HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Happy Thanksgiving.
MARCUS PARKS
Happy Thanksgiving. I don't like Thanksgiving.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're alone here. You're alone here, you're alone in the studio. Thanksgiving is wonderful because there's no Jesus Christ.
MARCUS PARKS
Welcome to the Last Podcast on the Left, everybody. I'm Marcus Parks, here with glutton Henry Zebrowski.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love to sit with my family and sup. I love to sup. But hopefully you've already consumed your meal, right, because we're gonna talk about... I mean after two weeks episodes ago, you know what I mean? I don't know. I mean we just recorded necrophilia.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, we did just record it. I mean we're getting everything out of the way before the holidays come.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But yeah, we did just record necrophilia yesterday.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I just can't wait. And I was like looking up, I was like yam recipes yesterday, just being like oh man. Then I was reading all about Harold Schechter's new book 'Murderabilia' which we're gonna be talking to him today in an exclusive interview.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I forgot about the Acid Bath Killer.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, the Acid Bath Killer is incredible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just turning somebody into soup.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Turned many people into soup. Did you get to read about the guy who owned the sausage factory and put his wife into the sausage mixer? And they didn't find it until all the sausage had already gone out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's fun.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Everyone got real upset in Chicago.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I bet.
MARCUS PARKS
Sausage sales plummeted.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God, that must have been hard for the economy of that entire city.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah, the Acid Bath Killer. He was the one that said like yeah, I killed them but you ain't got no body, ain't got no crime. Good luck!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you're like well you just confessed to murder, several murders.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And then they found quite a bit of evidence back at his house. Like oh I forgot to rinse out that bucket.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh no. And this is where an eye for detail really comes in. But today we have a very special Thanksgiving episode. We have one of our mentors-
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
In true crime. He's here to talk with us about his new book 'Murderabilia' and his new project, upcoming projects, and his thoughts on why he doesn't feel shame about loving true crime.
MARCUS PARKS
And none of you should feel shame about loving true crime. I don't feel any shame about loving true crime.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
Henry feels shame about nothing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Almost nothing. It's more personal. It's more on the inside. Again, I saw myself getting out of the tub the other day.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah? You still got the frogman thing going on?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just don't look good. Don't look good. But are you ready for the sultry tones of Harold Schechter?
MARCUS PARKS
Here he is. So here we are with Harold Schechter, the patron saint of Last Podcast on the Left.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Our benefactor, contributor. You don't know, you are a contributor. I'm sorry.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
No, I'm very honored. I mean you guys have kind of made me a celebrity among some group of social misfit-like young people-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Who are coming to me all the time. Yeah. So I'm very grateful for that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're welcome.
MARCUS PARKS
Well okay, so you are grateful. Good. I was worried that you weren't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Good, good, good. At least they buy books, you know what I mean? They're all book readers, everybody. What is also I think one of the coolest parts about our audience is that they love the information. So they're going for it. And nobody does it better than you.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Well I truly am moved and appreciate that. That means a great deal to me.
MARCUS PARKS
Of course. I mean we've talked about it before, about you being such a huge influence on the podcast. Because what I love about your writing is that you find this line where it's lurid up to a point but still being very respectful.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what we're trying to figure out.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Well I mean the material is so inherently sensational.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
And sensationalistic. That I felt you didn't have to play that up, you just report it. Understatement in a way is the best way of communicating how horrible it was, just letting the facts speak for themselves without using over the top lurid language or whatever.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
So yes, that was a deliberate stylistic choice.
MARCUS PARKS
But that's also one of the things that I think sets you apart from a lot of other true crime writers is that you don't shy away from the detail. Like you give the detail as it is, no matter how horrible it is, especially let's say your book on Albert Fish.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
You pull no punches at any point.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah. Well again, with Fish, you just had to quote from his letters.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
But with Fish, I mean it was particularly important to communicate how monstrous he was. I think there are many people, myself included, who do regard him as the most... Again, it's hard to gauge these things. But because his victims were children and because he took such joy in torturing them, it's hard not to think of him as possibly the most monstrous serial killer our country has produced.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he should be proud of that. Wherever he is. I hope he's looking down, him and Beethoven and Ruth Bader Ginsburg and I hope they're having a good time.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Well I'm not entirely sure they're all in the same place. But I'm sure he'd happy to be counted as the most monstrous, sadistic sex murderer in our country's history.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God, he'd be jealous of new guys. Before we talk about your new book 'Murderabilia' which is great, great, love this book.
MARCUS PARKS
So good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I kind of want to ask just a general question about just kind of decades spent wading through true crime.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Because ourselves, we're about 15 years into it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
We're still relative newbies when it comes to really just living in the world of true crime all the time.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
How does it feel? Because I feel like we're watching another, which is now you have documented many times, we were in a waxing period for true crime and now we're in a waning period for true crime, I would say. But it feels like more so it's not as red hot as it was like three years ago.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like what does it do to you? Like as a man? Like when you are researching this material, and your relationships, does it wear upon you? Like as each cycle comes and goes, watching people be super into true crime and then being like true crime's horrible. Kind of how do you deal with that? Are you just so deep in your own work that you don't... You know?
