Transcript of Episode 575: Veronica Gedeon & the Easter Sunday Murders (Part 1)

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Hey, weirdos. I'm...

Fuck. Okay. Leave it in.

Hey, weirdos. I'm Elaina.

And I'm Ash.

This is Morbid.

It's Friday, so we're like hella unhinged in the office.

We're very unhinged.

We're going cry, cry to dead day.

I also just pulled out of my box.

What is that?

A picture of a cricket that my youngest drew for me. And it's the most unhinged and adorable-looking cricket I've ever seen.

I can't even see it from here because the green is very light. I just see a long- Just a very-brench, perhaps? Just a very French, perhaps.

Very happy little cricket.

She greeted me this morning. She goes, Titi, which cat do you like? And just showed me a picture of two cats. And I picked the one I liked. And she goes, okay. And then she just whips a pair of scissors out, cuts it out, and hands it to me.

She I was her thing this morning.

I made this for you. I made this for you. I was like, all right. Good morning. Thank you.

Now that I just pulled it out of my pocket because I felt it rustling. And she had asked me and John this morning, first thing, like, Welcome to Parenthood, everybody. First thing, you here, would you like a cricket, a worm, a centipede, a spider, or a lady bug for a pet? And me and John both go, Lady bug. At the same time, she goes, Only one of you can have it. And John said, Lady bug. And I was like, Damn it. And I was like, All right, I guess I'll take a worm. And she was like, Worm is mine. And I was like, Why did you offer it then? Okay. And I was like, I don't want any of those other ones. And she was like, You get a cricket. What about a cricket? Crickets aren't bad. Crickets are ugly. When you really look at a cricket, they're also loud. Yeah. Like, have you ever had a cricket locked in your house? It's a form of torture.

I'm sorry. Do you remember the day that we were cleaning Ma's room and a fucking cricket just dive bombed at me and tried to live inside of me?

Crickets are no joke. That one was beautiful. I love the sound of crickets outside. I don't want it in my house.

But Google a snow. Wasn't it a snow cricket?

Yeah, maybe that's- Those are beautiful. How I get out of it. Maybe I'd just be very specific about the type of cricket.

Yeah, it's called Manifestation. Look it up.

There is a cricket I didn't even mean to do this. What a segue. I'm a segue queen right now. There's a cricket infestation happening. What? Somewhere in the United States right now. It's like a migration or something. But they're like, Norman crickets, they're called. And I think they're red-ish color. They're like, very TikTok-it, guys. People are taking video of it. Are they pretty? Are they pretty? No, it's horrifying. It's like the end times. People can't come out of their house. People are literally like a blanket of crickets is covering the side their house.

Oh, my God.

It's the end times.

Don't say that to me.

I already had therapy this week. No, I mean, it looks like the end times, but it's not. It's a normal process of nature.

Speaking of the end times, though, since we're on the fucking subject. And this is good. Let me just from the jump here. This is going to sound absolutely unhinged, but it's a genuine concern of mine, and it's a genuine thing that I have been experiencing lately, and I need to know if other people are experiencing it. I've experienced it with you multiple times in the past couple of weeks. Birds are fucking widely lately.

Yeah, birds are being weird.

Birds are just going right in front of your car, like flying in front of your car, trying to get you to hit them. It happened to me this morning again on the way to your house, and I was like, Why are you trying to make me kill you? I don't want to do that.

Yeah, you're right. I've seen it happen a couple of times. Like, bad lately. Bad. I will say my crows are doing okay.

Yeah, no- They're acting totally fine.

They're not acting a fool.

I have a lot of crows in my neighborhood all of a sudden.

Because they're like, hey, we're family.

Do you think they're following me from your house? Like, there's multiple families of them? Maybe. Damn.

My crows are real, guys.

No, they are, genuinely.

They're really my crows now.

Yeah, they are. They're my family. Did you leave them anything?

I started feeding them. That's good. Yeah. So I have little...

I want you to leave them a treasure, though, because they'll bring you back a treasure.

Yeah, I want to do that. That's fine. I want us to have that relationship. There was one that would bring...

Oh, no, I'm sorry. That was a squirrel. You're like, wait. You're like, we don't want those. I don't want a squirrel. No, squirrels are far too common.

I want a murder of crows.

I just have a lot of cats, personally.

I thought you were going to say, I just have a lot of feelings.

Those two. I do have a lot of feelings. I have a lot A lot going on. All right.

But that's where we are on this Friday. Yeah. That was a fun journey.

Kids, crickets, and birds. Yeah. And crows. There you go. And murders, which we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about the treatment ones here.

There you go. Seguing right in.

I have a very interesting case today. It's Veronica Gideon and the Easter Sunday murders.

I do not know this.

No, you don't? I do not. I looked up 1920s, 1930s crimes to get in a place of like... I really was looking for something like ash, like socialitey, thing. And I ended up with a model. Veronica is a model. But it begins with her parents. Okay? Mm-hmm. So in many ways, the lives of Joseph and Mary Gideon, her parents, were like a lot of other immigrants who had come to the United States just before the outbreak of World War I. Joseph Gideon left Hungary in the early 1900s, and he moved to New York a short time later. Not long after arriving in the US, in New York, he met Mary Karatosky. I hope I said that right. She also immigrated from Hungary, like right around the same time. So they bonded over that shared experience and culture. And after dating for a little while, they got married in 1908, and they moved to Astoria, in Queens. A few years after marrying, Mary gave birth to the first of the couple's two children, a girl that they named Ethel. And then a few years later, in 1917, Mary gave birth to a second girl who they named Veronica, but she went by Roni, which I love.

Oh, that's really cute.

Also, this entire time, all I can think of is the Veronicas. I feel so untouched. You know that song?

I do. I remember that. Also, it makes me think of a Gilmore Girls episode when she goes to... When Rory goes to college and they spell her name wrong on her ID and they call her spelled Roni. And she was like, Roni is not even slightly short for any girl's name on the entire planet. And Loreley says, Veronica. But that's not helping because she's freaking out. And it made me think of that. I love that.

I also love that you can find any Sabrina, the Teenage Wedge, Gilmore Girls, or there's another show, too.

