KM Classic: The Shotgun Slaying of Freida Beckley with Darren Marlar (Weird Darkness Podcast)
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Zevon Odelberg is a true crime podcast host and disability advocate. Zevon has cerebral palsy and he wants Kinda Murdery to be welcoming community for people with disabilities and for people living with challenges of any kind. Life can be hard, but being together makes it better.
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the cryptogame heldoge dot com. 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. California's rugged and scenic Northwestern Corner is the
beginning of the Great Pacific, northwest of the brain of descending Northwebber, the
region of Untains and the primitive Uni and the Sheriff's Department has now joined off.
The Gull County also has the highest rate of visiting. There's a lot
of evil here, a lot of evil. This is kind of Murdery and
you're entering the Emerald Triangle. Wow, that was nuts. Hey, everybody,
welcome to Kind of Murdery. I'm your host, Zevan Odelberg. Thank
you for deciding to be here today. We bring you a story from the
city of Yucaiah. In Mendocino County. It's the story of a horrifying and
seemingly inexplicable murder of a teenage bride in nineteen nineteen, and, as is
often the case, when the explanations of the inexplicable or unearthed, were left
with truths that we can't help but feel would have been better left buried.
But before we get into that, first a word about Mendocino County. There's
no question that each of the Emerald Triangles counties Mendesino, Humboldt, and Trinity
have played host to their fair share of kind of murdery happenings in the nearly
two hundred years since Jedediah Smith became the first person of European descent to explore
California's northern reaches. And while no shortage of ghouls have disgraced the grounds of
Humboldt and Trinity with ghastly deeds over the years, there is also, in
my mind no question that Mendesino County has been home to more than its share
of the Emerald triangles most depraved, twisted, and grotesque true crime stories.
Whether that's simply because it's the Emerald Triangle sibling and closest proximity to a major
urban center, where the mathematical odds of leaching sickos into the state's northern reaches
becomes far higher. Or whether there is another more so teric and creepier reason.
Who's to say, but over just the last fifty years, Mendesino County
has attracted the likes of the Mooney's, Kenneth Parnell, Lewis, Tree Frog
Johnson, Jim Jones, Leonard Lake, Charles Ing, and Charles Manson.
Now, some of these monstrous names I suspect you're familiar with. Others may
be unfamiliar, And if they are unfamiliar, then I suggest not googling them.
Whichever path you choose, I think you'll agree with me that Mendesino County
is at the heart of the Emerald Triangle's most chilling brand of weird darkness.
And it's no mistake that I chose those exact words, because here with me
today is the fiendish father of felonious folklore, the Duke of Dread and all
things dastardly, a preacher of creatures and paranormal fright. It's the modern master
of the macabre, Darren Marler from Weird Darkness podcast. Hey, Dred,
how you do it today? Dude? I have got to get a copy
of that. You got to send me that in print, and I'm actually
I'm going to take a recording of this and I'm gonna start playing it at
the beginning of my show. That was best intro ever. Thank you so
much for being here. I can't tell you how excited I am. You
know, I'm a big fan of your show. It occurred to me yesterday
that you must have a lot of fans who are long haul truck drivers.
Yes, yes, I bet you do it. I'll tell you how I
figured this out. I was stuck in traffic yesterday. I live in southern
California, in San Diego. I was stuck in traffic for about two hours
on a drive that should have taken about forty minutes, and I put on
Weird Darkness, and all of a sudden, I didn't care that I was
stuck in traffic, and all of a sudden, I had listened to a
couple episodes in a row, and now I'm totally obsessed with Whendigo. Psychosis.
Yeah, when to go Psychosis is something I never even knew existed until
until I started doing Weird Darkness, and it was a really interesting topic.
If anybody is not familiar, when to go psychosis is the idea that and
correct me if I've got this wrong there, and that once you have consumed
human flesh, a person then gains a ravenous hunger for human flesh that essentially
can never be sated. And it's an idea that comes out of Native American
cultures that do I have that right? Yeah? I think another addition to
that is when somebody does that, especially if they're familiar with the when Togo
legends that if they do consume human flesh, they feel like they are becoming
a when Togo, it's almost like like internally in their mind, they actually
have become that monster. Whether or not the monster is real or not,
that's that's a completely different topic. But you know, with when it comes
to when to go psychosis, that person believes, well, kind of like
the same idea to some people, like like Antherropy, it was it was
originally somebody felt that they were becoming a werewolf, not that they actually were
one. But when to go psychosis sounds so cool? It does, it
totally does well, shall we jump into today's story. Oh, that's right,
we actually have a show today. I've already forgotten about that. For
this story, I'm taking you to the town of Yucaiah. Now, Yucaia
is a town we've been to before in kind of murdery Insomniac, the Yucaia
Strangler, and peripherally in our stories earlier this season about the town of Fort
Bragg. As the largest town and county seat, the sixteen thousand person city
of Yucaiah is likely to pop up in any murder story about Mendocino, And
as I alluded to at the top, Mendocino County is a kind of vortex
in the Emerald Triangle that seems to generate, or at least attract, some
of the Triangle's most bizarre and horrifying stories. And so we find ourselves here
again. Yucaiah is situated about one hundred and fifteen miles north of San Francisco
on Highway one oh one near the Russian River. The town saw it's biggest
population boom alongside the surging redwood timber industry in the nineteen forties, but today's
story begins decades before. In nineteen nineteen This is the story of the stomach
churning murder of Frida Beckley, recently become freed to Nash. Frida Beckley was
born and raised in Ukaiah, dark haired, dark eyed, a beautiful young
woman with a sharp mind who loved fashionable hats and dresses. In April of
nineteen nineteen, at the age of just eighteen, Freda Beckley married German American
World War One veteran and recently naturalized citizen, the blonde, blue eyed,
and muscular peach farmer Herman Nash, and so she was no longer legally Freda
Beckley, but rather Freda Nash. Barely three months later, early in the
afternoon of July nine, nineteen nineteen, still only eighteen, in the early
bloom of her womanhood, newly wed Frieda Nash was found dead in her home
by her husband, Herman, and immediately thereafter, upon herman's beckoning by an
electrician named mister Foster, who had come to the peach farm to fix a
water pump. Frieda's body had been horribly mutilated by two shotgun blasts from a
double barreled twelve gage that belonged to herman. That's that's that's a tough one.