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Well I haven't really paid attention to any particular cycles in terms of true crime's popularity. But as I'm sure you know from my own writings as well as other sources, people have always been fascinated by true crime.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
I mean there's always an audience for true crime going back probably before the invention of the Gutenberg Press in terms of murder ballads and stuff. This recent kind of, I wouldn't even say research, this explosion of interest in it caught me by surprise. When I first started writing true crime, I may have mentioned this to you in some earlier podcast, it was considered such a sub literary genre.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
That I couldn't persuade my publisher at Simon and Schuster at the time to publish my Ed Gein book in hardcover. Because even though Capote's book had come out a couple of decades before, it was still again regarded as a sub literary thing. And also the received wisdom at that time was that no one was interested in reading about old murder cases.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Incorrect. Whoever said that that was very wrong.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah. Well it was proved wrong.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean more in terms of waning, I mean more just kind of cultural. Now there's more people doing the 'true crime is inappropriate' again. Like we're heading back into the Tipper Gore times about true crime in many ways.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Well there's always that pendulum.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
I'm not surprised by that. True crime is... I think it stirs up very dangerous, fearful impulses in people. You know part of the function of true crime is to allow us to vicariously ventilate very taboo and forbidden impulses within ourselves. I have this anthology, 'True Crime: An American Anthology' I'm very proud of, published by the Library of America, which traces the history of true crime publications really from the puritan times. But the introduction to the book, I begin by quoting Plato. And Plato says the virtuous man is content to dream, what the wicked man really does.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Jeez.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
And the point of that quote is that all of us possess these dark, taboo, forbidden, unacknowledged fantasies and impulses. And true crime allows civilized, law abiding people to ventilate those things in some kind of safe, socially acceptable way. But the point is it does stir up thoughts and dreams and as I say taboo impulses that make people very, very uncomfortable. So yeah, it's not at all surprising at some point that there's gonna be a reaction against the fascination with true crime.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
It's gonna be condemned, it's gonna be seen as some sign of the moral decay of society. Again, there are always gonna be these moral crusaders who launch these campaigns against popular forms of entertainment that really in a way disturb something of themselves that they can't deal with.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I like that. Because that's the thing, it's causing thoughts in your head that you can't handle.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Exactly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And the rest of us are over it. I mean I got five long stem roses in my butt right now. But that's just, again, that's just to concentrate for the interview.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah. Well I think you would have been closer to Albert Fish if you had them up your urethra.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean I'm working. Fingers crossed I get there by Christmas.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I gotta do something for my family.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Make sure the thorns are still on there.
MARCUS PARKS
So do you see like any patterns throughout history as far as like when true crime waxes, when it becomes more popular or when it becomes less popular? Or is it just sort of up to the fates?
HAROLD SCHECHTER
I think it's always at a certain level of popularity. Again, if you look at any moment in the history of modern western civilization, and by modern western civilization, I'm going back to the 1700s, you see this flood of true crime pamphlets every time a sensational murder happened. In our own country, well you see murderabilia. I reproduce some of the Jesse Pomeroy true crime pamphlets.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Which are illustrated with... To us the illustrations look very quaint but to an audience in 1860, those would have been shockingly graphic images of Jesse Pomeroy slitting this little girl's throat. In the 1930s and 1940s, the newsstands of America were packed with all these true detective magazines which ran very, very lurid and graphic stories. So there's always been that. It's a little, what's happened over the last few years with this great explosion of interest in true crime is kind of an anomalous in a sense. I can't remember any particular period where it's captured the public's attention to that extent.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. It's entered the mainstream, like fully entered. Like Ryan Murphy, you know what I mean? Showrunners of big time television shows that are obsessed with true crime.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I go into meetings, this is real, or like I'll have meetings with big time producers and they're all like tell me more about what Jeffrey Dahmer did.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I'm just being like this used to get me kicked out of meetings.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Right. Well I think part of it's just technological, that the means of transmitting these stories now has changed so much and it's much easier for people to feed their appetite for this kind of material and even to acknowledge their appetite for it without being made to feel ashamed. So again, as we're kind of talking about, I mean the guilt eventually does come up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Weak people.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
People who don't get it.
MARCUS PARKS
You know what it could be? I just realized that you say the technological aspect of it, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that a lot of true crime content, you used to have to read to get it. And now you don't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Yeah, you have to find the books.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, you have to find the books and you'd have to actually sit down and read an entire book.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is this about zoomers? Are we about to talk about quiet quitting?
