# The Infamous Tacoma Ax-Murderer

An episode of [Buried Bones - a historical true crime podcast with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1455668750), 13 May 2026, 56 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/976825e3-37d8-4387-a0cd-b24b002d91e5/98841bf1-4b18-4f7e-becd-b44201431ff3/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=3df02c7c-f75a-4bea-abe8-b24b002d91ff

On today’s episode, Paul and Kate travel to 1947 Tacoma Washington where two women are found murdered in their home. But after a suspect is found, the true mystery surrounding this case is just unfolding. Join our Patreon: patreon.com/kateandpaul Support this podcast by shopping our latest sponsor deals and promotions at this link: https://bit.ly/4buCoMc See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:03] Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson.
[0:05] Speaker 2: I'm a journalist who's spent the last twenty five years
[0:08] Speaker 2: writing about true crime.
[0:09] Speaker 3: And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
[0:12] Speaker 3: worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
[0:16] Speaker 2: Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
[0:19] Speaker 2: compelling true crimes.
[0:21] Speaker 3: And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring
[0:24] Speaker 3: new insights to old mysteries.
[0:26] Speaker 2: Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
[0:31] Speaker 2: cases through a twenty first century lens.
[0:34] Speaker 4: Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
[0:38] Speaker 2: This is buried bones.
[1:01] Speaker 4: Hey, Kate, how are you?
[1:03] Speaker 2: I'm well, Paul, how about you?
[1:04] Speaker 4: I am doing great.
[1:06] Speaker 2: So we have deep burning questions from viewers and listeners,
[1:11] Speaker 2: more questions.
[1:12] Speaker 3: Uh.
[1:13] Speaker 2: We have an endless supply, which I think these are fun.
[1:16] Speaker 2: And you know sometimes I think, oh, I have to
[1:18] Speaker 2: ask him about his fish. And I know that you
[1:21] Speaker 2: know that we kept up. We keep up with your
[1:23] Speaker 2: fish a lot. But I like to hear what other
[1:25] Speaker 2: people think too, other than what pops up in my
[1:28] Speaker 2: little head.
[1:29] Speaker 1: So this is not a question.
[1:32] Speaker 2: This is a suggestion, and the suggestion from a viewer listener,
[1:36] Speaker 2: is I suggest Paul considers magnesium glyconate to improve the
[1:41] Speaker 2: circulation in his hands. And then I have to say,
[1:46] Speaker 2: I remember we talked about your hands, but remind me
[1:48] Speaker 2: and then tell me if you have actually ever taken this.
[1:51] Speaker 3: So I didn't realize I had this condition called ray
[1:56] Speaker 3: Nod's syndrome. And so this is where circulation in my
[2:01] Speaker 3: extremities might put down my feet in my hands shuts
[2:04] Speaker 3: down prematurely in the cold. Of course, you know, spending
[2:09] Speaker 3: most of my adult life in the Bay Area, California,
[2:13] Speaker 3: I never really experienced anything that was anybody would never
[2:17] Speaker 3: consider cold, though I remember standing in the ocean at
[2:21] Speaker 3: Santa Cruz and my feet would ache like crazy, and
[2:25] Speaker 3: my first wife thought I was the biggest wimp in
[2:27] Speaker 3: the world.
[2:28] Speaker 4: You know. But moved out to Colorado.
[2:31] Speaker 3: And you know, you start getting shoveling snow, and then
[2:36] Speaker 3: the hands would just start turning purple and go numb.
[2:40] Speaker 3: And then when they you get the circulation back, it
[2:44] Speaker 3: can be quite painful. And it turns out, you know,
[2:47] Speaker 3: I've known my mom has had Ynod syndrome. She you know,
[2:52] Speaker 3: ended up moving to Hawaii to avoid any type of
[2:55] Speaker 3: temperature that would cause it to kick in. And it
[2:59] Speaker 3: turns out three of my four children have ray nods
[3:02] Speaker 3: as well.
[3:03] Speaker 4: Really, I end up.
[3:05] Speaker 3: Doing things like wearing heated gloves when I'm out there
[3:08] Speaker 3: shoveling snow, and I have to get you know, well
[3:11] Speaker 3: insulated boots, and it still doesn't prevent that from from
[3:15] Speaker 3: kicking in.
[3:16] Speaker 4: The raynods from kicking in.
[3:17] Speaker 3: And there's almost a psychological aspect. I can be sitting
[3:21] Speaker 3: in my office like where I'm at right now, and
[3:24] Speaker 3: if it's cold enough outside, my feet will start to
[3:27] Speaker 3: shut down.
[3:29] Speaker 4: It is so weird.
[3:30] Speaker 2: Is that like people who can feel rainstorms coming in
[3:33] Speaker 2: their knees.
[3:35] Speaker 3: I think it's like that. Yeah, I think it's like that.
[3:37] Speaker 3: So I often I have a little space eater underneath
[3:40] Speaker 3: my primary desk in my office, and in the wintertime
[3:44] Speaker 3: that thing is blowing on my feet and even my
[3:46] Speaker 3: lower legs will still feel cold to the touch, because
[3:50] Speaker 3: just there's a psychological aspect where my you know, my
[3:54] Speaker 3: body just knows it's cold.
[3:56] Speaker 1: Well, what do you do if.
[3:57] Speaker 2: You're at the gym and it's too cold and you're
[3:59] Speaker 2: lifting or doing something that involves grip strength for you?
[4:02] Speaker 2: Does that ever happen.
[4:04] Speaker 3: Not inside the gym, but throughout my career with the
[4:08] Speaker 3: Sheriff's office or the DA's office. I either worked out
[4:11] Speaker 3: at home in my garage in California or I worked
[4:14] Speaker 3: out at the jail. So I thought, well, I'll just
[4:17] Speaker 3: work out in my garage in Colorado, and I set
[4:19] Speaker 3: it up that way, and then it got to where
[4:21] Speaker 3: I couldn't grab the barbell because it was frozen. So
[4:27] Speaker 3: you know, I ultimately did move the gym into the basement.
[4:30] Speaker 3: But now I go to a gym, you know, and
[4:33] Speaker 3: I've actually enjoyed the gym just because I have all
[4:35] Speaker 3: the equipment available.
[4:36] Speaker 2: Well, this person says, try magnesium glacinate, and you have not.
[4:41] Speaker 2: Is that right? Do you treat it with anything other
[4:43] Speaker 2: than your space heater and trying to stay warm?
[4:45] Speaker 4: Okay, no, I've never heard of that.
[4:47] Speaker 2: Actually, Well, magnesium glaconate for me, has been great for sleep.
[4:51] Speaker 2: It's good for sleep, helping you relax. I know there's
[4:54] Speaker 2: a whole host of other things, and I know that
[4:56] Speaker 2: there are different kinds of magnesiums so I had to
[4:58] Speaker 2: look it up. But our doctors suggested that I do it,
[5:01] Speaker 2: and it's been really helpful. You know, for me, there
[5:03] Speaker 2: were kind of big horse pills and there are different
[5:05] Speaker 2: ways to take it. But try it and then maybe
[5:07] Speaker 2: we'll report back in a few months to see if
[5:11] Speaker 2: it makes a difference or not.
[5:13] Speaker 3: I'll added it to my supplement stack.
[5:15] Speaker 2: Well, there you go.
[5:17] Speaker 1: I know you have a lot of those.
[5:19] Speaker 3: I've really cut back actually, but yeah, I still have
[5:21] Speaker 3: a you know, I take a few pills in the morning,
[5:24] Speaker 3: and you know, just as you get older, you got
[5:27] Speaker 3: to kind of keep just adding things to you know,
[5:31] Speaker 3: the nutrition that you're pulling in.
[5:33] Speaker 2: Yep, same, I hear you. Okay, we are going into
[5:37] Speaker 2: a big case that seems simple I think at the start,
[5:40] Speaker 2: but there are a lot of twists in it, and
[5:42] Speaker 2: it'll be the fairly well known case once people hear it. Maybe,
[5:47] Speaker 2: I guess we'll see. We're going to the Pacific Northwest.
[5:51] Speaker 2: I don't know if we've done much in Washington State, okay,
[5:55] Speaker 2: but we've gone everywhere together, Paul, I don't know.
[5:59] Speaker 3: I don't know, no, but I've been consulting on a
[6:02] Speaker 3: case out of Washington State now for I don't know,
[6:05] Speaker 3: over a year a year and a half, and also
[6:08] Speaker 3: did a podcast. Yeah, so actually I've consulted on multiple
[6:11] Speaker 3: cases at Washington State.