I got the mental picture on that one. I know I did two.
Unfortunately, my apologies to to our listeners. Well, you went from
early bloom of her womanhood to two shotgun blasts. That's That's quite the segue.
It is a bit of a jarring juxtaposition, isn't it. Yeah,
the first blast of buckshot had eviscerated her intestines, the second had very nearly
blown her head clean off. The coroner said later that the second shotgun blast,
the one aimed at her head, could not have been fired from more
than four inches away. This was made evident by powder burns on Frida's scalp.
A heavy soldering iron like that which might be used by an electrician or
a mechanic, was sitting on the bedside table. Both Hermann Nash and the
electrician reacted with horror and surprise, and Hermann, of course, with monumental
grief. His beautiful young wife had been horrifically murdered. How well, how
we know? But how in the larger sense which leads us to why?
Those are the questions we must answer, And to answer those questions we delve
deeper into the stories of Hermann and Frida Nash. Sadly, as is often
the case, we know far more about the survivor than we do the murdered,
and so we will begin with the victim's husband, Hermann. Oh,
let's just take a little palette cleanser here. That's a that's a rough start,
that is. But I'm all. But I also am writing this down
because I'm stealing this from you from my own podcast. Please please do,
please gosh again, I would be flattered. And wow, I just I
for some reason, I've been doing this now for for six years, I
have not heard the Frieda and Herman Nash story. I don't know how this
has not come as how this has not come across my eyes. This isn't
This is insanely dark. It really is dark, you know. I just
want to say, also, I didn't pick this story only for the gory
details. There are some twists and turns and some mystery ahead. So there's
more. There's more to it than horror. Um And sometimes I think what
attracts us to horror is the way in which it throws into sharp relief.
The more to it, so to speak. Yeah, yeah, if it
was just a murder, that was the end of the story there would that
would be much of it. Yea, it's it's it's what happens after the
murder, And so many of these stories, the follow up, the mystery
of the investigation, sometimes the hauntings, you know, you know, that's
more more along my lines. But yeah, half of the story is what
takes place after the death. Absolutely correct. Yeah, so continue on.
Yeah, let's talk about Herman Nash. Herman was born in Germany. So
if you'll forgive me the lightheartedness, this is Herman, the German we're talking
about conal killer name. Why not? It sure is. He was born
in eighteen ninety one. When he was a young boy, his father went
mad and died in an insane asylum. That bodes well for a young boy,
no kidding. He immigrated to the US, and he settled in the
Yucaiah area at the age of eighteen in nineteen o nine. He became a
naturalized American citizen five years later at fourteen years old, and then when the
US joined World War One in nineteen seventeen, Herman joined the army, perhaps
all too aware of his German heritage and eager to prove that he bled the
Red, White, and Blue you know, that reminds me of a story
my grandmother once told me. She worked at the DMV and she was Italian
American one hundred percent Italian. And when the US entered World War two,
and of course the Axis powers were Japan, Germany and Mussolini in Italy,
one day a man walked into the DMV and recognized her, I supposed by
her features as being Italian American one hundred percent Italian, and just started screaming
at her that she had no right to be in the country. She ought
to get out, she was a filthy you know, expletive, etc.
And you know, this is a young woman. But her boss was German,
big German guy Eddie probably maybe would have done this no matter what his
background was, but clearly this particular line of attack struck him acutely as well,
and he came barreling out of his office immediately in her defense. And
so I always thought kindly of whoever that man was. Yes, see,
some of us Germans are actually okay, absolutely not not very many, but
a few. I have some very close German friends, and not to overly
generalize, but every one of them is incredibly on time, to the point
of early German precision, I'm telling you. And they're both versions of highly
gifted to genius level math brains. One of them is a musician, of
virtuoso musician who then taught himself to program, and the other one is a
Harvard educated landscape architect. So perhaps there's something to those, some of those
stereotypes, the positive ones. Anyway, I can attest to stop buying your
watches from Switzerland. That's all, that's all just rumor. That's that,
you know that, that's all just advertising. Get the watches from Germany.
Oh boy, all right, so let's get back to Herman. So we
joined me. I'm someone biased, by the way, with my last name
being Marler being German. But then again, I'm sorry, go ahead.
I actually I love, by the way. I love your last name.
It's it's quite evocative. It's a it's a great last name for the show
you do and the career that you have because maybe because it rhymes with parlor,
but I immediately picture sort of a Edgar Allan Poe esque dark, maybe
a little bit smoky um blood colored velvet chairs in a in a Victorian parlor.
