8: The Blue-Eyed Butcher & the Illegitimate Con Artist

WARNING: The audio in this episode is rough. What can we say? We were young(ish), dumb, and thought we’d save a little money by sharing one microphone. Yeah. The audio quality improves drastically after episode 9.

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Susan Wright stabbed her husband 193 times, left his dead body half-buried in the backyard, then asked police for a restraining order against him. A restraining order against her dead husband. So, what was up? It depends on who you ask. Some say she’s a cold blooded killer. The media even dubbed her the Blue-Eyed Butcher. But Susan tells a different story. She says that her husband had abused her for years and that she killed him to protect herself and her children. Lifetime movie aficionados Brandi and Kristin think the truth lies somewhere in between.

Then Kristin talks about con artist Cassie Chadwick. This woman knew her craft. In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, she talked countless people and banks out of millions of dollars. How did she do it? By starting a rumor that she was the illegitimate daughter of Andrew Carnegie. For years, her scheme worked perfectly. Until it didn’t.

And now for a note about our process. For each episode, Kristin reads a bunch of articles, then spits them back out in her very limited vocabulary. Brandi copies and pastes from the best sources on the web. And sometimes Wikipedia. (No shade, Wikipedia. We love you.) We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the real experts who covered these cases.

In this episode, Kristin pulled from*:
“The High Priestess of Fraudulent Finance,” Smithsonian Magazine
“Carnegie On Chadwick Case,” New York Times
“Hoax of ‘Heiress’ Ruined Bankers,” Sarasota Herald-Tribune
“The Turbulent Life of Cassie Chadwick,” Vintage News
“Cassie Chadwick,” Biography.com
The book “Whoppers: History’s Most Outrageous Lies and Liars” by Christine Seifer

*Please note that Cassie Chadwick was full of shit, so details differ from story to story.

In this episode, Brandi pulled from:
“193” by Skip Hollandsworth, Texas Monthly
“Wright Case Goes To Jury After Graphic Testimony” by Andrew Tilghman, Houston Chronicle
“Susan Wright Guilty Of Murder” by Andrew Tilghman, Houston Chronicle