[6:12] Speaker 4: Now I think about it.
[6:13] Speaker 2: Okay, well there you go. Maybe this will be helpful,
[6:16] Speaker 2: maybe not, we don't know. Let's set the scene, Okay.
[6:22] Speaker 2: We like to give credit where credit's due here and
[6:24] Speaker 2: there is a fantastic multi part blog. The person who
[6:27] Speaker 2: wrote the blog is Brianna Audrey Wright, and so there's
[6:30] Speaker 2: a lot of nice backstory that she's put in there,
[6:33] Speaker 2: so we appreciate her help with the research. We are
[6:37] Speaker 2: in Tacoma, Washington. So it is October thirtieth, nineteen forty seven,
[6:42] Speaker 2: and this is after the World War two boom, and
[6:47] Speaker 2: so this is kind of the city is transitioning. And
[6:50] Speaker 2: ship building had been a really big thing obviously for
[6:52] Speaker 2: World War two and in Tacoma, and now it's on
[6:55] Speaker 2: the decline, and so that means the economy has slumped
[6:59] Speaker 2: and we have a lot more people moving out to
[7:01] Speaker 2: the suburbs. So just trying to set the historical scene
[7:05] Speaker 2: with this here. Okay, we're gonna kind of jump right
[7:08] Speaker 2: into this. So it is two twenty two in the
[7:11] Speaker 2: morning on this day, October thirtieth, the day before Halloween,
[7:15] Speaker 2: and there are screams coming from this central Tacoma Hilltop neighborhood,
[7:20] Speaker 2: and there is a woman who phones the police. Her
[7:23] Speaker 2: name is missus Steinseffer, and she says that she can
[7:30] Speaker 2: see a six foot tall black man standing in her
[7:33] Speaker 2: neighbor's dark kitchen. And you know, there's a the neighborhoods
[7:38] Speaker 2: a porch light outside, and so she feels like she
[7:40] Speaker 2: could see this clearly. So she screams and then calls
[7:44] Speaker 2: the police. So we have a couple of police officers
[7:47] Speaker 2: who show up, and this is one zero zero seven
[7:51] Speaker 2: South twenty first Street, and they are just in time
[7:55] Speaker 2: to see a forty five year old, six foot tall
[7:58] Speaker 2: black man run out of the back door and break
[8:02] Speaker 2: through a picket fence. Now I want to pause here
[8:05] Speaker 2: because there's an interesting note. He is barefoot. And we
[8:09] Speaker 2: talk about this sometimes where when we read notes, particularly
[8:12] Speaker 2: in history, and they say shoeprints in footprints, what do
[8:16] Speaker 2: they mean? And so you know, I would think the
[8:19] Speaker 2: obvious question, of course, or the obvious assumption for me,
[8:22] Speaker 2: would be that he is barefoot because he's trying to
[8:24] Speaker 2: sneak around and stay quiet. This sometimes does not seem
[8:28] Speaker 2: like a great idea to me, but I mean, have
[8:31] Speaker 2: you encountered a lot of cases where the people remove
[8:34] Speaker 2: their shoes and even their socks. To do this, I
[8:36] Speaker 2: would have to imagine their socks.
[8:39] Speaker 3: I can think of a case in which the offender
[8:41] Speaker 3: removed to shoes and is walking through the house in
[8:44] Speaker 3: his socks and ultimately left a bloody sock print behind.
[8:49] Speaker 3: And it wasn't one of my cases for my jurisdiction.
[8:52] Speaker 3: It was a case I covered for a TV show.
[8:56] Speaker 3: When you said, well, obviously he's doing it to move
[8:59] Speaker 3: around quietly, that's possibility. But I've also got cases that
[9:04] Speaker 3: I've either worked or I'm aware of, where offenders they
[9:08] Speaker 3: remove their clothing before they commence with sexual assault, and
[9:12] Speaker 3: sometimes they remove their clothing outside before going into the house,
[9:17] Speaker 3: and so when things go sideways, now they're running down
[9:19] Speaker 3: the middle of the street nude or nude from the
[9:21] Speaker 3: waist down. So there's, you know, depending on how this develops,
[9:25] Speaker 3: that's you know, kind of like, well, there's this guy
[9:27] Speaker 3: somebody who's removing his shoes and his pants before it
[9:30] Speaker 3: goes into the house and sectually assault somebody.
[9:32] Speaker 2: Mm hmm, Okay, well we'll see how this unfolds. So
[9:36] Speaker 2: they don't explicitly say that this neighbor who sees this
[9:40] Speaker 2: is a white woman or that the people inside the
[9:43] Speaker 2: house are white, but the fact that she is saying,
[9:45] Speaker 2: there's a black man standing in my neighbor's house is
[9:49] Speaker 2: alarming to her. So they chase this guy. He hurls
[9:53] Speaker 2: himself over several backyard fences and the officers are haunt
[9:58] Speaker 2: on the trail there. They finally corner him in an
[10:01] Speaker 2: alley and he pulls out a jackknife, so before the
[10:06] Speaker 2: officers are able to subdue him, he slashes one of
[10:10] Speaker 2: the hands of one of the officers and he stabs
[10:13] Speaker 2: the other one on the back of his shoulder. So
[10:15] Speaker 2: they still catch him and he is put in the
[10:18] Speaker 2: hospital first. Because he has a lot of cuts on
[10:21] Speaker 2: his face and around his mouth. I have to assume
[10:24] Speaker 2: that's from the fight with officers, but it doesn't have
[10:26] Speaker 2: to be, depending on what happens inside that house that
[10:28] Speaker 2: he just.
[10:29] Speaker 3: Broke out of, yeah, or even during the pursuit, you know,
[10:32] Speaker 3: is he getting hit in the face with branches, you know,
[10:35] Speaker 3: so that it could be a combination.
[10:37] Speaker 4: Of all of that.
[10:39] Speaker 2: He is treated at this hospital and then he is
[10:42] Speaker 2: sent straight to jail in Tacoma, and we have a
[10:46] Speaker 2: detective lieutenant who shows up and he is investigating the house.
[10:51] Speaker 2: His name is Earl Cornlisson, and he finds the victims.
[10:57] Speaker 2: So we have two. One is a fifty two year
[10:59] Speaker 2: old baby and she's a Russian immigrant and her name
[11:03] Speaker 2: is Bertha Clute, and he also finds her seventeen year
[11:07] Speaker 2: old daughter, Beverly June Clute, both lying in pools of
[11:12] Speaker 2: blood and it looks like both of them have been
[11:15] Speaker 2: bludgeoned repeatedly with an axe. And again we kind of
[11:19] Speaker 2: come back to the bludgeoned part. Their throats are slit.
[11:23] Speaker 2: There is blood and bloody fingerprints all over the walls,
[11:26] Speaker 2: and there's blood on the ceiling too. So already this
[11:30] Speaker 2: seems pretty open and shut, I would think, but you know,
[11:33] Speaker 2: kind of give me your impressions first blush here.
[11:36] Speaker 3: Yeah, on the surface, it seems very straightforward. You have
[11:39] Speaker 3: a witness who sees this black male standing in the
[11:45] Speaker 3: victim's porch area, right, and then law enforcement responds and
[11:52] Speaker 3: this guy is now bursting out of the house and
[11:56] Speaker 3: a pursuit ensue, so it appears that he does go
[12:01] Speaker 3: into the house. Now you have these two women that
[12:04] Speaker 3: have been killed. It's interesting that they've been killed with
[12:08] Speaker 3: an axe. The witness who saw him on the porch
[12:14] Speaker 3: didn't describe him holding an axe entering the house, right.
[12:17] Speaker 2: She saw the porch light was kind of the light
[12:20] Speaker 2: from the porch was pouring into the house. The neighbor
[12:23] Speaker 2: could see him standing in the kitchen. Oh, okay, she
[12:27] Speaker 2: does not identify an axe in his hand or anything
[12:29] Speaker 2: like that.
[12:30] Speaker 3: No, well, I would just say, you know, that's even
[12:32] Speaker 3: better than what I initially thought, because now he's somebody
[12:35] Speaker 3: she sees him. You have a witness seeing him inside
[12:38] Speaker 3: the house. Now you know whether or not he brought
[12:43] Speaker 3: an axe with him or he used the victim's own axe.
[12:46] Speaker 3: You know that right now is not anything that I'm considering.
[12:51] Speaker 3: But again it's why, you know, why do these offenders
[12:54] Speaker 3: choose axes, especially if he's armed with a knife.
[12:58] Speaker 4: You know.
