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Due to the graphic nature of this case, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of domestic violence, sexual violence, and murder. Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen. To get help on domestic violence and sexual violence, visit Spotify.com slash resources.
In June of 1915, crowds packed into England's Old Bailey Courthouse. They'd come to see the man the papers described as having hypnotic eyes that had seemingly given him some kind of power over his female victims. He was George Joseph Smith, the man they were calling the London Bluebeard. In this instance, Bluebeard referred to a person who wooed women into marriage,
only to kill them. Essentially the male form of the Black Widow killer. It was a term borrowed from a 17th century French fairy tale. But not all fairy tales have happy endings.
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.
Today's episode details the crimes of bluebeard serial killer George Joseph Smith. A thief and bigamist, George repeatedly married women and stole everything they had. Eventually, he found a faster way to make larger sums of money: by drowning his wives and making their deaths look like accidents. Stay with us.
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The area known as Bethnal Green in London's East End was originally a calm refuge, with lush gardens inviting a welcome change from city life. But around the mid-19th century, Bethnal Green's population had boomed. Poorly constructed houses were thrown up on land that was damp with water and human waste.
Unable to afford anything better, multiple families crowded into these dwellings, where disease ran rampant. There, just a couple of miles away from where Jack the Ripper committed his atrocities, lived a troubled boy. When George Joseph Smith was born in 1872, Bethnal Green, his hometown, had a reputation as one of the worst slums in England.
As a child, he stole to make ends meet. So from the ages of 9 to 16, his parents sent him to an industrial school, where he fell in with a rough crowd.
Industrial schools weren't quite as strict as reformatories. Younger children could be sent there for a variety of reasons. Some were juvenile delinquents who'd already built a rap sheet of petty crimes at an early age. Others were guilty of nothing and were simply unhoused. Parents could even send their children away to industrial schools for no other reason than they were too hard to care for. And it seems that's exactly what George Smith's parents did.
Today, there's actually something known as "boarding school syndrome," which describes the emotional and behavioral hurdles often faced by children who are left to live at their schools in their adolescent years. To be clear, boarding school syndrome is not an official medical diagnosis. But typical characteristics, like difficulty forming healthy relationships, have historically been common enough to warrant the need for such a term.
Not to mention, the industrial school George was subjected to was probably a few notches below what we think of as a boarding school. Rather than deter him from a life of crime, it's possible that being sent away to grow up there only encouraged George to follow a darker path. Because from the time he got out, he rarely took a break from committing crimes.
Perhaps to escape the stigma of his past, George Smith changed his name to George Love. Although he couldn't shake his old habits, he continued thieving, occasionally getting caught and spending time behind bars.
At some point, he realized he could coerce others into committing theft for him. He specifically targeted women. Women he believed he could strong-arm, bully, and even allegedly abuse in order to make them do whatever he wanted.
In his early 20s, George began a romance with a woman and persuaded her to find work as a domestic servant. That way, she could easily steal valuables from her employers and hand them over to George. One day, this girlfriend hit the jackpot. When she handed over £115 cash, George took it and left her, moving about 100 miles away.
He used the money to open his own business, a bakery. It was there that he met the first of what would be many wives, Caroline Thornhill.
Now, George could be a cold and calculating man, but he knew exactly how to sweep a lady off her feet. He made promises of a better life. He wrote love letters. He would later admit he stole his wording straight from Shakespeare. He wore sharp outfits to make it look like he was more successful than he really was. And when he wanted to, he could turn on the charm like a faucet.
At 18 years old, Caroline fell for George's charade. She thought she'd found the perfect man. Even though her parents refused to give their blessing, Caroline agreed to marry George. Immediately after, her husband's attitude changed completely. He became controlling. When his bakery went under, he fell back on his old tricks and forced Caroline to take a job working in wealthy homes.
Just as he'd done before, George coerced Caroline into stealing for him. During one theft, law enforcement caught the couple. George escaped and ran off, leaving Caroline to take the fall. She spent three months in jail while he walked free.
