Stranger Than Fiction

Every once in a while, there are news stories that are stranger than fiction. In this episode, we meet Ruth and Judd, possibly the worst murders of the 1920s. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
You're listening to American Shadows, a production of I Heart
Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Mankey Clement for
Lendingham was born in New Lisbon, Ohio, in eighteen twenty.
He received his education through home schooling until he attended

(00:24):
Jefferson College in Cannonsburg, Pennsylvania. After an argument with the
school's president, he left the college without finishing his degree.
At the time, aspiring lawyers didn't need a degree to practice.
All they had to do was past the bar exam.
Lendingham passed the bar and set up his law firm
in Dayton, Ohio. His lack of the college degree also

(00:45):
didn't prevent him from being elected to the Ohio Legislature
in eighteen forty five, or from being elected into the
House of Representatives shortly before the Civil War. Although Lendingham
lived in a pro Union state, he was staunchly pro slavery.
His beliefs on the subject were so strong that he
looked for any way to oppose President Abraham Lincoln on

(01:06):
every military bill, and frequently accused the President of prolonging
the war for his own gain. As the leader of
the copper Heads, a group of like minded politicians. The
lending Him believed that the president and the abolitionists were
destroying the nation. In their opinion, the war was completely unjustified.

(01:26):
Though landing Him lost his bid for reelection in eighteen
sixty two, he remained popular with anti war factions and
was considered a candidate for the presidency. Those aspirations ended
when he entered the public sector and continued his anti
war rhetoric. His rants violated Ohio's General Order thirty eight,
which banned anyone from declaring sympathy for the enemy. Thus,

(01:49):
he was arrested in eighteen sixty three. During the trial,
he voiced his opinions in sympathy for the Confederacy. As
a result, the court ordered lending Him held to the South. However,
despite the court order, his strong opinions and his affiliation
with the copper Heads, but Confederates didn't exactly give him
a warm welcome. It took some time for them to

(02:12):
trust him, even after he ran for governor of Ohio
and Absentia. Blending Him lost the election, but managed to
return to Ohio quietly. After the war, he continued his
crusade against the rights of black Americans. He ran for
the Senate and then the House of Representatives, losing both times.
He returned to practicing law, taking on a murder case.

(02:36):
His client, one Thomas the Gean, had been accused of
murdering a man by the name of Thomas Myers. Lending
Him's defense was simple. His client couldn't possibly be guilty
since Myers had accidentally shot himself. The witnesses stated the
two men had been enemies, They had been gambling, and
though the details were murky, Myers wound up dead and

(02:59):
everyone pointed to m age In blending him insisted that
the evidence was weak. He fired rounds into a piece
of fabric to demonstrate the placement of gunpowder residue a
close range, matching the powder formation on Myer's clothing. After
the demonstration, a companion reminded him that there were still
three live rounds and the gun's chambers. Of Lending Him

(03:19):
shared him that his knowledge and comfort around firearms would
prevent him from accidentally discharging it. Lending Him found a
package containing Myer's unloaded pistol waiting for him at the
hotel and placed it on his nightstand alongside his own gun.
Then he summoned the rest of the lawyers to his
room for one last reenactment. He grabbed a pistol from

(03:40):
the nightstand and placed it in his pocket. As he
withdrew it, he demonstrated how Myers had held the gun,
then pulled the trigger. Unfortunately, he had grabbed the loaded
gun and cried out that had shot himself. The shot
proved fatal. The court acquitted, and aghe in blending him,
had proved in his client's innocence. It might not have

(04:03):
been the most intelligent of defenses, but it certainly wasn't
the worst. I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. Welcome to American Shadows. It
was the Roaring twenties. Ruth Snyder was a blonde, pretty,

(04:24):
thirty two year old homemaker and described as having a
playful personality. It had been married to Albert for twelve years,
and the two had a young daughter, Lorraine, and an
eight room home in Queens Village, New York. A forty
two year old Albert worked as an art editor for
a magazine about motor boats and did not share his
wife's playful personality. Most women dreaded him. His idea of

(04:49):
fun was to slap his wife and nine year old
daughter around. He took every opportunity to let Ruth know
he had never forgiven her for not giving him a son.
When he did out compliments, they were about his late
ex fiancee, Jesse was shard. He kept a picture of
his beloved on a wall in the home and frequently
mentioned that Jesse had been the finest woman had ever known.