[12:58] Speaker 3: So there's you know, that's just an interesting dynamic in
[13:03] Speaker 3: terms of the choice of weapon.
[13:06] Speaker 4: You know. So, now the.
[13:07] Speaker 3: Question is is there are one or both of these women?
[13:12] Speaker 4: Are they sexually assaulted? You know?
[13:14] Speaker 3: What is his motive going into the house? Is the
[13:16] Speaker 3: rants acting in the house. Does there appear to be
[13:18] Speaker 3: any financial motive to this? Is there any interpersonal aspects,
[13:23] Speaker 3: so need more details in order to try to get
[13:25] Speaker 3: a better sense of what's going on here.
[13:28] Speaker 2: So the note is that Bertha, who is the mother
[13:32] Speaker 2: a fifty two year old, that her body is on
[13:36] Speaker 2: the ground floor bedroom where she would sleep, and they
[13:40] Speaker 2: said that her assault was so savage that her head
[13:43] Speaker 2: had been hacked nearly completely off with this axe, and
[13:48] Speaker 2: it appeared that the killer had attempted to sexually assault her.
[13:53] Speaker 2: So I'll tell you they find no evidence of that.
[13:56] Speaker 2: We know about the evidence of sexual assault and the
[13:58] Speaker 2: caveats that come with that, but but I think that
[14:01] Speaker 2: probably meant like her skirt was pulled up or something.
[14:05] Speaker 2: They discovered the daughter's body in the adjacent kitchen, and
[14:10] Speaker 2: the detective thinks that Bertha was attacked and maybe there
[14:15] Speaker 2: was going to be an attempted sexual assault, but then
[14:18] Speaker 2: her daughter heard her, and the daughter came downstairs after
[14:22] Speaker 2: hearing her mother's screams. That's where you know, she met
[14:25] Speaker 2: the killer and then she died too, and then oh yeah.
[14:29] Speaker 2: Over the next few hours they find an axe, knife,
[14:33] Speaker 2: a cap, and a pair of shoes in the house
[14:38] Speaker 2: and also strewn about the Cluditt's yard and the neighbor's backyard,
[14:43] Speaker 2: so you know, he's tossing them obviously as he's running out.
[14:47] Speaker 3: I'm surprised at how quickly law enforcement arrived, you know.
[14:52] Speaker 3: So that's that is of consequence in terms of you know,
[14:56] Speaker 3: the you know, the veracity that they're not just too
[14:58] Speaker 3: you know, chasing a random guy that's you know, walking
[15:01] Speaker 3: down the middle of the street. They literally are going
[15:04] Speaker 3: after a guy that was seen inside the house, is
[15:07] Speaker 3: emerging out of the house and then puts up significant resistance.
[15:12] Speaker 3: Quite frankly, I'm with this guy pulling a knife. I'm
[15:15] Speaker 3: surprised the officers didn't shoot him. Yeah, you know, so
[15:18] Speaker 3: he's lucky on that front, you know, but he's obviously
[15:22] Speaker 3: you know, looking at significant charges if they're you know,
[15:26] Speaker 3: let's say some of these bloody prints inside the house
[15:28] Speaker 3: can be matched to him, you know, and there's nothing
[15:31] Speaker 3: better than having the offender's fingerprints and the victim's blood
[15:36] Speaker 3: at a homicide scene.
[15:38] Speaker 4: That's pretty good.
[15:42] Speaker 2: Well, let me ask you, you know, in this list
[15:45] Speaker 2: of things, they found axe, knife, cap, and a pair
[15:49] Speaker 2: of shoes. Okay, so all of that stuff, and he
[15:51] Speaker 2: has the jackknife in his pocket too, So all of
[15:55] Speaker 2: that makes sense, and he's tossed this stuff. And I
[15:59] Speaker 2: I was just thinking about what you were saying about
[16:02] Speaker 2: how quickly they responded. I didn't read this, but I
[16:05] Speaker 2: have to imagine when you think they must have been
[16:07] Speaker 2: on patrol in the area, because if you think about
[16:10] Speaker 2: the sequence of events, she you know, looks through the window,
[16:14] Speaker 2: she sees this man in her neighbor's kitchen and it's dark.
[16:18] Speaker 2: She screams, picks up the phone, calls the police. And
[16:23] Speaker 2: then what they show up just in time to see
[16:25] Speaker 2: him leave. Is he not leaving for you know, a
[16:28] Speaker 2: few moments or I don't know how that works. It
[16:32] Speaker 2: just seems kind of quick.
[16:33] Speaker 3: So, having worked cases you know that pre date nine
[16:39] Speaker 3: to one one, which this most certainly does. So the
[16:46] Speaker 3: witnesses is dialing the operator. The operator will then transfer
[16:51] Speaker 3: the call, you know, to law enforcement, and then now
[16:55] Speaker 3: law enforcement dispatch can dispatch the closest cars in the
[17:01] Speaker 3: area to this location. He's inside the house, oblivious he's
[17:06] Speaker 3: been seen. Right, he is attacking Berth, He's attacking Beverly.
[17:11] Speaker 3: And then possibly after he has completed his attacks on
[17:15] Speaker 3: these two women, he looks outside and he sees.
[17:17] Speaker 4: A patrol car.
[17:19] Speaker 3: Now he is in a panic and he's trying to
[17:22] Speaker 3: get away, and that's why he's ditching the acts. You know, first,
[17:27] Speaker 3: that's just going to slow him down, but it's also.
[17:29] Speaker 4: The murder weapon.
[17:30] Speaker 3: He doesn't want that on his person when he's arrested,
[17:34] Speaker 3: So that seems to be the logical thing of what
[17:37] Speaker 3: happened here.
[17:39] Speaker 2: Okay, And the kitchen where the neighbor saw him is
[17:44] Speaker 2: where Beverly was murdered. So he's at the tail end
[17:49] Speaker 2: of these events. And then he runs out and they
[17:52] Speaker 2: catch him. So he's in the jail and he's been
[17:55] Speaker 2: identified as somebody named Jake Bird. He's forty five year
[18:00] Speaker 2: old transient man. He has on his clothing blood brain tissue.
[18:07] Speaker 2: His fingerprints matched the prince at the crime scene, and
[18:11] Speaker 2: the detectives confirmed that the shoes left at the street
[18:14] Speaker 2: outside the house belonged to him, and you know, then
[18:18] Speaker 2: they start trying to figure out who this guy is.
[18:21] Speaker 2: He was a railway worker and a section gang laborer
[18:25] Speaker 2: since the age of nineteen laid and maintained track across
[18:29] Speaker 2: the US, and he had been known for a string
[18:34] Speaker 2: of burglaries and assaults and attempted murders and murders across
[18:39] Speaker 2: the US when they finally catch him here.
[18:43] Speaker 3: He was previously known to be this serial killer.
[18:47] Speaker 2: Well he was previously convicted of one murder, I believe,
[18:53] Speaker 2: but there is a string of all of these other things,
[18:56] Speaker 2: attempted murders, you know, that are following him. And the
[19:01] Speaker 2: issue that will have because he is guilty of this crime,
[19:04] Speaker 2: there's no getting around it. The issue that we're going
[19:07] Speaker 2: to have a little bit with Jake Bird, and what
[19:10] Speaker 2: I need your help with is that he turns a
[19:13] Speaker 2: little Henry Lee Lucas on us. And you you remember
[19:17] Speaker 2: Henry Lee Lucas and what he's most well known.
[19:20] Speaker 3: For, Yeah, confessing to everything across the United States. Yeah,
[19:24] Speaker 3: and then turns out he was just lying about it.
[19:27] Speaker 2: Yeah, he did kill some people, but certainly not the
[19:31] Speaker 2: six hundred or whoever you know was that he confessed.
[19:34] Speaker 2: And Texas Rangers got into big trouble for Henry lu
[19:37] Speaker 2: Lucas because they just took all of it in essentially,
[19:40] Speaker 2: you know, and they were closing cases left and right
[19:43] Speaker 2: when it you know, really you go back and it
[19:46] Speaker 2: turns out that this was not the case. And so
[19:48] Speaker 2: there is the complication of Jake Bird and why this
[19:51] Speaker 2: case is pretty well known. But in Jake's case, he
[19:56] Speaker 2: is apparently totally totally capable of doing all of the
[20:01] Speaker 2: stuff that he's going to talk about, and so this
[20:04] Speaker 2: is not a who done it? It's a like a
[20:06] Speaker 2: multi step What do you do when you have someone
[20:11] Speaker 2: who you know is confessing to all of these different
[20:14] Speaker 2: crimes and is capable of it, and is he telling
[20:18] Speaker 2: the truth or not? How do you kind of sort
[20:20] Speaker 2: that out?