When I think of Marler House, which is your production company. So
yes, yeah, marks for me. Yeah. Well now I need to
build a parlor. Thanks a lot. Thanks. Yeah, that's something else
I got to put on my to do list now. She I apologize,
all right, So I'm sorry. I had a go ahead. Oh no,
please continue on, continue on with Herman the German, Herman, the
Germans. So he joined the US Army and went to fight in World War
One, perhaps to prove his patriotism, and it is intimated, although not
explicitly stated, that Herman saw heavy fighting in the European trenches and may well
have suffered from PTSD. After the war, he returns to Yucaiah at the
end of nineteen eighteen and resumed his previous occupation as a peach farmer. Then,
not too many months later, in April of nineteen nineteen, he married
his wife, Frieda Beckley, only eighteen years old. Herman at the time
was twenty eight, so not exactly a winter spring arrangement. There was some
big age difference, but back then, I actually I don't think it was
all that unusual. I think you're right. Herman was square jawed, thick
and muscular, blonde, blue eyed, handsome. I hate guys like that.
I know, right, I mean he looked he looked like a I
mean unfortunate. And I say this not in a glib way, but they
have pictures of him in the paper and he looks like an SS recruiting poster.
I mean he's absolutely he's absolutely, yeah, yeah, literally. Frieda
was a contrast with dark hair, dark eyes, willowy, thin beautiful.
She loved to wear striking hats and dresses of a style that were not firmly
of but haralded the coming of the flapper look of popular imagination. She had
style class. Yes, Frieda could probably even be described, as they might
have said at the time or a decade or so later, as a fashion
plate. She was, by all accounts, a healthy, beautiful, quick
witted, and vivacious woman, and the Nashes seemed to be very much in
love. The only cloud over their young romance was that Frieda was in need
of a surgical procedure. It was a surgery that the family doctor assured her
was not terribly rare or unusual, and posed no real danger to a young
woman in good health and vigor. However, the doctor felt that the Nash's
domestic happiness could not be assured until Frida underwent the surgery. But we'll return
to this later. No, don't do that to me. I need to
know what the surgery is. You got me so curious. Oh you're a
jerk. I love you, but you're a jerk. Classic radio tease,
right, I mean, come on, I want him to keep listening.
Okay, keep going now now, now, I want you to rush through
everything else and we can get to the surgery. Oh boy, Well,
speaking of surgeries, from what I know of the medical profession and the evolution
thereof, I don't think there was any surgical procedure that posed quote no real
danger in the year nineteen nineteen. I was kind of thinking the same thing.
Yeah, you can go in for tonsilitis, and I mean you're you're
taking your life into your own hands. Yeah, absolutely, I mean they
barely stopped using leeches and bleeding people back then. Yeah, now, dared
have you? Have you ever told any medical stories on a Weird Darkness we
I'm sure we've had a few. I don't none of them popping into my
head right now. But anything strange and weird what can can sometimes creep into
the podcast, and a lot of those would be medical issues or um like
sometimes sometimes a story where somebody was born unusual and they ended up living like
in the freak Show circuit for a while or something like that. So a
lot of medical maladies would definitely, yeah, come in. Not necessarily the
surgeries themselves, but the maladies. Yeah, medical maladies and surgery or something
I'm personally very familiar with. I was born with cerebral palsy, and as
a young boy, I used to really walk difficultly. I mean I would
glibly now compare myself to Quasimoto or something. But then when I was seven,
I had my first surgery, and then when I was twelve, and
again when I was seventeen, had my entire left leg rebuilt from the hip
to the toe. So now I walk pretty normally. I might look like
I took a bullet in the hip or something. I definitely limp a little
bit, but I'm thankfully present as pretty pretty physically normal human. But I
mean, I I have so much sympathy for being born with difficulties and also
used for the pain and recovery process that's inherent to surgery, even in the
modern age. So do you tell people that you were born with MS,
or do you tell them that you were shot in the hip. Well,
actually, it's cerebral palsy's I'm sorry, yeah, sorry, yeah, you
know. I usually just tell them I was born with cerebral palsy, although
it has sometimes occurred to me to make up a more exciting story some motorcycle
stunt writer accidents or some such thing. But actually telling people that you were
born with cerebral pals though, can actually make can make for an inspirational story
though. So you know, sharing that and seeing how far you've come and
that you know that you're walking fairly normal now and it's nothing to be ashamed
of. Um, that's pretty cool, Thank you. And I would say
that a big part of my maturation is an adult. To the degree that
I have matured has been coming to terms and being willing to admit to myself
that things were difficult and that I wasn't just totally normal, because for the
longest time I had a lot of denial about it, which created a ton
of anger, etc. I'm getting off track here, but you're actually but
I think this is a great a great thing to say, because what's going
to happen now is once people hear this this episode, those who have had
or excuse made who have cerebral palsy, or they have a loved one that
has it. They're going to come to you and they're going to thank you
for being so open about it and for you know, for being for being
someone who's not scared to talk about it. Well, I hope that does
happen. And something I wanted would want to say to those people too,
is that there are many gradations of severity of cerebral palsy. You can be
like Daniel de Lewis and my left foot and only be able to move your
left foot as where I have only had difficulties with my left foot and late
So I'm very aware that my situation, even from the beginning, was not
nearly as severe as what many people face, and that I have the good
fortune of having the medical care that I needed. But at the same time,
it's easy to be too severe with yourself, and I certainly was constantly
saying, don't be such a woos somebody else has it way worse. You're
basically normal. How dare you be down on the dumps about it and just
kind of beat yourself up for being weak? And so I would also tell
everyone whatever your situation with a disability or other difficulty in your life is give
yourself the space to allow that thing to hard and to process it emotionally,
because it's too easy to fall into a trap where we are our own harshest
judges. Excuse me while I get up and applaud that speech. Thank yes,
that was that was beautiful and so true. We talk about depression quite
a bit on a weird darkness and it's not obviously it's not physically debilitating,
but it's still debilitating in some way and there. And you're right, I
mean, if you if you suffer from it, even if it's mild,
you know, you beat yourself up. You think that you're not normal,
You think that you're not worthy of you know, of of being in public
with other people. I mean your mind, your might just play tricks on
you with it. UM. So yeah, I love that. I love
what you said allow yourself, um, to allow yourself to be beat up
by it? Or how exactly did you say that? I love the way
you said it. Did you do you remember? Give yourself space for it
to be difficult for you and emotionally process how difficult it is without constantly judging
yourself for being because somebody else has it worse. Because no matter how bad
your situation is, somebody else always has it worse. If that is the
yardstick by which you judge yourself, you'll never measure up. And that compounds
give yourself permission for life to be hard. So yeah, I love that.