(05:13):
To add insult to injury, when Albert purchased a boat,
he named it Jesse. Understandably, Ruth's love and devotion toward
her husband turned sour. On top of being verbally, emotionally
and physically cruel, he drank a lot, so much so
that Albert took to brewing beer in his basement, which

(05:34):
wasn't exactly legal during the Prohibition era. When he tired
of beer, he visited the local bootlegger for stronger stuff.
In women like Ruth didn't have many options. Women were
considered property of sorts, first belonging to their fathers and
then to their husbands. They had little to know rights

(05:54):
to their own finances. In the US, it wouldn't be
until the nineteen sixties before women were allowed to open
a bank account on their own. They weren't allowed to
have a credit card, without a husband's signature. Until nineteen
seventy four, single women need not apply. The men earned
more of the same jobs. Companies openly overlooked women in

(06:15):
favor of men when it came to hiring, until President
Kennedy signed a law prohibiting such tactics in nineteen sixty four.
Until nineteen twenty, women hadn't been allowed to vote for
those who worked. Any paycheck that they brought home immediately
belonged to their husband. The only financial wealth a woman
had was her jewelry. For many women, marriage meant a

(06:37):
lifetime of love and financial security. For others, marriage was
a prison. In the twenties, society frowned on divorce, which
usually entailed proof of adultery or abandonment, and in society's view,
if Ruth filed, she was breaking the family apart. The
words till death do us part had real meaning. For Ruth.

(06:59):
She was stint for a lifetime of misery and abuse,
and like other women in her shoes, she did her
best to occupy her time outside the home when possible,
since having lunch with her friends in Manhattan had become
her only escape. Once she dropped Lorraine off at school,
she caught a train to the city to spend the day.

(07:21):
In the afternoon, she boarded another train back home, and
during those lunches at the counter in a Fifth Avenue restaurant,
Ruth met Judd Gray, another regular, and my most accounts,
Judd wasn't the most memorable man. He was short, curly haired,
and wore thick horn rimmed glasses that gave him an
owlish appearance. And Judd worked as a traveling salesman for

(07:44):
a corset and brawl company, although we conducted most of
his work from the Waldorf Storia Hotel. He spent his
spare time as a member of an Elks lodge in
New Jersey, and he taught Sunday school. The two quickly
struck up a friendship. They talked to family and life,
and before long, jud confided that he was also in

(08:04):
an unhappy marriage. Over several weeks, the growing attraction and
tension between them increased. They began to flirt. By the
end of the summer, Ruth and Jed took the flirtations
even further and started a fiery and all consuming affair.
Albert never came home during the day, providing the couple

(08:25):
with a convenient place to meet. Other times, Ruth met
her new lover at the Waldorf. Meanwhile, little Lorraine entertained
herself by riding along with the elevator operators until her
mother returned for her. Jed was smitten with Ruthe whoop
seemingly couldn't get enough of him either. She called him Loverboy,
among other pet names. Over the next year and a half,

(08:47):
the affair turned riskier and the lovers grew bolder in
their liaisons. On Sunday, March, Loreen Snyder made a frantic
phone call to the next door neighbor, Missus Harriet Mulhouser.

(09:10):
Lorrain's cries that her mother was sick urged Harriet hurry
to the Snyder home. When Harriet entered, she had no
idea what to expect. Moans from an upstairs bedroom met
her at the door. She ran up the stairs to
find Ruth lying on a bed with a loosened gag
around her neck. Her feet had been bound, but her
hands were free. Ruth moaned that she had been hit

(09:33):
on the head. Unsure of what had happened or where
Albert was, Harriet told Lorraine to go and get Mr.
Mulhauser and then to wait outside. Lewis Mulhouser arrived moments later.
He found Albert in another room, lying face first under
a pile of blankets on a twin bed. His hands
and feet had been bound. The blood on the pillows

(09:54):
and the wire around his neck made it clear someone
had strangled him. Lewis also noted a revolt he lay
next to the body. He covered Albert with a sheet
and called for the police and doctor for Rufe. The
doctor examined Rufe while she told him what had happened.
Though she insisted she had been hit on the head,
he couldn't find any evidence of an injury. Two officers

(10:16):
arrived shortly afterward. The house appeared to have been ransacked,
and the officers thought the Snyders had been victims of
a burglary gone wrong. There had been reports of a
strange man prowling around the neighborhood and Snyder House in particular.
Detectives Frank Hainer and Harry Krauss arrived shortly after eight
am to take over the case. The doctor had finished

(10:40):
his exam of Ruth and Albert and gave the detectives
his findings. Ruth's calm demeanor seemed off, and he couldn't
find any signs of injury. Albert had been dead for
about six hours. He noted heavy bruising on his face,
which indicated blunt force trauma. The doctor wasn't sure whether
Albert had died due to that trauma or to strangulation.