[20:21] Speaker 3: Fundamentally, it does come down to how you conduct the interview,
[20:25] Speaker 3: the interrogation. It can come down to forensics. You know,
[20:28] Speaker 3: nineteen forty seven, you're going to be limited on the
[20:30] Speaker 3: forensics part. With Henry Lee Lucas, one of the issues
[20:35] Speaker 3: with the interviews is they were asking leading questions. They
[20:39] Speaker 3: provided Lucas with details about the crime that only the
[20:42] Speaker 3: killer would know. That is completely opposite of what you do,
[20:46] Speaker 3: you know. So this is where I'll be curious to
[20:49] Speaker 3: see how they approach Jake Bird in terms of, you know,
[20:53] Speaker 3: seeing what other crimes you know he's committed, and is
[20:56] Speaker 3: he being truthful or are they you know, feeding him,
[21:00] Speaker 3: you know, information to where they can just close the
[21:02] Speaker 3: case and now they're done, you know. So the railroad
[21:08] Speaker 3: side is interesting. I've, of course, im familiar with multiple
[21:13] Speaker 3: railroad serial killers, but I did a deep dive in
[21:16] Speaker 3: Golden State killer investigating a railroad suspect, and I got
[21:21] Speaker 3: to know the culture from the nineteen seventies. But the
[21:25] Speaker 3: culture of the railways, you know pretty well to understand
[21:30] Speaker 3: the freedoms these guys have as they move around the country.
[21:33] Speaker 4: Yeah.
[21:34] Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's what I meant when I said transient
[21:37] Speaker 2: doesn't mean then what it can sometimes mean today. And
[21:43] Speaker 2: so transient for him was he would move, obviously from
[21:47] Speaker 2: place to place, but it sounded like he was picking
[21:50] Speaker 2: up and leaving work with the railway system. But he
[21:53] Speaker 2: was a leader on laying track in certain places. So
[21:57] Speaker 2: this is, you know, somebody who is cape of holding
[22:00] Speaker 2: employment obviously. Okay, he's in the hospital because he's got
[22:06] Speaker 2: cuts and bruises and all kinds of stuff all over
[22:08] Speaker 2: his body. We don't know if, as you said, that's
[22:10] Speaker 2: from the escape. We don't know if that's third degree
[22:13] Speaker 2: from the police, because he stabbed them, you know, stabbed
[22:16] Speaker 2: one person in the shoulder and the other guy in
[22:19] Speaker 2: the hand. We don't know if it's from the women.
[22:22] Speaker 2: So you know, he's in the hospital. He then gets
[22:25] Speaker 2: sent to the Tacoma jail, and he confesses fairly quickly
[22:31] Speaker 2: to murdering the two women to the clutes, but he
[22:35] Speaker 2: says that it was not premeditated. He said it was
[22:38] Speaker 2: a botched robbery. He says he picked up an axe
[22:42] Speaker 2: from a nearby shed to and he says to bluff
[22:46] Speaker 2: off anyone who tried to bother me. He says that
[22:49] Speaker 2: he entered through the unlocked back door, slipped off his shoes,
[22:53] Speaker 2: stole a dollar fifty from Bertha, the mother's purse, which
[22:57] Speaker 2: is like twenty bucks today. On his way out of
[23:00] Speaker 2: the house, he was confronted by Bertha and Beverly in
[23:04] Speaker 2: the kitchen. He told them that he would leave quietly,
[23:08] Speaker 2: but they attacked him, so he said, in self defense,
[23:13] Speaker 2: he knocked them down and kept on swinging the axe.
[23:16] Speaker 2: And he, you know, agrees to this confession and he
[23:20] Speaker 2: signs it from the police, so that that is what
[23:24] Speaker 2: leads to charges. Now, what do you think about That
[23:27] Speaker 2: doesn't sound like the evidence lines up with what he's
[23:30] Speaker 2: saying happened.
[23:31] Speaker 4: No, No, he.
[23:32] Speaker 3: Is completely I've used this term, you know, in the past.
[23:37] Speaker 3: He is he is purposely minimizing. This is a term
[23:40] Speaker 3: that we use in law enforcement. He is trying to
[23:45] Speaker 3: make it look, you know, less than what it actually was.
[23:50] Speaker 3: So this idea that he got the axe as just
[23:54] Speaker 3: a bluff, right, and he talks about out how he's
[24:01] Speaker 3: attacked by Beverly and Bertha, So now he's using this
[24:05] Speaker 3: axe in self defense. Yet you know, oh, Bertha's skirt
[24:12] Speaker 3: has been pushed up, you know, her head is almost
[24:15] Speaker 3: hacked off. It's so obvious what's going on here that
[24:20] Speaker 3: you know he's basically he's telling a lie, and he's
[24:24] Speaker 3: putting some truth into the lie to make it seem
[24:27] Speaker 3: like that would be palatable for the investigators to accept.
[24:32] Speaker 2: Well, the next day he is charged, but only with
[24:35] Speaker 2: Bertha's murder, not Beverly June's, and despite this confession, he
[24:40] Speaker 2: pleads not guilty. He says that he signed it under duress,
[24:44] Speaker 2: which I'm assuming would be the third degree from these
[24:47] Speaker 2: Tacoma cops. But the trial starts November twenty third, nineteen
[24:50] Speaker 2: forty seven. So Bird wanted to represent himself, but he
[24:57] Speaker 2: is forced to have a guess a defense attorney to
[25:00] Speaker 2: a defense attorney, and it's a guy named James W. Selden,
[25:04] Speaker 2: and he argues this case, and he moves to have
[25:07] Speaker 2: the confession declared inadmissible because of what I told you.
[25:10] Speaker 2: He says it was under duress. So the defense attorney
[25:14] Speaker 2: calls a officer to the stand who had transported Jake
[25:18] Speaker 2: Bird to the hospital. So not one of the two
[25:21] Speaker 2: responding officers who he stabbed, this is somebody different. And
[25:26] Speaker 2: this officer, Officer Hickey, said that Bird had maintained his
[25:31] Speaker 2: innocence the night of the murder, which I don't think
[25:34] Speaker 2: you would find surprising. He said that there was another
[25:38] Speaker 2: black man in Tacoma named Leroy who was the killer.
[25:43] Speaker 2: And Hickey said that Bird only confessed after another officer
[25:48] Speaker 2: beat him up in jail. So this is I think
[25:52] Speaker 2: the only witness that the defense attorney puts on the stand.
[25:56] Speaker 2: So you do have an officer saying that he has
[25:59] Speaker 2: been handled inappropriately by the police and he had been
[26:03] Speaker 2: maintaining his innocence. So what do you think about that
[26:06] Speaker 2: development the confession.
[26:08] Speaker 3: You know, I finished my career at the DA's office,
[26:10] Speaker 3: and I remember having great conversations with some very very
[26:14] Speaker 3: high level DA's and many of them would rather not
[26:19] Speaker 3: have a confession. And even even if the defendant did confess,
[26:25] Speaker 3: you know, they wouldn't move to put that into trial,
[26:30] Speaker 3: especially if the case is strong on other fronts, you know,
[26:34] Speaker 3: so you know a strategy as you present the case.
[26:37] Speaker 3: The case is so strong against Bird, they easily can
[26:40] Speaker 3: get a conviction and then get Bird on the stand
[26:45] Speaker 3: and you know, basically in front of a jury and
[26:48] Speaker 3: I'll start making these ridiculous statements and looking like an idiot. So,
[26:54] Speaker 3: you know, I don't know how the prosecution handled this
[26:58] Speaker 3: this case, but the idea of just trying to get
[27:01] Speaker 3: the confession you know, thrown out is really trivial as
[27:06] Speaker 3: far as the overwhelming evidence against Bird in this particular case.
[27:12] Speaker 4: Yep.
[27:12] Speaker 2: So this is a three day trial, which is pretty fast,
[27:16] Speaker 2: you know, nineteen forty seven they were getting a little
[27:18] Speaker 2: bit longer, you know, I mean we're used to like
[27:22] Speaker 2: two day trials, one day trial in the eighteen hundreds.
[27:24] Speaker 2: This was three days. But Selden doesn't really put on
[27:27] Speaker 2: any kind of a defense because, as you had said,
[27:30] Speaker 2: with the overwhelming evidence, he was not able to get
[27:33] Speaker 2: the confession tossed. They read the confession aloud, and the
[27:37] Speaker 2: prosecutors arguing for the death sentence, and the jury deliberated
[27:43] Speaker 2: for thirty five minutes and they come back with a
[27:46] Speaker 2: guilty verdict. So he is sentenced to death by hanging.