I love that. Man. Now I'm inspired, you know, And
Darren, if I may, I have to ask you now. You know,
in my life, I've had friends and family members and perhaps even myself
at times who have who have dealt with depression. And often people really like
things like Swedish death metal if they're depressed. People find something soothing and calming
in in that kind of music or art or television or movie. And so
is that something that you feel drew you to the world of weird darkness?
Is it a coping mechanism for you to some degree, if that's something you're
willing to talk about. I don't think it was for me necessarily. I'm
in a bit of a uni situation, and that in fact that my birthday
is the day after Halloween, so growing up I was, you know,
all of my happy times were surrounded by all this dark imagery. But I
started suffering from depression when I was a teenager, and I did. I
definitely found myself drawn more towards music that it was in a minor key,
you know. You know, I liked wearing black, not to the not
to the goth effect of it, just you know, I just kind of
liked it. But I have noticed and I have heard from so many people
via email, Facebook messages, whatever, when they listen to my podcast because
we talk about depression. That's I truly believe that's one of the reasons that
they were drawn to the too weird darkness is because they automatic they already have
that that dark tone about them. But they also like it because they feel
like they're part of the family. And I mean, I call them my
weirdo family just out of fun because of the weird darkness play on words.
But they like idea that they are accepted, that they're not alone, that
others do suffer the same thing that they do. That's why when you mentioned
cerebral palsy, I said, that's that's what's going to happen to you.
People are going to come to you and they're going to say, hey,
wow, you know, nice to know I'm listening to somebody that suffers the
same thing that I suffer from, and they're going to feel a connection with
you. And that's that's what happens with Weird Darkness as well. People who
suffer from depression tend to tend to search for darker content. They're the ones
they're more likely to like the horror movies and stuff like that. And they
just when I'm wondering, they probably don't even realize that depression might be even
pulling them towards those things until they hear about it on Weird Darkness or somewhere
else, and they kind of put the two and two together, going,
oh, yeah, you know what that does kind of explain me, and
I wonder. I can't help, but wonder. And I wouldn't want to
speak for anyone else, but perhaps if your default mental state is one that
feels sort of dark and haunted most of the time, maybe immersing yourself in
a dark, haunted world makes you feel normal. Yeah? Maybe, no,
maybe about it. There are there are people whom they I'll go back
to my listeners just because that's what I'm familiar with. When they call themselves
weirdos, they actually take that on as their persona. They say, you
know what, normal people are boring, I would rather be this way,
um, and it yeah, they they definitely. They gives them their gives
them permission to be different and to almost take pride in it. Um that
I'm not a normal person. I'm not like you. I've got my own
unique, unique faults, my own unique personality, and I'm just the way
I am. And you know, if you can't, if you can't hate
to let well, that's fine because I have all these thousands of other people
who over here who love me just the way I am. So yeah,
I think you're I think you're right on the nose with it. Absolutely.
And as to what you said about people hearing this and feeling a connection to
my experience or wanting to reach out, let me just say that I certainly
hope that you do. If anybody out there has cerebral palsy or has struggled
with depression or anything else where you feel like your life has been more of
a challenge than it maybe should have been. Whatever should means, please don't
hesitate to reach out to me. Reach out to the show. The email
is kind of Murdery at gmail dot com. We're on all social media platforms
at kind of murdery. I would love to hear from you. I would
love to connect with you. And with that, Darren, shall we get
back to the tail, the terribly dark tail. Really, I'm getting kind
of bored with it. Well, then suck it up, buck o,
here we go. No, because we still need to figure out what the
heck this surgery thing is that that poor friend I has to go through and
you haven't told us yet. I know that's right, I haven't all right
moving on yep. So the Nashes had been married about three months when on
the morning of July ninth, they drove into town around eight thirty a m.
And Frida visited with some friends for breakfast while Hermann took care of some
business at the bank. They returned home around ten and immediately picked crates of
peaches, which Hermann loaded into the bed of his truck. After they'd finished
picking and loading, around noon, they had lunch, and then around one
o'clock, Hermann drove the peaches into town to deliver them at the railway station
for shipping. He stopped at his in laws, the Beckleys, for lunch,
and then went into town, where he ran into the electrician mister Foster,
who I mentioned earlier. He told Foster about a water pump that needed
rewiring and persuaded Foster to head out to the Peach farm right away and begin
the job while Nash made some necessary purchases in town. Foster agreed and left.
Nash bought some necessaries. Then he went to the confectioners and bought a
box of candy for his new bride, and then on his way home,
because it was so hot out, he stripped and took a swim in the
Russian River. Nash went home with his supplies and his box of candy for
Frieda. He arrived at the farm to find mister Foster working on the water
pump. He asked Foster if he had seen Frieda. Foster said no.
Nash thought that was strange and went into the house and suddenly, to his
shock, found himself following a trail of blood, and at its end he
found, to his immediate grief and horror, the grotesquely shotgun body of his
bride, young Frida Nash until only recently Beckley. In the immediate aftermath the
crime mystified the authorities. What enemy could Freda Nash possibly have. How could
she have engendered such hatred? Nash had left his wife alive at one pm.
