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Due to the nature of this story, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of murder and violence. Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen. To get help on mental health and suicidal ideation, visit Spotify.com slash resources.
Most people struggle with confidence at some point throughout their lives. Whether it's our appearance, skill level, or social graces, we wonder if we have what it takes. But some people possess the preternatural ability to bend the world to their will, to convince themselves and others that they are special, that they wield a power that others can only dream of.
These people may become heads of state or titans of industry. They may become religious figures or spiritual guides. Or they use their self-confidence to take whatever they want, regardless of who it hurts. Like Morris Bulber. He convinced others he could solve their troubles. And with the help of his henchmen, he ran an infamous murder ring.
I'm Vanessa Richardson, and this is Serial Killers, a Spotify podcast. You can find us here every Monday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at Serial Killers Podcast. And we'd love to hear from you. So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. Stay with us. Hey, y'all. Marci Martin here with a little Tampax story. One time I went on vacation in the Bahamas with some friends. And of course, I got my period.
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In a dark Philadelphia room, Anna Arena shivered. She was clad only in a corset. Candles illuminated her face, and her fingers tensed on the sides of her high-backed chair.
It was December 1931, and though Anna could feel the cold night air raise goosebumps on her arms, she couldn't help but break out in nervous sweat. The wooden seat grew slick with perspiration from her bare thighs, but she tried not to make a sound as a man with a knife circled her. After all, she was paying him.
Anna had hired this man to fix her love life. The middle-aged healer waving a mystical knife had come on a high recommendation from her boss at the tailor shop. Indeed, many women in the Pashyunk neighborhood of South Philadelphia praised this mysterious man and his magical ability to fix wayward husbands like Anna's.
The healer was plump and ill-kempt, maybe 40 at most, but despite his otherwise average appearance, he had one remarkable trait. One of his eyes was brown with peculiar grey spots, half covered by a drooping eyelid, and rumored to curse any who looked upon it. Whispers circulated that it was a physical manifestation of the evil eye itself.
Many feared this eye, but even more, they feared the man it belonged to: Morris Bulber. Not much is known about Morris Bulber's early life that didn't come from his own lips. He was born on a frigid morning in January 1890 in a small Russian village. His mother, a religious woman, died when he was only a year old, and he was sent to live with his grandfather.
At age 7, Bulber went to school in a nearby town. And at age 9, he claims to have enrolled at a place he called "Grodno University." It's unclear what university Bulber was actually talking about, but he could have been referring to the Grodno Medical Academy, the first medical school in Belarus, which has roots dating back to 1775.
That said, even in 1899, a nine-year-old in medical school is highly doubtful. This story is most likely a lie Bulber told later in life to lure in customers and potential victims. Either way, around this time, Bulber claimed to have first heard of a book that would eventually change his life. A book known to him as the Kabula.
The Kabula, more commonly called the Kabbalah, is a school of thought with ties to many religious, cultural, and esoteric practices.
What Bulber seems to be referring to here, however, is a collection of texts that emerged from early Jewish mysticism. The text began as an interpretation of ancient writings about the meaning of life, but by the Middle Ages, a particular branch of Kabbalah rose to popularity. That branch was a collection of mystic rites and cures that some people in the early 1900s might have thought of as a type of witchcraft.
Young Bulber was instantly obsessed. But according to his story, his teachers at university banned him from reading the Kabbalah. They said he was, quote, "too young and not holy enough to interpret the text." Bulber focused on his studies, but the book lurked in the back of his mind, a force pushing him toward the strange, forbidden corners of human knowledge.
After graduating from university in 1902 at the completely believable age of 12, Bulber felt an urge to see more of the world. He set course for the biggest city he had ever heard of, Odessa on the Black Sea. There, he taught children and studied. Finally, Bulber decided he was holy enough to do something he'd wanted to do for nearly half his life: read the Kabbalah.