HAROLD SCHECHTER
And you had to buy the books.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah. So yeah, I mean I think to my mind, I could be totally wrong, what set the whole true crime craze off was the podcast Serial.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
And then at the same time that show Jinx about Durst.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean that was just lightning in a bottle.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah. But I mean Serial because it was so respectable. I have very mixed feelings about Erik Larson's 'Devil in the White City' as I'm sure you know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah. It drew very heavily on my own book. But the way I always thought of that book was that he made true serial killer stuff safe for women's book clubs.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Because embedding the home story and the story about the building of the Chicago World's Fair, you could read about H. H. Holmes while feeling you are learning something cultural.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure. Something safe.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
You're learning something cultural but on this other level, again, you're getting to feed... The philosopher William James talks about the carnivore within.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
The carnivore within. You're getting to throw a piece of red meat to the carnivore within, without even knowing it's there. So yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I've seen a lot of ladies express it. But no, I will say that's kind of why it is both who we are as people but it's also a part of our show, which is we understand where it's like we used to joke about how you have to get through the jokes to get to our information.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like you have to handle... Like we're ghouls.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And the proper tradition I think of true crime is just both being deadly serious about the information but also kind of reveling a little bit and understanding that this is naughty and that it's kind of where it should in many ways kind of remain, like it should be not in the center of the pipe of entertainment. It's probably best if it's a little bit on the fringe.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah. But I think entertainment is the key word. People are reluctant to admit that true crime, watching the Jeffrey Dahmer miniseries or whatever is a kind of entertainment. You ask people why they do it and they rationalize their answers. Well I'm interested in learning about abnormal psychology, blah, blah, blah. What they're not willing to admit is that they're enjoying it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. You like it. You just kind of like it.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah. That it's entertaining. There used to be a zine, I don't know if you're aware of it, if you remember, I mean now there are all these e-zines but back in the day-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh I remember zines.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah. So there was one called 'Murder Can Be Fun'.
MARCUS PARKS
Murder Can Be Fun'. I loved 'Murder Can Be Fun'. I used to buy it at Desert Island in Brooklyn. It's incredible.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah, yeah. But the title kind of says it all for people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, exactly. That's us. That's what we do. But that actually probably brings us to 'Murderabilia'.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that you somehow in an academic sense still nail that tone. You nail that we are fascinated by this and it is okay to be fascinated by this. And the way you break it down, because the run up of the book is it's a history of true crime in objects.
MARCUS PARKS
100 objects.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I love this, I love this concept of boiling it down to these kind of like famous totems that represent massive stories.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I mean so when you were writing this book, did you start with the story or start with the object for each one?
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Kind of with the objects. I mean obviously if you're writing a history of crime, there's certain crimes you feel you have to cover. I mean there were certain crimes I wanted to cover that I couldn't find any suitable objects to... And I didn't want to have every object be this is the weapon that so and so used and this is the weapon so and so used. I was looking for a variety of interesting objects. So yes, in many cases it was finding what I thought was an intriguing and interesting object connected to the crime that led me to focus on that particular crime.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The footstool with the Lindbergh baby was really interesting. I also did not know that the ladder with the Lindbergh baby is really interesting. I did not understand, I don't know as much about the case as I wanted to.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I didn't fully understand that there was discrepancy over the guy that they named as the killer of the baby. I did not know that.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
There's a lot, there's always been a lot of controversy over whether Bruno Richard Hauptmann was actually the Lindbergh baby kidnapper. I feel pretty sure he was and I think the weight of evidence indicates that he was. But yeah, I mean there have been people who've written books arguing, pointing to other suspects. But the ladder was one of the key pieces of evidence against him. He was a carpenter, he made this homemade ladder which he used to snatch the baby from the second story nursery room in New Jersey.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And technically that's like a Looney Tunes tactic.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's like Wile E. Coyote.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah. Well he did it. And he almost kind of got away with it. Yes, but it was these wood experts who were able to match the wood from the ladder to these missing boards in Hauptmann's attic that helped convict him.
MARCUS PARKS
I did appreciate in your book how you put "wood experts" in quotations.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah because it just sounds like yeah, a lumberjack shows up being like I know wood. Like oh great.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Right. Yeah. So again, some controversy surrounds it but that's a very, very famous piece of murderabilia. I should say by the way, again, I do in the book, the term murderabilia coined by a gentleman named Andy Kahan who works for a victims unit in Houston. I was actually on, John Walsh years ago of America's Most Wanted briefly had a daytime talk show and I was invited to be on with Andy Kahan on this subject. Andy coined the term and he's violently against anything having to do with murderers profiting, justified, from their infamy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
By selling things and so on. I was there to point out as I do in my book that it's not at all a modern phenomenon, that people every time in the past and again, going back at least to the 1700s, that a horrible sensational murder happened, hordes of people would flock to the site and want to come away with some sort of morbid souvenir.
MARCUS PARKS
I always think of the Belle Gunness site when I think about that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. That's interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Well the Belle Gunness site, I mean the Sunday after her murder farm, the bodies on her murder farm, the dismembered lonely Norwegian bachelors that she lured to the site-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God, she must have been something in the sack. I think about that. Because she kept, these men were thirsty for her and she was built like an offensive lineman.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Okay first of all, I have to say that so one of the Amazon reviews... So you know in my book I describe her as she was.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
She was weighed 250. Anyway, one of those-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, she a lot of lady.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah. Anyway one of the reviews said I was fat phobic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh no. If we're gonna talk about it with anybody, at least do it with the serial killer. I think we can talk. It's not Oprah.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
But yeah, but thousands of people, I mean they were running special trains from Chicago for all the sightseers, thousands of people. There are postcards, they put the decaying remains of her victims initially in a little outbuilding on the farm. And there are photographs of hundreds of people, men, women, and children, looks like the line outside the Pirates of the Caribbean or something, just lining up so they could walk past and see these decomposing remains.