Foster had arrived at two pm. It appeared that Frieda had been murdered
in that single hour between herman's departure and Foster's arrival. What a nightmare,
right, I'm picturing that try walking in on that My heart just sank.
If I was to walk in, I know this, this is not Foster's
bride that he's walking in to see. But I just I pictured myself walking
in and finding my wife that way, and oh my god, I would
be inconsolable. I would be I would be out of out of my mind
in grief. I don't I don't think I could even have I don't even
know if I have, I would have it in me to call nine one
one, or I would just I would blackout. I'd want to die right
then and there. That is just horrifying. And the idea that if you
had just left twenty minutes earlier so that you got home twenty minutes earlier,
or if you hadn't swam in the river, or not knowing right, not
knowing the margin of time time, that it was the difference between her being
okay or not, or even more heartbreakingly, perhaps if I hadn't stopped to
buy her a box of candy, Oh might still man? Yeah that would
Oh yeah, you just made it even worse. Yeah, I know,
I would be. I can't. I can't think of the right words to
even put into that. It's it would just be so devastating. The shot
and freud of it is horrid. Right, Oh my gosh. So anyway,
back to the story, and everyone, thank you for sticking with us.
And I'm sorry to be leading you through this maze of broken glass,
rusty metal and terrible emotion. But don't fool yourself. That's the reason people
to tune into you. You know that, it is the reason. I
probably it's the reason in some ways that I do the show that the fascination
of I don't know. It's not that I would ever want somebody to be
hurt, of course, but there's a the heightened emotional state and the slow
motion car wreck of it all, and the bizarrety of it all. There's
just something that it's hard to look away from these tales. They feel so
imbued with human stakes because they are, and that makes them so compelling.
Yeah, so she apparently died in that one hour between when he left and
when Foster arrived. Now, the Mendocino Hospital for the criminally insane, the
Arkham Asylum of Northern California, where the most dangerous of all unstable criminals were
sent, was situated not far from the house. Sheriff Byrne of Yukaiah thought
of the mental hospital first, and he called there to see if any deranged,
homicidal maniacs had escaped. And let me just say, while that seems
like a convenient conclusion to jump to, I've also found, somewhat to my
surprise, as I researched these historical stories, that prison breaks and asylum breaks
were incredibly common in the preconstant electronic surveillance era. And in fact, I've
told stories on this show of people escaping from this exact mental hospital. So
Sheriff Burne may have been on to something, but all the inmates were accounted
for. The sheriff was stumped. He had a body and a murder weapon,
but no known motive and very little opportunity around which to narrow down a
list of suspects because of the nature of the murder, and in hope of
finding clues to solve it. The autopsy on FRIEDA. Nash was performed almost
immediately that very afternoon and evening, and after the coroner had cleaned and disrobed
the body, he had barely begun the routine phases of his initial examination when
he reacted with such startled surprise that it was remarked upon by attending staff.
Now, the coroner was a grizzled veteran of Mendocino murder, and no one
had seen a reaction like this from him before. Was she sexually assaulted doctor
one of the masked No, said the coroner, his eyes wide. It
was at about seven pm that night when the coroner called Sheriff Burne, and
Burne finally thought he discovered a motive. Oh, I got the Goosey's You're
so good at holding off on giving us the info. I'm trying it.
I'm in my head, I'm spinning through. Okay, what could what could
it have been? Was she pregnant? You think, well, the autopsy
is kind of pointless. You know how she died. I mean, it's
very obvious when you walk in and find her that way. So what on
earth could he have found that would give him that kind of a shock,
right, Well, I wondered the same thing. So the Nashes. They
had a whirlwind courtship. They met at church and were married before even two
weeks had passed, and they'd only been married three months when the murder occurred,
and now Burne thought he knew who the killer was. The next morning
he called Herman Nash and asked him to come down to the station, telling
him he had a fresh lead that might help him capture the fiend who had
slain his wife. Between the coroner's call and Hermann's arrival at the station,
Sheriff Byrne visited the town photographer and had him blow up two photos as large
as possible, almost poster size. One of them was of beautiful freed to
Nash on her wedding day. The other was of her shotgun mutilated body on
the bed. Nash arrived eager to know the clue, what was it,
who'd done it, but he was not met by Sheriff Byrne. He was
met by a deputy and then left in a waiting room for three hours.
That never bodes well, it does. If you're in the in the waiting
room for three hours, you're a suspect if they're letting you sweat like that,
Yes, I think you're correct. So the sheriff finally comes in and
Nash says, what was it? Who was it? What is it?
Who killed her? And the sheriff takes Nash by the elbow and says,
I have the evidence in this room, and he ushers him into the adjoining
room. And when he walks into the room, what is displayed there on
the wall but the two photos of his wife, Freda in her wedding dress
and Frida's terribly mutilated body. And he stops stunned, horrified, And the
sheriff says, I know who killed Frida Nash. And Nash says, who
was it? Why do you have these pictures here? This is awful.
And the sheriff says it was you, Herman, it was you. And
Herman said, what, why? Why would I kill my own wife.
The sheriff said, she was your wife in name only your marriage had not
been consummated. In fact, it could not be consummated. Told this,
Herman reacted in a new way. Startled, frightened, yes, but also
deeply ashamed, as though a dark family secret had been revealed to the entire
town. You see, can I guess you may Frieda was actually fred and
we're just trying to think of something. Okay, continue, it wasn't consummated.
I mean it shocked the auto, shocked, you know, the doctor.