Within the book's pages, he claims to have learned the ancient secrets to cure a wide variety of ailments, everything from minor illnesses to paralysis and even cancer. He started treating patients around Odessa using potions and salves of turpentine, vinegar, alcohol, and horseradish.
Bulber quickly realized that what healed most of his patients wasn't potions or magic. It was belief. Belief in the ancient wisdom of the Kabbalah, but more importantly, his belief in himself. And surprisingly, this wasn't just Bulber's narcissist traits at work. Research has shown that belief, yes, just belief, can actually impact our hormones and nervous systems.
You might have heard of the placebo effect, where a patient who truly believes they'll get better will. On average, about 20% of patients respond well to placebos. But it's not just that they heal faster. Recent studies funded by the National Institute of Health have demonstrated placebos dulling pain, increasing endorphins, and even eliminating hunger hormones.
A properly used placebo can alter a person's brain chemistry, and it's all in the power of suggestion. A placebo administered by a doctor in a white coat is proven more effective than a random cream ordered online. So Morris Bulber might have been full of himself, but he was onto something, and he pursued it relentlessly.
After four years in Odessa, Bulber traveled east to Siberia, Japan, then China. He claimed that in China, an exiled Indian sorceress named Reno taught him the ancient magic of the knife, a practice that involved chanting incantations while waving a special blade. Bulber then began carrying his own magic knife in his pocket.
It's difficult to know if any of Bulber's self-proclaimed history, particularly the far-fetched or fantastical parts, are true. Bulber was, if nothing else, a storyteller. He cultivated an image of himself that helped further his own means. And while there's much to be learned from his fabrications, we can confirm that at age 21, Bulber set his compass west for a new world: America.
He arrived in New York City on February 27, 1911. By this time, he claimed to be fluent in 10 languages, including Russian, Chinese, Arabic, English, and Hebrew. He was eager to start what he called a faith healing. But before he could set up shop, he fell in love.
Her name was Esther. Just a schoolgirl when she met Bulber, Esther lived with her parents and two sisters. Before long, she and Bulber fell head over heels. They married in 1913. There was one problem though. Esther didn't approve of anything resembling witchcraft.
And when Bulbur told Esther of his goals with faith healing, Esther put her foot down. She told Bulbur that if he followed his dream of becoming a traditional healer, she would leave him. Out of love for his new wife, Bulbur put his dreams aside. He neglected magic and medicine for nearly 14 years. Instead, he turned to education and opened a chain of grocery stores.
But by 1927, he'd lost interest in teaching, and his grocery store chain failed. Bulber again found himself thirsty for new opportunities, so he decided to head south to the city of brotherly love, Philadelphia. Temporarily leaving his family in New York, Bulber opened a new grocery store. Eventually, he was doing well enough to move Esther and their four children to Philadelphia. He was all in.
But the timing couldn't have been worse. Signs of the coming Great Depression hit Philadelphia in early 1929, and times were hard. Bulber was forced to shutter his newest grocery store after only one year. Though Philadelphia didn't prove fertile ground for a grocery business, Bulber discovered it did have something even more valuable: a community of believers.
Beginning in the late 1800s, Philadelphia welcomed a large influx of Italian immigrants. By the 1930s, Italians made up nearly one-fifth of the immigrant population in the city. A large number lived in South Philadelphia, where Bulber primarily operated. And what's more, the community was famously superstitious.
Why? Well, according to studies published in both Personal and Individual Differences Journal and the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, superstitions often arise from a need for control. The same need that drives so many serial killers to murder.
The studies found that people who are more superstitious have a lower internal locus of control. They personally don't feel empowered in their situation, and this gets worse during times of crisis. People feeling a loss of power are more willing to try unusual methods to regain it, like trusting a shady authority figure.
All that said, it's a good time to remind you that Bulber operated during the Great Depression. People were desperate, and during this dark period, Philadelphia's Italian-Americans believed in all manner of witchcraft, including la fattura, a form of magic. Within this practice, some focused on the concept of the evil eye, which could curse someone to misfortune or even death.