MARCUS PARKS
And that's funny. Like I have noticed that in a fair amount of stories, because we've been going a little bit more historical with true crime lately and I've been noticing that showing up a fair amount. That showed up, we just did the Madame LaLaurie story down in New Orleans. And they did the same thing where they would display-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah but that was also out of protest too.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But in the same I guess nature is like they would display the dead bodies for people to come and look at, like almost as if it was the public's right to see these things.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Well back in the old west as I'm sure you probably know, they would put the corpses of outlaws that had been captured or killed on display, that have been hanged or shot to death. You know the Clint Eastwood movie 'Unforgiven'.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
At the end when he rides into town, he sees Morgan Freeman's body on display and that sets off his last rampage. But that was very, very typical in the old west. And sometimes they would put body parts on display. And I think I say in my book, in 19th century dime museums, there was a famous one in New York called the Museum of Anatomy, they would put... The New York one had the preserved arm of Anton Probst, one of the most horrific mass murderers of the 19th century, on display in this dime museum. And they would advertise it in the newspapers as a big draw.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's why I always disagreed when Charles Manson freaked out towards the end of his life when he had that... It was Star, right?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They had that girl move in who was trying to kind of move in on his game. And then he found out that she was just angling to get his body to take it on tour after his death. And honestly I was like that would have been awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I would have paid money to go see Charles Manson on tour. Charles Manson live. You know what I mean? You just have a couple... Slash comes out and plays a couple songs. To be honest if you're a serial killer, what more would you want?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
So you would advertise it as Charles Manson live?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Live! And then he's dead, you put it into parentheses, like right, he's dead. Can I ask like how do you feel about just kind of murderabilia in general now? Like I've never purchased a piece of murderabilia.
MARCUS PARKS
Neither have I.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I have never spent money. Most of the stuff I've gotten, I have a Gacy drawing, I have some stuff from Charles Ng, I have some stuff from Ted Bundy. But it's kind of just showed up at my house.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Yeah, you don't really know where it comes from. Like I've got a drawing from Richard Ramirez, I've got a letter from BTK.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Again, I didn't pay for any of this stuff, it just ended up in my possession.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What do you have?
HAROLD SCHECHTER
What do I have? Well one of the things I have that's in the book, it's actually kind of a treasured possession of mine, is this beautiful hand carved wooden box that had been made by Robert Irwin, the Mad Sculptor.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
So I wrote a book about him called 'The Mad Sculptor'. Irwin was a very talented artist, totally crazy, who committed this very, very sensational triple murder in New York City in 1937, Easter Sunday 1937. And he was in and out of mental institutions. And when he was incarcerated in them, he would make a little money for the hospital canteen by either sculpting busts of the doctors and nurses in attendance and selling them for a few dollars or in this case he carved this beautiful wooden box. He made the box to carve it and each side of the box and the lid of the box is decorated with a bas relief carving of this naked woman who was this young model named Ronnie Gedeon who was one of the victims he killed.
MARCUS PARKS
Jesus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
After my book came out, this very sweet woman from down south contacted me and said my husband was a guard at one of the mental institutions that Irwin was an inmate in and he bought this box from him. And her husband was deceased, I think he'd want you to have it. So I offered to purchase it from her and flew her to New York and I have this box which is really quite an amazing piece of artwork actually.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you use it?
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Do I use it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is there stuff in it?
HAROLD SCHECHTER
The only thing that's in it is the original letter she sent me describing what it was. But no, I do not use it. It's an objet d'art.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
So I'm trying to think, I have a couple of other things. I have a watercolor that somebody gave me from Lawrence Bittaker I think.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
I also acquired actually, in doing my book, an inscribed hymnal from the former Son of Sam who is now I think calling himself the Son of Light.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, the Son of Light.
MARCUS PARKS
The Son of Hope.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wish that we could be... He won't talk about... Because I wanted to get in contact with David Berkowitz. But he only will talk about Jesus Christ.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And I do have a book that is a lot of his poetry that he's written over the years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's very bad.
