Due to the graphic nature of this case, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of assault and murder. Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen. ♪
The newspapers were the first sign that something wasn't right. Gertrude McCabe always took them inside. The 88-year-old California resident would read them herself early every morning and then pass them over her back fence to her neighbor Juanita Lennon. And yet, there they were, two days' worth, sitting outside Gertrude's front door, untouched.
It's morning when Juanita first notices the break in routine. She rings Gertrude's doorbell to check on her friend. When no one answers, Juanita speaks to another neighbor who notices that the sliding door on the side of Gertrude's house is open. And through a living room window, they can see open drawers and assorted items strewn about the room.
They call 911 and police arrive before 10 a.m. The officers call out Gertrude's name to see if anyone's home, but there's no response. So when they find the back entrance unlocked, they step inside.
They find Gertrude in the den. Her body is lying on the carpet in a pool of blood. Detectives begin documenting the crime scene immediately. There's a bike chain twisted around Gertrude's neck. The wounds covering her body suggest someone bludgeoned her in the head with a thin, round object and stabbed her at least 20 times.
The state of the scene suggests she was killed less than 24 hours ago. Authorities later estimate around 3 p.m. the day before. Upstairs in the house, detectives find one of the two bedrooms in shambles. Like the living room downstairs, drawers have been left open and their contents are scattered everywhere. It looks like a robbery gone wrong.
But that might be intentional. There's plenty of valuables lying around. Gertrude's purse is in her bedroom with more than $200 cash inside. And she's still wearing two diamond rings that are now covered in blood. Detectives suspect the killer staged a burglary to throw them off their scent.
But why? What kind of person kills a defenseless, elderly woman in such a violent fashion? That question haunted homicide detectives for years, until a few determined investigators picked up on details that everyone before them had missed.
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 @SerialKillersPodcast, 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, we're covering the murder of Gertrude McCabe, a crime that might never have been solved without a few critical pieces of evidence.
We're very excited to bring you this special episode of Serial Killers, ad-free, courtesy of ABC's Will Trent, last season's most talked about new crime series. Special Agent Will Trent has an eye for the crucial clues that close even the toughest cases. He uses his amazing gift for reading crime scenes to catch kidnappers, murderers, even a serial killer.
Watch season two of Will Trent at its new time Tuesdays at 8/7 Central on ABC and stream on Hulu.
Okay, so Will Trent is one of the reasons we're covering today's case. During a recent sickness, I binge-watched all of season one on Hulu. I'm someone who consumes a lot of crime-related content, and it had me hooked. But as I was watching the series, I kept thinking about this case, the murder of Gertrude McCabe. And I kept wondering to myself, what might have changed if someone like Will Trent was assigned to it from the start?
As you're about to find out, over the course of an investigation that lasts more than 10 years, the evidence surrounding Gertrude's murder doesn't change, but the detectives do. Like a revolving door, each one enters and evaluates the same clues with new perspectives, until finally a killer is brought to justice.
I know it's not exactly fair to compare fiction to real life, but I couldn't help myself. Would Will Trent have made fewer missteps? Would he have picked up on the most relevant evidence from the start? What if you were the detective? Would you? Let's get into the story. It's Sunday, October 23rd, 1983, the morning after Gertrude McCabe's murder. Investigators are collecting evidence from Gertrude's house in San Jose, California,
It looks like someone killed the old woman and tried to stage a burglary. The only notable item missing from the house is Gertrude's checkbook register, which, for our younger listeners, is what many people used to track their spending before online banking. Detectives wonder if maybe Gertrude wrote a check to her killer before she died, and that's why they took it.
Inside the bathroom closest to Gertrude's body, officials find two bloodied pillows and a towel inside the bathtub. A rust-colored ring near the drain suggests the killer tried to wash them to obfuscate the evidence. There's also a pair of gloves hanging on the sink. They're too large to be Gertrude's, so they were presumably worn by the killer.
The forensic team doesn't find any unusual fingerprints in the house. No hair or blood either. Nothing that could help them identify the person responsible. But based on a recent wipe mark on the bathroom wall, too high to have been made by Gertrude, they might be tall. Taller than the average person.
