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Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast. The podcast dedicated to serial killers. Who they were, what they did, and how.
I am your host, Thomas Weyborg Thu, and in tonight's episode, we are sticking with the terrors haunting America after the Bella Park of the 1890s. In the aptly named American centuries, the 20th century, first decades, several serial killers roamed the land.
Tonight, we look closer at one of my favorite topics, namely serial killer cases that have never been solved. More specifically, we are traveling to the Deep South, to the Gate City, the city in a forest, the Empire City of the South and capital of Georgia, the great city of Atlanta. On July 1st, 1911...
"'A twenty-year-old woman named Emma Lou Sharp sat in her house on Hanover Street in Atlanta "'and waited for her mother to come home. "'It was a balmy, typically southern Saturday evening, and Emma Lou was worried. "'Her mother had left an hour before to buy some groceries and still had not returned. "'Usually this wouldn't be a cause for concern, but these were unusual times.'
Just two weeks before, a neighbor of the Sharps, named Addie Watts, was hit on the head with a brick. Then, as the local papers described in a mysterious understatement, a coupling pin was brought into play. This being a more naive age, I'm guessing what the paper was describing is that a metal rod was used to bash Addie Watts over the head to subdue her.
Watts' attacker then dragged her into a clump of bushes and slit her throat with a murder weapon that has never been identified, probably a regular hunting knife. Watts' murder had been just the ladies in a string of attacks that left the local African-American population on edge. All the victims had been of black or mixed race. All had been young, around 20 years old. All had been women.
Emmaloo Sharp fit that description almost exactly, but she was more concerned about her mother, whose name was Lena. Frantic with worry, Emmaloo set out in search for her mother. At the market where her mother was to buy groceries, the daughter learned that Lena never had showed up. Emmaloo started back for home.
In the area that now separates Inman Park from Reynolds Town, she was approached by a stranger, who she later described, according to the Atlantic Constitution, as tall, black, broad-shouldered, and wearing a broad-brimmed black hat. "'How do you feel this evening?' the man asked Emma Lou. "'I'm very well,' she told the man, and began to walk past him.
But he blocked her path. "'Don't be afraid,' he told Emmalou. "'I never hurt girls like you.' Then, as the young woman turned to get away, he stabbed her in the back. Bleeding, she ran away, screaming for help. And Emmalou's mother? She was already dead, her head severed, well, almost severed, from her neck. Atlantis. Jack the Ripper had struck again.'
Less than a half century after the Civil War, the Atlanta of 1911 prided itself as the gateway to the New South. With almost a dozen major railroads poking out from the city, the business of Atlanta was business. Atlanta always ahead was the slogan the local airman's club chose as the city's new motto.
Inman Park and Peach Tree Street were enclaves for the wealthy. For a select few of the city's African Americans, Atlanta was a model for racial tolerance. Black-owned businesses had sprung up on streets such as Auburn Avenue, and local colleges, Spelman, Atlanta Baptist College, now known as Morehouse, Morris Brown and Atlanta University, currently Clark Atlanta University,
were considered among the best black centers of learning in the nation. But for most of the city's African Americans, life was hardly idyllic. Most worked menial jobs, installing sewers, cleaning the streets, or cooking and cleaning in white households. Then trudging home at night to dimly lit neighborhoods such as Reynolds Town and Pittsburgh.
While Abraham Lincoln had given black Americans the right to vote, Georgia in the early 20th century actively sought to disenfranchise black voters by such methods as the poll tax. Many southern states enacted poll tax laws as a means of restricting eligible voters.
Such laws often included a grandfather clause... which allowed any adult male whose father or grandfather... had voted in a specific year prior to the abolition of slavery... to vote without paying the tax. Segregation, meanwhile, was not just a practice. It was the law. Blacks could not be buried in white cemeteries... could not walk through white parks... could not drink in white bars...
Could not cut white women's hair. In fact, a black baseball team wasn't allowed to play within two blocks of a white baseball team.
Nearly five years earlier, on September 22, 1906, the facade of racial unity fell away when a crowd of several thousand white men and boys gathered in downtown Atlanta and made unsubstantiated reports that four attacks had taken place on white women at the hands of black men. The white mob went on a rampage.