(11:04):
While an ambulance took Albert to the more, the detectives
questioned Ruth. They also noted how calm she seemed given
her account of what had happened. The Ruth claimed she
had been knocked out. The detectives had more questions than answers.
Why had someone bound Ruth's feet but not her hands
and they couldn't find an injury. Why hadn't she gone

(11:24):
for help herself? And something wasn't right? Detectives Hayin and
Krauss called for assistance while other detectives began a thorough
search of the house and property. Hayner and Krauss took
Ruth to the police station for further questioning. She repeated
the story that she and Albert had attended a bridge
party lad into the night. When they arrived home, they

(11:47):
immediately went to bed. Some time in the middle of
the night, she heard a noise and went to investigate
the Ruth told them that an enormous Italian thug attacked
her and hit her on the head before she could
scream for Albert. Ruth claimed that the man must have
robbed them and killed Albert. She took the time to
describe valuable pieces of jewelry and expensive fur coats she owned.

(12:09):
Given the doctor's findings, the detectives thought that the attackers
description played too heavily on the general racism against Italian
immigrants of the time, and it didn't take the detectives
long to find more problems with Ruth's story. Albert's gold
pocket watch had been found next to his deathbed. They
also found Ruth's jewelry wrapped in a rag and stuffed

(12:30):
under the mattress, and her fur coat tucked away in
a trunk in the basement. But most damning was the
toolbox that had found A large iron sash weight had
been married beneath an assortment of hammers and screwdrivers, and
the weight had blood on it. To say Ruth was
the number one suspect would be an understatement. They told

(12:51):
her what they had found and prompted her to confess.
After a couple of hours of intense questioning, Ruth slipped
and gave them a name, Jed Ray. Then she refused
to answer any more questions. Police quickly arrested jud They
were not surprised to hear that he had a different story.
He was innocent, he claimed. In fact, like Albert, he

(13:14):
also claimed to be one of Ruth's victims. She had
seduced him and made him an unwilling accomplice to the
murder plot. Within hours, the detectives had their killers, but
the two lovers weren't done with the details just yet.

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Judd claimed that Ruth had been the mastermind. She had
taken out an insurance policy with a double indemnity clause.
If Albert died from an act of violence, Ruts stood
to get twice the money. While Ruth had bought the
iron weight, he had been seduced into buying chloroform. He
told the detectives that Ruth had told him to smash
Albert's head with the weight, but he was so frightened

(13:57):
that he couldn't do it, he said. Ruth grabbed the
way and eagerly did the job herself, striking Albert on
the side of the head of The blow knocked Albert unconscious,
and jud admitted dragging him to the bed, and he
also admitted to using the wire to ensure he was dead.
The entire murder seemed to happen in a daze. He
told the detectives he had been entirely under Ruth's spell.

(14:19):
Prosecutors decided to try the pair together instead of individually.
Reporters flocked to the courtroom. While wives killing abuse of
husbands for money wasn't exactly new, competing newspapers saw a
sensational story. The tabloids were quick to add creative details,
and they're retelling. As they put it, Ruth the Ruthless

(14:40):
was a fem fatale who had it all a house
car money before taking on a lover and seducing him
into killing her husband. Journalist Damon Runyan thought the two
killers were about as dumb as any had ever seen,
and began calling the incident the Dumbbell Murder. The New
York Times kept the story on the front page as

(15:01):
the trial continued. It began on April eighteenth of n
and became nothing less than a circus. Fifteen hundred people
crammed themselves into the courtroom outside vendors sold sash weight
replica pins, and food vendors hiked up prices to the
thousands of people waiting outside the courtroom. The celebrities, from

(15:23):
renowned historians and film producers to the nation's elite, reserved
seating inside. Among them were songwriter Irving Berlin and mystery
novelist Mary Roberts Reinhardt. Though Jed and Ruth were tried
together and were at the same table, they each retained
their own lawyer. For hours, each lawyer worked to sway