MARCUS PARKS
And it does have a fair amount of Christian poetry but then there's other poems. Like there was one poem, it's just called 'The F Train'. And it's about how much he doesn't like the F train.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The F train, it never works. How am I supposed to get to work? Like yeah, he was one of the worst, he is the worst.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
I take the F train all the time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Breaks the headlines. Harold Schechter is pro F train.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
But yeah, I mean there is something, as I say in the introduction to the book, I've always been fascinated about the kind of power that emanates from these items and why people are so drawn to them and why people want to have them in their households. Again, I see them as the shadow side of saints' relics, just as some sort of divinity it inheres to a saint's relic, to a piece of bone or whatever of a saint. There's some dark quality of evil that we're drawn to. In fact I've come to think, okay, gonna run this by you, you're the first people I've spoken to about this. I've come to think that a lot of the fascination with serial murders and true crime, there's a weird quasi religious quality to it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can see it. Yes. If you want to speak on, I can respond.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah. But let me just say, one of the central issues of theology, in a letter, I don't wanna get too pedantic, but in a letter to his father, John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, said in Latin 'unde malum', whence evil. Where does evil come from? It's a mystery that religion has always grappled with and essential to religion. And I think somehow people are partly drawn to these true crime documentaries and podcasts because it confronts you with that age old question of the nature of evil, the source of evil, the existence of evil. So there's something about that in owning a piece of murderabilia. And I also think there's some primitive thing going on, it's like evil fighting evil, like people who wear the evil eye or something, all these superstitions that if you carry around some token of evil, it will ward off other evil. Anyway, I mean those are just theories that I've been playing around with.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wonder if people view quote unquote "holy" good people, saints... I love this connection of murderabilia to saints, like objects, religious objects.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because I think that there's on one hand if you believe in God, like if you believe in that, this idea that there's some pure good in this world, a saint is someone that knows something about that world that we'll never know. They have some form of intimate knowledge of this purity of god that people who want that are desperately chasing and looking for. And also just kind of curious about I think in general, being like how do you go... Because a lot of them started as just normal people, how did they become a saint? How did you become this other thing that became like deified in a way? You got touched by this energy and there's a connection to it. I think that on the other side there's a transgressive version of that which is those guys, as much I mean we make fun of them as losers and they are and again we do believe that serial killing essentially is also born of an extreme mediocrity. It's because you're not good at really anything else. You can choose this other thing that then you can get an instant name for yourself by destroying a bunch of people's lives.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I think there's something in that, that they have crossed over to a world that we will never see. Like they have done things, they have done the most taboo, they've stepped into an extreme taboo and I think in some ways there's a curiosity about yes, like whence evil, right?
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like what made you go do that? But also there's something about you, that means there's something inside, there's something, there's an experience that you had that I will never understand.
MARCUS PARKS
Well it may also be a case of like-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Or see.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a lot easier to touch the devil than it is to touch god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's there, he's looking. His pants are down.
MARCUS PARKS
And if you're wanting to get into something supernatural or something extranormal or anything like that, something religious, then if you believe in god, therefore you must believe in the devil. And it's a lot easier to touch someone who's touched bad.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Much easier to do bad than good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think about Gacy and I think about guys that are like true villains of American history, right. Not just like low murderers or mass murderers but like those guys that are like... John Wayne Gacy, upon re-watching his stuff, I had a re-interest in him not that long ago. And he was a guy that I believe was probably one of the worst predators that ever walked the face of the planet.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah, I agree.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But there's something about like what was it like in that rumpus room on a Wednesday between these murders where you're walking on top of this pile of your own bodies that you have created that are in your home? You got the fucking Pogo costume, the Pogo costume hanging in a closet. You know what I mean? Like this guy has become, it's a demon kind of walking the earth in a way. And so there's something about something that that guy touched and then now you're like oh wow, this is imbued with something and I don't know whether I like it or not but I'm endlessly fascinated by it. A lot of it being like I don't want to be there, I don't want to be in that place but like holy shit, what would that be like?
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. By the way, speaking of murderabilia and Gacy, I know somebody who actually showed me this, who owns and it's signed by him, John Wayne Gacy's Bob Ross learn how to paint kit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well he also had, what's his putz? He had guys working for him. He had guys doing the paintings for him. He had everybody, it was like an assembly line. I went to a showing of a bunch of his art and they just showed like he did a whole series of the seven dwarves but they were all just paint by number sets and he'd just sign them and then ship them out.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah, yeah. But apparently Bob Ross was a big influence on his artistic development.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Love to see that conversation.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
So this like religious element, is this sort of an outcropping of kind of the new revelations that you had when you revisited Ed Gein for 'Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done?'
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah, I mean I felt it's so inexplicable, a phenomenon like Ed Gein. But what I came to believe is that all the psychic pressures that were brought to bear on him opened up some kind of fissure in his deep psyche and all of this weird, archaic stuff just came pouring out. And he was enacting these kinds very, very, very atavistic rituals of human sacrifice and again flaying human skin and so on and so forth. It's one of the sources I think of the fascination that surrounds Gein because you have this guy living in 1950s, the American Heartland in the 1950s, the rest of us are there watching Leave it to Beaver on TV, so and so forth. And he's in this little remote farmhouse acting out these very bizarre, very bizarre rituals which would have been again familiar to Aztec priests and stuff.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So weird.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
So there is some element of that. And given the materialistic society we live in, very secular society we lived in, still on some level we believe in these cosmic forces of love vs evil that are always at war with each other. And as you were saying, there are on the one hand the saints' relics which resonate with this quality of self sacrifice and utter selflessness and love, and then the shadow side of that, this murderabilia stuff, which resonates with all this satanic meaning.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's cool.