Now, if the detectives were anything like Will Trent, they'd be able to look at all those details and imagine how the killer entered Gertrude's home, where they attacked her, and why they left behind this bizarre evidence. Unfortunately, in Gertrude's case, the few clues at the crime scene don't add up to much, and the detectives are left with more questions than answers.
About two hours away, in Marin County, California, Gertrude's niece, Jane Alexander, watches football at a friend's house. In the middle of the game, she gets a surprise phone call telling her to get in touch with her cousin, Irma, as soon as she can. Something's wrong, Irma tells Jane through sobs. When she called their Aunt Gertrude not long ago, a stranger answered the phone. She got scared and hung up. Then, when she called back...
Irma says she spoke to a police officer who refused to answer any of her questions. Jane's heart sinks. Gertrude is much more than just an aunt to Jane. She considers her a surrogate mother. She hangs up and calls Gertrude's home immediately. An officer passes the phone over to the city coroner, who delivers the news. "Your aunt has been the victim of a homicide," he tells Jane. "Was she shot?" Jane asks.
"No," the coroner says, without elaborating further. Jane and her boyfriend, Tom, arrive at Gertrude's house that evening. They're greeted by a police sergeant and two homicide detectives. Authorities had already removed Gertrude's body from the house, but Jane can still see the bloodstains on the living room carpet.
The detectives brief Jane and Tom on the manner of Gertrude's death. But to protect the integrity of the investigation, they omit certain details, like that the killer used a bike chain as an asphyxiation tool.
The information is a lot to process. To detectives, Jane appears to be in a state of shock. She keeps asking about the killer's possible motive. According to James D'Alessandro's book, Citizen Jane, she tells police: "Practically every house in the neighborhood is bigger and more expensive. She didn't have an enemy in the world. She was kind to everyone."
All detectives tell Jane is they don't believe it was a burglary. It's possible she knew her killer, but they aren't sure. And beyond that, they're not willing to comment. But what happens next in this case is a little strange. Everyone knows police don't always get things right. I mean, before Will Trent shows up at his first crime scene in season one, officers had already misidentified a murder victim and assumed the killer was dead.
In the case of Gertrude McCabe, it's not that detectives read the crime scene incorrectly, but they do make a bizarre procedural error. They potentially compromised their evidence by allowing Jane and Tom to spend the night in Gertrude's home alone, even though the house hasn't been fully examined or cleaned yet, possibly because they felt confident that they photographed every inch of the crime scene.
Before they leave, detectives tell Jane and Tom that they'll be back in the morning and ask them for three favors: 1. Stay out of the bathroom where the gloves, pillows, and towel were found. 2. Be on the lookout for Gertrude's missing check registry. And 3. Save any tissues they might find lying around the house. They don't explain that last request.
Jane and Tom find clean sheets to make the spare bed. But given everything, Jane doesn't fall asleep until around 4 a.m. Shortly after she does, she's awoken by the sound of running water. Tom says a can of orange juice exploded in the kitchen and he was just cleaning it up. Luckily, it was far away from the crime scene. As promised, detectives are back at the house by 10 a.m. the next day.
At some point, Jane starts going through her aunt's papers. She learns that, as a gift, Gertrude had created two savings accounts for her nieces, Jane and Irma. Each one had $20,000 sitting in them. And after finding Gertrude's will, Jane learns that even though Irma's listed as the executor, she and Irma will each split half of their aunt's quarter-of-a-million-dollar estate.
And that's not all. Jane also stumbles upon Gertrude's missing check register.
She assumes detectives missed it during their original sweep because it was wedged in a corner, flat against the drawer's side. She hands it over, and the register provides authorities with their first leads. Based on Gertrude's payment history, as well as interviews with neighbors, detectives learn she hired a lot of help around the house: gardeners, painters, plumbers, even a driver who took her grocery shopping each week.
Officials interview each one and ultimately land on their first person of interest, a man named Virgil Jackson. Virgil, it turns out, had recently been hired to work on Gertrude's sliding glass door, the same one left open after her murder.