When she got out, she tried to move on without her husband, but George found her and threatened to harm her. Fearing for her safety, Caroline escaped to Canada in 1906 and began a new life. At some point, George must have decided there was an easier way to make money off of women by stealing directly from his wives and disappearing, leaving them heartbroken and penniless.
In order to do that, George began to choose his victims a little more carefully. Three years after Caroline fled England, George had once again changed his name and moved to a new city. It was in Southampton, along the southern coast of England, that he met Sarah Faulkner.
Sarah had money of her own. It wasn't a fortune, but she'd been working and saving up and had nearly 300 pounds to her name. That's equivalent to over 30,000 pounds or $38,000 today. There was a small hiccup in George's plan this time, though. Sarah didn't want to marry him. She outright refused his proposal.
No matter, George was determined. He badgered her into going on walks. And when it came to old-fashioned courting, he was a pro. Eventually, Sarah gave in and became Mrs. George Rose.
When her new husband said she needed to invest in his new business, an antique store, Sarah probably felt she had little choice. She withdrew her life savings, but asked if she could keep some of it. George flatly told her, no. Then he took her to a museum and abandoned her there. When she returned to their rented apartment, she realized he'd also gotten away with her jewelry, as well as their marriage certificate.
The following year, while posing as Henry Williams, George set his sights on Bessie Mundy. Bessie probably believed at first that her dreams were finally coming true. Now that she was 33, she feared she'd become one of the country's so-called "surplus women." By the late 1800s, the new era of industrialization had dawned, bringing with it opportunities for work. But these new jobs weren't always easy to come by.
A significant number of young, working-class men couldn't find employment in England. Many moved abroad to pursue better professional opportunities.
And that left a noticeable population gap between the sexes. Women began to far outnumber men. That was a problem for people like Bessie. Not only had she yearned for marriage and a family of her own, marriage was also seen as an economic necessity at the time because women had far fewer professional opportunities than men.
George likely saw Bessie as a perfect target, for those reasons and more. She was endearing, but also gullible. She wasn't very close with her family, and she had money. Real money. Bessie's father had passed away, leaving her 2,500 pounds in a trust.
It was managed by her uncle, who sent her a little bit each month to live off of. Well, that was all George needed to know. He whisked her away, and they were married at once. The very same day, George dragged Bessie along to send a formal request. He wanted to see a copy of her father's will.
Over the next few days, both George and Bessie wrote to her uncle demanding a check. The uncle refused to turn over the entire trust fund, but sent £138, all that was legally due to Bessie at that time.
Once again, George took the money and ran. Only, he didn't entirely cut off communication with his wife. Through a letter, George told Bessie he had to leave her because she'd given him a sexually transmitted illness. George claimed he was so embarrassed by her so-called lack of virtue that he had to separate from her and seek expensive, time-consuming treatments. And she was to tell no one about it.
Bessie knew it was an outright lie, but back then, the story made her feel so shameful given stigmas at the time, and she rarely, if ever, brought it up. She did admit to her uncle that she was struggling in the wake of him leaving her.
Eighteen months later, in 1912, Bessie got another shock. During a seaside holiday, she ran into none other than her estranged husband, George. Right away, he apologized for the false accusations he'd made in his letter. He said he'd been wrong about the illness and had actually been out searching for the perfect home for Bessie because he wanted to give her the life she deserved.
It seemed like a random chance encounter, but it's possible the whole thing was orchestrated by George, who had by now come to a horrible realization: Bessie was worth more to him dead than alive.
Bassey was willing to give George another shot. He found them a cottage in a popular resort town and outfitted it with expensive furniture. He even purchased a bathtub, an uncommon luxury to have in their own home. Even as the couple finally built their life together, not all was well. People who witnessed the couple together said it was obvious that he was extremely controlling. When they went out in public, it was George who did all the talking.
Which he did that July, when he made Bessie a doctor's appointment. There, it was George who claimed his wife was having fits. Even though the doctor found no evidence that Bessie had epilepsy, he took her husband's word for it. Around the same time, George also visited a solicitor to make sure Bessie had an iron-clad will, and that he was her sole beneficiary.