[27:51] Speaker 2: And this is set in January sixteenth of nineteen forty eight.
[27:55] Speaker 2: And this is not this is sort of we're now
[27:59] Speaker 2: halfway through this story, because you would think that would
[28:01] Speaker 2: be the end of it, but we're not, you know,
[28:03] Speaker 2: even close to it, because this was an opening case
[28:06] Speaker 2: as far as the DA was concerned.
[28:07] Speaker 4: Right, It's as easy as it gets.
[28:09] Speaker 2: Yeah, So what one of the things that makes this story,
[28:15] Speaker 2: I would say well known for true crime history. Buffs
[28:19] Speaker 2: is something that happens at trial. Okay, actually it's not
[28:22] Speaker 2: at trial, it's at sentencing. So the sentencing hearing is
[28:27] Speaker 2: on December sixth, and his defense attorney makes it very
[28:32] Speaker 2: clear that he really did not like Jake Bird. And
[28:34] Speaker 2: of course, remember Jake Bird wanted to represent himself. He says,
[28:37] Speaker 2: I feel whenever any man forty five years old gets
[28:41] Speaker 2: an idea that no lives are safe to anyone except
[28:45] Speaker 2: his own, that man is a detriment to society and
[28:49] Speaker 2: should be obliterated. So he's happy about the death penalty.
[28:54] Speaker 2: I mean, that doesn't sound very ethical to me. I
[28:56] Speaker 2: don't know, I've never heard it off. It's attorney do
[28:58] Speaker 2: that certainly at sentence?
[29:00] Speaker 3: Well, and also want to I wonder if there's a
[29:05] Speaker 3: way that he is trying to set the stage for
[29:10] Speaker 3: an argument for inadequate or incompetent counsel, you know. And
[29:16] Speaker 3: so he's now going, yeah, I mean the guy I
[29:20] Speaker 3: represent should get the death penalty, you know. And now
[29:24] Speaker 3: it's like, Okay, you're not doing your job as a
[29:26] Speaker 3: defense attorney.
[29:27] Speaker 2: M Well, wouldn't that be bad for business?
[29:32] Speaker 1: I mean, this is not his last client, right.
[29:35] Speaker 3: Well, but if he prevents Bird from getting the death
[29:39] Speaker 3: penalty as a result of incompetent counsel, you know, he
[29:42] Speaker 3: basically proves that I'm willing to go all out for
[29:45] Speaker 3: my defendant.
[29:46] Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I don't think Bird buys into that theory,
[29:49] Speaker 2: because he says this, He has given time to talk,
[29:55] Speaker 2: and he says, all you guys who had anything to
[29:58] Speaker 2: do with this case are going to die before I do.
[30:01] Speaker 2: Wait and see you policemen and judges will be sitting
[30:05] Speaker 2: and waiting at the pearly gates a long time before
[30:09] Speaker 2: I roll up. As like an epig statement there. Yeah,
[30:12] Speaker 2: and this was called Jake birds hex and I heard
[30:17] Speaker 2: of it because it came true because a lot of
[30:20] Speaker 2: people drop dead before he did in this case. And
[30:24] Speaker 2: I just thought, I've never heard of somebody hexing someone
[30:27] Speaker 2: else before. I mean, that's not the only interesting part
[30:29] Speaker 2: of this, but but that's part of he was. He was,
[30:32] Speaker 2: you know, expressing some anger there at the end.
[30:35] Speaker 3: Sure, you know, I've never heard of Jake Bird's hex
[30:38] Speaker 3: you know, but you know, it happens to all of us.
[30:42] Speaker 3: At some point, you know you're going to pass away.
[30:44] Speaker 3: So it could just be coincidence that many of the
[30:46] Speaker 3: people involved in this case passed away before he did.
[30:48] Speaker 2: It could be. It could be. Let's see how it goes.
[30:51] Speaker 2: So he's on death row and here's sort of the
[30:56] Speaker 2: beginning of the list. And this is all within an
[30:59] Speaker 2: eighteen month period, so sentencing is December sixth. Less than
[31:03] Speaker 2: a month later, the judge dies from a heart attack.
[31:07] Speaker 2: Then a couple months after that, the under sheriff, who
[31:10] Speaker 2: had gotten confessions from Bird, apparently under duress, he says,
[31:15] Speaker 2: dies from a heart attack. A couple of months after that,
[31:18] Speaker 2: a court reporter dies from the heart attack, and then
[31:22] Speaker 2: the main detective on this dies that same year, and
[31:26] Speaker 2: on November twenty sixth, which is basically a year from
[31:30] Speaker 2: when this happened. The attorney dies that he hated so
[31:33] Speaker 2: much heart attack. This might be a little bit more
[31:36] Speaker 2: of a comment on what people ate in nineteen forty seven,
[31:39] Speaker 2: nineteen forty eight.
[31:40] Speaker 1: I don't know, but that's a lot.
[31:42] Speaker 2: I mean, the majority of these people who who really
[31:45] Speaker 2: really he hated ended up dying in less than a year.
[31:50] Speaker 3: What comes to my mind nineteen forty seven, think about
[31:53] Speaker 3: Dwight D. Eisenhower. You know, one of the things, you know,
[31:56] Speaker 3: he ended up having a major heart attack when he
[31:59] Speaker 3: was present, I believe, and this is where people started
[32:05] Speaker 3: to recognize the you know, the five packs of cigarettes
[32:09] Speaker 3: a day that they were smoking was a major contributing factor.
[32:13] Speaker 3: That's what I think is probably going on. It's not
[32:15] Speaker 3: so much the diet. It was the fact that all
[32:17] Speaker 3: of these people are smoking.
[32:19] Speaker 2: Yeah, and in stressful jobs, of course.
[32:22] Speaker 4: Yeah.
[32:22] Speaker 2: Sure, but this this does help, you know, push along
[32:26] Speaker 2: the legend of Jake Bird's hex well.
[32:30] Speaker 4: I I you know, I am kind of.
[32:34] Speaker 3: Somewhat surprised that the number of people that died within
[32:38] Speaker 3: a year. I was thinking, hell, over the course of
[32:39] Speaker 3: twenty years, of course, but within a year, maybe maybe
[32:43] Speaker 3: there's something to this.
[32:44] Speaker 2: Hex Now you're talking about five or six people, and
[32:48] Speaker 2: he was right. They died. They died before he did.
[32:54] Speaker 2: So now we get to whether or not we believe
[32:58] Speaker 2: Jake Bird. So so he is delaying his execution. He's
[33:02] Speaker 2: on death row at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla, Walla.
[33:06] Speaker 2: And he, during his you know this time that he's
[33:11] Speaker 2: on death row, fairly quickly confesses to having murdered forty
[33:15] Speaker 2: four other people over the past twenty years, which would
[33:19] Speaker 2: make him the most prolific serial killer of all time,
[33:23] Speaker 2: you know, to that point. So then I will unravel
[33:28] Speaker 2: what he's talking about. We know he has killed at
[33:31] Speaker 2: least one other person than you know, the clutes into Coma,
[33:36] Speaker 2: and he has done some pretty bad things around the country.
[33:40] Speaker 2: So he's capable of it. It's a matter of is
[33:42] Speaker 2: he doing it and why confess to it?
[33:44] Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I think a little bit of insight is
[33:48] Speaker 3: he wanted to represent himself at trial. That's showing the
[33:53] Speaker 3: level of narcissism.
[33:55] Speaker 4: You know.
[33:56] Speaker 3: And so this is where now evaluating his you know,
[34:01] Speaker 3: acknowledgment of being involved in forty four other cases. Is
[34:06] Speaker 3: he somebody like like Henry Lee Lucas or another guy
[34:10] Speaker 3: I'm very familiar with a Kurtistine Anderson, who are willing
[34:14] Speaker 3: to say I did this and I did that because
[34:17] Speaker 3: they want the notoriety, you know that they are seeking
[34:22] Speaker 3: that out and they are willing to confess to something
[34:25] Speaker 3: they didn't do just to have another you know, notch
[34:28] Speaker 3: in the belt. So that's where it's going to be.
[34:31] Speaker 4: Okay.
[34:32] Speaker 3: So what kind of details did Bird provide on these
[34:35] Speaker 3: other cases?
[34:36] Speaker 4: You know?