Three days later, an estimated 25 to 40 black Atlantans lay dead. By 1911, the population of Atlanta had climbed to more than 150,000, and whites actively sought to keep their neighborhoods free from black homeowners.
That July, white citizens living on Ashby Street gathered at the Emmanuel Baptist Church for the purposes of suggesting methods of keeping Negroes out of the vicinity. Already, it seemed, four black families had moved into the neighborhood, and there were signs that more were on the way.
The committee decided to visit property owners in the neighborhood who might reside elsewhere and, quote, ask them not to sell any of the property lying in that section to Negroes. So, when young black and mixed-race women began showing up dead, it wasn't cause for much concern in the local papers.
Circulating largely among white readers and staffed exclusively by white reporters and editors, papers such as the Atlanta Georgian, the Atlanta Constitution, and the Atlanta Journal are far more concerned about crimes among whites.
Black-on-black crime merited little attention, as the Constitution showed May 29th, 1911, when it buried a two-paragraph brief on page 7 under the headline, ''Negro woman killed, no clue to slayer, was found with her throat cut near her home.''
The brief went on to say that the mutilated body of Belle Walker was found by her sister on Sunday morning, after Walker failed to return home the night before from her job as a cook at a home on Cooper Street. But it wasn't until two weeks later, after Abby Watts was killed, that the newspapers began speculating that the murders of the, and I quote, ''negresses''
were perhaps the work of a solitary killer. The Atlanta Journal asked on June 16th, is this a black butcher at work? Although the story beneath it stretched to just four paragraphs. Still, the final paragraph was perhaps the first in the local press that compared the Atlanta killings to the work of London's serial killer of the 1880s.
A serial killer case still haunting our collective memories. The case more infamous than any other crime. The press wrote: "On account of the number of recent murders of Negro women, policemen advanced the theory that Atlanta has an insane criminal, something on the order of the famed Jack the Ripper." Ten days later, the journal elevated Atlanta's Jack the Ripper to the front page.
For the first time, the paper examined similarities among the crimes, noting that five Saturdays in a row saw the murder of a young black woman. The same day the journal was sounding an alarm about a possible serial killer, the Constitution covered the six dead black women in much the same understated way as before.
naming the deceased and concluding, after just two paragraphs, that the mean whiskey and cocaine is the probable causes. It is worth noting that in this era, cocaine was not viewed in the same manner as it is in our own postmodern society. Sigmund Freud wrote extensive of the beneficial properties of cocaine,
Coca-Cola had only eight years before stopped using cocaine in its beverages, and anyone could buy cocaine without a prescription, in any pharmacy, in any quantity, as long as they had the cash to do so. It was, though, known that it could be used recreationally, and was as such beginning to gain a reputation of substance that could be abused.
Much the same way that prescription drugs can today. Still...
When Lena Sharpe was found dead and her daughter stabbed, even the Constitution had to admit in a headline that the theory of Jack the Ripper is given further substance. The story underneath then recounted in detail how Emmalou Sharpe came face to face with what police believed was the man now known as the Atlanta Ripper.
The journal described Emma Lou's ordeal quite differently, however, in a much shriller tone. The paper said that Emma Lou and her mother had been together when they were attacked. After first knocking Lena down with a brick, the man slashed at Emma, who ran screaming from the attacker, before fainting from loss of blood. She awoke to see the man standing over her, knife poised,
until he was scared off by the sound of approaching footsteps. I quote, The paper wrote, By now, the verdict was certain.
It is the work of the same man, said coroner Paul Donhoe. On the next day, July 3rd, the Journal made a page nine mention that a local black undertaker, L.L. Lee, had offered a $25 reward for the capture of the murderer.
Meanwhile, papers throughout the country, intrigued by the prospect of another Jack the Ripper, began running wire stories with an Atlanta dateline. Eighth victim of Jack the Ripper, screamed the Sandusky Star Journal of Ohio. As another Saturday approached, the journal asked the question that was on everyone's minds. Will Jack the Ripper claim eighth victim this Saturday? The story quoted an unnamed veteran cop.
"'It is coming,' he said. "'The Negro will kill a woman before midnight Saturday. "'And, not surprising to you and me, dear listener, "'on Saturday night, July 8th, "'22-year-old Mary Yeldell "'left the home of W.M. Selser on Fourth Street, "'where she worked as a cook. "'From down an alley she heard a low whistle. "'She stopped.'
and coming forward towards her was what she described as a negro man, tall, black, and well-built, and moving with a cat-like tread. Yeldell ran screaming back to the Seltzer house. Seltzer met her at the door, then grabbed his revolver. He ran to the alley and found the man still standing there.