Boy Meets World. I can usually hit. I can usually hit all those with references. The amount of like, like movie or TV quotes that stick my mind.

Yeah. Versus other things. It's alarming. Isn't that the worst when things like that stay? Yeah.

I can excite that entire scene.

We played Out of your mind this morning. I know all the words.

Yeah. See, that's wild.

And I don't even know when that song came out, like early But ask me what I had for dinner last night, and I couldn't fucking tell you. Couldn't tell you. Anyway, Roni is a nickname for Veronica, and that's what Veronica used. Very cute. The girls were both really beautiful in appearance, but they ended up being very different in their personalities. Ethel was always somewhat stern. But Roni was more carefree, more fun. She had a very wild soul. Since Joe Gideon had arrived in the US when he was still fairly young, he didn't have a ton of marketable skills. And so in the early years of their marriage, he relied on just various odd jobs to support himself and his new family. He worked as a janitor, a bartender, an industrial painter. And although the work was somewhat menial, they were able to live modestly. And after just a few years, they were able to combine their savings with a small dowry that Mary brought to the marriage.

Dowry.

That's wild. I know. Early 1900s, bro. And with their combined savings, they were able to purchase a little bit of a rundown brownstone, but nonetheless, a fucking brownstone.

A brownstone in Manhattan.

Yeah, on East 53rd Street. So they moved into the first floor of the building, and then they rented out the upstairs rooms to the borders. And for a little bit of time, I love this, Joe operated a speakeasy in the basement because fucking 1920s.

Anytime you bring a speakeasy, isn't easy into my world.

I'm just there for it. There for it. I love a speakeasy. I love a speakeasy now.

And liquor is legal. I love a speakeasy. It's great. Sorry. We're very tangent to you today. No, go for it. I love it. But it's Friday. Friday. I saw that there's a vampire cafe in New Orleans. What? Yeah. And you can drink. You get a drink in a blood bag. Okay. I told John this last night, and he was like, I don't want to do that. And I was like, I do. Do you know somebody who does, though? And he was like, I do. Do I don't know anybody.

I was like, let's be real. She's sitting right in front of you asking you to love her.

Do you know someone who wants to drink out of a blood bag? Yeah, you do. You married her. But also there's a speakeasy associated with it that you get a card, and then you have to go to a separate place and show them the card, and they let you into the speakeasy.

That's so cool.

And that is so fucking cool to me.

There's one in Hudson, and it looks like an ice cream shop in the front. It is an ice cream shop in the front. And you have to go to this special door. Me and Drew went to it one time. I forget the word that you have to say, but you have to... Or it's a question you have to ask, and they lead you into it, but you have to figure it out, and it's fun.

I love it. I love a speakeasy moment. We need more. I know. Make them everywhere.

Let's open a speakeasy. Let's open a speakeasy. No, that restaurant business is crazy. Yeah, no, fuck that. I mean, good for you if you own a restaurant. Well, that's what I mean. That shit's real hard. That's cry. Anyway, for a short time, he did operate a speakeasy in the basement, but unfortunately, it was short-lived because that was when you weren't allowed to, and that was the whole vibe. Lame. Lame. Local police shut it down.

Prohibition.

So without the income from the speakeasy, Joe was forced to fall back on the only skill he really had that he could maintain and was actually very good at, which was upholstery. So he opened a shop a few blocks from the apartment.

That is quite a skill.

It is. Yeah, it really is. Especially back then, that was a great skill to have. You could do a lot with that. So in time, Joe built up his upholstery business, and the income provided financial security for the family. But behind closed doors, their specific domestic life was one of conflict and dysfunction, unfortunately. Oh, no.

I was really hoping that wasn't the case.

I know because in the It sounds so great. It's like, Oh, you're really putting your pennies together and making this work, and you got two beautiful daughters, and then, damn it, conflict.

Bummer.

Yeah. Because the thing was, like many men of his generation, Joe was a strict disciplinarian, and he had a very rigid personality. He saw little value in things like fun and social activities. Oh. He said, What the fuck is that for?

He said, None of that.

He said, No, get a job. Live your life. Don't have fun. What's fun? Jump rope? Eek. As far as he saw it, the culture of his adopted country was far too permissive, and he rallied against the, quote, unquote, Rotten American system where children laugh at their parents and start running wild before they cut their teeth.

I mean, yeah, kids run wild.

That's just what they do. It's giving Mrs. Kim from Gilmore Girls. It really is.

It is. What the fuck are you guys doing? What the fuck are you doing?

Get these kids together. Yeah. Joe's rigidity and personality usually caused tension in the relationship that he had with his very American daughters because they were born there. Born in America. Were being raised there and had friends there and everything. Specifically, Roni. She was a lot more stubborn. She was wild. She was, quote, unquote, boy crazy. Far much more than her sister, Ethel.

I mean, their names are fitting for their personalities, I feel. Aren't they? Isn't that funny? You just did that to them.

I know. That's on you, dog. Yeah. Well, and also she's the little sister. The little sister is always crazy.

Yeah, of course. The youngest is always going to be the crazy one.

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Nancy's love story could have been ripped right out of the pages of one of her own novels.

She was a romance mystery writer who happens to be married to a chef.

But this story didn't end with a happily ever after.

When I stepped in to the kitchen, I could see that Chef Brophy was on the ground, and I heard somebody say, Call 911.

As writers, we'd written our share of murder mysteries. So when suspicion turned to Dan's wife, Nancy, we weren't that surprised.

The first person they looked at would be the spouse. We understand that's usually the way they do it.

But we began to wonder, had Nancy gotten so wrapped up in her own novels?

There are murders in all of the books.

That she was playing them out in real life? Follow Happily Never After Dan and Nancy on the WNDYRI app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Happily Never After, Dan and Nancy early and ad-free right now by joining WNDYRI Plus.

But Roni, she saw her father as spineless and irresponsible. Oh, damn. That's a quote. And at times it seemed that she may have gone out of her way to defy him by staying out past her curfew, coming home drunk, Which her father responded to with, quote, unquote corporal punishment. So he was physical.

Okay, so violence. So he was physical.