[34:36] Speaker 3: And can law enforcement? Can the investigators say, yeah, you know,
[34:40] Speaker 3: with what he's providing, we believe only the killer would
[34:44] Speaker 3: be able to know those details, or you know what,
[34:46] Speaker 3: we actually do have fingerprints from this cas is do
[34:49] Speaker 3: a direct comparison to Jake Bird. Yes, his fingerprints are
[34:51] Speaker 3: at the scene, just like in birth in Beverly's crime scene.
[34:56] Speaker 2: Well, they are able to tie some of these things
[34:58] Speaker 2: to him, but then they're picking apart different motives for
[35:02] Speaker 2: you know, some of the cases that he brings up.
[35:04] Speaker 2: So let me tell you, we'll get into some of this.
[35:07] Speaker 2: Most of the victims that he's talking about were white
[35:09] Speaker 2: women whom he stalked and bludgeoned with a hatchet or
[35:13] Speaker 2: an axe. He had only escape justice because he thinks
[35:19] Speaker 2: his crimes had occurred across the US, you know, with
[35:21] Speaker 2: the train job, So Illinois, Kentucky, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Kansas, South Dakota, Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa,
[35:30] Speaker 2: and Washington State where we are at first he says
[35:33] Speaker 2: he just wants to clear up his conscience, and then
[35:36] Speaker 2: he says, well, I can clear up some details of
[35:39] Speaker 2: the murders, including providing names of accomplices for a life sentence.
[35:48] Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, so he's now gunning for a deal get
[35:53] Speaker 3: rid of the death penalty. I'll give you names of
[35:55] Speaker 3: individuals that helped me, you know, commit these crimes. You know,
[36:01] Speaker 3: you think about the number of states that you mentioned.
[36:06] Speaker 3: You know, this this transient nature, you know, this is
[36:10] Speaker 3: always a concern in an investigation. Is Okay, we have
[36:14] Speaker 3: residents within a certain town. We you know, we can
[36:18] Speaker 3: put people in this town based on they live here,
[36:21] Speaker 3: and that's the easy suspect pool to go after. But
[36:27] Speaker 3: in any town, there is this transient suspect pool that
[36:32] Speaker 3: may be there one day and they're flowing through and
[36:36] Speaker 3: unless they were contacted or somebody tips law enforcement off,
[36:40] Speaker 3: how do we know that there's somebody we need to
[36:43] Speaker 3: look at. That's always that sort of that big unknown
[36:46] Speaker 3: and these who done it homicides. When you are dealing
[36:50] Speaker 3: with these railroad workers, it's just like long haul truckers.
[36:55] Speaker 3: And how many serial killers are long haul truckers because
[36:59] Speaker 3: they have this freedom, you know. So that's that's when
[37:03] Speaker 3: you mentioned that he was railroad I was like, okay,
[37:06] Speaker 3: you know, I've talked to guys from matt as far
[37:09] Speaker 3: back nineteen forties, but in the nineteen seventies, and you know,
[37:12] Speaker 3: they the train would stop and you know, they would
[37:16] Speaker 3: flow into neighborhoods and their buddies would cover for them,
[37:20] Speaker 3: you know, and they're committing burglaries or they're committing sexual assaults.
[37:23] Speaker 4: You know.
[37:23] Speaker 3: So Jake Bird probably had a similar type of freedom
[37:27] Speaker 3: and took advantage of that to attack all across the
[37:29] Speaker 3: United States. Now, is he being truthful about everything he did?
[37:33] Speaker 3: You know, that's going to be the million dollar question.
[37:35] Speaker 2: You know, And I'm writing an audiobook right now that's
[37:39] Speaker 2: set in the early eighteen hundreds in London, where there
[37:43] Speaker 2: were sailors pouring in and out of port constantly, and
[37:47] Speaker 2: you know, specific areas of London like Whopping that were
[37:53] Speaker 2: basically built to cater for you know, all of these
[37:56] Speaker 2: guys coming in and out and perfectly capable of committing
[37:59] Speaker 2: crime and then taking off. And so there is always
[38:02] Speaker 2: that boogeyman that a defensive Kearney can bring up and say,
[38:05] Speaker 2: how do we not know? It's some stranger, you know?
[38:08] Speaker 2: And so this is the situation we're in a little bit.
[38:11] Speaker 2: He is traveling a lot. So he says the first
[38:14] Speaker 2: time he murdered somebody was on July first, nineteen twenty eight.
[38:19] Speaker 2: So remember we're in forty eight when he's on death row,
[38:21] Speaker 2: so this is twenty years earlier. He says it was
[38:24] Speaker 2: in East Omaha, Nebraska, and he says it was an
[38:27] Speaker 2: eight year old named Harvey Boyd. Harvey had disappeared on
[38:31] Speaker 2: his way to buy a scooter at a shop two
[38:34] Speaker 2: blocks from his house, and he was missing for several weeks.
[38:39] Speaker 2: Then his body was discovered in a sunflower patch about
[38:42] Speaker 2: a half a mile from his home. His skull was
[38:45] Speaker 2: caped in behind his left ear, and they believe that
[38:49] Speaker 2: he was bludgeoned with a hammer. Now there's a guy
[38:52] Speaker 2: who confessed. His name was Clarence Lukart. He's twenty one
[38:56] Speaker 2: and he was imprisoned on a separate charge, and two
[39:00] Speaker 2: days after Harvey went missing, Luke Hart had sexually assaulted
[39:06] Speaker 2: a different eight year old boy, and in his confession
[39:11] Speaker 2: he describes hitting this boy who survived with a hammer
[39:16] Speaker 2: on his head. So he is convicted of this and
[39:19] Speaker 2: I don't know what other evidence there was, but he
[39:23] Speaker 2: was sentenced to life in prison for the criminally insane.
[39:27] Speaker 2: That's the word he was in And over the next
[39:29] Speaker 2: twenty years his parents said he didn't do it, he
[39:31] Speaker 2: didn't do it, And now Bird is saying, well, I'm
[39:34] Speaker 2: the one who did that. So now they don't know
[39:37] Speaker 2: what to make of this. But he has been given
[39:39] Speaker 2: a two month reprieve. Two days before he was supposed
[39:42] Speaker 2: to be executed, he's now been given two months to
[39:44] Speaker 2: spill his guts.
[39:47] Speaker 3: You know, On one hand, the fact that he is
[39:52] Speaker 3: bringing up a crime that somebody else was convicted of
[39:57] Speaker 3: that might increase the veracity of the truthfulness and what
[40:03] Speaker 3: he's saying. But also is he generally aware of this
[40:08] Speaker 3: crime because he's seen it in the newspapers? Was he
[40:10] Speaker 3: and Omaha at the time, and reads the headlines and
[40:13] Speaker 3: then goes, oh, you know, for me to you know,
[40:16] Speaker 3: not be hung in the next two days. I might
[40:19] Speaker 3: as well throw a nugget out there of a case
[40:21] Speaker 3: I'm aware of. You know, this is where you have
[40:23] Speaker 3: to get into the weeds a little bit with him
[40:25] Speaker 3: and say, okay, well, you're going to have to give
[40:27] Speaker 3: us a hell of a lot of detail because we've
[40:30] Speaker 3: got a guy that's been sitting in prison for twenty
[40:32] Speaker 3: years now. The fact that he's saying that the first
[40:35] Speaker 3: case is this case, this eight year old boy Harvey
[40:37] Speaker 3: out of Omaha, going back to nineteen twenty eight. You know,
[40:41] Speaker 3: Bird is forty five, and we often see these serial predators,
[40:45] Speaker 3: you know, they start escalating to homicide in their you know,
[40:49] Speaker 3: their twenties, and so this is making sense to me
[40:51] Speaker 3: that the timeline is tracking appropriately in terms of what
[40:54] Speaker 3: he is saying his first case is.
[40:56] Speaker 2: Okay, Well, what they find out later is that Lukehart
[41:03] Speaker 2: and Bird had known each other at a state penitentiary.
[41:07] Speaker 2: There you go, and Amos says, state penitentiary. They think
[41:11] Speaker 2: later on that Bird is confessing to this to help
[41:15] Speaker 2: Luke cart out. I don't think that's.
[41:17] Speaker 1: What it is.
[41:18] Speaker 2: I think he's trying for some other stuff, but he is.
[41:21] Speaker 2: He will implicate people in crimes and then he will say,
[41:25] Speaker 2: you're wrong about the person you convicted for this crime.
[41:28] Speaker 2: And so it's interesting to try to piece together what
[41:30] Speaker 2: are these grievances and friends and you know, what is
[41:32] Speaker 2: he doing exactly, but you know they do end up
[41:35] Speaker 2: tying some to him.