Detectives visit the apartment complex where Virgil lives. From neighbors, they learn that he and his wife and daughter only moved to the area within the past year. Some claim he was running from police, wanted for issuing bad checks back in New York, a misdemeanor punishable by up to 90 days in jail. Adding to suspicions, neighbors tell officials they'd witnessed violent altercations between Virgil and his wife Cheryl in the past.
The abuse is confirmed by police patrol reports and by Cheryl herself. Detectives interview her on two different occasions and ultimately learn Cheryl thinks her husband is capable of murder and believes he might have been the one to kill Gertrude. At one point, she attempted to sell their belongings and skip town without him.
But Virgil isn't a consideration for very long. As it turns out, he has an alibi. He was working on a construction project, pouring concrete the afternoon the murder occurred. And one by one, police eliminate every other person whose name appeared in Gertrude's check register as well.
By the end of the year, authorities are at a loss. Gertrude's niece, Jane, calls the department almost every other day with questions, wanting updates on her aunt's case. But investigators don't have answers. They have no suspects, no witnesses, and all their leads have run dry. So just three months into the investigation, Gertrude's murder goes cold.
That January, a new detective joins the homicide department. His name is John Cracht. And in many ways, he's a lot like my new favorite TV detective, Will Trent. Cracht may not be dyslexic or wrestle with the same demons, but he's been on the force for almost 20 years. And like Trent, his reputation precedes him. He's known for closing cases.
His tenacity and attention to detail are exactly what the Gertrude McCabe case needs, and it's the first assignment on his desk. As Cracked pours over the case files, he returns to the question of motive. Why would someone want an 88-year-old woman dead? He's struck by something the other detectives glossed over.
Gertrude's estate. There are only two people in the world who stood to benefit from Gertrude's death, her nieces, Jane and Irma. And one of them inserted herself into the investigation from the start. In January 1984, Detective John Cracht is assigned to Gertrude McCabe's cold homicide case, and his attention turns to Gertrude's niece, Jane Alexander.
Jane is 61 years old and a mother of six. Friends describe her as energetic, opinionated, and funny. She owns a large home in an affluent neighborhood in Marin County, California. That's where she lives with the man she's been seeing for about three years now, Tom O'Donnell. Jane's husband passed away unexpectedly six years ago from a heart attack.
The sudden loss sent her into a depression, and it was Tom, a tall, charismatic ballroom dancer, who drew her out of it. They now lead a comfortable, upper-middle-class lifestyle. Tom made a small fortune through his job over the years, and thanks to her late husband's pension and Social Security benefits, Jane doesn't have to work.
This is perhaps why detectives didn't initially suspect Jane or Tom. They didn't seem to need any money. But after months working Gertrude McCabe's case, Detective Cracked learns that not everything about their lifestyle is as it seems. Jane's home in Marin County is nearly paid off, but she has a $200,000 home equity loan with large monthly payments, almost $3,000 each month.
The payments hadn't been a problem, but at some point, Tom put most of that $200,000 in the stock market and lost it. Now the couple's checking accounts are almost empty, and they barely have anything saved. To top it all off, they had a loan payment due right after Gertrude was murdered.
In the spring of 1984, Detective Cracked shows up at Jane and Tom's home with questions. He learns that Jane lets Tom handle all of their finances. According to Tom, he's a retired businessman. He used to travel all over Europe and Africa trading diamonds. That's how he amassed a $1.2 million trust, which is sitting in a bank in Switzerland, just waiting to mature.
By the time he leaves, Detective Cracked senses that Jane and Tom are hiding something. He just needs to get one of them to talk. That May, Cracked summons Jane to a lab in San Jose and shows her a seemingly innocuous item: a Kleenex with a bright pink lipstick stain.
He asks Jane if the lipstick could have belonged to her aunt, Gertrude. Jane shakes her head no. There's no way her aunt would wear that shade. But according to Jane, the color looks exactly like her own favorite lipstick. She grabs the tube and shows it to the detective. The color looks identical. Cracked leaves knowing something Jane doesn't. A detail investigators withheld from the public.