Which was something that was going on at the time. Yeah. You know, not okay in any way, but it wasn't- No, it was very much accepted in the time, though. It was not outside of the norm. Much more. It was not outside of the norm. So, desperate to escape her abusive and oppressive, really, father, Roni dropped out of high school after just three semesters and enrolled in beautician or what we would call cosmetology school today. Yeah. Her goal was to get training as a hairdresser, but where she went, the Molar Beautician program, they provided training on a wide range of subjects, from hairstyling to treatment for scalp and skin diseases. It seemed like a really good school. But the program proved itself to be far more rigorous and complicated than what Roni was really looking for. After just six months of training, she quit and just vibed in unemployment for a while.

She was still young at this point. Fun employment, you know? Fun employment. There you go.

Now, a few years later, in the spring of 1933, Roni tried again to get away from her parents, this time by marrying Bobby flowers. He was a friend of the family whose parents owned a bowling alley in the neighborhood. Not surprisingly, the teenage marriage was something of a disaster. You don't say.

It's crazy.

After just a few months, the couple had the marriage annulled, and Roni ended up moving back in with her parents. I think it was early 1934. Now, even though the marriage itself didn't last very long, it did seem like it was the final act of defiance that Joe Gideon was willing to tolerate. But rather than kick his daughter out of the house, he actually was the one who opted to leave the family. What? He left the house. He told his friends that he was tired of the disobedience and the fact that his wife always took Roni's side instead of his. So he packed a bag and went to live in a small corner of his upholstery shop.

Interesting. Just did. He was like, You know what? Interesting response.

You know what, ladies? I'm good.

Ladies, I've had enough of you. Women. Wow. Wow, Joe.

Yeah.

Here, I was rooting for you with your speakeasy. I know, right? You know?

I mean, at least he didn't kick his teenage daughter out, I guess.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's a plus.

And he's still like, he maintained a relationship with his family. He just stayed mostly at the upholstery shop.

Okay.

So it was an interesting dynamic.

In the '30s.

In the '30s. Shit was complicated. Yeah. This is also mid-Great Depression, too.

As soon as you said, Shit was complicated, my brain just went 30s. It was like, where are we? Depression. Yeah. So, everybody's feeling things.

Walking on eggshells vibes.

That we don't know what it feels like. Yeah. Very oppressive time.

It is. So it turned out that Joe's departure was just the first major change for the Gideon family. Not long after her father moved out, Ethel, who was actually coming off of her own brief teenage marriage, Oh my. Decided to start planning for her future, her future, excuse me, and enrolled herself in secretarial courses at Hunter College. Those courses actually eventually led her to Vanity Fair, where she quickly rose through the ranks and became the personal secretary of the magazine's editor at the time, Helen Norton. Good for you, Ethel. Right? Just like, bang, bang, boom.

I love that Ethel just was like, you know what? I would like to start planning for the future. And then she was like, boom. Let me do that. And just went on a trajectory to Vanity Fair.

Yeah, insane. And around that same time, she had been introduced to a man named Joe, I think it's Kutner. He was a friend of the family and an aspiring lawyer. So like, boy with a good head on his shoulders. Hey, look at that. Now, Ethel had recently been flirty with her mother's, her mother Mary's last border. He was in- Good for Ethel. She was just young and getting it. This guy was an unemployed sculptor, so she didn't really see him as a viable husband.

Yeah, but just flirt with him.

Yeah, flirt with the hot artist. I don't know if he was hot.

But for Ethel's sake, I hope he was.

Yeah, you know. But she was like, Uh, aspiring sculptor, aspiring lawyer. What am I going to pick here in the mid-30s? In the mid '30s.

In the mid '30s during the Great Depression. Lawyer.

So in June of 1936, after dating for a while, she and Joe Kudner were married in a small ceremony in Manhattan. And she said, Peace out, sculptor. Bye. Now, with Joe and Ethel both out of the house, the multifamily Stone on East 53rd Street was way too big, way too hard to manage for just Mary and Roni, who had moved back home at this point. So they moved to a much more affordable, fourth floor walkup on East 50th Street. Their previous home, like the bigger one, on on 53rd Street, it wasn't a lot to speak of, but honestly, it was a mansion compared to the, quote, unquote, cramped and dimly lit apartment on 53rd Street.

Oh, that's tough. Yeah.

The new apartment consisted of three very small bedrooms, a kitchen and a combination dining and living area. So it was tight quarters in there. Yeah. But despite that extremely limited amount of space, Mary still insisted on having a border to help with the rent. She was like, I'm not paying this whole fucking rent by myself. Damn.

All right.

So the cramped accommodations of the new apartment probably would have been unbearable. But Roni's new work and social schedule kept her occupied on most nights. Through her sister, Roni had actually made the acquaintance of a magazine publisher at Condonast. Oh, shit. Who was taken with her beauty and suggested that she model for his daughter, an aspiring artist.

Oh, wow. Look at these girls.

I know. Like, just using their connections. Yeah. And at that point, Roni didn't have a job. So she was like, Hell, yeah. Yeah. And literally within a few months, she became a working model. She was posing for artists, photographers, and her most lucrative work, serving as the model for lured covers of detective fiction magazines. Oh, yeah. So like a like a pulp model.

Very of the time. Yeah. And Very interesting where those magazines take some people. We've had many criminals who were very interested in those crimes.

What we just recently spoke of.

Ed Geen, for one.

Yeah. So interesting.

And Harvey Glattman? Yeah. Yeah.

We had a few.

Yeah. That's how he would lure people. There's a few that were very into those magazines. I mean, they're troubling.

It makes sense. I don't know a lot about those magazines. Were they like... They were pretty normal magazines where girls were just posing as detectives?

It was just like, detective fiction thing. So it was very over the top, very like noir.

Like the old black and white.

Yeah. But it was just the visuals, I think, were combining two weird things.

Combining two weird things. Like two things and making it weird.

I think it was like, I mean, it was obviously like people with a healthy mind could read those and move on with their life. People with an unhealthy mind took it to a place. So it's not the magazine's I would say, it's like the person reading them.

Yeah, that makes sense. So, yeah, that's what she was doing. She was just modeling for a bunch of different stuff, including those.