Bulber's Russian accent, fantastical life story, and eerie eye perfectly suited him to take advantage of the people around him. And in 1931, Bulber finally wore Esther down, getting her blessing to start his business as a healer.
He took out an ad in an Italian-language newspaper and sent out flyers in South Philly's Pashyunk neighborhood, announcing his new practice as a faith healer, Kabbalah expert, and specialist in the mysterious Eastern art of the knife. Within a day of distributing the flyers, Bulber claims his first customer knocked on his door.
From there, he saw patients regularly. He charged about 50 cents a visit, not cheap at the time. However, Bulber did personalize his treatments. For the religious, he prescribed church. For the superstitious, he gave advice like, "Bring me hairs from your abusive husband's head to burn at midnight," or "Hang a fish in the moonlight for four days, then take it down and eat it."
And of course, for anyone taken in by his tales of ancient cures, he uttered incantations in foreign tongues, waving his famous magic knife.
Bulber's belief in himself soon spread to his customers. Even when his spells failed, it was always due to supposed "evil influences" rather than a lack of skill. Word spread fast. Business was good, but not as good as Bulber would have liked. To amass enough clients, Bulber needed an "in," someone embedded in the community.
He found it in 1931, when a client invited him to a secret meeting of Philadelphia's healers and naturopaths. Bulber was excited. He hoped to make some connections, maybe learn a few tricks of the trade. But when he arrived at the meeting, he was not impressed. The "Fatura Doctors," as Bulber called them, were almost entirely superstitious fools obsessed with the idea of devils.
But there was one attendee who stood out. He'd loom large in Bulber's life, setting both on the path toward murder. Paul Petrillo.
In late 1931, traditional healer Morris Bulber met a man who would change his life: 39-year-old Paul Petrillo. Charming and sharply dressed, Paul was an Italian immigrant who owned a struggling tailor business in the Pashyunk neighborhood. The front of the shop housed a legitimate garment business, but the back was reserved for Paul's true passion: divine healing, as it was written on his business card.
But Petrillo had a small problem. Though he advertised himself as a magical healer, his spells and potions rarely worked. Despite a deep belief in magic, Petrillo didn't have the unshaken confidence Bulber possessed. As a result, when Petrillo finally met Bulber, he quickly became ensnared in Bulber's net.
The day after they met, Petrillo showed up on Bulber's doorstep to offer him a deal. Petrillo, who'd been part of Philadelphia's Italian immigrant community for nearly two decades, would send clients he couldn't help to Bulber. In exchange, Petrillo requested Bulber give him 50 cents of every dollar he made. Bulber agreed.
The arrangement grew into a prosperous friendship. Bulber taught Petrillo some of the secret magic he learned overseas, and Petrillo's connections expanded Bulber's client base. They were open to almost any customer, but thanks to a robust gossip network among the ladies of Pashyunk, they mostly served women, particularly Italian women whose husbands were unfaithful or had otherwise lost interest in them.
In cases like these, Bulber provided the women with sex therapy, which usually involved commanding the women to strip naked as he chanted and waved his knife. Then he would give her a potion to feed her unwitting husband, intended to turn him into a model spouse.
Sometimes, women showed up with unwanted pregnancies. If incantations didn't work, Bulber and Petrillo lined up a medical practitioner who'd provide an abortion for a fee, with a kickback to the middlemen, of course. The Bulber-Petrillo healing network grew every day, and Petrillo was about to present Bulber with an idea that could more than double their income.
For years, Petrillo had been committing insurance fraud. He'd first heard about it from agents who patronized his tailor shop, selling cheap life insurance policies to immigrants. The key detail, the agents told him, was that the insurance companies allowed them to write policies with no medical examination.
Nowadays, it's common practice to make patients disclose any pre-existing medical conditions before underwriting a policy. This usually includes a full medical exam, but back in the 1930s, very little prevented someone like Petrillo from profiting off his sickly neighbors.