I was just try I'm trying to figure out what on earth would that
have been. So if she was secretly a boy this entire time, and
of course they couldn't have consummated the marriage, you know, so right?
And then I think our modern psychology leaps to perhaps herman himself was incapable.
Now would the coroner and have known that aspect of it? Right? Right?
I'm going to tell you now, buckle up, guys, because this
is all of this is so terribly sad. But you see, Frieda Nash
had a medical condition known as imperforate hyman. Her vaginal opening was covered by
skin. This was the condition that her family doctor called not terribly rare or
dangerous, but that needed to be surgically corrected. When confronted with this truth,
Herman Nash immediately confessed, saying, I realized my wife's physical condition was
not what it should be, but that a slight operation would have remedied this.
A thought of this fact, though, caused me to lose control of
myself, and I became a madman. My father died in the asylum.
Perhaps I am insane too. And then he told the real account of the
events. That day, after they had picked and packed the peaches, Frieda
and Hermann went back into the house and where Hermann's shotgun was sitting on a
table in a sunroom, and he took note of how his wife seemed to
be so terribly frightened of the thing. This is essentially paraphrasing his own words
now, and he was suddenly seized with the overwhelming desire to murder her,
just out of the blue, out of the blue. This is what he
says his confession, although he also says that he was so obsessed with her
imperfection, such a minor imperfection and something that was still easily fixed in surgery.
Horrible and absurd. And I'm trying to get into the head of of
a killer. I mean, it's already hard to do. All I can
think is that, like a true sociopath kind of Bateman style, that he
took it as some sort of affront to his own pride that she would have
that imperfection, like he like, he can't be a man because she has
that imperfection or something right, and it's her fault. And now he married
this this broken person. Um And I think he was right. I think
maybe he was mad, just like his father. Yes, absolutely, wow,
absolutely, okay, so all right, So so he just he was
he was caught up with this, this this obsession that he had he had
to murder his wife, that he med he just had this thought that he
had to kill his wife. Yeah. There's a very famous Nathaniel Hawthorne story
called I Believe the Birthmark about a man who has the most beautiful wife in
the war world, but she has this one little sort of foot shaped red
birthmark on her face, very small, smaller than a dime, and he
becomes so obsessed with it that he essentially teaches himself undiscovered medicine and alchemy and
all kinds of things until he finally finds a way to remove this birthmark from
his wife's face and make her literally perfect, at which point she dies.
Because without imperfection, we cannot be human, is the message of the story.
Yeah, and it seems that Hermann's dark obsession was a long some similar
line. So that day, after they had packed the peaches, he went
into the house and he could see her nervous around the shotgun, and he
was seized with this overwhelming desire to murder her, and so he picked up
the shotgun and he fired the first shot, the one that eviscerated her guts
and essentially blew her back onto the bed. But then she was not dead.
She was moaning, and his thought was to use the other barrel of
the shotgun to end his own life. But here he had failed to kill
her. So he took that heavy soldering iron that was found at the scene,
and his plan was to finish her off by bashing her brains in and
then using that other barrel on himself, but he lost his nerve and so
from very close range because he had approached to hit her with the soldering iron,
he fired that other barrel as has been described, and then, careful
not to be covered in blood, he packed everything up and drove into town
to deliver the peaches, ran into mister Foster sent Foster out to the farm
to create an alibi for himself. Also went to buy the candy to create
an alibi for himself because people would assume that you don't buy candy for a
dead person. And then, and this is my presumption, went for a
swim so that he had an excuse to have changed his clothes. So he
confesses to all of this in written confession, only to recant the very next
day and say that he was innocent and that he had been coerced by the
sheriff, who was concerned that he would be lynched by a town that was
outraged, and so basically just wanted to tie up the case in a neat
little draw string. And so he said, I should never have confessed to
that. It's not true. I don't know who killed my wife, but
it wasn't me. Never mind the fact that his confession explained every single detail
of the scene. Correct. Yeah, it's kind of hard to be coerced
into a confession and still be that accurate as to what exactly happened. Right,
I was coerced into a confession that revealed details that only the killer.
Yeah, yeah, because that happens all the time. Nevertheless, he pleads
not guilty, and he goes to trial, where, thankfully, his bloody
fingerprint is discovered by alienists, which is what they called the CSI people back
then. His bloody fingerprint is found on the handle of the shotgun and he
is convicted and he's sent to prison for life, but notably not without the
possibility of parole. He's sent to San Quentin. He's first eligible for parole
in nineteen twenty six, after serving seven years, parole is denied again.
In nineteen thirty two, he goes before the parole board and begs for his
release, again denied. Yeah, few right. Well. In the meantime,
he had become a mail clerk in the prison, and he also cared
for the warden's dog and parakeet. Was generally well liked by other prisoners and
the staff. Essentially the model prisoner, not just good behavior, exemplary behavior.
He made himself almost indispensable with his clerking skills in the mail room.
So in nineteen thirty six he goes before the parole board again, sixteen years
after the murder. This time parole is granted. This causes a giant uproar,
especially in Northern California. People are like, how is it possible this
confessed, although recanted murderer of his beautiful young wife is out on parole.
He was twenty eight when he did it, So seventeen years sixteen years later,
he's only forty four. He's a man still in his prime. How
can he possibly be out? Well, now, this is a little interesting.