[41:37] Speaker 4: Yeah.
[41:37] Speaker 3: Well, and this this very much complicates the interview with
[41:42] Speaker 3: Bird because a lot of the details of Luckhart is
[41:45] Speaker 3: a true killer, you know, in those you know, discussions
[41:50] Speaker 3: in prison. You know, Luckhart is getting Bird a lot
[41:53] Speaker 3: of details that only the killer would know. So now
[41:56] Speaker 3: it makes it much tougher. This is probably in this
[41:59] Speaker 3: day and age, it's probab you're gonna have to resort
[42:01] Speaker 3: to some DNA testing or something to prove that it
[42:04] Speaker 3: was Bird versus Luckhart.
[42:06] Speaker 4: Yep.
[42:07] Speaker 2: And you know the hard part about this is I'm
[42:09] Speaker 2: not sure how vigilant the railways are keeping records of
[42:14] Speaker 2: who is working when. So, because he's off and on trains,
[42:18] Speaker 2: I don't think there's like a there might not be
[42:20] Speaker 2: a log that says, for instance, in the case we
[42:23] Speaker 2: have coming up, he says, you know, the next thing
[42:26] Speaker 2: happens in Nebraska. So before we had said was in
[42:30] Speaker 2: East Omaha. Now we're talking about South Omaha. He says
[42:35] Speaker 2: that the next day after killing this boy, he murders
[42:41] Speaker 2: two sisters who were eighteen and twenty one in South Omaha.
[42:44] Speaker 2: And then he says four days after that, he tried
[42:47] Speaker 2: to murder a couple in their mid twenties in their
[42:49] Speaker 2: home in Carter Lake, Iowa. Now, both of these people survived,
[42:54] Speaker 2: the husband and the wife, and there was a man
[42:57] Speaker 2: who had just escaped from a mental institution who confessed
[43:00] Speaker 2: those murders, and it sounds like maybe attacking this family
[43:07] Speaker 2: in Iowa, which is very close to where the other
[43:11] Speaker 2: murders were. But he didn't look anything like the offender,
[43:14] Speaker 2: and people knew that. But Bird looked very much like
[43:17] Speaker 2: the offender. So in the case of the couple who
[43:23] Speaker 2: survived and were able to id him, he was arrested
[43:27] Speaker 2: in Des Moines in nineteen twenty eight, charged with assault
[43:30] Speaker 2: with intent to kill. So they didn't pursue what happened
[43:36] Speaker 2: in Nebraska. They pursued Iowa, Okay, so they had enough
[43:41] Speaker 2: evidence to convict him of trying to kill this couple
[43:44] Speaker 2: in Iowa, and he was found guilty. The reason that
[43:50] Speaker 2: makes a big difference is that they had pursued murder
[43:53] Speaker 2: charges against him. In Nebraska, he would have potentially been
[43:59] Speaker 2: executed or spent at least thirty years in prison. In Iowa,
[44:04] Speaker 2: because the laws were different, he only served twelve years
[44:07] Speaker 2: and then he got out for good behavior. He got
[44:10] Speaker 2: out in yeah, less than twelve years. So he was
[44:15] Speaker 2: convicted of almost killing somebody, you know, a couple.
[44:19] Speaker 3: The amount of time he served is not surprising at all.
[44:23] Speaker 3: You know, we saw this rampant in California in the
[44:26] Speaker 3: nineteen seventies where people were convicted of rape murders. And
[44:31] Speaker 3: I've got one guy that served five years and was
[44:36] Speaker 3: released on parole, and he what does he do? He
[44:39] Speaker 3: starts sexually assaulting and killing again. So I'm surprised that
[44:44] Speaker 3: he served twelve years in Iowa.
[44:46] Speaker 4: You know.
[44:47] Speaker 3: So obviously if bird is in Cussy, now we don't
[44:49] Speaker 3: have anything during those twelve years. He gets released, he
[44:53] Speaker 3: must say, Okay, now I'm now killing out in some
[44:56] Speaker 3: other state, right.
[44:58] Speaker 2: Yes, So he is released December twenty fourth, nineteen forty one.
[45:04] Speaker 2: Ten months after he gets out, he is in Chicago.
[45:06] Speaker 2: So this is October twenty first, nineteen forty two. He
[45:11] Speaker 2: hooked up with this gang of men I don't, you know, criminals,
[45:14] Speaker 2: petty criminals, burglars, that sort of thing. They were gambling
[45:19] Speaker 2: at someone's apartment. They lost a lot of money, and
[45:22] Speaker 2: so they started prowling the area for a house to burglarize.
[45:26] Speaker 2: So they broke into a home and held these women
[45:30] Speaker 2: at gunpoint. They stole three furs and some jewelry, and
[45:35] Speaker 2: all of this amounted to about six hundred thousand dollars today.
[45:39] Speaker 2: Then they clubbed the women to death using a sawed
[45:42] Speaker 2: off baseball bat loaded with lead. He had named a
[45:46] Speaker 2: couple of accomplices. One of this was a guy named Boykins,
[45:51] Speaker 2: and details of birds account actually matched the evidence in
[45:55] Speaker 2: that case, the clubbing of these two women. He said
[45:59] Speaker 2: that Boykins had used his handkerchief, Bird's handkerchief to wipe
[46:04] Speaker 2: blood off of his shoes, and sure enough, near the
[46:07] Speaker 2: crime scene they find a bloody handkerchief made of expensive
[46:10] Speaker 2: linen embroidered with the initial B on it, and Bird
[46:15] Speaker 2: says that Boykins had a stutter, which he did. But
[46:19] Speaker 2: Bird wasn't arrested at the time, so you know, I
[46:23] Speaker 2: don't know if that's enough evidence to say that he
[46:25] Speaker 2: was responsible, but that's what he's confessing to and he's
[46:29] Speaker 2: naming this guy Boykins, who had not been arrested. I
[46:32] Speaker 2: don't think anybody had been arrested in this.
[46:34] Speaker 3: Yeah, and we don't know if they ever identified the
[46:38] Speaker 3: actual Boykins.
[46:40] Speaker 2: I don't believe so they found that. I think this
[46:43] Speaker 2: was an unsolved case.
[46:45] Speaker 3: Yeah, at least, you know, I mean there's there's some
[46:48] Speaker 3: good admissions in details within those admissions probably not sufficient
[46:55] Speaker 3: to close the case. You know, this is where the
[46:59] Speaker 3: limitation of nineteen forty seven kind of come into play,
[47:03] Speaker 3: because now, even though those are some good details to
[47:07] Speaker 3: try to make it into a chargeable offense, that handkerchief,
[47:11] Speaker 3: you know, just because it has a B on it,
[47:14] Speaker 3: that's not that's not very strong. This is where you
[47:17] Speaker 3: go after DNA's. Bird's DNA on that handkerchief, in addition
[47:20] Speaker 3: to the victim's you.
[47:22] Speaker 4: Know, blood.
[47:25] Speaker 3: Fingerprints at the crime scene, you know, being able to
[47:29] Speaker 3: identify who Boykins is. You know, today we have a
[47:33] Speaker 3: lot more tools in the digital age to try to
[47:36] Speaker 3: track down who this Boykins actually is and then go
[47:39] Speaker 3: interview him. So you know, I would say, yeah, there's
[47:44] Speaker 3: a chance that that bird is there, and this is
[47:47] Speaker 3: a you know, kind of a cooperative double homicide. But
[47:52] Speaker 3: they don't. They definitely didn't have enough I think in
[47:54] Speaker 3: order to be able to push it over the finish
[47:57] Speaker 3: line and convince, you know, jury of twelve.
[47:59] Speaker 2: He says that he was a watchman during that the
[48:03] Speaker 2: bludgeoning of these two women. But on October twenty third,
[48:08] Speaker 2: so that was two days later, he's arrested for a
[48:13] Speaker 2: spat of burglaries in Michigan, Saint Joseph, Michigan, and when
[48:19] Speaker 2: he was arrested, he's holding a hatchet. He pleads guilty.
[48:22] Speaker 2: He sentenced to six months to five years in prison,
[48:26] Speaker 2: and he's released August twenty seventh, nineteen forty two.
[48:31] Speaker 1: So then he.
[48:31] Speaker 2: Goes to Tacoma, and this is where the Clute women
[48:35] Speaker 2: were his final victims. So then as we get closer
[48:39] Speaker 2: to his execution date, because now he's used up his
[48:42] Speaker 2: two months of rattling on about all this, he revises
[48:46] Speaker 2: his timeline. He said he actually killed also people in Jersey.