I'm sure that was the heavy paying thing, I'm sure.

Yeah, it sounds like it was. So now, even though Ethel had moved out and Joe's relationship with his family was still challenging, the Gideons, particularly Joe and Mary, had actually made a point of staying in contact and insisted on spending major holidays together.

Okay, well, that's nice.

Yeah. And I feel like really big for the time. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's That's pretty big. Yeah. We're going to stay together for holidays. Our family unit is important.

But dysfunctional. Dysfunctional. But definitely, yeah. But it's nice that they were trying to stay together in some capacity.

Yeah. And aside from that, Joe's upholstery shop also had no place to bathe. So keeping on good terms with his wife meant that he could use her apartment to bathe every couple of weeks when his usual routine of washing himself and just the sink wouldn't cut it. Yeah.

I mean, a bath is nice.

Stay on good terms for a nice shower. Yeah, I think that's valid. Yeah. In the early afternoon of March 28, 1937, Joe woke up late and started making his way to Mary and Roni's apartment to have Easter dinner. On this day, he was particularly eager to see everybody because he and Mary had recently decided to reconcile. Oh, wow. And they were going to tell Roni and Ethel over dinner like we're getting back together.

Wow, I didn't see that coming.

I know. So he reached the apartment building around 2:00 PM, arriving just a couple of moments before Ethel and her husband showed up. And Joe rang the bell for Mary's apartment, waited to be buzzed in, but nothing happened. He was just about to ring the bell again when one of the tenants was leaving the building and held the door open for them to enter. So unsure whether or not his wife and daughter were home, Joe told Ethel and her husband, just like, hang on, wait in the lobby and I'll run up the four flights and see if they're home. Why climb the four flights of stairs if you don't have to? Yeah. So he climbed up the four flights, knocked on the door when he reached Mary and Roni's apartment. And when no one answered, he tried the door, which wasn't just unlocked, but also slightly a jar.

Oh, that's always a bad sign. Yeah.

Inside, he was greeted by another pretty awful sign. Toochee, Roni's pecking knees dog, I think that's how you say it. Peck-a-nees. Peck-a-nees. Came over to him, like, nervously and then just crawled beneath the living room couch. Oh, no. So clearly was off. Something was off. Now, Mary 100 % knew that the family was coming over and would have at least started preparing dinner by this point. But in the kitchen, Joe found only the ingredients for dinner, which seemed to have been sitting out on the counter all night. Oh, no. So like, something was very off here. And the abandoned feeling of the apartment was starting to make him feel really uneasy. But what he really noticed was how eerily silent everything was. Like, you could hear a pin drop. Yeah. So he moved to the main bedroom where everything was equally undisturbed. The bed was neatly made. Everything was as orderly as he had come to expect from his wife. She was a very neat person. Yeah. But there was, however, what appeared to be a broken up bar of soap on the floor. And that was strange. What? Now, stepping over the soap, Joe walked from the main bedroom to the adjacent room and pushed the door open slightly, which is when he saw the nude body of his daughter lying dead across the bed.

Oh, no. Veronica, Roni. Joe didn't need to touch her to know that Roni was dead. Her skin at that point had taken on a slightly blue tinge, a stark contract to the bruises on her neck, and her eyes were open, just staring lifelessly at the ceiling. So absolutely horrified, he quickly backed out of the room and entered the third bedroom where he found the body of Mary's border, Frank Burns, dead in his bed. He had a blanket covering everything but his head, which was just caked in blood and gore. What the fuck? So Joe ran down the stairs from the apartment where his daughter and son-in-law were still waiting in the lobby, and he screamed to them, They're all dead, murdered.

What? Where's Mary?

You'll find out. Oh, no. So they went back up to the apartment altogether, and Ethel just sat in the kitchen sobbing while her father and husband continued looking around the apartment because nobody knows where Mary is. After just a few minutes, it dawned on Ethel that, Wait, nobody knows where Mary is. What's going on here? So they're trying to figure it out, and Joe suggested maybe she went to the nearest precinct for help. Maybe she came upon the scene, too, and ran to get help. Damn. So it was then decided that Joe would go check for Mary, his wife, at the station, while Ethel and her husband called the police and waited at the apartment for them to arrive, which I can't imagine having to sit in that apartment because remember, it's a tiny, cramped apartment where your sister's dead in one room. A border is dead in his bed. Your mom's missing, and you're just waiting for the police to show up.

That poor dog was scared.

He was so scared, yeah. So Detective Martin Owens and William Gilmartin were the first to arrive at the apartment just a short time later. Among the first thing they noticed was that other than the two dead bodies, the apartment appeared to be completely undisturbed. There was no sign of forced entry, really no sign of a struggle. It was like the killer had been let into the apartment, and the victims really didn't offer any resistance when he attacked. Detective Gilmartin entered the room where Roni's body lay, and as he looked around, he noticed that something was sticking out from underneath the bed. Crouching down to look beneath, he found the body of Mary Gideon. Oh, no. She was fully clothed, but it did look like her underwear had been torn, and she, too, had been strangled. Holy shit. Less than an hour later, the apartment was packed with detectives, patrol officers, the district attorney, and of course, because it's the 1930s, a slew of photographers. Some of them were the police, but most of them just from the press. Of course. Aside from the bar of soap crumpled on the floor, nothing seemed to be out of place or disturbed.

But Ethel did notice that a small green alarm clock that Roni kept on her dresser was missing from the room. Otherwise, nothing had been taken and anything valuable was just literally sitting right out in the open. All things considered, the investigators were quick to conclude that whatever this was, it wasn't motivated by robbery.

That was very clear. That's interesting.

So a preliminary examination of the bodies revealed that Frank Burns his death had been quick and likely happened while he was sleeping. He'd been laying on his side when the killer crept into the bedroom and delivered 11 quick stabs in the head and neck with a long pointed instrument that they believe to be an ice pick or something very read like it. There was no way to determine the order in which the wounds were inflicted, but the fatal wound was delivered to the base of the skull, just below the foramen magnum. Foramen magnum, that's hard to say. And that's where the spinal cord enters the skull. So that would have killed him instantly. Yeah. Later, it was learned that he was deaf in one ear, and he was laying on the side of his good ear. So he didn't even hear? That's why he didn't wake up when the others were being murdered. Oh, man. Yeah. Both Mary and Roni died by manual strangulation. And it says, The killer's hands applying such force that Ms. Gideon's thyroid cartilage was torn while Roni's throat showed signs of hemorrhage in the larynx and muscles of the neck.