A coroner pried that Kleenex from Gertrude's throat. It had been used to try to silence or suffocate her, possibly both. Jane might have just implicated herself in her aunt's murder.
Walking away from the conversation, Detective Cracked focuses on building his case. First, he lies and tells Jane and Tom that authorities found fingerprints at the crime scene. He says to eliminate them as suspects, analysts will need to examine their prints. More than anything, Cracked wants to see how Jane and Tom respond.
There's a lot that can be gleaned from people's reactions. Will and his partner use a similar tactic to solve one of their cases. While a suspect is listening, they let some misinformation slip into conversation just to see how the person reacts. It ultimately leads them to answers.
But in this case, Detective Cracked doesn't get all the information he needs. Sure, Jane seems happy to provide her prints, and Tom appears hesitant, but it's possible Jane is just the better actor. Cracked needs more information. Luckily, he's been working with the FBI all along to create a psychological profile of the killer. The completed report arrives on his desk that June, and it adds more fuel to his theories.
The FBI also believes the motive was likely financial and that the murder was pre-planned,
Given the erratic nature of the attack, the killer was probably inexperienced, possibly a female, and according to the report, whoever did it may have inserted themselves into the investigation. Detective Cracked tells Jane and Tom that they're pretty certain Gertrude knew her killer. Again, to gauge their reactions, he adds that he expects to arrest the culprit within three months.
Jane is pleased, but Tom is impossible to read. Cracked feels certain he's on to something big. Then in mid-August, the detective gets a call that turns his investigation upside down. It's Jane. She's crying so hard she can barely talk. In fits and starts, she tells the detective a story.
A few days ago, on August 6th, Jane and Tom were planning a vacation. It was Tom's idea. He said she needed a break from all the stress and heartache of Gertrude's murder. Jane withdrew $10,000 on credit and gave it to Tom to book the trip.
But when Jane came home from visiting a friend that night, Tom was gone. Two days later, she got a letter from him in the mail. He said his past had caught up to him. His diamond trading business was actually a diamond smuggling operation. Some of his associates had been arrested, and now they were hunting Tom down, looking for revenge. He had no choice but to go on the run.
Tom explicitly told Jane not to get authorities involved. He said it would only make matters worse. But Jane wrestled with what to do for days. She finally decided to call Detective Cracked because she was so worried Tom might be in serious danger. From the story, it's evident that Jane believes Tom's wild claims.
But Cracked doesn't. Tom just so happened to go on the run shortly after the detective mentioned he was closing in on Gertrude's killer. The timing seems too convenient. But the confidence Jane has in Tom suggests that maybe the detective was wrong about her. Maybe he and Jane have always been on the same team. Maybe she's also a victim. After all, Tom ran away with $10,000 of her money.
Cracked asks Jane if she's willing to file fraud charges, but she refuses. She doesn't want Tom arrested. She just wants him safe. Authorities run a background check on Tom O'Donnell and find a clear pattern. A number of women from his past claim that they financially supported Tom for extended periods of time. One of his exes even says he swindled her out of $80,000.
Their stories all end the same way, with Tom taking their money and running. When Detective Cracked explains all of this to Jane, she still doesn't believe it. She can't fathom that the man she loved and planned to spend the rest of her life with would do such a thing.
The detective sees Jane's denial, but he doesn't give up. And it's a good thing he doesn't. Because one day, as he and Jane are talking, he realizes he's never asked Jane a basic question. "Where were you on October 21st, 1983?" he says, the day before Gertrude McCabe was murdered. Jane doesn't answer right away. She asks the detective to wait a second.
When she returns, she's carrying a treasure trove of information. As it turns out, Jane keeps an extremely detailed diary. Phone calls, errands, events, even the perceived emotional state of her dog, Duke, all get meticulously recorded in its pages. Now, I love the idea of recording your pet's emotional state. I might have to start doing that with my pets. But I would really love to see what Will Trent might write about his chihuahua partner in crime, Betty.
