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

Let's Go To Court!

True Crime, History, Comedy

4.8 • 4.8K Ratings

🗓️ 28 March 2018

⏱️ 97 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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.

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

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	One semester of law school. One semester of criminal justice. Two experts. I'm Kristen Pitts. I'm Brandy Egan. Let's go to court. On this episode I'll talk about con artist Cassie Chadwick, who told a lie so big that almost no one questioned it until they did.
0:20.0	And I'll be talking about the blue-eyed butcher, the Texas woman accused of stabbing her husband to death.
0:25.7	Was she a battered woman or was she just after his life insurance?
0:31.8	I am so excited about my case this week. I can't wait to hear about it. This is a
0:38.1	totally nuts story and this is the second week in a row where I've researched something, read about it, and been like,
0:45.3	that's it, I'm going to dedicate my entire life to this. And then I forget about it in two days.
0:51.1	Okay, so I'm going to talk about Cassie. I forget about it in two days.
0:53.0	Okay, so I'm going to talk about Cassie Chadwick,
0:56.6	or was it Elizabeth Bigley?
0:58.6	Oh, or Emily Heathcliff, who the hell knows. I love these names. I left out Marie La Rose, but I thought
1:09.5	it rhymed with who the hell knows and I really didn't want to do that.
1:14.3	You didn't want to be too, right?
1:15.6	I didn't want to be too cute about it, you know?
1:17.6	Because it's such a serious podcast.
1:19.4	Very serious podcast.
1:20.6	Back to the business.
1:21.8	Okay. So what we do know about Cassie Chadwick is she's one of the most famous con artists of all time, at least in my mind. I think she should be the most famous because in the late 1800s
1:37.4	she talked banks and people out of millions of dollars.
1:43.2	Holy shit.
1:44.2	In the late 1800s.
1:45.2	Holy shit.
1:46.8	Yes.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Let's Go To Court!, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Let's Go To Court! and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.