Holy shit. That takes a lot of strength and a lot of determination to do that. Yeah.

And to think at least one of them was being strangled while another was nearby. Yeah. You know? And to think that they weren't able to stop that person Yeah, that's a lot. You would assume that's a big, scary fucking person. Yeah. But Mary's knuckles were really badly bruised, indicating that she put up a big fight against this attacker.

Oh, man.

And finally, although they wouldn't be able to know for sure until an autopsy had been completed, given that Roni was discovered nude and Mary's underwear had been torn, detectives assumed at least one, if not both, women had been sexually assaulted. That's awful. Unfortunately, with the exception of the missing clock and a few strands of gray hair found in Roni's the scene was very light on evidence and leads. But there was one thing that investigators found curious. As soon as detectives arrived at the apartment, Toochee, the dog, had been barking nonstop in a loud, shrill tone, to the point where the ASP TCA actually had to come remove him from the apartment. And according to the neighbors, this was a common occurrence anytime somebody new or unfamiliar came to the apartment, but none of them recalled hearing that dog barking at any time the previous evening. Oh, that's interesting. So it supported the theory that whoever the killer was, they had been to the apartment before, at least enough that they would have been recognized by the dog, and assumingly, let into the apartment because no sign of a struggle.

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But like the lack of evidence in the apartment, a canvas of the neighbor's proved pretty equally unhelpful. One man who lived two floors below Mary, recalled hearing a scream around 11:00 PM, followed by a brief scuffle.

It's always wild to me when people are like, Yeah, I heard this woman scream.

Yeah, it was crazy.

I didn't do anything. And it's like, Okay, what?

And this guy was not quite sure what he'd heard. So he stuck his head out the window to listen for further sounds. He heard something enough that he was like, Wait, what the fuck was that? But then he didn't hear anything following that, so he just went back to bed. Just like, I feel like I couldn't go back to bed after hearing that.

I don't think I could either.

I don't know. Maybe that's just me.

Yeah.

Maybe that's just Another neighbor, Charles Robinson, reported that he'd come home late a little after 2:00 AM and noticed that the Gideon's door was ajar. And this is so fucking creepy. He said, As he passed by, the door slowly began to close as if someone were behind it.

Oh, shut the fuck up.

And he said, I don't know. There was something about the way that door started to close that gave me the creeps, and I beat it to the sixth floor as fast as I could.

And that's a grown ass man.

Honestly, I don't blame him on that one. I would do the same thing.

Because there's no violence that you can hear, you're just like, something about that. I just don't like that.

That's strange and so creepy. So while the apartment yielded frustratingly few clues, detectives did find Roni's diary, which they hoped might include some information on who she was with the night of the murder. In addition to containing a long list of phone numbers, the diary entries actually dated back to 1932, and they were surprisingly detailed. But most importantly, were the most recent entries referring to somebody that Roni only referred to as B. Just the letter B.

Who's B?

Yeah. As one of the detectives slipped through the pages of the diary, the phone in the kitchen actually rang. So Detective Charlie McAllen was standing closest to it and picked up the receiver, and the man on the other end asked to speak to Roni. Mcallen explained that she wasn't available, and after identifying himself as an NYPD Detective, he asked for the man's name and address. The man said his name was Steven Butter, B, and he had been out with Roni the night before.

Oh.

So thinking that they may have found the B referenced in the diary, detectives rushed over to Butter's apartment, just a short distance away, and immediately brought him down to the precinct for questioning. Who are you, Butter? Who are you? But because the detective on the phone and the officers who escorted him to the precinct had given him literally no indication about what this was all about, he had no idea why they wanted to see him or talk to him. But when they got to the precinct, he could tell from the reporters crowded around out front that something awful had happened.

Oh, no.

Once inside, it was Ethel who finally told Steven what happened to Roni and the others.

What a way to find out.

I know, from her sister. From that moment that he sat down in the interrogation room, Detective Lyons and Commissioner Valentine could tell that Steven Butter was not their subject.

No. No. No one who's last name Butter. It seems like they could do something that horrible. I know. Butter... You know?

Yeah.

It's like flowers.

Yeah.

You know? It is. Those are just nice last names.

There is a flowers. Yeah.

I remember mentioning the flowers.

Did I already say that?

You did. I remember hearing the flowers name. Yeah, Butter and flowers. Yeah.

Now, he was obviously and very genuinely distraught by the news of the murders. He was scared of the veteran detectives, peppering them with questions, and he seemed eager to help in any way that he could. According to Butter, his best friend Lincoln Hauser had gone out of town for the weekend and asked Steven to, Keep an eye on his girlfriend, Roni, while he was away. Because he had no other plans and because it wouldn't hurt to be seen with beautiful model. Steven was like, Sure.

Meanwhile, Steven's like, Jesus. Yeah, right? What did I do?

He's like, What a weekend for you to go away, sir. Originally, Roni and Steven's plan was to get together with another one of Roni's friends for dinner. But when Roni arrived to Steven's apartment a little after 8:00, she was alone and just said that her friend had to cancel. Abandoning their previous plan, Roni and Steven met up with one of his friends, and they all had dinner at a local restaurant. They had some drinks. Steven's friend left at about 2:00 AM, and at that point, he and Roni went to the Monte Carlo bar and grill for another drink, and he walked her home at about 3:00 AM. Wow. He told investigators he walked her right up to her apartment door on the fourth floor, and they made plans to attend Sunday Mass together at 10:00 AM. And then he just walked back to his apartment. Man. He returned right at 10:00 AM the next day and rang the buzzer for Roni's apartment. But when nobody answered, he returned to his apartment and tried calling a few times throughout the afternoon.

That's why he was calling.