(15:43):
the all male jury that the other defendant in the
case was the more guilty party. Most felt sympathetic toward
Jed's confessions. He told the courtroom that Ruth completely seduced him,
earning him the nickname the putty Man. He said that
he was helpless whenever she drew his face close to
hers and looked deeply into his eyes. Judd sobbed when

(16:06):
he told the Jerry how she had pressured him into
doing her dirty work. The plot went sideways when he
arrived that night and he had struck Albert in self defense.
In turn, Ruth fainted whenever the prosecution brought out the
most gruesome of the details her attorney told the courtroom
that such gore made his client faint easily, and jud
and Ruth exchanged barbs and accusations, dividing the court on

(16:30):
who had been ultimately responsible for Albert's death, until the
prosecution brought a toxicologist to the stand. Using only the
facts from pathology and chemistry, Alexander Getler systematically laid out
what had happened to Albert that night. The police had
found a bottle of whiskey on Judd on the night
of his arrest. He had told detectives that Ruth asked

(16:52):
him to dispose of the bottle. A lab results showed
that the whiskey contained so much bichloride of mercury that
it was undrinkable, and, knowing Albert's penchant for drinking heavily,
had given Ruth the idea to poison her husband. However,
the acrid, foul taste would have undoubtedly made Albert spit
the drink out. Albert had already been drinking, and he

(17:15):
had consumed so much bootleg whiskey that it would have
been unlikely that he could stand much less attack Judd.
And if the whiskey wasn't enough, the chloroform they found
in his system was though the iron weight had fractured
Albert's skull and the wire had cut off his last breadths.
Albert was already a dying man. That bootleg whiskey combined

(17:38):
with the heavy amount of chloroform had been fatal. Getler
testified that Ruth and Judd might have gotten away with
murder if they had just let the whiskey and chloroform
run their course. Ninety minutes later, the jury returned a
guilty verdict for jud and Ruth. Both were sentenced to
death at Sing Sing. The story continued to dominate headlines

(18:08):
for weeks. One reporter noted that, in an odd twist,
Albert's beloved ex fiance, Jesse Guischard and Ruth's affair partner
Judd Gray shared the same initials. It turned out that
this twist had helped the detectives with the case. They'd
come across some papers with the initials j G, but
they didn't belong to Judd. Before her death, Jesse had

(18:32):
sent Albert love letters on monogram stationary. Albert had kept
letterhead from his beloved Jesse. Of course, the detectives didn't
know that when they showed it to Ruth and asked
who j G was. In a moment of panic, she'd
asked why they were looking at Judd in connection with
her husband's death. On the day of Ruth's execution at
sing Sing Prison, photography was prohibited in the execution chamber.

(18:56):
One creative reporter rigged a camera under his clothing. At
the moment of Ruth's execution, he snapped a single photo.
The Daily News used the image and the headline dead.
The paper sold out in fifteen minutes. The Dumbell murder
had been a sensational story, but with the case over
and jud and Ruth executed, the papers returned to other

(19:19):
news Over time, the story faded from most people's memories.
Murder for money was hardly new or unheard of, and
true crime stories have seemingly fascinated us. All while plenty
of reporters covering the trial simply looked for enough headline
worthy material before moving on to their next assignment. One

(19:40):
of those reporters never forgot it. James M. Caine said
the trial had been larger than life and stranger than fiction.
He had always wanted to write a novel like f
Scott Fitzgerald or Ernest Hemingway, and the murder gave him
an idea. Over the years, he had written a few
plays and novels without much success, but the betrayals and

(20:01):
murder in this case inspired him to try once more.
In nineteen thirty four, he made the best seller's list
with The Postman Always Rings Twice. Characters Frank and Cora
begin an affair and soon plot the murder of Cora's
older husband, Nick. The lover's first attempt, striking Nick with
a blunt object, fails. He recovers but has amnesia. The

(20:25):
second attempt, a fake car accident, works. The two killers
stand trial, each blaming the other. Kine wrote a twist
to the ending, which I won't divulge here in case
you haven't read it or seen the films based on it.
At the height of the book's popularity, Boston banned it
due to the amount of sex and violence it contained
for the time, and as popular as this book was,

(20:47):
another became an even larger success. Using the case and
trial again as inspiration, he wrote Double Indemnity, first publishing
it as a serialized story in Liberty Magazine in nineteen
thirty six, and then as a novel in nineteen forty three.
The plot revolves around a woman who seduces an insurance
salesman to help her kill her husband alike jud The

(21:10):
man becomes so entangled in the fog of the affair
he feels compelled to help commit the murder, and just
like the Dumbbell murder, the plan backfires, pitting the couple
against each other. There's more to this story. Stick around
after this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.