A few days later, George and Bessie woke for the day, and George suggested she enjoy a nice bath. According to the leading theory, once Bessie was enjoying the warm, soapy water, George approached her from the end of the tub. Then he swiftly grabbed her ankles and pulled her feet upwards, dunking her head under the water.
It's possible that the sudden and violent rush of water into Bessie's mouth put pressure on the vagus nerve in her neck. The strain may cause someone to faint, and in some cases, it can stop the heart. Moments later, Bessie was dead, drowned in a tub that was only three-quarters full.
George put on a show as a grieving widower, sobbing as he brought in a doctor, the same doctor he'd convinced to diagnose his wife with epilepsy. Despite no bite marks on her tongue, the doctor concluded Bessie must have had a fit in the bath and drowned. After all, there were no visible signs of foul play on her body.
George finally got the money he was after, all 2,500 pounds. Yet he had Bessie buried in a cheap, common grave. It should have set off alarm bells, and in fact, some people did find his actions fishy, including the woman he'd rented the cottage from. She later said it really rubbed her the wrong way when George came into her office crying about Bessie, and then said...
After that, George had one last piece of unfinished business before moving on to his next victim. He returned Bessie's bathtub and received a full refund.
George Joseph Smith had moved from petty thievery to bigamy to murder. After drowning his wife Bessie in a bathtub, he inherited her entire trust fund and all of her belongings. Today, George would be called a comfort or gain killer. Like H.H. Holmes, George's main motivation appeared to be financial. He wanted to live comfortably, and he killed to support that lifestyle.
In some ways, George fits perfectly into this category. Criminologist Scott Bond points out that comfort or gain killers usually start with smaller thefts and other monetary crimes, just like George did. But George was also unique within this category in one big way. Comfort killers often rely on poison or drugs to kill their victims. Back in the day, certain poisons might help bluebeards avoid detection.
But George must have decided that such a strange death might actually be easier to cover up. After all, he had to make it look like an accident if he was going to get what was most important to him: money. The windfall he received from Bessie's trust should have been enough to keep him comfortable for some time.
But it turned out George was terrible at making business decisions. He bought an annuity of 1,300 pounds, but it's not clear what he did with the rest of Bessie's money.
So George moved on to his next victim. In September of 1913, he met 25-year-old Alice Burnham. It was a whirlwind romance, and although her family was hesitant about such a speedy union, Alice was delighted to find a man who intended to marry her.
She came from a good family and even had a steady job as a nurse, but she'd nearly given up on the idea of marriage. She'd contracted an illness that author Jane Robbins believes may have been gonorrhea, a sexually transmitted infection that, while common, carried a great deal of stigma.
George said he didn't mind. For him, it was all about closing the deal, and that meant making Alice believe they were soulmates. He insisted she was everything he wanted in a wife.
Once he'd reeled Alice in and they got engaged, George began calling the shots. See, Alice didn't have a large trust fund in her name, like Bessie. So the day before their wedding, George instructed Alice to sign up for a life insurance policy worth 500 pounds. They were married on November 4th, 1913.
While most would spend their wedding day celebrating, George suggested his new bride write to her father, asking for money. Then he made plans for their honeymoon in Blackpool, a seaside resort town on England's west coast. George picked a local boarding house, one that he made sure offered use of a bathtub.
Three days after George and Alice arrived, the owner of the boarding house noticed something strange. Water coming down the wall from the second floor. The newlyweds had spoken about Alice having a bath, and the owner worried the tub might be overflowing. Before she could go upstairs to check on her boarder, George happened to come downstairs and strike up a conversation. It was a strange, forced chat.
Clearly, he was creating an alibi. Minutes later, George returned upstairs and screamed for somebody to call a doctor. A local physician arrived swiftly and ran upstairs. He found George cradling a motionless Alice, still half in the bath. He pulled her out of the tub and tried to resuscitate her, but it was too late. Just one month after her wedding, Alice Smith was dead.