That's why he was calling. Convinced that he was telling the truth, the detectives let him go. A little after 9:00 PM. As soon as he stepped on onto the sidewalk, reporters essentially pounced on him. Oh, yeah, I'm sure. Trying to get any information. Thinking he's the guy. Right. The next day, as investigators started digging more and more into Ronny's background, the story of the murders hit the paper in an insanely sensational way. In 1937, Americans were still feeling the crushing effects of the Great Depression and welcomed any story that could distract from the reality. And the press, of course, was more than happy to deliver.

Which it's like, the fact that this was an escape from the reality of the Great Depression is like, here, listen to this. Pult models, horrific murder in her apartment. Oh, her mom was also killed and another man.

Yeah, that's an escape from the bleakness of the Great Depression. That's holy shit. Well, and just the way they went about this was so fucked up.

That's the thing. The press is so sensational about it. They're just like, Hey, everybody, it's a pult model. You know that was the number one thing here.

It's just so gross. Now, although three people had been murdered and investigators couldn't say which, if any, was the primary target, the press instantly zeroed in on Roni's beauty and her career as a model. I knew it. Of course. The New York Daily News dedicated the entire front page to a provocative photo of Roni with an inset photo of her lifeless dead body being removed from the apartment. Wow. Alongside a headline that read, Three murders in models flat. She opened the door for death. First of all. The motherfucker, you don't even know if she opened the door.

It's also not her flat.

Yeah, you don't know anything.

It's like it's not even... It wasn't just her flat, first of all. Like, she was living with other people.

And to just be like, she opened the door for death.

And it's like, what?

Do you open the door when somebody knocks on it? Back then, yeah. Today, Neville.

Oh my God. It's like in my story that I just had last time where the press just says whatever they want. Yeah. Just make shit up. Talking about Marion Parker's kidnapping in death, how they just made up that she was horrifically tortured and all this shit. It's like, You didn't even verify that information, and it was wrong.

And it's already bad enough. Why are you dramaticizing it? Stop making it worse. Or dramatizing it, whatever the fucking word is.

Stop making it cray.

You're making it cry, cry. In a lured, mellow dramatic tone, the article Detailed what they referred to as the murder of the artist's model and the other two murders.

That is so fucked up. Awesome. That's fucked up.

And they all but declared that Roni was the target and Mary and Frank were just collateral damage. Just like, How do you know that? You don't.

She's a model. That has to be the reason. No one else had any life that could have made this happen.

Also, spoiler alert, it's not the reason.

You're wrong, actually.

Wow. The Daily News reported, as she stepped into the apartment, the killer was thought to have dragged Roni into the bathroom, throttled her, and started ripping off her clothes. The dying beauty was born to the room where her mother lay lifeless and thrown on the bed. It's so crazy that you guys have all this information that the detectives don't. Who told you? What the.? That? Just made that shit up. Detectives had no fucking idea what happened. There was actually no actual signs of violence other than the bodies themselves.

I was going to say because part of the whole thing was like, nothing looked like it was tough.

Nothing looked out of place. Except for the victims. Yeah, exactly. Wow. Yeah. Almost every last article was written next to a picture showing Roni in various states of undress because of the modeling that she did. Actually, would have been more at home in the pulp magazines that she modeled for versus the Metropolitan newspaper? Like an actual... Like, what are you guys doing? But the salacious story of a beautiful model murdered under mysterious circumstances was just too good for the press to resist.

It was like right out of one of those detective magazine.

Yes, very much that. Soon, every photographer who had ever shot Roni came out of the woodwork hoping to sell their nude and semi-nude photos to the highest bidder, which was always tabloids with the lowest standards.

People are always going to people.

It's the theme of every single story. At least one of the underlying themes is people are always going to people.

And they've always been people in.

It's just fucked.

People have been people in in the best of times and in the worst of times.

In all the times.

There's always going to people.

Always.

That's... Imagine. Imagine being one of those photographers and being like, Hey, I got a nude picture of that dead girl. What the fuck is wrong? What goes through your brain? Why don't you splash it on the front page of your tabloid and pay me a couple of dollars for it?

And it's like, Yeah, I understand that this is a tough economic time. Absolutely. But do you have fucking morals?

You don't have a soul?

That's not lost on me that people were very, very- Desperate.

Desperate, clearly.

What do I mean?

Selling nude photos or semi-nude photos of a murdered girl to be splashed onto an unethical tabloid. What is wrong with you? What is wrong with you? Cover is not the way to do it. No.

But within days of their deaths, the story had become almost entirely about Roni and had a noticeably misogynistic tone that basically just blamed her for her own death before anyone knew the details of the actual case.

Yeah, I mean, she was the one who opened the door to the killer, right? Yeah.

In, in reality, anyone who met Roni immediately liked her. But for those who didn't know her, she became another low class nude model with a diary full of men's phone numbers.

Yeah, we've heard that story before.

Actually, even Roni's own father didn't hesitate to pretty much slander her in the press.

Joe, what the fuck?

On March 30th, just one day after he'd found his wife and daughter dead, Joe Gideon gave an interview to the Daily News and told them, Roni made foules of lots of men. One of them killed her with my wife and the rumor. And in an article that more or less placed the blame for the murders on his daughter, he continued on saying, It's hard to say now, but Roni was wild and willful. Girls Roni's age don't realize it, but you can't treat men that way.

Oh, Joe. Oh, Joe.

Yikes. Yikes.

Joe, I have a string of things that I would like to let out of my mouth right now that I'm just going to be a quiet asshole. Yeah, you know what? Joe, shut the fuck up.

What the fuck? Shut the fuck up. You can't treat men that way.

What grieving process is this? I'm like, Slandering your child in the press You're dead, murdered child.

Essentially blaming her.

And saying that she did it because she made foules of men and she shouldn't have treated men like that. Not men, if this is a man also.

That's the other thing, assuming this is a man.

Which I know, like, But it's like, we're just assuming this is a man that Roni made a fool out of and that, don't treat men like that. This is what happens. It's like, you get murdered. So we're not going to say men shouldn't murder people. We're going to say, don't make men feel feel bad.

Women be subservient or else you'll get killed.