MARCUS PARKS
It's incredible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's pretty cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Now that we've arrived on the subject of Ed Gein once more-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
We were both on a new MGM+ documentary series about Ed Gein in which we all got to hear Ed Gein's voice for the very first time, among the first people on earth to hear Ed Gein's voice since he died. What was your first thought upon hearing Ed Gein's voice? Like after spending, arguably you are the Ed Gein expert amongst experts, you know more about him than anyone, you've spent more time with him than anyone. Like how did you feel upon hearing that voice? What did you think?
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Well when I first heard it, he just sounded like a regular guy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the thing! That's what's weird, man. He sounds like he's just like oh yeah, you know. He's like ugh.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
For some reason, for various reasons, partly because in my researches reading about people who knew him, he was always... I had the impression of him as being a little, I don't know if this is still an acceptable word, do people use the word effeminate anymore? But effeminate.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Yeah, I mean I don't know. But he was, yeah.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
So I was always expecting to hear that a little in his voice. But yeah, there was none of that. It was just like this regular farmer guy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Like a regular rural American, not even a Wisconsin accent, that's what was weird to me is that he just had this regular, yep, I just went on and I found her and I did it and that was just how, I did it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I actually wonder if it's a part of his... Because these guys, right, they all kind of have, some of these guys have cloaking mechanisms. Like they have these things where they have families like see look, no, I'm normal, I got this other stuff going on. I wonder if that's just his way, it's like how I'm trying to learn how to learn about football so I could talk to men, right, because I got nothing to talk about except aliens and serial killers. So I'm learning to try to... I use football. I'll go like ah, the Cowboys, huh? And that works. Where I wonder if Ed Gein affected more of a-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, a tougher accent.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah. I don't think it was an affectation. I mean I think when he wasn't robbing graves and dissecting corpses and dressing up in flayed skin and so on, he was leading this kind of regular Plainfield, Wisconsin life.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm just a regular guy. Just like you. Let me feel your sides. Let me just see. Oh yeah. What's your waist? But yeah. But otherwise he's just a regular guy.
MARCUS PARKS
(M)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah. Obviously none of his neighbors, well of course you couldn't really imagine anything-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the thing is that he's in the Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory. You know what I mean? No one knows what's going on in there and the Oompa Loompas are afraid.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah. Well people would sometimes ask me didn't some of his neighbors suspect? But I mean who would-
MARCUS PARKS
Suspect what?
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's grave robbing, he's wearing human skin, he's dancing in a field. Like they'd probably lock you up.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. For even suggesting it.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah. There was a great, you know the satirical newspaper The Onion?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
So they had this great headline years ago. Neighbor said she always suspected that the man living next door is a serial killer, I think it was those nurses he was burying in his backyard. But if you don't actually see that, you don't suspect. And again, this would be unimaginable for anybody to suspect the kind of things Ed Gein was doing.
MARCUS PARKS
Of course.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah because he was just inventing stuff.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah. Oh yeah. I think of him as a little bit of an outsider artist.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh very much so.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very outside. He's a solar system artist.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yes. But Gein again is endlessly fascinating. And as you see in 'Murderabilia', a friend of mine came into possession of Augusta Gein's crucifix.
MARCUS PARKS
I saw that, I was gonna ask you where that came from.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah, he actually wrote me. I'm not sure how it happened, he was puzzled because apparently we reproduce the flip side of the crucifix. But in any case, where that came from was that Gein formed a friendship, an epistolary friendship, they just wrote letters to each other, with some guy when he was in the last institution that he was in until his death. They became very, very close pen pals and at some point Gein sent him as a gift Augusta's crucifix with a little card. I don't quite remember how my friend came into possession of it but he purchased it from this other person and he has Augusta's crucifix and the card, Ed Gein's card that accompanied it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God, I wonder what his signature was like. I just see it as like 'ED'. Like just in the block letters.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
No, no. I mean I've seen cards from him, he had perfectly normal handwriting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's kind of disappointing.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
He was not a stupid man, Gein. People saw him as a simple minded kind of village idiot. But when he was incarcerated, he apparently read pretty widely. From what I know from some people who interviewed him, he even read some Freud.
MARCUS PARKS
Interesting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's like oh my god. Oh no!
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah. Well he was very dismissive of Freud's theory.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I imagine. I imagine he's like that doesn't track for me.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
That oedipal complex stuff has nothing to do with me.