For a quick paycheck, Petrillo took out life insurance policies on people he believed would die soon. Sometimes he would take out a policy directly and list himself as a relative of the insured. But that was risky. If the insurance company caught wind that Petrillo and the client weren't related, it would all be for nothing.
It was best to have a family member on the inside, like a wife or a child who trusted him to take out the policy, pay the premiums, and split the payout when their loved one died. Petrillo had been trying to tip the scales in his favor by cursing those he insured to an early death. Again, this man truly believed he had magical powers, that he was a witch. His cursing skills were simply lacking.
But now he had a secret weapon, Morris Bulber. With Bulber's magic on his side, Petrillo was convinced they could make a mint on insurance scams.
Bulber liked this new plan. Life insurance policies could pay anywhere from $400 to several thousand dollars. Evenly split between Bulber, Petrillo, and a family member of the insured, the potential payout made Bulber's healing fees seem paltry. And what's more, he had a lead. The perfect candidate for an insurance payout.
Bulber had been giving seamstress Anna Arena sex therapy for a few months, since December 1931. She initially came to him hoping he could reform her drunk and neglectful husband, Joseph Arena. But when Bulber's spells and potions failed to change the man, he tried a different, bizarre tactic.
Bulber paired Mrs. Arena with one of his male clients named Dominic Rodeo. He had Anna gather her menstrual blood, then he fed it to Rodeo to make him fall in love with her.
Astonishingly, Bulber's plan worked. Anna and Dominic began a torrid affair. By the spring of 1932, Anna's husband Joseph was an inconvenience to her, standing in the way of her exciting new lover.
So Petrillo sent one of his insurance agent friends to Anna, and she took out an accidental death double indemnity policy on her husband worth $3,200, enough money for Anna and her lover to buy a new house. Petrillo paid the premiums for a few months. Then he and Bulber set to work attempting to fix the evil eye on Anna's husband.
Bulbur used all the tricks in his book. He chanted in different languages, waved his mystical knife around, and concocted spells and rituals tied to the cycles of the moon. But Joseph proved resilient against Bulbur's black magic.
Petrillo became impatient as time ticked by and insurance premiums stacked up. Though he still strongly believed in Bulber's powers, it was time to take a more direct route. The evil eye needed a little help. For that, Petrillo enlisted the help of his cousin, Herman Petrillo. Herman Petrillo was a character, to put it mildly.
Slightly younger than his cousin, Herman was a failed spaghetti and olive oil salesman turned con man. He was a persuasive talker and an inveterate schemer. Much like his cousin, Herman had a number of side hustles. He was a counterfeiter who made regular trips to New York to bring back fake $5 and $10 bills.
And even more brazen, he was also a self-educated bomb maker who would blow up his own heavily insured buildings to collect the money. Despite having no education, Herman's various scams, mostly illegal, kept him flush with cash. Around Philadelphia, he was known for his sharp suits and his shiny green Plymouth.
Herman had a wide network of conmen and criminals at his fingertips, as well as the stomach for a little violence. So when he got a note from his cousin Paul instructing him to send Joseph Arena to California, their code for murdering someone, Herman set to work.
Early in the morning on June 30th, 1932, Herman picked up Joseph from his house. It seemed the two men were acquaintances as they lived in the same neighborhood. As he got into the Plymouth, Joseph believed the plan was to go crabbing at Ludlum Bay on the Jersey Shore. Herman had also invited Dominic, Anna's secret lover, as well as one of Herman's criminal friends, who happened to be an experienced assassin.
On the drive, the trio got Joseph drunk. When the group arrived at Ludlam Bay, they rented a fishing boat and shoved off into the water. It was early in the season and the bay was mostly empty. The men began to cast out their lines, leaning over the side of the boat to check if they'd caught anything. The moment Joseph leaned over the side, Dominic shoved the intoxicated man overboard into the frigid water.
Joseph thrashed desperately, but Dominic and Herman's assassin friend hit him over the head with an oar and hit him again until he went limp. Finally, Joseph sank beneath the surface. They left Joseph underwater long enough to make it appear he had drowned, before recovering the body and reporting his accidental death.