If you make them feel bad, they'll come and murder you. And it's like, can we maybe say, don't do the murdering part? No?

No. Okay. Got it. Okay.

We're just going to stick with this fantasy world that everyone's living in.

Yeah, it's really awesome. Love it, love it, love it. Love it. It'd be so hard to be alive back then. Yeah. She was a romance mystery writer. They glomed on the fact that she writes stories like this. There are murders in all of the books.

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But while the press continued their campaign of slander, investigators were really struggling to find viable leads that could move the case forward. Given the lack of evidence, the lack of a forced entry, and the fact that the dog was never disturbed, investigators believe the killer could have been one of the many former borders. Within a day of the murders, they had publicly identified 45-year-old chauffeur. I don't know why I said it like that. Chauffeur. George gray, I believe it is, as their prime suspect. At the same time, they also identified 20-year-old Mary Baker, I think, as a person of interest. Gray They had been a tenant at the Gideon's previous boarding house on East 53rd Street before moving out the previous December. Mary Baker, I think it is, claimed to have been living with Mary and Roni as recently as a week before their deaths.

Interesting. Yes.

Which also, imagine knowing that you were living there a week before. That's intense.

It's just interesting that there's a woman involved here. Yeah.

Imagine that, So Joe. Now police detained and questioned gray briefly, but let him go after a few hours later without giving an explanation to the press, which they didn't need to. Chief Inspector John Lyons told reporters, We haven't a thing to hang our hats on. And not long after Mary Baker was also cleared of any suspicions. So the lack of evidence or any lead was frustrating. But investigators, they still had Roni's diary, and they were convinced that the killer's identity had to be somewhere on its pages. Among the More intriguing entries were those related to that man only referred to as B. Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. And from what the detectives could tell, Roni had known B for at least a year, and then in that time, the relationship had gone from friendly to fearful. She never said why, but there were a number of entries where she made it clear that in the weeks leading up to her death, she had very much come to fear this man and worried that his behavior would escalate to violence. Interesting. Now, while the references to B were a promising lead, police still didn't know the man's identity, so they turned back to Roni's personal life.

And before long, they found out about Roni's ex-husband, Bobby flowers. Flowers.

That's where it came. I was like, I knew I heard that name in this thing.

Roni's ex-husband, Bobby. With a B. According to flowers, he and Roni had gotten into a handful of arguments during their relationship, and one or two of them may have gotten physical.

Oh, no. Here I was, saying your last name is flowers. I know.

But he swore that all of that was in the past. It was true their relationship had come to an end, he said, but not because of any animosity. They just got married too young and for the wrong reasons. So they decided that it was best that they parted amicably. His explanation seemed reasonable, and in addition to that, he also had an alibi for the night of the murder. He'd been working as a hot dog vendor in a very public location, so that could have easily been verified by hundreds and hundreds of witnesses. So he's not the B. Okay. Now, by March 30th, more than 200 NYPD officers had been assigned to the case, and dozens of potential witnesses and suspects had been interviewed, but no new leads presented themselves. Having ruled out Garay as a suspect and confirming Bobby flowers' alibi, detectives were back at square one. All they could be reasonably certain of was that these murders, or at least the murder of Roni, were a crime of passion. In addition to that, much to the chagrin of the tabloids, the test results of the vaginal swab showed that neither women had been raped.

Oh, okay.

I mean, Yeah, so it seemed unlikely that this actually was a sex crime. But if not the ex-husband or her companion for that evening, Butters there, the most likely suspects, who would have had such anger towards Roni that they would have wanted to kill her? In the absence of any new suspects, detectives turned back to the person who had reported the crime in the first place, father and husband, Joe Gideon.

I was wondering if they were going to ask some questions.

They did. When detectives Owen and Gilmart and arrived at the apartment right after the family's call to the police, they both seemed to notice that Joe's behavior seemed out of the ordinary for what one would expect in those circumstances. Unlike his daughter and her husband, Ethel, and they were sufficiently shaken up. But Joe, they felt, seemed unaffected. Their suspicions were raised again in the days that followed when he gave those interviews to various tabloids, where he pretty much slandered his daughter and spoke, quite frankly, about his wife and their separation. They were like, What the fuck? That's a little weird. So also, when Roni's body had been processed, technicians found several gray hairs on her body, which they believed might have come from the killer, and Joe Gideon had gray hair. So during their initial interview with him, he claimed that on the previous evening, the night before the murder, he'd gone out to a bar, the night of the murder, excuse me. He'd gone out to a bar around the corner from his appolstery shop, where he stayed all night drinking beer and playing skiball until 2:00 AM. So detectives went to this bar, this cafe, to check on his alibi.

And the bartender did remember seeing him that night and actually even had Joe's skiball high score recorded on the board for the night. Oh, wow. But he said he didn't remember seeing Joe around closing time. He was like, Yeah, he definitely was here, but like, I don't know. I don't think I saw him around closing time. So that meant that Joe had been where he said he was that night, but he very well could have left early and gone to his wife's apartment to commit the murders.

Yeah, like the time frame is- A little shaky.

Shaky. So no longer to verify Joe's alibi, detectives returned to the upholstery shop on April first to ask him some follow-up questions. The officers confronted him about what the bartender had told him, but Joe insisted that the man was mistaken, and he had definitely been at the cafe, the bar, all night. So while one of the two detectives asked the questions, the other looked around the shop, and that's when they came across the upholster's kit lying on the counter. Oh, no. The kit contained everything somebody would need to upholster furniture, including several large needles.

Oh, I'm worried about this.

Curiously, one of the needles, the largest one that most resembled an ice pick, appeared to be missing. Based on the unconfirmed alibi, his obvious anger towards his daughter, and his being in possession of what could have been the murder weapon, as well as a pistol without a permit that was also found, Joe Gideon was taken to the local precinct for further questioning.

I'm really hoping that this is not what I think it is.

Well, at the precinct, Joe stuck to a story about playing skiball and drinking all night on the night of the murders and offered his own theory as to the identity of the killer. According to Joe, a quote, Millionaire from Boston had been infatuated with Roni and had vainly offered her a car, an apartment, and some money. When Roni rebuffed his advances, the man became, quote, frustrated and had hired somebody to kill her. That was Joe's theory. He told detectives about this theory on the day of the murders, and it was investigated and quickly dismissed as unfounded. So he's been He's saying this from the jump. So they weren't very receptive when he repeated it at the precinct because they pretty much rolled it out.