It was standard procedure then, and I don't actually know if parole boards
still do this. But when a prisoner comes up for parole, letters are
sent to the judge and the district attorney who tried him, and to the
leaders of the community in which they committed the crime, to take the temperature
of those people and get their opinion on whether or not they believe the prisoners
should be released, and how they would feel about the prisoner being released and
possibly even being reintegrated into their community. Well, as you can imagine,
the people of Yukaia, the good people of Yukaiah were and remained horrified by
this monster, Herman Nash, and would never have written anything but hell nor
in response to those letters. However, the insidious, devious Herman Nash had
made himself the mail clerk while there is this massive uproar over his pending release
that certainly throughout California, all the major papers, the Chronicle, what have
you, the Los Angeles Times, and it's a semi national uproar. This
becomes a national story. It is discovered that the parole Board granted his release
in absence of any objection from the community of Yukaiah, from the judge,
from the DA And the reason there was no objection is that those letters never
went out. So he was not the mail clerk of the prison, of
the prison, he was the mail clerk of the entire town. He was
the mail clerk of the prison. The parole board and the warden of the
prison. We're sending out the letters to the town of Yukaiah to ensure that
to find out if Yukaiah objected to so the notification of his parole coming up.
Correct, Oh wow, he intercepted the letters. They never left the
prison. Nobody found out that he was going to be paroled until essentially the
day before his release. And initially everyone thought this was some bizarre secret deal
that he made with the warden for good knows what kind of hideous favors.
But there is such an outcry that Governor Merriman, the governor of California at
the time, revokes Herman Nash's role over rules the Parole Board, which was
the first time that anybody was aware of that this had been done by a
governor, and he is applauded for it. Well, Hermann goes back into
prison, and then he sues the prison system jeez, on the grounds that
other men had been convicted of life in prison served far less time than him
with good behavior. He'd been in prison for seventeen years now and then been
paroled. So he essentially said, what legal grounds, what comparable cases do
you have to support the idea that my parole should be overturned. It's not
fair that I have to stay in here. Yeah, exactly. Wow.
So in nineteen thirty seven, his appeal goes to the State Supreme Court and
he wins. Unbelievable. He has given a writ of habeas corpus and released.
But now he has literally nowhere to go because in the meantime, the
United States government has revoked his citizenship. He was a naturalized citizen, not
a born citizen. They said, in light of your crimes, you are
no longer a US citizen. The US won't take him. They offer him
to Argentina and Venezuela, who both indignantly understandably indignantly refuse said no, we'd
rather not have him thank you very much. But because of his consummate clerking
skills, he's offered a job as a shipping clerk in the Philippines by a
wealthy San Francisco businessman, and the Philippines, seeing that he has employment yes,
agree to take him. And so, eighteen years after murdering his wife
in one of the most horrific ways and for one of the most horrific reasons
possible, Herman Nash sails for a new life in the Philippines at the age
of four five, never to be heard from again. Wow. That is
a disturbing story, I know, and it doesn't even have the ending that
you want. Now. First you're like, good, he goes to prison
of her life. Good, he never gets out. And then you're like,
or somebody else kills him, or or some bad karma comes on him
and he ends him dying in a car accident or something. You don't even
get that we have we getting zero closure on this. And some would probably
say that I shouldn't even have told this story for that reason, that it's
probably frustrating for everyone hearing it, as frustrating as it is for me and
for you. But I can't help but have been fascinated by the maze of
details and the improbability of the outcomes. And so if anyone is angry at
me for telling the story, you have a right to be. But uh,
there it is. You're listening to the wrong man. If you're if
you're angry with with Zevin for for telling this story, then why are you
here listening? There? I mean, it is called you know, murdery,
you know, for a reason, you know, yeah, exactly.
And I do say at the top, this show is not appropriate for anyone.
Turn it off. And I do mean that so kinda on this one.
It's not kind of murdering in this one. This is full blown murdering.
Wow that I'm kind of curious as to what the guy in the Philippines
was thinking that he'd actually want to hire this guy to work for him.
You're essentially just saying, you know what, I know, you're an evil
son of a mother, but I'm going to go ahead and bring you on
anyway because I need a mail clerk, right, That's it. No,
absolutely, And in addition, not that he should have gotten out in this
case, but I feel like the intensity of my feelings about him would have
been somewhat affected. Had he stuck to his confession and his grief and his
explanation that madness runs in the family, take responsibility for it, but exactly,
but the fact that he recanted the confession, was convicted, then conspired
or did withhold parole documents to try to nefariously get paroled against the community's wishes.
I mean, he was absolutely self interested and calculating. Nose was the
last man. I can't believe we don't have a follow up on what happened
to him. I'm sorry it does. Yeah, I can't help the conspiracy
theorist and me can't help. But wonder if there really was a wealthy San
Francisco businessman, or if clandestine services of the United States made a back room
deal with the Philippines just because they had to send this guy somewhere, and
that that was the explanation that they gave the public, Like maybe he ended
up going in going behind bars and the Philippines or something because secretly, hopefully
or maybe he was just sent to the Philippines. But to your point,
it's hard for me to imagine any person of good conscience right hiring this guy
knowing a story. Then again, we're looking at looking on this hindsight with
everything. I mean, so at the time, you never know how much
information they truly had about this guy. But wow, what a what a
horrible ending, Zevan. I know, I know, I'm sorry, and
I think the fear that all of us might have if in fact Herman was
right and his madness was genetic, that there would be now a bunch of
descendants of Herman Nash running around the Philippine Islands horrifically murdering people. Yeah.