Food for thought for the show's writers. Anyway, when Detective Cracked gets Jane's diary, he flips to the weekend of October 21st. It says that Tom took a trip to the Los Angeles area that weekend. He was gone from Friday morning to Saturday night, supposedly visiting a friend who lives in LA. That friend's name is Harry Carmichael. Two days later, Detective Cracked is standing on Harry's porch.
Harry Carmichael is a big, gruff-looking guy who doesn't seem happy to be speaking to law enforcement. He doesn't invite the detective inside. According to Harry, Tom did visit him that weekend. Tom spent Friday night at his house, then rented a car in Burbank and drove to Las Vegas on Saturday morning.
Tom asked Harry not to tell Jane about the Vegas trip because he didn't want her to know he was gambling. But Harry says Tom didn't stay in Vegas long. He was back that same night. Next, Cracked tracks down the rental car company in Burbank and pays them a visit. According to their records, Tom drove 669 miles in the 24-hour period he had their rental car. So the detective decides to put Tom's alibi to the test.
He drives from the car rental agency in Burbank to Vegas and back, and he comes up over 100 miles short. But when he drives to Gertrude McCabe's house and back, the detective is only two miles short, a distance that could easily be explained if someone was, say, circling a neighborhood to make sure the coast was clear.
It's December 1984, 14 months after Gertrude McCabe's murder. Detective John Cracht needs to somehow convince Gertrude's niece, Jane Alexander, that the man she loved may have been responsible for her aunt's death. So he pays her another visit. He shows Jane a piece of evidence she's seen before: the lipstick-stained Kleenex.
But this time, he tells her that it was found in Gertrude's throat. Jane is quiet. And in the silence, everything clicks for her. Jane always kissed Tom on the cheek before he left home. Tom always carried a Kleenex in his pocket. She can see the chain of events. She kisses Tom. He wipes his cheek with a tissue, then stuffs the wad into his pocket. He goes to Gertrude's house.
Jane stops before letting her mind wander any further. All at once, her world comes crashing down and a new reality sets in. Tom never really loved her. He wasn't the man he claimed to be. The diamond business, the Swiss trust, it was all a lie. Their relationship was one long con and she fell for it.
The emotions wash over Jane until, eventually, rage sets in. Jane's angry at the police for not zeroing in on Tom sooner. She's angry at herself for sticking up for him. But more than anything, she's angry at Tom and ready to file those fraud charges against him.
Like with Will Trent and so many of his investigations, she has a personal connection to the victim. But in Jane's case, she has a connection to the murder suspect as well. I can't imagine what that's like. But once Jane decides she's willing to file those charges and the paperwork is complete, all investigators have to do is find Tom.
Which is easier said than done. They've had no luck before, so sometime after Christmas, Jane calls up Harry Carmichael, the man who Tom visited the weekend Gertrude was murdered. She's lonely and just looking to chat.
Jane asks Harry how he spent Christmas, and Harry tells her that he went to Vegas to see a buddy of his, John Mackey. They shared a nice dinner with some friends. When Jane asks Harry who was at the dinner, his tone shifts. He clams up and stops answering questions. To Jane, it seems like Harry might be hiding something, or maybe someone.
Jane shares her suspicions with Detective Cracked, and in January 1985, he arrives on John Mackey's doorstep, the man who hosted that Christmas dinner. When Mackey opens the door, the detective looks straight past him into the living room. Sitting right there on the couch is Tom O'Donnell. His gray hair has been dyed a strange shade of brown, but there's no doubt about it. It's him.
Cracked arrests Tom on the spot. Within days, he's transported to California to await trial.
Meanwhile, Jane and Detective Cracked work on building their fraud case against him. Despite their initial differences, they become an unlikely duo, kind of like Will Trent and his partner Faith Mitchell. In season one, Will and Faith start their relationship on shaky ground because of some shared history. Will spearheaded an investigation that ended Faith's mom's decorated career as a police captain, but we eventually see them move past their differences so they can have each other's backs.