The tragedy shocked the entire boarding house, but the newly bereaved widower acted most broken-hearted of all. When a police officer arrived at the scene, he questioned George. But because there were no signs of a struggle, the detective didn't suspect foul play. Everything was going according to plan for George.
The doctor who responded to the emergency was the very same man George had taken Alice to see one day earlier. He'd claimed Alice was suffering from prolonged headaches, and the doctor prescribed her medicine. George had laid the trap, making his wife appear sickly and frail. Now he just needed the physician to take the bait.
After the autopsy, the doctor concluded that Alice died from accidental drowning caused by a seizure or fainting spell. On Monday, December 15, 1913, Alice Smith was laid to rest. George had once again chosen a cheap coffin and would only pay for burial in a public grave. Alice's mother and brother arrived in time for her funeral, having made the 300-mile trek.
George, who hadn't been expecting them, didn't bother to hide his displeasure. The owners of the boarding house also attended, deeply shaken by the incident that had taken place under their roof. And they noticed something strange. George didn't wear the customary black clothing to the ceremony. Bessie and Alice's murders occurred about a year and a half apart.
This time, George would claim his next victim after just one year, almost to the day.
Criminologist David Wilson says the shorter gap between George's murders suggests he was growing more confident, not only in his methodology, setting up his wife's deaths to look accidental, but also growing more confident he wouldn't get caught. He'd now seemingly gotten away with not one, but two murders, and his ego may have led him to believe he would continue his schemes unscathed.
If he'd stopped before claiming his third victim, he actually might have never been caught. With his next wife, George followed the same pattern he'd established with Bessie and Alice, only this time he went through the motions faster. First, he targeted a woman who was likely to overlook his less attractive traits and would be open to a quick marriage.
38-year-old Margaret Lofty had already been declared a spinster when she met George, who was now going by the name John Lloyd. Next, he swept her off her feet with his usual pseudo-charms and stolen poetry. Then, he marched her down to a solicitor's office to insure her own life for 700 pounds.
By early December 1914, George and Margaret were engaged. This time, George wouldn't be eloping in a seaside town. Instead, he made the eerie decision to wed Margaret in the city of Bath, England. The two had a hasty, informal ceremony on December 17th. He and Margaret set out for London the same afternoon, intending to honeymoon in the city.
Of course, George's wedding night wouldn't be complete without a trip to the doctor. Again, he did all the talking, claiming Margaret had been experiencing headaches. More importantly, in George's mind, he was paving the way for her death to look like an accident.
But George ran into a last-second problem when the newlyweds arrived at their lodgings for the evening. A few days earlier, he'd scouted the room where he and Margaret were to spend their wedding night, ensuring there would be a bathtub for his wife. He found one, and even got to inspect it before placing a down payment. But the prospective landlady had second thoughts. She didn't like the fact that George refused to give her any references, and frankly, didn't like the look of him.
When the honeymooners showed up at their rental after the wedding, they realized the place had been given to somebody else. George was furious. He trudged through the night searching for a place to stay. When he finally found one, it was a fair price, so he paid for a room. It just so happened there was a bathtub on the premises.
Perhaps because things didn't seem to be going George's way, he wasted no time. Margaret felt ill the next day, but George urged her to get out of bed and go file a simple will naming him as the beneficiary. Now there was only one thing left for George to take care of. On the evening after their wedding day, Margaret announced she'd be taking a bath. The landlady helped draw the water and then set to her other chores.
The next thing she heard was a second set of footsteps following Margaret, and then water splashing. She even thought she could hear hands or limbs grasping at the edge of the tub.
Considering the landlady had no idea about George's dark history, it all just seemed strange. But what came next was downright creepy. For ten minutes, someone played a song on the organ. It was a popular tune called "Nearer, My God, to Thee."
For the past couple of years, though, it was an exceptionally morose song choice, because that's what the band reportedly played on the Titanic as it sank into the murky depths of the Atlantic Ocean. And now, George played the song as his wife lay dead in the water, just one room over.