But when Seltzer told him to raise his hands, the man darted back down into the alley and disappeared. This behavior is very much in line with what we know of psychopaths today. Even though capable of inflicting tremendous horror on entire communities, they are at the core narcissists. They will risk many things.
but if they can, they will never consciously risk capture or death. Serial killers prey on those weaker than they are, and especially victims that are alone. When confronted by witnesses or challenged physically by the victims, the killers withdraw and run away. It is unfortunate that Seltzer did not fire his weapon immediately,
But regular people seldom use violence unless they are absolutely forced to. So instead, Seltzer called the police, who arrived on motorcycles. But, much like in a movie, their search turned up nothing.
Within days, black churches in Atlanta had fattened their reward for the killer, declaring in a resolution that the foul and unpunished murders have placed a reign of terror over the laboring class of women of our race. But the reward was useless. If it was true that a prowler who had approached Yildir was indeed the killer, a streak of Saturday night slayings had been broken.
but he didn't waste any time. Again, the Atlanta Ripper acts very much in a, to our modern eyes, predictable pattern. If a killer's routine is broken, he will lash out and intensify his actions. So on Tuesday morning, July 11th, a group of men working on a sewer near the intersection of Atlanta Avenue and Martin Street, just west of Grant Park,
came upon a large pool of blood in the road. They tracked the blood, about nine meters, to a small gully, where they found the lifeless body of Sadie Holly, who worked at the local laundry. Her shoes were missing, and her throat had been cut in a manner very similar to the method employed by Jack the Ripper, cut so that the head was almost removed from the neck.
Clues were scarce, especially for a police force of the early 20th century with no backing of a federal force, no advanced forensic science, and little cooperation with other police districts. Police did find combs worn by the victim on both sides of Atlanta Avenue, and they also found a two-pound rock smeared with blood.
guaranteeing that this murder was yet another notch in the belt for the Atlanta Ripper. Within twenty minutes after discovery, more than one hundred onlookers had gathered. By nine a.m., when Don't Who, the coroner, arrived, the crowd had grown to five hundred people.
Because so many murders had occurred, and because even the police weren't sure which murders were the result of which killers, some papers called Holly's death the Ripper's seventh victim, while another called it his eighth. And another speculated it was his ninth. In any case, the effect was the same. Hysteria. Police patrols were beefed up,
But there seemed no pattern to where the killer was striking. Newspaper accounts decried the deaths, especially since all the victims, with one exception, were, and I quote, hard workers and generally respected by both races alike. The character of the victims is largely responsible for the indignation at the murders, which has been so evident among the better class of Negroes.
In an editorial, the Constitution chastised the police for not finding the killer. What is the matter with the Atlanta police that they have not found the criminals themselves and locked them securely from further depredation? Is it indifference or incompetence? Is Atlanta in need of a police awakening or of a police shaking up?
By mid-July, Mayor Cortland Wynne began publicly leaning on the police chief and chairman of the police commission and said, City councilmen were even more vocal. Councilman Steve Johnson was quoted as saying in the journal,
No doubt the police impotence was due, at least in part, to the fact that the Atlanta Police Department was all white. Imagine, dear listener, what would happen in today's America if several black women were murdered by a merciless killer and the police department investigating consisted of not a single black officer.
I would imagine such a case, if it remained unsolved for long, would result in the recent events at Ferguson looking like a kindergarten play. Ruffled by the public scorn, the Atlanta police now began to arrest people left and right. Within 24 hours of the discovery of Holly's body, police arrested Henry Huff, a 27-year-old laborer. Huff had been seen with Holly the night she was killed, police said.
and was arrested in bloody clothes with scratches on his arms but hough was only held on suspicion and in the same constitution story that described his arrest the unnamed reporter seemed fed up the police department has nothing to say in explanation of its inability thus far to cope with the situation further than the simple declaration that it is doing its best
Not long after Huff's arrest, police also picked up 35-year-old Todd Henderson at a saloon on Decatur Street. A man had seen Henderson with Holly the night she was killed in a drugstore not far from the murder scene. Emma Lou Sharp was brought to the station to identify Henderson. "'How you getting along?' Henderson said when he was brought before Emma Lou."
who supposedly shrank back at the sound of his voice, the Constitution reported. But another paper, the Georgian, reported that her identification wasn't solid. That's the man, she said initially. Then she qualified a statement. If that's not the right man, I'm badly mistaken. The Atlanta press now reported that the white community was aroused over the killings as well.