MARCUS PARKS
Well in 'Murderabilia', one of the things I really appreciate about it is that I kind of get the feeling from it that it's not just a history of true crime, but it's also kind of a cultural history of how people process true crime. The thing that I found most interesting, the objects that I found most fascinating weren't really the murder ballads. Because of course I know a lot about murder ballads and it's great that those are included in there but the kidnapping songs were bizarre.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's interesting.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Tell me a little bit about those. Those were fascinating.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Well the one I remember most, and again as I think I said before we started, as soon as I write a book I forget everything that's in it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
But I remember that I do include this little Charley Ross sheet music. I think it was called, the song was called something like I Wanna See Mama Again.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's bizarre. It's called, yeah, Bring Back Our Darling.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Was that the Charley Ross one? Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Wasn't there one like I Wanna See Mama Again or something? But anyway-
MARCUS PARKS
There was a couple of them.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The Fox.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Oh yeah. But Charley Ross was the first child who was kidnapped for ransom in the United States and the case became a big sensation. But as you say, it says something about the culture of the time and its love of these highly sentimental poetry and music and so on and so forth, that they turned this thing into a piece of sheet music so you could take this music home and sit in your parlor and entertain family and friends.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Singing this heart-tugging song about this little missing kidnapped boy. But what you're saying is one of the things, I've regarded myself as a true crime historian and one of the things I feel very strongly is you can learn a tremendous amount about any period in a culture by seeing which particular crimes the public is fascinated and obsessed by at that moment. For example, one of the books I wrote was about the Bath School Disaster of 1929 where this farmer named Andrew Kehoe blew up the town public school and killed 38 children and teachers and so on and so forth.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think we called him on the show the biggest asshole of the century.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
And it remains the worst school massacre in US history. At the same time that was happening... And it disappeared from public awareness within days, people just really weren't interested in it. But at the same time this happened, they were obsessed with the Ruth Snyder Judd Gray case. The so-called double indemnity murder where this housewife Ruth Snyder, along with her milquetoast loverboy, conspired to murder Ruth's husband. And that obsessed the public for months and months and months. This guy blows up a school, kills 38 children, and the American public at the time shrugs it off. The case with this woman who conspired with her adulterous lover to murder her husband becomes front page news for months.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
And it's because she embodied something that the public was very, very terrified at the moment. She was this flapper, this 1920s flapper who was flaunting her sexual freedom.
MARCUS PARKS
It's another moral panic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's juicy.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Exactly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's juicy, yeah.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
But she represented a threat to the whole Victorian domestic order that was being completely overthrown during the Jazz Age. She came to embody that. To some extent Leopold and Loeb also embodied what they called the flaming youth at the time. It wasn't that their crimes were so horrific, I mean she killed one person, Kehoe murdered 38 children. She murdered this kind of bullying husband that she really had no relationship with, so it wasn't the horrificness of the crime, it's what she represented. So my point is you can learn as much about the 60s counterculture from looking at the Manson case as you can from looking at Woodstock.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's very interesting.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
I'm just saying there's a sociological dimension to it, as Marcus was saying.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the shadow. It's understanding the shadow of a time period I think. And what's in the shadow... I am in Jungian therapy. So the shadow is a lot longer than you think it is. A shadow actually encompasses quite a lot.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yes and Jung says the meeting with yourself is at first the meeting with your shadow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
In any kind of self awareness, the first step is your have to be able to face your shadow. And of course the shadow, in my classes I would always tell my students, because I taught this course called Myth & Archetype for many years, I would say whatever is the most shameful, guilt- ridden thing you can say about yourself, something you would never reveal even to your most intimate friend, is not the shadow. The shadow is something that is so abhorrent to everything you consciously think and all the values you hold that you can't even admit it's a part of yourself. And that again is something you confront but it's necessary to confront that. And true crime is one of the ways that helps people come face to face with it even though they're not consciously acknowledging that again they're dreaming those things that these wicked men are really doing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very interesting. Also we're kinda hitting now too because we cover what we call in our terms Heavy Hitters, these kind of fascinating serial killer figures that we want to investigate. And we're discovering because of the years we've been doing this, I feel like there are some crimes like the Bath School Massacre that are so bad no one wants to get into it, we're starting to come up against well like the guys that are kind of left that we're starting to kind of cover, each one's worse than the last one.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're having a hard time finding a proper source for the Toolbox Killers, right. And then it's because as soon as you look into it you're like oh, this is pretty unpleasant. I could see why there's not a lot of focus on this story.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Yeah, there was someone that you covered in the book, Gary Heidnik?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Is it Gary Heidnik? Yeah, I'd actually never heard about that story in the full detail. And it's about a man who kidnaps women and keeps them chained up in his basement and one of them dies and he grinds her up into meat and feeds the remains to other women. I'd never heard of him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not cool.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Heidnik had one of my two favorite defenses of any criminal. Heidnik's defense, you say he lured these women into his home and chained them in the basement and tortured them in various ways. His defense when he was arrested was the women were there when he moved in.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly I was trying to get them to leave!
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They didn't wanna go!
HAROLD SCHECHTER
My second favorite defense of all time was a few years ago, probably a decade or so ago, a woman, I think it was in Miami, it was somewhere in Florida. A woman collapsed on the street and this homeless guy immediately started sexually assaulting her. And his defense was I thought she was dead.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What are you gonna do, officer?
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly. And they're all like we have to let him go. We have to let him go. I thought she was dead! God, it takes every kind.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well last week we just did a full series on necrophiliacs. We went real deep in the world of necrophilia.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hard. Yeah, we went... Ugh god.