If yeah, if it's if it's genetic, Oh that's oh, that's a
great thing to think of. Gee. Why it was bad enough to not
have an ending, Now you've created a worse ending. Now I've created the
horror movie. Yes, nash Lings. Then yeah, it's you've got Texast
chainsaw massacre in the Philippines. Now I wow. Okay, well my day
is right, Thank you so much. Yeah, yeah, you're you're well,
you're welcome. Oh boy, I'm gonna to go take a nap out
of it after this. This was exhausting. What a story. I hope
it was somehow emotionally cathartic and not an entirely awful way for everyone. Often,
if you've listened to the back catalog of the show. Often I intentionally
pick stories that are not so dark and have humorous elements. They might be
a robbery or a justifiable homicide, or something where it's not so heavy and
dark. I do usually go out of my way to go down a path
more similar to that, or at least to have the victim be someone who,
in sort of a horror movie seven sins sense, kind of deserved it.
They were a criminal of themselves or something. I usually avoid innocent people,
especially innocent women, and especially sex crimes for a reason because it is
so heavy to go through. In this case, when I found this story,
I just found it to be so fascinating because of the details that were
available that I couldn't turn away from it for better or worse. I have
to admit if I had come across it, I probably would have concluded it
in weird Darkness too. It is such a fascinating story, even if it
doesn't have a happy and well then again, I mean the kind of podcasts
that you and I do, they are very rarely happy endings. That's true.
But yeah, this was just so dark and so twisted, and I
feel so awful for freedom. I tell so many stories of serial killers and
killings and stuff like that, and you feel bad for those victims. But
yea, for some reason, I am just attached here to poor Freida.
I mean, she she had, she had done nothing, and such a
whiplash from young love, from meeting and falling head over heels so quickly that
you're married within two weeks and bliss, and that I've found my person.
Such a whiplash to a mere a mere three months later, murdered in your
own home for something that that you were were born with, And you know,
circling back to our talking about cerebral palsy and depression, I think that
often, certainly I speak for myself when I say that people with disabilities,
even if they're more minor, live with an ever present fear that they will
be rejected because of them. You can't force someone to fall in love with
you, you can't force them to date you. You can't blame a person
if they don't have chemistry with you. You live with a fear of rejection
for something that's not your fault and that you were born with and that you
can't do anything about. And I think maybe that, Maybe that, though,
is what drew me to this story. Maybe it is the knowledge of
that fear of rejection for something that you can't control and can't necessarily fix.
But maybe maybe that's why I think you're right about that. I think we
all have something in us that we don't want to share with others, something
that we are ashamed of. There's there's there's some part of me that I
don't want others to know about, and so I'm not going to be open
about it. And I'm sure that there are there are things that we even
keep from those that we love the most, um just because we we don't
like the idea about them in ourselves. And so I can I can understand
freedom not doing that. And she probably, you know, it wouldn't surprise
me if she suffered from depression because of that. Eighteen is so young.
She's a she now is a man in my forties. I thought I was
all grown up at eighteen, But eighteen year olds or children, I mean,
when I see high school kids these days, it's I say to my
wife, is that person like eleven or twelve? And She'll be like,
oh, no, that's she's sixteen or eighteen or something, and I'm like,
no way, I like ten years old. That's why whenever these gross
men that say, like, oh, I met her in a twenty one
and overbar I thought she was old enough. No, you didn't. Once
you're forty years old, the eighteen year olds look like they're twelve. I
don't. I don't. I don't believe you. And I think that she's
so innocent and so young and to expect her to know how to grapple with
the powerful emotions of falling in love and the fear of preemptively revealing this is
it's too much. It's too much to ask of a young person a hundred
years ago, is what we're talking about. Trying talking about sex and intimacy
back then, and then add add on to that the fact that you have
an intimacy issue. I don't even I mean, who do you even go
to for that? Aside from the aside from the doctors? Can you go
to a psychologist for that to get you through it? I don't think they
would have that back then. I no, I think, you know,
I think doctor Freud was still prescribing cocaine to people. Yeah, so yeah,
there might have a lot of beneficial for Herman, Yeah, he could
use that. This was awesome, Man, I really appreciate you having me
on today. This This was I'm not going to say exciting, because that's
that's the wrong word to use. It was a privilege being here. But
um, it's all draining, it is. I have that feeling too,
that kind of like just walked out of a three hour action movie feeling,
and when you go to the matinee and you walk out it's too bright and
you're like, oh yeah, but but no, really, thank you so
much for being here, Darren. I mean so exciting for me, such
an honor. I'm a fan of your show. You're a consummate professional.
I mean that you're also just guys are in person, in regular Darren,
not just the voice you hear on Weird Darkness is really one of the kindest
people I've met and so fun to be around. So please, if you
don't already, and you probably do, listen to Weird Darkness, leave a
five star review. Email Darren. Go to Weird Darkness dot com interact engage.
It's a beautiful community that Darren has built. Who talked about it a
little bit today. The stories are utterly compelling. Once you turn it on,
you won't turn it off, You'll just keep listening. So please subscribe
to Weird Darkness Podcast. It's a wonderful place to be and I'm so happy
that Darren chose to be here with me today. I had. I had
a great time. You know, as as dark as as the content is,
I really enjoyed the conversation. Man, I really appreciate it. I
can't wait to tell my own weirdo family of listener about kind of Murdery,
and this is a great way to introduce them to what you're doing. I'll
say, hey, you know, you guys need to check out this conversation
I had with Zeven. It was a really great and you're going to love
his podcast. So thank you and for Darren Marler from Weird Darkness Podcast.
I'm Zeven Odelberg, and this has been kind of murdery. Kind of Murdery.
The Emerald Triangle is created, researched, edited, produced and hosted by
Zeven Odelberg, with opening theme by Nile Madden and arked by the Gin of
Lange. Available now on all podcasting platforms. If you like the show,
please subscribe, review and tell your friends You can find us on social media
at kind of Murdery or email at kinda murdery at gmail dot com.
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