Killings that have served to identify the servant problem. Faced with police's impotence, leaders of Atlanta's black community called upon authorities to hire black detectives. Leaders of black churches urged city council and the governor to set a reward for the capture of the killer.
Their petition was endorsed by many prominent white Atlantans, including Asa Candler, founder of Coca-Cola and the future mayor of Atlanta. The Georgian, like many other papers quoting African Americans, took great pains in spelling out their words in ways that reinforced racist stereotypes, a la the character of Nigger Jim in Huckleberry Finn.
For instance, Henderson was quoting as telling the police, Gee, if I was Jack the Ripper, I sure would have begun on my wife, for she's gave me a lot of trouble. The case against Henderson grew stronger when he told detectives that he hadn't owned a razor or pocket knife in a year. But police learned that on the morning after Holly was murdered.
Henderson had dropped off a razor at the local barbershop to be sharpened. Although the cases against both Henderson and Huff remained circumstantial, police decided to hand over both men to the prosecutor in hopes that a grand jury would sift through the evidence and decide which man to indict for the murder of Sadie Holly. Nevertheless, police themselves seemed doubtful they had gotten the right man. On Thursday,
Three days after the Holly murder, eight plainclothes patrolmen were assigned to night duty, and the police chief Henry Jennings explained the challenges his department faced in tracking down the killer. The police department is handicapped, seriously so, by its small size, but even if we had more men, we could not stop crime, Jennings said.
The week ended with Governor Hulk Smith offering a $250 reward for the capture of the Ripper.
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At the First Congregational Church, the Reverend Henry Hugh Proctor said, Proctor called on his congregants to clean up their neighborhoods by shutting down saloons and gambling dens.
Decatur Street is a reproach to our churches in this city. If each member of our churches would go down to that street and save one of its habitués, it would be better than all our praying and singing. Cleaning up the community, he said, would make the work of a Jack the Ripper impossible. Racism of the times was perhaps best displayed here.
In the remarks of Nash Broyles, a city recorder, Broyles served as a local magistrate. I quote, There is no such thing in Atlanta as a Negro jacked ripper, Judge Broyles said at the trial of a black man named Jim Murphy, who was charged with threatening to cut his wife's throat. Murphy was fined $25.75.
"'It is just such cases as these that result in these murders of Negro women,' Broils continued. "'I am satisfied that every one of the several Negro women slain recently in Atlanta "'were murdered by a different man. "'There are at least one thousand Negro men in Atlanta today who stand ready "'to cut the throats of their wives at the slightest provocation.'
Asked to explain why so many murders took place on Saturday nights, Broyles had a pat answer. Saturday night, he said, is the black man's big night. The time when he tanks up. And over the coming weeks, the murders did stop. But police, under intense political pressure, continued making arrests. In virtually each case, the accused was...
nabbed based on accounts of witnesses who had put them at the scene of the crime. On August 9th, the grand jury indicted two men, Henry Huff and a new suspect named John Daniel. Huff was indicted in the Holly murder, but the papers would give scant information on Daniel that said that his was a Jack the Ripper case.
On August 31st, more than six weeks after the latest murder described as a rip crime, the Constitution reported that Mary Ann Duncan, a 20-year-old Negro woman, was found dead in an area called Blandtown, west of Atlanta, between a web of railroad tracks. Like Holly before her,
Duncan was found without her shoes and with her throat cut from ear to ear. Despite indictments of Huff and Daniel, both the media and police were certain they hadn't arrested the true Ripper. That fall, the murders of young women resumed. The body of Minnie Wise, described by the wire services as a comely mulatto girl, was found in an alleyway on November the 10th.
Her throat cut, her shoes removed, and the index finger on her right hand severed at the middle joint. Now, dear listener, take heed on that last detail. By removing a body part, the killer has hair shown to be maturing, to escalate, if you will. Like many other aspects of the Atlanta Ripper case, it follows very typical serial killer developments.