It wasn't the perfect crime. Though the coroner would find alcohol in Joseph's system and all the hallmarks of death by drowning, his head injury could have given away his true cause of death. But apparently, the coroner didn't think much of the injury. He bought the story that Joseph drunkenly fell off a boat and couldn't be rescued in time.
And a few weeks after the incident, Bulber and the Petrillos had the $3,200 insurance payout. They split the money amongst themselves and the newly widowed Anna Arena. Anna and Dominic were now free to be together. They'd both been, in their minds, cured. Meanwhile, Bulber and the Petrillos started the hunt for their next victim.
In 1932, Morris Bulber had taken his faith healing to a new level. He was healing failed marriages by killing off the husbands. Even better, he'd conspired with two cousins, Herman and Paul Petrillo, to take out life insurance on their victims, ensuring a hefty profit. With their first victim sent to California, their code for murdered, they were on the lookout for their next mark.
In July, the perfect candidate came knocking at their door: Rose Lavecchio. Rose owned a confectionery store near Paul's tailor shop. Though the sweets she sold made her enough money to get by during the Great Depression, Rose had a problem.
Her husband, Luigi, was dying. After falling from a scaffold in 1923, Luigi had never fully recovered. He'd remained bedridden with recurring respiratory issues for years, and by mid-1932, his doctor had not given him long to live, telling Rose that Luigi's insides were green and about to burst.
We can't be sure, but it sounds like Luigi might have had a gallbladder issue. The gallbladder holds bright green bile, and like an appendix, it's known to burst. This can be deadly without the right antibiotics. Luigi was running out of time, but Rose had heard some of her female customers talk about how Bulbur was able to solve all manner of problems, even reviving seriously ill husbands.
Desperate to save her beloved Luigi, Rose made her way to Bulbur's doorstep. Bulbur immediately pegged Rose as a woman of means. In addition to her sweets shop, she owned two rental houses and sold homemade wine. She fit Bulbur and Petrillo's victim profile perfectly. A woman with a husband whose death could bring all three of them financial gain.
Right after meeting Rose, Bulber began devising a ritual to "heal" Luigi that would actually send him to his grave. In the meantime, he sent Rose to his partner, Petrillo.
He tried to get Rose to take out life insurance on her husband, but Rose refused. She already had three policies totaling $900. He was too sick now to be approved for insurance anyway. Petrillo told Rose not to worry. He knew someone who could give her insurance with no medical exam.
Rose agreed, and Petrillo's friend prepared two applications for $400 each. He dated the policies one month apart and forged Luigi's signature. The man assured Petrillo that he didn't need to worry about the tampered paperwork, since there was little to no scrutiny for policies valued at less than $500.
Now all Petrillo had to do was sit back and wait for Bulber's magic to push Luigi over the edge. But despite being at death's door, Luigi proved resistant to Bulber's curses. At the end of July 1932, Luigi still lived.
Once again, Petrillo became impatient with paying insurance premiums. To make things more complicated, the bedridden Luigi never left the house, which made it nearly impossible for his cousin Herman and his goons to send him to California. On the afternoon of July 30th, Bulber called Petrillo with a new idea. It was foolproof.
Bulber gave Rose a magic powder and instructed her to sprinkle it on Luigi's food three times a day. Bulber claimed the powerful mixture would heal Luigi and restore him to his former vigor. But what he didn't mention was that mixed into the otherwise harmless powder was a lethal dose of arsenic. The effect was immediate.
The day Rose started sprinkling the arsenic in Luigi's food, he suffered vomiting and diarrhea. Concerned, Rose called a doctor. The doctor did a quick exam and diagnosed Luigi with bronchitis and gastroenteritis, believed to be due to excessive garlic consumption. Which sounds weird, but this can be a real problem.
