Episode 003: Merry Wives and Black Widows

This episode of The Mortician’s Daughter is brought to you by Colleen Malley Schwartz of The Malley Schwartz Group and Clients First Realty. Are you tired of forking over money to a landlord month after month? Don’t you wish you could invest that money in your own future? Well, as the end of the year draws near, maybe you should start thinking about making that resolution to find a more permanent set up in 2019. Colleen Malley Schwartz can help make that happen by finding you the perfect forever home to fit your budget. And the best part? With Colleen, she'll rebate one third of her commission to pay towards your closing costs so the savings start before you even unpack a single box. Already a homeowner and looking to sell, don't know where to turn? Colleen Malley Schwartz will list your home at a reduced commission, saving you more money to put down on your next house. Head to Colleen Sells AZ .com for more information or to setup that initial appointment today. And remember, please support the businesses that support the local arts! -- Hello hello, my little hellfiends. So glad to be back with you on this fine day. I hope you’ve all been embracing life with the warmth of someone who knows they must someday pass into the coldness of death. But we’ll hopefully have many more tales to share before that expiration date hits. This month I’ve been doing some real life exploring of the world around me and found some lurid tales lurking right here in my own dusty stretch of desert that inspired today’s discussion. Yes, my fella and I took a tour of the Mystery Castle on South Mountain here in Phoenix. Now, for those unfamiliar, the Mystery Castle was built by Boyce Gulley for his daughter, Mary Lou Gulley, who took up residence at the castle in 1945 and remained there until her death in 2010. Boyce Gulley, it seems, was diagnosed with Tuberculosis and only given six months to live. Rather than risk his family’s continued to exposure to TB during what was certain to be a rapid and uncomfortable demise, he decided to pack a bag and disappear from their Seattle home in the middle of the night. The next few years put Gulley in a bit of a haze as he wandered the Southwest and Northern Mexico, spending some time in a TB center in what is now Sunnyslope, before he finally settled on an unclaimed plot of land on South Mountain where he began building a castle for his daughter using the odds and ends he could scramble together. Everything from hubcaps to glass bottles can be found cemented into the three story, 18 room, castle. The story goes that Mary Lou used to build sandcastles with her father along the Pacific and when the tide washed them away, the daughter pleaded “Please, Daddy, build me a big and strong castle someday that I can live in. Maybe you ought to build it on the desert where there is no water.” [1] Whether that day by the ocean really happened or it’s just part of Mary Lou Gulley’s narrative, no one can say, but I do know that a giant sandcastle exists on a mountain in Phoenix and that Mary Lou spent 65 years of her life there. But, while I toured this weird piece of my weird desert city, I was particularly struck by the “chocolate organ” in the wedding chapel. Three adjoining rooms greet visitors who amble up the path toward the castle. They are known as Purgatory, Heaven, and Hell. Heaven is the chapel, Purgatory, the central waiting room, and Hell, of course, is the dark bar on the opposite side, carved right out of the mountain. Mary Lou’s mother, it would seem, didn’t quite have all too happy an outlook on marriage. Then again, her husband disappeared in the middle of the night and, once she found out he was alive somewhere in Arizona, wouldn’t answer any of her letters to offer explanation. So, for this marriage chapel, she procured a very special organ from a woman purportedly known as the Chocolate Widow of Tombstone, Arizona. Tombstone was a bustling mining town so no surprise that it wasn’t too uncommon for a young widow of the mines to find herself another husband, maybe another miner. But the chocolate widow apparently lost six husbands before it was discovered that wasn’t the mines but a rich chocolate cake the woman served her husbands, laced with cyanide, that did them in. Now, lots of folks manage to mingle myth and actual marvel, so I did a little digging and could turn up very little about the “Chocolate Widow of Tombstone” but I did find that the woman was named Elsi and who buried six husbands on Boot Hill. Whatever the case, Mrs. Gulley had a dark view of marriage or a macabre sense of humor. Either way, I think we might have gotten on just fine and the chocolate organ sits proudly in the Mystery Castle to this day. That got me thinking about some of the other Black Widows. Arizona has a few sordid tales of its own. And why shouldn’t we? We certainly provide refuge to those lethal arachnids from whence we draw the phrase Black Widow. Every few months, I have to clear out a few of their webs from low spots where my dog, Eleanor, might wander. Maybe warm climate encourages Black Widows of the human persuasion as well. From Valerie Pape, the Scottsdale salon owner who dismembered her husband, to the notorious Jodi Arias who stabbed her lover 27 times before slitting his throat. We have more than our fair share of murderesses. [5] And what is it that makes a female killer a black widow rather than just your run of the mill murderess? Let’s start by taking a moment to gain a bit of perspective. Men represent 89.5% of homicide convictions in the US [3]. Almost 90 percent. And, of course, women are most likely to be the victims of violence. Women account for 63.7 % domestic homicides and 81.7% sex-related homicides [3]. And, according to a report from The Atlantic, nearly half of all murdered women are killed by romantic partners. [4] So, by the numbers if you’re going to be murdered, you are most likely a woman about to be killed by a man you know and maybe even love. When women do commit murder the most common reasons are (surprise) self defense or in response to domestic abuse. Black Widows, however, shock the general public by spinning that story on its head. They attack their prey, and yes, I do mean prey. Much like the spiders they are named for, Black Widows murder their mates, oftentimes without provocation. Let’s dive into the history books to a British serial killer that came on the scene before Jack the Ripper caused all that fuss in London. Mary Ann Cotton was born in 1832 in Jolly Old England and supposedly started her killing spree 30-some years later. Mary Ann, it seems, was