It starts with relatively simple murders, apparently made in a spur of the moment. The killer bludgeons, his victim then slashes the throat and flees the scene. Later, it is apparent the killer picks out his victims more carefully, making sure no one is around, like in a railing road yard in the middle of the night, and starts to mutilate the victims later.
and, as is the case with Ms. Wise, taking a souvenir with him in order to later being able to re-experience the murder. He is a murder maniac, said the chief of police. If we find this murderer, I am satisfied we will find a remarkable criminal, whoever he may be.
By this time, newspapers nationwide were running stories about the Atlanta Ripper. Detectives from other cities offered their services. Mayor Wynn was getting embarrassed. In a letter to one of those outside detective agencies, his office struck a defensive tone. Atlanta is known throughout the country as one of the most law-abiding cities of its size in the United States.
And its police and detective departments are second to none. It is true that in some instances criminals escape arrest for time, but even escapes of this kind occur in all cities. The letter also outlined the strengths of the force. I quote, 200 capable officers and 15 keen-witted and experienced detectives. But...
just a week after wynn's office sent out that letter atlanta awoke to one of the grisliest murders yet a woman with her head cut almost completely off her heart cut out and lying by her side her body disemboweled
The media attributed the crime to the Ripper, and the Constitution on November 23rd ran an interview with an unnamed police detective. His comments, even given the time in which they were spoken, are striking in their racism. I quote, "...we won't get to the bottom of this thing until we get some help from the Negroes."
"'These murders are being committed among the lower class of Negroes. "'Ignorant, brutal beasts that know nothing else. "'Their acquaintances are afraid to talk. "'If there was a little money, slip them. "'We could find out invaluable clues, "'and I wager we would land the murderers. "'But we haven't got the expenses.'
Racist statements like those are undoubtedly the main reason the killer was allowed to roam free. If the detectives had taken the time to study the original Drac the Ripper case, they would find their own Atlanta Ripper to be frighteningly similar.
Jack started out with simply slashing his victim's throat, but escalated quickly to savage mutilation, very similar to that endured by this latest young lady. At black churches, pastors advise their female congregants to not venture out at night. Venturing out at night is inviting the monster's ravages.
Pastor C.M. Tanner told a group of concerned citizens at Big Bethel Church that a basket was passed and $1,200 raised as a reward for the Ripper's capture. In December, Reverend Proctor was still clamoring for black detectives to be retained to help track down the murderer. Meanwhile, Henry Huff...
who'd been accused of one of the Ripper murders was found not guilty by a Fulton County jury. This means, reported the Georgian, that the police department and the county authorities are as far as ever from a solution to the Jack the Ripper murders. Throughout the winter of 1912, more young women were found with their throats cut off.
But the pace never again reached the early summer of the year before. In March 1912, the Constitution reported that a grand jury had concluded that an Atlanta Jack the Ripper was a myth. Each murder was committed by a different man. In each case, it was the result of jealousy following immoral conduct. But the story, which ran just four paragraphs...
didn't explain how the grand jury reached its conclusion. And a month later, the same paper ran a story headlined, Jack the Ripper Turns Up Again. In this case, the body of a 19-year-old octoroon girl was found in a clump of bushes at the end of Pryor Street. She'd been stabbed in the throat.
Now, personally, I doubt this to be the work of the Atlanta Ripper. As I stated earlier, serial killers usually escalate their crimes. They do not usually revert from mutilating their victims to simply stabbing them in the throat. Now, there is a caveat to this. That is, if the Ripper was interrupted, he might have been in the process of murdering the young woman...
heard horses or people approaching and ran away. We will, unfortunately, never know for sure. By the spring of 1912, the daily papers were writing about the Ripper's 20th victim, a 15-year-old pretty octoroon found floating in the Chachahoochee River. Her throat cut, her body mutilated.
Now, you might wonder what an octoroon is. To a modern air, such expressions are alien and antiquated. It is quite simply a person with one-eighth black ancestry. Although the media wasn't convinced, police kept making arrests. In late April 1912, a man named Charlie Owens was sentenced to life in prison for one of the so-called Jack the Ripper murders...