(21:37):
Every once in a while, a new story stands out
far from the rest. Such is the case of the
Denver spider Man. Helen and Philip Peters had lived in
their Denver, Colorado neighborhood for a long time. The neighbors,
young and old alike, loved them. During the fall of
nineteen forty one, sixty four year old Helen spent five

(21:59):
weeks for ring in the hospital after breaking her hip.
Every morning, after breakfast, Philip went to visit, returning in
time for dinner each night. And to keep Philip from
eating alone and in sure he didn't have to cook,
neighbors took turns inviting him to dinner, and when Philip
failed to arrive at a neighbor's house on October sevent
they began to worry. The neighbor checked on Philip, knocking

(22:22):
and trying the door. Soon more neighbors gathered outside the
dark house. All windows and doors were locked, but a
young girl found a loose window screen and managed to
pry the window open and climb inside. After a couple
of moments, the neighbors heard her screams. The girl threw
the door open and ran out inside. Among the blood

(22:43):
spladder lay Philip's body. The police arrived, confident the killer
was still inside, except the house was empty. Whoever killed
Philip Peters bludgeoned him to death using two cast iron shakers.
The killer took the time to wash one of the
shakers and left behind the damp, blood stained dish towel.

(23:04):
The attack had been merciless. It appeared Philip had tried
to flee his attacker. Blood splatter was found throughout the home,
and they estimated he had been struck thirty seven times.
As the weeks went on, the investigation stalled, and when
Helen returned home, the housekeeper and neighbors stayed with her
as much as possible. They couldn't stay forever, though, Helen

(23:28):
was uncomfortable in the house, not just because of the murder.
The strange things kept happening even before Helen arrived home
from the hospital, and neighbors noticed the lights would come
on in the house. One saw a ghostly face in
the window. The residence along the street began to whisper
that the house was haunted. Helen frequently called the police

(23:50):
to check up on the case and to report missing food,
strange sounds in the walls, objects out of place. Oh
one night, she fell again, fracturing her leg. Being home,
nurse also heard rattling in the walls. Once a specter
appeared on the backstairs. It chattered its teeth at the nurse,

(24:10):
scaring her off. She promptly quit, leaving Helen in the
care of a neighbor. The neighbor spotted the ghost standing
at the base of the stairs one night. It vanished
when she screamed. Police kept watch on the house but
never saw anyone or anything strange. Eventually, Helen left, despite
having lived much of her life in the home. On

(24:31):
July two, a couple of police officers saw a pale
face looking out of a window and ran inside to investigate.
When the men reached the top of the stairs, closet
door swung shut. Unwilling to let the intruder escape, they
opened the door in time to see two feet disappear
into a tiny trap door in the ceiling. They grabbed

(24:52):
the legs and pulled the man out of his hiding place.
One of them commented that a human would need to
be a spider to fit into such a small opening.
The pale, gray skinned man wore tattered clothing. He was
impossibly thin, which explained how he fit into a hole
too small for most adults. During questioning, the officers learned

(25:12):
that Theodore Coneys had been living in the Peters house
since nineteen forty one. Coney said that when he was
a teen, he took guitar lessons from Philip Peters and
they fed him dinner. Twenty years later, houseless and broke,
he returned to the Peters home to see if they
might still offer him food. Coney's broke in when he

(25:33):
found no one home. After stealing some food, he decided
to sleep there. His search of the home revealed the
trap door. Coney's managed to squeeze up into the ceiling
and decided that he might as well stay it all
seemed to work until Philip Peters caught him in the
kitchen one evening. Philip fought back who before retreating, Coney's

(25:55):
admitted to killing him and cleaning up and returning to
his hiding place. After his trial, he told reporters that
he felt safe in prison and that it was a
better home than he had had in years, and Coney's
enjoyed the rest of his years in prison until he
died in American Shadows is hosted by Lauren Vogelbaum. This

(26:23):
episode was written by Michelle Muto, researched by Ali Steed,
and produced by Miranda Hawkins and Trevor Young, with executive
producers Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. To learn
more about the show, visit Grim and Mild dot com.
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