[48:50] Speaker 2: He robbed and murdered a grocer in la in nineteen
[48:53] Speaker 2: twenty three, so he's going back even further. There are
[48:56] Speaker 2: two men and a women in Cleveland, Ohio, and he
[48:59] Speaker 2: dumped their bodies. I mean just sort of like on
[49:01] Speaker 2: and on, and they ultimately, out of these forty four,
[49:06] Speaker 2: felt pretty sure about eleven of the murders, and they
[49:11] Speaker 2: were substantiated and confirmed by investigators, but certainly not all
[49:15] Speaker 2: of them. But again, you know, we also we kind
[49:18] Speaker 2: of went and looked at Luke Hart and you know,
[49:21] Speaker 2: figured out that they were in the penitentiary together, and so,
[49:25] Speaker 2: you know, was he trying to help his friend or
[49:27] Speaker 2: did he have like I think you and I have
[49:29] Speaker 2: talked about too many he had so many facts from
[49:32] Speaker 2: being with this guy that he was able to provide
[49:34] Speaker 2: things to the police.
[49:36] Speaker 3: Based on just the details of the birth of Beverly
[49:40] Speaker 3: double homicide. You know, I truly feel that this Jake
[49:46] Speaker 3: Bird is I mean, he most certainly could be responsible
[49:50] Speaker 3: for as many as he's claimed. But we just have
[49:54] Speaker 3: seen that some of these offenders will confess the things
[49:58] Speaker 3: that they didn't do for you know, a variety of reasons.
[50:02] Speaker 3: The fact that law enforcement was able to basically corroborate eleven,
[50:07] Speaker 3: you know, and of course I'm like, well, did they
[50:10] Speaker 3: truly corroborate them, right, you know, sort of like with
[50:13] Speaker 3: Lucas and the Texas Rangers back in the day. Yeah, Nope,
[50:17] Speaker 3: they just wanted to go Yep, case closed and I
[50:19] Speaker 3: don't have to do any more work on it.
[50:21] Speaker 4: So but I'm sure some of those.
[50:24] Speaker 3: Cases probably truly were closed and could be chargeable. But
[50:28] Speaker 3: now he's saying, oh, and I was also out of
[50:30] Speaker 3: New Jersey and I've got more cases out there. He's
[50:34] Speaker 3: just trying to delay, delay, delayed because he doesn't want
[50:37] Speaker 3: to be hung in the next two days.
[50:39] Speaker 2: Yep. Absolutely, And I think that a lot of investigators
[50:42] Speaker 2: say these are stalling tactics. I don't know if we
[50:47] Speaker 2: should believe any of these confessions. And he successfully stalls
[50:50] Speaker 2: for months and months and months, and he ends up,
[50:53] Speaker 2: you know, following appeals and everything is denied for a retrial,
[50:59] Speaker 2: and so after he ends up delaying a total of
[51:04] Speaker 2: about eighteen months. So he was supposed to be executed
[51:08] Speaker 2: in January of forty eight, and he is finally hanged
[51:12] Speaker 2: on July fifteenth of nineteen forty nine, and so it
[51:17] Speaker 2: is at that point over But I will I'm going
[51:19] Speaker 2: to circle back to the hecks. There was a prison
[51:22] Speaker 2: guard who he did not like, Washington State Penitentiary guard
[51:25] Speaker 2: who died of pneumonia two months before Bird was executed.
[51:29] Speaker 2: I hate to laugh at that, but this hex thing
[51:31] Speaker 2: keeps coming back. So now we're at six or seven people.
[51:35] Speaker 2: Who you know, I mean, this guy, I don't know
[51:38] Speaker 2: if he killed eleven people or if he killed forty
[51:42] Speaker 2: four people, but he was clearly a terrible person. And
[51:45] Speaker 2: the stalling tactics that he used we've seen being used.
[51:51] Speaker 2: And so that's it's interesting to you look back in
[51:53] Speaker 2: the nineteen forties and see it happening just like it
[51:55] Speaker 2: might today.
[51:57] Speaker 3: He you know, Bird obviously is a he's a he's
[52:00] Speaker 3: a serial predator if he truly did these forty four
[52:05] Speaker 3: other cases, you know, a very prolific serial predator. The
[52:10] Speaker 3: case against him with Bertha and Beverly was so strong.
[52:14] Speaker 3: This isn't where I'm like a gust at how fast
[52:18] Speaker 3: the death sentence was carried out.
[52:20] Speaker 4: It's like it was him. Yeah, this is.
[52:24] Speaker 3: A no brainer. They are fortunate Bird being at forty five.
[52:30] Speaker 3: You know, he could have continued, you know, a killing
[52:34] Speaker 3: series for the next decade to two decades possibly, And
[52:38] Speaker 3: so the fact that this witness saw him called police
[52:43] Speaker 3: and police responded and arrested him did save lives. There's
[52:47] Speaker 3: no question in my mind about that.
[52:49] Speaker 2: You know, I have a question that you probably don't
[52:51] Speaker 2: have any answer to. When I was reading through all
[52:53] Speaker 2: of this and I read about the initial time, you know,
[52:56] Speaker 2: with the clutes, and I just thought, this guy does
[52:59] Speaker 2: not seem like a smart killer, as in, can't he
[53:02] Speaker 2: really get away with even eleven out of forty four
[53:05] Speaker 2: of these cases? He just doesn't seem like this some
[53:09] Speaker 2: like mastermind slipping in and out. And I know we
[53:11] Speaker 2: talk about criminal masterminds don't really exist, but still, I mean,
[53:15] Speaker 2: he got caught so quickly and so easily. Could he
[53:19] Speaker 2: really have gotten away with eleven or more of those?
[53:22] Speaker 3: I think in Beverly and Bertha's case, the luck is
[53:27] Speaker 3: is that witness, you know, that's these other cases, if
[53:31] Speaker 3: you don't have that witness across the street or the neighbor, absolutely,
[53:35] Speaker 3: because I mean law enforcement is so handicapped in what
[53:40] Speaker 3: they could do investigating these cases, let alone the transient
[53:44] Speaker 3: nature of bird you know, so he could have left
[53:47] Speaker 3: all sorts of evidence at the crime scene or with
[53:50] Speaker 3: the victims' bodies and he would never be identified.
[53:54] Speaker 2: Yep, Well there you go. I mean, next week, hopefully
[53:59] Speaker 2: no confession killer as they called Henry Lee Lucas, which
[54:03] Speaker 2: was so nauseating. If you've ever read anything about you
[54:06] Speaker 2: know him and and sort of like the relationship that
[54:09] Speaker 2: he had created with these investigators, you know, that's what
[54:13] Speaker 2: this reminded me of. So anyway, no Henry Lee Lucas
[54:17] Speaker 2: or Jake Bird next week, but maybe a HEX. I
[54:20] Speaker 2: don't know. I was interested in the hex. I thought
[54:22] Speaker 2: that was good, but that's how I had heard of.
[54:24] Speaker 3: It, something out of a Salem hunt.
[54:29] Speaker 2: But I've never been hext. I know you probably have
[54:31] Speaker 2: had some version of a hex thrown on you by
[54:34] Speaker 2: a finger.
[54:35] Speaker 4: Guarantee.
[54:36] Speaker 3: There's a lot of people out there that don't like me.
[54:39] Speaker 2: Oh no, we can't eat like that. Paul Okay, next
[54:45] Speaker 2: week some other interesting and strange and twisty case without
[54:50] Speaker 2: hex's hopefully right.
[54:58] Speaker 3: This has been an exactly for our sources and show
[55:02] Speaker 3: notes go to exactlyrightemedia dot com, slash Buried Bones sources.
[55:06] Speaker 2: Our senior producer is Alexis Emrosi.
[55:09] Speaker 3: Research by Alison Trumble and Kate Winkler Dawson.
[55:12] Speaker 1: Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
[55:15] Speaker 4: Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
[55:17] Speaker 2: Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
[55:19] Speaker 3: Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark, and Danielle Kramer.
[55:24] Speaker 2: You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
[55:27] Speaker 2: Baried Bones pod.
[55:29] Speaker 3: Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded
[55:31] Speaker 3: Age story of murder and the race to decode the
[55:34] Speaker 3: criminal mind, is available now.
[55:36] Speaker 2: And Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life solving America's
[55:40] Speaker 2: cold cases, is also available now.
[55:42] Speaker 3: Listen to Baried Bones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
[55:46] Speaker 3: or wherever you get your podcasts

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