Committed in Atlanta during the past 18 months, the Constitution reported. The story didn't say for which murder he was convicted, however, and in a matter of weeks, the papers were attributing yet another murder to the Ripper. On August 10th, 1912, more than a year after the first Ripper murders had occurred, Henry Brown, also known as Lawton Brown,
was arrested for killing Eva Florence, who had been murdered the previous November. Brown's wife told police that he had come home on successive Saturdays, the same Saturdays that many of the killings had taken place, with his clothes bloody and would sit before the fire to dry them out. Under questioning, Brown revealed intimate details of other crimes. Detectives believed they'd found their man. But had they?
That October, Brown went to trial in the Florence murder, but John Rutherford, identified by the Constitution only as a Negro, testified that police had put Brown through their third degree during questioning. Rutherford said the detectives chained Brown's arms to a chair and then struck him in the ears until he confessed.
For his part, Brown said he often suffered hallucinations and would admit to almost anything under pressure. So, on October the 18th, Brown was acquitted. Try as they might, Atlanta detectives could not convict anyone of the Ripper murders. Vance McLaughlin first heard about Atlanta's Ripper murders when he was researching a book on a serial killer in Buffalo, New York.
McLaughlin is a former Savannah police officer and today is a criminal justice professor at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. Unfortunately, McLaughlin says, finding primary documents about the Ripper case, indictments, death records, police reports, is challenging. Many simply don't exist. And the newspapers of the time were notoriously unreliable.
Each paper would describe a different number to each murder. So while some papers claim the Ripper was responsible for 20 murders... ...another might say he had killed 21. McLaughlin says the hysteria created by the murders may have inspired a copycat killer. Or it's possible that someone with murder on their mind... ...simply used the same technique that was described in the papers...
to divert suspicion to a non-existent serial killer. If you were going to kill a black woman during that time, you'd certainly do the modus operandi and everything else, McLaughlin says. So was it actually one person who picked up on him? Or maybe a couple of people who wanted to get rid of certain folks? Whether or not police ever nabbed the Ripper, if he even existed, the Atlanta papers did not forget about him.
and invoked his name several times in the coming years. In March of 1913, the Constitution detailed the murder of Laura Smith, who was found with her throat cut. Like the other victims, Smith was young, of mixed race, and worked as a servant. Smith's murder was the third that year.
Then, in March of 1914, three full years after the Ripper murders had begun, firefighters found notes pinned to fireboxes around the city. The notes' author promised to "...cut the throats of all Negro women who were found on the streets after a certain hour of the night." The newspaper attributed the notes to Jack the Ripper.
In the coming years, in fact, when a black woman was found stabbed to death in Atlanta, the papers would point to the Ripper. Oddly, one of the final mentions of the Ripper arose during the infamous case of Leo Frank, the Jewish businessman who was charged in the death of 13-year-old Mary Fagan, and who was ultimately lynched. Besides Frank, there was one other prime suspect.
A black man named Jim Conley. In April of 1914, an out-of-town detective, W.J. Burns, said that Conley not only killed Fagin, but that he was responsible for the Ripper deaths. Nothing came of Burns' claims. Over time, as memories of the murders faded, most of Atlanta grew to forget the Ripper. That is, until now. I will soon release an episode about the original Jack the Ripper.
There we will look into the possibility of a link with the Atlanta Ripper. So, as they say, stay tuned. 1-800-Flowers.com is more than your birthday, anniversary, or just-because gift-giving destination. We put our hearts into everything we do to help you celebrate all life's special occasions with friends and family. From our farmers and bakers, florists and makers, and our fans.
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As dawn broke over the seven seas, the pirates of the Crimson Galleon set sail for adventure.
But there was one problem. Paperwork. Mountains of it. Filing, invoices, you name it. This work ain't fit for a pilot. Luckily, their captain had an idea. She used the smart buying tools on Amazon Business so they could work more efficiently and get back to doing what they do best. I know, right? Amazon Business, your partner for smart business buying. I have been your host, Thomas Warburg-Thun.
For tonight's episode, I would like to thank the creative loafing magazine of Atlanta for great source material. I would advise my listeners to check out their stellar publication. And as always, if you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe to it and feel free to visit its website www.serialkillerpod.wordpress.com. Thank you, dear listener, for listening.
Join me next time for another tale of serial murder. Good night and good luck.