The acid in garlic can create gastrointestinal issues. In addition, Luigi apparently had pretty awful garlic breath. But he hadn't been eating all that much. Luigi's quote-unquote "garlic breath" was actually a lesser-known symptom of arsenic poisoning. Once again, Bolber and Petrillo had concealed their crime behind a more innocent explanation.
The doctor prescribed additional medication, but Rose still believed in Bulber's miracle cure, so she continued to dose Luigi's food with the powder he gave her, alongside the doctor's medication. When Luigi hadn't improved in a week, she called Petrillo and asked him what was in the powder. He reassured Rose, telling her this was the way the powder was supposed to work.
Three days later, Luigi was incredibly sick, but still, miraculously, alive. Petrillo checked in with Bulber, who made a visit to his pharmacist friend who'd given him the first batch of arsenic. This time, he obtained a stronger poison, in capsule form. Petrillo was confused. He asked Bulber why they didn't start with the capsules in the first place.
He explained Luigi needed to be really sick before he took those. The capsules contained a drug very similar to arsenic: antimony. The capsules of antimony were likely more concentrated than the arsenic powder, and Bulber may have believed that because Luigi was already in such a weakened state, he'd be unable to survive the full force of the new drug's lethal effects.
Armed with the antimony capsules, Petrillo went to the Lavecchio home and instructed Rose to give them to Luigi. But Rose was fed up with the magical faith healing. None of it was working. She refused. So Petrillo took measures into his own hands. He shoved past Rose, marched to Luigi's bedside, and shoved two capsules in his mouth, forcing him to swallow.
Luigi spent one last agonizing day in bed, dying at 10 that evening. The doctor who'd been treating him cited gastroenteritis as the cause of death. Bulber's plan worked. A few weeks after Luigi's funeral, Petrillo stopped by the Lavecchio home to check on the insurance money. He found Rose crying, devastated about her late husband,
Petrillo tried, insincerely, to comfort her, and told her she could do better than a man who was sick in bed all the time and couldn't even work to pay the bills. Then he asked about the insurance. Rose showed him the $900 check she'd gotten from her insurance company. The problem was, she didn't know what to do with it. She didn't have a bank account. She didn't even know how to read or write.
Petrillo took the grieving widow to the bank and helped her cash the check. But when the teller turned over the cash, he pocketed all of it. Rose protested. This was from the insurance policy she'd had on Luigi before she met Petrillo. He didn't have the right to take the entire payout, especially when his remedies hadn't even cured her husband.
Petrillo quickly put Rose in her place. He revealed that she was complicit in her husband's death, since the powder she'd sprinkled on his food contained poison. He told her, quote, "'You helped do that job on your husband.' He threatened to kill her if she gave him any more trouble."
Rose must have been shocked and horrified, and whether or not she believed Petrillo, she realized she didn't have a choice but to comply. With Luigi gone, she had no one to protect her if Petrillo made good on his death threat, so she backed down and kept quiet. The two remaining $400 insurance payouts were sent directly to Petrillo, who forged Rose's signature and kept the money.
In all, killing Luigi had netted Bulber and Petrillo $1,700. And more importantly, with Bulber's new potion, they now had a guaranteed way to deliver death to anyone they insured.
In August of 1932, the Bulber-Petrillo murder ring was born, and any man in Philadelphia could be their next target.
Thanks for listening to Serial Killers, a Spotify podcast. We're here with a new episode every Monday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at Serial Killers Podcast, and we'd love to hear from you. So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts.
Amongst the many sources we used, we found the book Poison Widows, a true story of witchcraft, arsenic, and murder by George Cooper, extremely helpful to our research. Stay safe out there.
Serial Killers is a Spotify podcast. This episode was written by Danny Messerschmidt, edited by Sarah Batchelor and Maggie Admire, researched by Chelsea Wood, fact-checked by Bennett Logan, and sound designed by Kelly Gary. Our head of programming is Julian Boirot. Our head of production is Nick Johnson, and Spencer Howard is our post-production supervisor. I'm your host, Vanessa Richardson.