mainly in it for the money, but personally, I think she had some other reasons as well. All in all, it’s believed that Mary Ann Cotton may have killed as many as 21 people, including three of her four husbands and 11 of her 13 children. - Mary Ann Cotton might have really raked up the numbers, but this next Killer had a sense of style that made her quite notorious in her day. Evelyn Dick, born on October 13, 1920 in Ontario, is known as both the “Torso Killer” and the “Canadian Black Widow”. Word has it, Evelyn had a bit of reputation for being a gold digger just when the term was moving from its literal interpretation to the more figurative one we’re more familiar with these days. Thanks Kanye. [11] After only five brief months of marriage, Evelyn decided to ditch her betrothed by killing him and sawing off his limbs. Some children found the headless, dismembered torso of John Dick and Evelyn was arrested for murder. [6] She almost got away with it too. She was convicted and sentenced to hang in 1946 but she was acquitted on the appeal due to a technicality. But, in 1947, she was arrested and tried again. This time, because of a partly mummified body found in a suitcase filled with cement. The body belonged to Peter David White; Evelyn’s own infant son. She was handed a guilty verdict and a sentence of life in prison, only to be paroled 11 years later, in 1958. [6+7] Evelyn disappeared, changed her name, probably built a new life in a new place, and never let on about her history of violence. BUT there is a popular children’s song inspired by this part of Canada’s history that goes… You cut off his legs... You cut off his arms... You cut off his head... How could you Mrs Dick? Now, that’s Mrs. Evelyn Dick, but yes, I believe the play on this name is probably on purpose. Children can be rather creative when it comes to these things. I wonder if old Evelyn Dick ever heard children singing that song wherever it is she landed after her release from prison. And, when she heard it, did it make her laugh or cringe? - Let’s jump back to the states for our next Black Widow… this one’s a personal favorite because she would actually tell her victims they were going to die before she acted. Yep, Tillie Klimek, born Otillie Gburek in Poland, claimed to have “premonitions” or “precognitive dreams” that someone around her was going to die and, then, poof! They did. Tillie started her killing streak in 1914 when she predicted the death of her first husband, John Mitkiewicz. Tillie and John had been married nearly 20 years, but she told a friend she had a premonition that she would find him dead on a certain day and what do you know? He died that day. John was just the first of what is believed to be about 20 victims, 14 that ended up dead, all attributed to Tillie’s poisonous ways, including four husbands, several relatives, a couple of neighbors, and even one annoying neighborhood dog. Over her nine year killing spree, Tillie made a lot of predictions. She even went so far as to taunt her third husband, Frank, with her premonitions. "It won't be long now." "You'll be dying soon." Tillie joked with the neighbors that Frank wouldn’t be among the living for too much longer. And she didn’t stop there. Tillie knitted her own mourning hat while sitting next to Frank and asked the landlord for permission to store a bargain casket in the basement. She insisted it was her ability to foretell the deadly fates of those around her that made her so certain about Frank’s approaching end. But, it wasn’t phenomenal psychic powers. It was arsenic. And, unfortunately for Joseph Klimek, it took another husband before anyone worked that bit out. When she was finally picked up for murder, the Chicago Tribune claimed that Tillie told the arresting officer, "The next one I want to cook a dinner for is you." [10] She didn’t get the chance. She was handed a life sentence in prison once investigators started tallying up her victims. It was such an extraordinary tale with an unprecedented headcount as more bodies were exhumed and tested for arsenic that the newspapers might have gotten a bit caught up in all the hype of Tillie’s tally. They even going so far as to suggest she was the "high priestess" of a "Bluebeard clique" in Chicago's Little Poland neighborhood. But, as other neighborhood wives were rounded up for arrest and then released, it was decided that Tillie acted on her own vicious accord. Yes, Tillie seemed to derive some personal pleasure from the whole killer-run-amok thing. A mere annoyance was grounds for a death sentence in her little black book. Mary Elizabeth Wilson, the Merry Widow of Windy Nook, as she is better known, had a modestly British approach to her serial murders. A simple plan, kill husband and keep insurance money which, for her first and second husband, amounted to £42. Husband number three raked in £50 all by himself while husband number four brought £100 and a bungalow. Clearly, the widow of Windy Nook was learning to hone in on a better prey but she wasn’t being too careful about covering her tracks. By the time we get to husband number four, one Mr. Ernest Wilson, Mary Elizabeth decided the funeral was too much of a hassle to bother attending. This got the neighbors talking. It seems Mary Elizabeth was just a bit to, well, merry about the frequent loss of husbands. In fact, she seemed downright cheerful. Two of her husbands were exhumed and it was determined that they were killed by beetle poison. Mary Elizabeth Wilson was tried and convicted of the murders. Later, her two other husbands also exhumed and examined, but there was no sense in trying Mrs. Wilson again. She was already serving a sentence of life in prison. So, gentlemen listening today…. As we draw closer to the winter holidays and the year’s end with all its revelry, while we bask in the warmth of those we love and cherish, remember to maybe extra cherish those women in your lives. Because you never know what might be cooking up in their kitchens… or their minds. ------ "Merry Wives and Black Widows" was written and performed by Carly Schorman and produced by Garrett Bowers and the team at YabYum Music + Arts. Our theme song was performed by Travis James. Thank you for listening and thank you to Colleen Malley Schwartz of The Malley Schwartz Group and Clients First Realty for their support. Whether you're buying or selling a home, Colleen Malley Schwartz can help you along the way. And with Colleen, you never pay full commission. Head to Colleen Sells AZ .com for more information or to setup that initial appointment today. And remember, please support the businesses that support the local arts!