You might be thinking all of these sounds together make George seem pretty suspicious, but he had a plan for that too. George always created an alibi for the moments when his wives supposedly drowned, like when he went downstairs to speak with his landlords while Alice Smith lay motionless in a room above them.
With Bessie, he'd left his cottage to buy fish, making sure to be noticed around town. And with Margaret, he slipped down the stairs, out the door, and went off to buy tomatoes. He even rang the doorbell for the landlady to let him in the house, even though he had a key, just so she could see he had been outside. Now she couldn't be sure which of her tenants had walked upstairs and played the organ earlier. She hadn't seen George do it.
After handing over the tomatoes, George went up to the bathroom and pretended to discover his wife. Like Bessie and Alice, Margaret's body showed no marks or signs of foul play, and the doctor suspected she'd drowned by accident, perhaps because she'd been ill. George was hoping to get away with the mysterious death of a third wife, but his crimes were anything but bulletproof.
This time when a police constable responded to the scene, he noticed a couple of strange details. Margaret's body was laid out on the floor, still nude. He was shocked that a husband, particularly a grieving one, would show such little concern for his wife's privacy. The same officer examined the bathtub where Margaret died. Due to its shallow size and shape, he couldn't imagine how a person might have drowned in it.
When the undertaker came to call, George didn't shed a tear for his wife. He was only concerned about securing the lowest price for her coffin. It seems he was no longer worried about pretending to be heartbroken. But those missteps alone didn't cast enough suspicion on George. Not yet. There's no way he could have foreseen the sequence of events that finally shed light on his crimes.
In January 1915, as London rang in the new year, the inquest into Margaret's death wrapped up. The conclusion? Accidental drowning. It was a tragic story, only not for the reasons the public believed. They thought Margaret had long awaited her happily ever after, only to die just one day after marrying Mr. Right.
It was a big enough story that it ran in a national newspaper, where it caught the eye of one reader in particular, Alice Smith's father.
Alice Smith's father saw the article about Margaret's death in News of the World. It had been a year since his daughter died, and there was a story that sounded exactly the same. The coincidences felt too great to ignore. The fact that Margaret's husband was called John Lloyd did nothing to deter him. He'd never trusted Alice's no-good husband, George Joseph Smith.
So he sent law enforcement the national story about Margaret, a local news clipping of his daughter's death, and a description of his son-in-law. In January 1915, the case made its way to Scotland Yard.
The information landed on the desk of Inspector Arthur Neal. Neal had been in the game long enough to realize this couldn't be a coincidence. Two different women with two different husbands, but the exact same manner of death? In his mind, there had to be more to the story. So Neal opened a quiet investigation into the case of Margaret Lloyd, George's most recent late wife.
Neil started by questioning the officer who'd originally handled the scene. He passed along his suspicions about the widower's strange actions following his wife's death. The investigation heated up when Neil discovered Margaret's life insurance policy for £700. The timing of that policy, and the will she had drawn up on her honeymoon, didn't look good for her husband, the sole beneficiary.
Inspector Neal wondered if George had married Margaret with the intention of murdering her and collecting a payout. It certainly appeared that way. Neal visited the undertaker, who'd examined Margaret's body, hoping to find evidence of foul play. But both Margaret's doctor and her undertaker had seen no signs of struggle. They'd decided she'd drowned due to some sort of fainting spell.
While this was similar to Alice, who'd supposedly drowned due to fainting or a seizure, there were no clear signs of murder. Inspector Neal had no physical evidence to suggest these deaths were the result of a crime. The deeper Neal dug, the more similarities he found between the two cases. The next thing to do was to track down George Smith in person.
Neil realized he had the perfect bait to lure him in, because George still needed to collect on Margaret's insurance policy. If Neil's hunch was right, he certainly wasn't going to leave that money on the table. Neil set up a stakeout. He recruited four other officers to survey the solicitor's office 24-7 for a full week.
Finally, on February 1st, 1915, a police sergeant spotted someone who matched George's description. At first, George said he was "John Lloyd," the pseudonym he used when marrying Margaret.