Jane and Cracked review Jane's finances, and the devastation is clear. Between the home equity loan, various credit cards, and borrowing from friends and family, Tom has accumulated over $300,000 of debt in her name, meaning Jane is responsible for all of it. If she can't figure out a way to dig herself out of this hole, she'll have to declare bankruptcy. She could even lose her home.
Understandably, Jane's children are concerned for her. Two of her sons invite her to move in with them, but Jane declines. None of her kids live in Southern California, and she doesn't want to leave. To her, this isn't about money or a house. The fraud charge is just a stepping stone, a way to buy time until she and Detective Cracked can find irrefutable evidence that Tom murdered Jane's beloved aunt.
Until that happens, Jane isn't going anywhere. She finds work as a receptionist to keep herself afloat, and when she's off the clock, she obsesses about Tom and the depths of his betrayal.
In January 1986, a year after Tom's arrest, the fraud trial begins. Tom faces charges of embezzlement, grand theft, and obtaining money under false pretenses. When he takes the stand to testify, he repeats the same story he gave Jane. He has a large offshore trust that's tied up at the moment, and he only ran away to avoid the international diamond smugglers who are trying to hunt him down.
Tom's story sounds so far-fetched that some people in the courtroom laugh. As the prosecution eventually proves, there's no evidence to support any of his claims. He made it all up. In the end, Tom's found guilty on all counts and given the maximum sentence: three years and eight months behind bars.
Jane's happy about the outcome, but not satisfied. Tom still hasn't been charged with her aunt's murder, and his sentencing doesn't do anything to erase her debt, the debt he caused. Jane continues hounding the police about Gertrude's case, but as much as Detective Cracked wants to pursue charges, he hasn't been able to find a district attorney willing to prosecute.
Now, you might be wondering why that is. But the decision to prosecute a murder can be more complicated than you might think. A lot of DAs are reluctant to bring charges against someone unless the case is airtight. Even if there's an overwhelming amount of circumstantial evidence, most want more than that. And that's because if they don't get a conviction the first time around, the Fifth Amendment protects the accused from being tried again.
More often than not, DAs want a direct link between a suspect and a crime, like physical evidence or a confession. And while Will Trent can usually find that physical evidence or elicit a confession from his suspect, in Gertrude's case, they have neither.
In the months after Tom's sentencing, Jane's financial situation gets worse. Much of the money she stood to inherit from her aunt's estate goes into fixing Gertrude's house, which fell into disrepair after her murder. When Jane's cousin Irma finally does sell the property, it's at a huge loss. There's not much left over for anyone.
Out of options, Jane files for bankruptcy. Her house is foreclosed on that April, and a month later, she's evicted. Jane tries to get back on her feet while bouncing between cheap studio apartments, but in June 1987, she gets a call from Detective Cracked saying Tom has been released early for good behavior.
After only 18 months spent in prison, he's a free man again.
Another year passes with no movement in Gertrude's case. Then, in October 1988, five years after Gertrude's murder, Detective Cracked calls again. His voice is somber as he tells Jane he's stepping down from her aunt's case. He's burnt out. It's time for a new detective to carry the torch. Maybe they'll find something he missed.
The new detective's name is Jeff Weemette. He takes Jane out to lunch and tells her he's in the middle of re-interviewing witnesses and reviewing all available evidence. The meeting leaves Jane feeling hopeful. This new detective seems a lot like her. Fiery, driven, ready to see a killer behind bars.
And just like the man whose shoes the detective stepped into, he's diligent and detail-oriented. After only about a month on the case, Detective We Met calls Jane about a piece of evidence that stuck out to him in the files: Gertrude's checkbook register. Jane repeats the same story she told police back in 1983. She found it in one of Gertrude's dresser drawers.
We met goes back through the crime scene photos. He finds pictures taken of the inside of the drawer where Jane found the registry. In the photos, it's empty. Police didn't miss the checkbook. It wasn't there when they looked. Someone must have planted it after authorities searched Gertrude's house. And if it wasn't Jane, there's only one person it could be. Tom O'Donnell.
Ouimet sends this discovery up the chain, hoping it'll be enough to get a DA to prosecute. It takes another two years, but finally, in November of 1991, Detective Ouimet calls Jane with news she's been waiting eight years to hear. There's a warrant out for Tom's arrest. He's being charged with first-degree murder.