MARCUS PARKS
We went into 10 subdivisions of necrophiliacs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But there's something about that type of crime that's also very interesting because unless it's tacked on to some other serious crime, like even other serial murder, you don't hear a heck of a lot about it because it seems it's pretty gross.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah. And necrophilia, I mean there aren't really laws against it. I mean there are laws against violating graves and so on and so forth. I'm not sure that there are specific-
MARCUS PARKS
I found 40 states have laws on the books about necrophilia but there's no federal statute for it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think it's why droves of people are moving to Arkansas.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
I stand corrected.
MARCUS PARKS
It wasn't on the books in California until 2004.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Wow, okay. Well yeah, I know I've done some research into it. I mean it was just rereading stuff about Sergeant Bertrand who I'm sure you covered.
MARCUS PARKS
We absolutely did.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
So I believe that was a case where somebody first coined the term necrophilia.
MARCUS PARKS
Yup.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
So yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You should do that book. You should do that book.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah bro, you should do that book.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do that book! Honestly I would love it. Can I just ask you to do various topics so that I can read more about them?
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah. There is a very good book on Bertrand but it's in French. I'm sorry.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can't read European.
MARCUS PARKS
This is a question that we had on the show that maybe you can weigh in on is that when we were putting together the story of necrophilia and putting together like kind of a murderer's row of necrophiliacs, the majority of them were French. Why?
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Well, you know, I mean, you know how the French feel about having sex with women.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're very liberal.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah. I mean I can only assume that it is part of the French attitude toward l'amour. Like I know Pepé Le Pew was canceled recently.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly, finally.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah. I mean I don't know if that had anything to do with that. But yes, I can't-
MARCUS PARKS
You heard it here first, ladies and gentlemen. Harold Schechter says Pepé Le Pew is a necrophiliac.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wouldn't put it past him.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
I wasn't totally sure why he was canceled, I'm just throwing that out there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's a touchy. He's a touchy.
MARCUS PARKS
He touches too much, yeah. Well I mean, man, this has been so great. This has been do much fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dude, this is so fucking great. Thank you so much for talking to us for so long.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you want to talk about...
MARCUS PARKS
I mean I know that you're working on another book right now or you just finished it you said, '50 States of Murder'.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
50 States of Murder'. So it's a book about... What I tried to do in it was there's very little about all the most notorious cases that are associated with certain states. I mean because who needs to read more about Charles Manson or Jeffrey Dahmer or even Gein? So what I tried to do was write about crimes that are very, very notorious within each state but are largely unknown to the rest of us, crimes that have entered into the annals, criminal annals of the state, gone into the criminal law of the state. So yeah, I mean there are over 250 cases I cover and most of them were new to me and many of them are very, very fascinating. Not sure exactly what the... I just handed the book in, not sure exactly. I'm thinking maybe it will be out in 2025.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's awesome.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
But I'm very, very proud of 'Murderabilia' and I'm really glad you guys liked it.
MARCUS PARKS
We love it.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Really glad you guys invited me to be on the show. It's always a great pleasure to talk to you guys.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're the best. So good. Looking forward to the book. Looking forward to your book on necrophilia. I'm looking forward-
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Actually it's funny you should say that, Erin Powell and I were actually thinking about doing a book on that subject, connecting it to Ed Gein. I'm not sure that that project is still a go, we're working on something else. But we did actually talk about necrophilia. You must know the case of Count von Cosel?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, Carl Tanzler.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's another talk about built for a comic book too.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's great for a comic book.
MARCUS PARKS
Very visual.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
So yeah. So Eric and I were batting that idea around, I don't know if something will come of it or not.
MARCUS PARKS
I'd love to see you guys collaborate again. Like 'Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done?' was my favorite graphic novel of the year.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So good.
MARCUS PARKS
It's so good. So yeah, I'd love for you guys to. I vote yes over here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Carl Tanzler! Carl Tanzler! Everyone's favorite romantic.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Marcus, just your favorite graphic novel of the year?
MARCUS PARKS
Okay, of all time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See, good. Shame him. Thank you Mr. Schechter for your wisdom and your time.
HAROLD SCHECHTER
Thank you very much.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What a fascinating interview.
MARCUS PARKS
Always a fascinating time with our good friend Harold Schechter. We want to thank him so much for coming onto the show and gracing us with his presence once again. He's always a treasure guest and a treasured part of the true crime community.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's wonderful. So check out his new book 'Murderabilia' and check us out on twitch. tv/LPNTV. Obviously we're off this week but we're gonna be rolling back with new stuff. And then a bunch of new shows in January, which I'm really excited for. And check out Operation Sunshine #2.
MARCUS PARKS
It is out in stores right now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. So get that in your local comic book store. We're going to Australia and New Zealand. Go check out our tour tickets at lastpodcastlive.com. It's gonna be great. Can't wait. And hail sweet Satan.
MARCUS PARKS
And hail Gein, Why don't ya?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail me, you turkeys!
MARCUS PARKS
You're all a bunch of turkeys.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You greasy turkeys.
MARCUS PARKS
You stuffings.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ugh.
MARCUS PARKS
You stuffings. What's wrong with the stuffings?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ugh.
MARCUS PARKS
You like it.