They're thinking you're just trying to get out of it.

Exactly. By the end of the day, on April first, a spokesperson announced to the press that Joe, quote, would be arrained on a formal charge sometime before morning. However, by the following day, he had yet to be arrested or charged with any crime. But finally, on the morning of the second, he was charged with being in possession of an unlicensed gun, a pretty minor charge, but enough to hold him for further questioning.

Yeah, easy.

Yep. So detectives intensely interrogated Joe, keeping him awake for nearly 33 hours, denying him food, threatening and physically assaulting him. But by the end of the interrogation, his story remained exactly the same. Wow. Nothing was breaking him.

I didn't see that. I thought you were going to be like, And then. Mm-mm.

Wow. Now, convinced that the police weren't doing... And this is crazy. Convinced that the police weren't doing enough to find the killer, the editor of True Detective magazine, where Roni actually posed as a cover model, sent one of his writers to Joseph's building to ask whether neighbors had seen him come or go that night. The editor?

Yes. Did the police work? Yes.

Okay. This actually wasn't the first time that the magazine had gotten involved in the story. When the press and tabloids started printing all these slanderous lies about Roni, the magazine published a full-page editorial intent on combating those lies and telling their considerable readership about what a good person Roni had been. Oh, my God.

That just me chill.

Yeah, I know. Same. I knew that. That gave me chill. And it still gave me chill.

Oh, I love that they did that.

Yeah. They were like, No, fuck all of you. Yeah.

Like, we knew her. This is who she was. She was our friend. Oh, my God. That really gives me chill.

Yeah, especially back then. Yeah. They didn't have to do that.

And it's like the fact that he's sending... He's like, Fuck that. They're not doing enough. I'm going to send my own investigation going out here. They're not asking neighbors whether they saw Joe. I mean, come on. This guy's figuring it out. Wow. I love that.

It's amazing.

What a turn.

Now, it's unclear how much the editorial influenced the case, but this second intervention would prove to be a critical move. The writer from True Detective had knocked on only a few doors before he found a neighbor that said he absolutely saw Joe Gideon come home drunk at 3:00 AM. Holy shit. Since investigators knew Roni had been killed a little after 3:00 AM, that meant Joe Gideon couldn't possibly have been the killer.

Wow. The editor of the True Detective magazine cracked that.

Just knocked on a couple doors. And it was like one of the first couple doors he knocked on. So it's like, why didn't... I have to wonder if they were getting frustrated. And they had to. And felt they could place the blame. And felt if they beat the shit out of this older man.

That he'll admit to it like a false confession and we'll just go with it.

And people will buy it because he has been slandering his daughter in the press. Yeah.

Like, he's made it easy.

Right.

Oh, my God. I'm like, wow, this is amazing. But then I'm like, but who the fuck killed him? Who is it?

Well, with the neighbor having confirmed his alibi, Joe was released from custody on April third, having suffered more than two days of brutal and not to mention illegal interrogation tactics. According to their press reports, upon his release, he had, quote, numerous black and blue spots, swelling cuts and abrasions on his face and head. And his lawyer claimed that he had been kicked and pulled and dragged and slapped for hours.

And he's innocent.

And he's innocent. And no matter what he's saying in the press, that is his wife and his child. He feels something deep down I hope, yeah. So having lost their prime suspect, detectives were right back to where they started days earlier when the bodies were discovered. Detective Walter Harding told reporters, There are four or five different angles we're working on now, and when we've cleared these up, we'll have a complete and direct case. But the truth was, they were no closer to catching the killer than they were on day one. With no other leads to pursue, they turned again to that diary, which is when they discovered an entry where Roni made it clear that whatever feelings, whatever her feelings for B might have been, his attention was clearly focused on her sister, Ethel.

Wait.

According to the diary, in the weeks leading up to the murders, Roni had been concerned that B had become obsessed with Eiffel, and she was worried that he might do something irrational to Eiffel.

Okay, I have a couple of things here. One, why didn't they read the whole diary?

That was my immediate question.

They're like, Oh, we did some work and we found this thing we didn't read before.

It was- It was- Just read the whole thing. Read the whole thing. I think it was a lot to get through because it was five years of entries.

Hire a speed reader. But get some interns in here. Start reading this shit.

Or give people parts. Have a book club.

Exactly. All of you read different parts of it. That was my thought. And get through it. Because I'm like, why was this so long coming? And also I'm like, wait a second. I'm Immediately thinking something, but I don't want to slander someone before I know. So I'm going to let you tell it. Good for you. Yeah.

Good for you. I think you might be onto something based on the twivel.

Because I'm like, wait a second.

So, armed with this new piece of information, detectives went to F. L. Gideon and asked her whether she knew the identity of the man referred to as B. Somewhat surprised, she said she didn't just know his identity. She knew him quite well. The entire family did. His name was Robert Bob Irwin, a former border at Mary's boarding house who'd become somewhat infatuated with her, but moved out and left the area when Ethel rejected his romantic advances and married Joe Kudner. And that is where we're going to pause and wrap up part one, and we'll see you for part two.

I know who it is.

I think if you if you listened pretty good in the beginning, you might... Yeah, pretty carefully in the beginning, you might have a clue.

Yeah, I think I know.

But you'll find out in part two.

Oh, no. This is such a sad case. It is. And especially if this is the scenario where this person was obsessed with Ethel and then went to throw. Mistaken identity. It's like, holy shit. Yeah. Damn. It's It's brutal.

It's really rough. There really is, for lack of a better way of saying it, a lot of collateral damage here.

Yeah, absolutely.

Almost the entire thing is collateral damage.

The entire case. Yeah.

Wow. But we will talk about the rest of this in part two. So we hope you keep listening.

And we hope you... Keep it weird.

But that's where you don't go listen in part two. Bye.

If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining WNDYRI+ in the WNDYRI app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wndyri. Com/survey.