensing that the strangler was in his store, called the only officer on duty, Constable Gray, in Killarney, and reported Nelson's location.

31:26 Gray was able to drive to a copa and take Nelson into custody without a struggle. He locked the strangler in a jail cell and went to phone the Winnipeg Chief of Detectives, George Smith. While Constable Gray was making the phone call, Nelson searched his cell and lo and behold, he found a rusty nail file under his cot. He used the nail file to pick the jail cell lock and ran to the rail yard, where he hid in a grain elevator waiting to catch the southbound train. Constable Gray immediately reported Nelson's escape, and a special train of police detectives was dispatched from Winnipeg to aid in Nelson's apprehension.

32:08 Winnipeg detectives discovered Nelson at the rail station before he could hop a southbound train. He was taken into custody and returned to Winnipeg, where he was met at the depot by a noisy crowd of over four thousand angry Winnipegers. Ultimately, the United States would choose not to attempt to extradite Earl Nelson for his twenty or more American murders, and instead preferred to have him tried in Canada. Perhaps they feared that in the United States he would be found insane and once again put into the NAPA asylum, that he had made at the very least a hobby and more accurately, a career out of escaping.

32:48 They may have been right. In Canada, on the other hand, they refused to question Nelson's sanity. He was captured on June tenth, nineteen twenty seven, and his trial was scheduled for November one of that year. As he waited in jail, Nelson became obsessed with that same biblical passage from Proverbs that I read earlier, My son, give me thine heart, and let thine eyes observe my ways. For a whore is a deep ditch, and a strange woman is a narrow pit. She also lieth in wait as for prey, and increaseth the transgressors among men.

33:33 In the context of his many horrific murders, mutilations, and bouts of wild necrophilia, Nelson's obsession with that particular passage is sickening and reads like nothing so much as a depraved monster attempting to use the word of God to justify his own profound transgressions. As I mentioned, Earl Leonard, Nelson's trial began on November one, nineteen twenty seven. Incredibly, and for what reason, I can't imagine, Nelson's ex wife, Mary Martin, actually made the long trip from San Francisco to Winnipeg to plead for Nelson's life, but she would be unsuccessful.

34:18 Throughout his trial, Nelson vocally maintained his innocence. But rarely, if ever, has the world seen a less innocent man than Earl Leonard Nelson. Of course not, according to Nelson himself. He maintained his protestations of innocence right up until the black hood was fitted over his head. The last thing he said was, I declare my innocence before God and man. Nelson said, in a clear, strong voice, I forgive those who have injured me, and I ask pardon of those I I have injured. May God have mercy on my soul.

35:04 Given his terrible career, I suppose it should come as no surprise that Earl Nelson, to the last moment of his life, continued to behave with almost unbelievable gall and lack of remorse. But on Friday, January thirteenth, that's right, Friday the thirteenth, after walking thirteen steps to the gallows, Earle became the thirteenth person to hang at the Vaughn Street jail, three sets of thirteen. I know not what that portends, but it certainly feels ominous. Earl Leonard Nelson was accused of killing twenty six women in less than twenty months.

35:52 The total could be higher. Some deaths were never linked to Nelson because of poor intercommunications between police departments. Others were never identified, and his actions well married to Mary Martin in nineteen eighteen, suggest that he started killing far earlier than his first credited victim. He was the most prolific murderer the world had ever seen until the arrival of such monsters as John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy in the nineteen seventies, and fifteen years after his death in nineteen forty three, Nelson's horrendous pursuits would inspire the Alfred Hitchcock movie Shadow of a Doubt, although in the case of the Guerrilla Strangler, I have no idea what doubt Hitchcock may be referring to.

36:45 And now, because I'm all too aware, and I'm sure you are too, that pop culture, and especially the true crime genre, can easily stray too far into a Hollywood like glorification of violent monsters who deserve no glory at all. Before I say goodbye, I'm going to read the names of each of Earl Nelson's suspected victims and say again that Nelson's story suggests that the trail of bodies he left behind is even longer than we know, and there are likely women that Nelson murdered who will never be discovered and never receive the remembrance or the vengeance they deserve.

37:26 Here is a list of Earl Nelson's suspected victims in chronological order. Missus Alah McCoy of Philadelphia, killed October eighteenth, nineteen twenty five. Missus May Murray, also of Philadelphia, killed November sixth, nineteen twenty five. Missus Lillian Wiener again a Philadelphian, killed on November ninth, nineteen twenty five. Miss Clara Newman of San Francisco, killed on February twentieth, nineteen twenty six. Missus Laura E. Beale from San Jose, March second, nineteen twenty six. Missus Lillian Saint Mary, San Francisco, June tenth, nineteen twenty six.

38:11 Missus George Russell Santa Barbara, June twenty fourth, nineteen twenty six. Missus Mary Nesbit, Oakland, August sixteenth, nineteen twenty six. Missus Beado Withers, Portland, October nineteenth, nineteen twenty six. Missus Mabel McDonald Fluke, Portland, October twentieth, nineteen twenty six. Missus Virginia A. Grant, Portland, October twenty first, nineteen twenty six. Missus William A. Edmonds, San Francisco, November eighteenth, nineteen twenty six. Missus Florence fifteen Monks, Seattle, November twenty third, nineteen twenty six.

38:51 Missus Blanche Meyers, Portland, November twenty ninth, nineteen twenty six. Missus John E. Barrard, Council, Bluffs, Iowa, December twenty third, nineteen twenty six. Missus Bonnie Pace, Kansas City, December twenty seventh, nineteen twenty six. Missus Germania Harpin and her daughter Nelson strangled Germania's infant daughter, as well as Germania in Kansas City on December twenty eighth, nineteen twenty six.

39:30 Missus Mary McConnell, Philadelphia, April twenty seventh, nineteen twenty seven. MISSUS Jenny Randolph, Buffalo, New York, May thirtieth, nineteen twenty seven. Missus Minnie May Detroit, June first, nineteen twenty seven. Missus Maureen Atorthey, Detroit, June first, nineteen twenty seven. Missus Mary SYSTEMA, Chicago, June third, nineteen twenty seven. Miss Lola Cowan, Winnipeg, June eighth, nineteen twenty seven. Missus Emily Patterson, Winnipeg, June tenth, nineteen twenty seven. If there's one thing you remember from this episode of Kind of Murdery, it should be the names of all of those women whose lives were taken brutally and too soon by a monster named Earl Leonard Nelson that history remembers as the Guerrilla Strangler.

40:35 I'm your host, Zevan Odelberg. Thank you for joining me on kind of Murdery, to be at the show, to be subscribe, review, and tell your friends. You can find us on social media at kinder Murdery or email at Kindomerdery at gmail dot com