It takes four months, but authorities eventually track Tom down. They find him living in LA at the home of yet another wealthy widow. This time, authorities put an end to his con before it gets too far.
Before long, Tom is behind bars again. His lawyers delay the trial by filing extensions, which is frustrating for Jane. But for Joyce Allegro, the prosecutor assigned to his case, it's an opportunity. The delays buy her time to comb through the information detectives cracked and we met handed over. And believe it or not, nestled in the stack of evidence, Allegro finds not one, but two bombshells.
Now, the timeline here is important, so as a reminder, Gertrude McCabe died on Saturday the 22nd. Her body was found on Sunday the 23rd. In the detective's case files, Joyce Allegro finds records of a phone call Tom made that Saturday. It was placed to his nephew and niece-in-law, whom he'd owed $15,000.
During that phone call, Tom apparently told his nephew that he'd be able to pay them back soon. He said Gertrude McCabe had just passed away, and he and Jane were about to inherit a windfall. Again, he told them this on Saturday, meaning Tom knew Gertrude was dead before police had discovered her body.
As if that wasn't enough, there's a second incriminating call. This one happened on Monday, October 24th. Tom contacted Jane's son and daughter-in-law to deliver the news of Gertrude's death, and he gave them a detail they couldn't forget. He said Gertrude had been stabbed and garroted.
It's an odd choice of words, but "garotted" means strangled with some kind of wire or rope. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, authorities withheld that Gertrude was strangled with a bike chain. Nobody except detectives and the killer could have known that detail.
When Tom's murder trial begins in April 1996, Joyce Allegro has an arsenal of circumstantial evidence against him: his prior fraud convictions, a clear motive, the lipstick-stained Kleenex, the register, and the fact that Tom knew information only the killer could.
It's overwhelming. The defense doesn't even try to refute the facts presented. Instead, they attack Jane's personality, accusing her of having a victim complex and making everything up. To make matters worse, over the course of the proceedings, Jane learns something new and terrifying about her ex.
Soon after Gertrude died, Tom took out a life insurance policy on her. In the event of her death, he'd receive almost $250,000. Jane can connect the dots. She leaves the stand deeply shaken.
In mid-July, each side rests their case. The jury spends the next week deliberating, and in the end, they find Tom guilty of first-degree murder. A judge sentenced him to 25 years to life. After 13 years, the case is finally closed.
While waiting for her aunt's murder trial to start, Jane co-founded a nonprofit organization called Citizens Against Homicide. She spends the rest of her life advocating for cold cases and lobbying against parole for convicted killers. She wins multiple awards for her extraordinary service. When she passes away from cancer at the age of 86, she leaves behind an unforgettable legacy.
As her biographer James D'Alessandro wrote, "She was a human dynamo. She had an energy, enthusiasm, obsession and commitment to justice that was extraordinary."
But it wasn't one person who solved this case. It took a revolving door of dedicated detectives and legal minds to read the evidence, solve the mystery of Gertrude McCabe's murder, and put a killer behind bars.
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.
If you enjoyed today's case, be sure to check out Will Trent season 2, airing at its new time Tuesdays 8/7c on ABC and stream on Hulu. I also highly recommend catching up on season 1 if you haven't already. It culminates in Will going after a serial killer who may have ties to his mysterious past.
Clearly, it was right up my alley. For more information on the murder of Gertrude McCabe, amongst the many sources we used, we found Citizen Jane, the true story of one woman's heroic struggle to catch a killer by James D'Alessandro, extremely helpful to our research. Stay safe out there.
Serial Killers is a Spotify podcast. This episode was written by Karis Allen, edited by Sarah Batchelor, Kate Murdock, and Connor Sampson, researched by Miki Taylor, fact-checked by Haley Milliken, and sound designed by Alex Button. Our head of programming is Julien Boirot, our head of production is Nick Johnson, and Spencer Howard is our post-production supervisor. I'm your host, Vanessa Richardson.