He denied his true identity was George Smith. Until, that is, Inspector Neal said Alice's father was on his way to identify him in person. As soon as George heard that, he folded, even commenting that two of his wives had died in bathtubs. But, he challenged, it was just the irony of fate, nothing more than bad luck.
George had no idea that the cards were already stacked against him, because working on the case behind the scenes was the brightest forensic investigator of the time, a man called the real-life Sherlock Holmes. By the time legendary pathologist Bernard Spilsbury took on the George Smith case, he was well known for securing convictions of high-profile murders that seemed impossible to solve.
With both Margaret and Alice reported as accidental drowning victims, this case also looked daunting. Spilsbury had both of them exhumed. Margaret was clearly a victim of drowning, but nothing pointed to how George Smith might have done it. On the other hand, there was also nothing in Margaret's autopsy to indicate an underlying condition that would have spontaneously caused her to drown. That meant there was still a mystery afoot.
It was a similar story with Alice, who was already in an advanced state of decomposition. And with public attention on the case growing, the pressure was on. They either needed a break in the investigation, or they'd be forced to let a murderer walk free.
One week after George's arrest, Inspector Neal received a crucial piece of mail. The timing couldn't have been better. It was a letter about George's first wife to die in a bathtub, Bessie. Inspector Neal and Bernard Spilsbury now realized they had a serial killer on their hands. Spilsbury immediately set to work having Bessie exhumed.
Meanwhile, George Smith stood in his cell at the Kentish Town Police Station in London. Outside, something strange was happening. Reporters churned out countless stories detailing George's "charms." His eyes became a particular point of focus. Some said they were hypnotic, used to lure women into his deadly trap. The press went so far as to speculate that he possessed supernatural abilities.
It seemed like the only way he could have committed so many crimes without getting caught. But Inspector Neil knew George didn't have magic powers. He was simply an evil man, driven by greed and cruelty. All the detective had to do was prove it. The trial began on June 22, 1915, at Old Bailey Courthouse in central London.
Huge crowds amassed outside. People, women especially, were eager to observe the proceedings of one of the early public serial killers. George had only been charged with the murder of Bessie, his first victim. In a rare move, though, the judge allowed the prosecution to present the cases of Margaret and Alice's deaths.
George pleaded not guilty. He approached the trial with the attitude of a man who was used to getting whatever he wanted. In total, 121 witnesses testified against George Smith. But the real coup de grace was pathologist Bernard Spilsbury's findings.
He provided detailed descriptions of how George had approached Bessie while she was in the bath, grabbed her by the ankles, and pulled. Her torso and head were thrust under the water, and in a matter of moments, Bessie had quietly drowned.
The real-life Sherlock Holmes had actually run experiments to test this theory. He'd used a volunteer swimmer to climb into a bathtub. When Spilsbury had pulled the woman by her ankles, she actually fell unconscious and nearly died.
After she was finally revived, she explained how water had rushed into her nose and mouth. She passed out and began to drown very quickly. Spilsbury was satisfied he'd sussed out George's secrets and presented his case to the court. Eight days after the trial began, it was up to the jury to decide the man's fate.
It took just 22 minutes of deliberation to return the verdict. George Joseph Smith was found guilty of the murder of Bessie Williams. The judge sentenced him to death. On August 13, 1915, George Joseph Smith walked out of his cell at Maidstone Prison for the last time.
The man with the so-called hypnotic eyes seemed like he'd aged several years in just two months. The London bluebeard who wooed, wed, and killed three wives was hanged, leaving behind a story as dark and twisted as the most sordid fairy tales.
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 Jane Robbins' book, The Magnificent Spillsbury and the Case of the Brides in the Bath, extremely helpful to our research. Stay safe out there.
This episode was written by Kayla Westergaard Dobson and Mickey Taylor, edited by Chelsea Wood, Karis Allen, and Giles Hovseth, fact-checked by Claire Cronin and Laurie Siegel, 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.