S3 Ep17: The Double Indemnity Murder

Crimes of the Centuries

Amber Hunt and Audioboom

True Crime, Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.6 • 3.8K Ratings

🗓️ 17 July 2023

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When Ruth Snyder began having an affair with a married corset salesman, Henry Judd Gray, in Queens, New York, in 1925, things soon turned deadly. Ruth convinced Henry to assist her in killing her husband, clumsily staging the murder as an attempted robbery. In today's episode we explore how Ruth Snyder and Henry Judd Gray became known as the Double Indemnity killers, and how the murder of Albert Snyder inspired a genre-defining film.

"Crimes of the Centuries" is a podcast from the Obsessed Network exploring forgotten crimes from times past that made a mark and helped change history.

Follow us on Instagram and Twitter: @centuriespod

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Some crimes are so heartbreaking or shocking that they change laws, change society, or even
0:14.5	earn the label crime of the century.
0:18.5	But the stories that made headlines and decades passed aren't necessarily remembered today.
0:25.1	I remember Hunt, a journalist and author, and in each episode of this show, I'll examine
0:30.2	a case that's maybe lesser known today, but was huge when it happened.
0:36.7	This is crimes of the centuries.
0:48.5	The crowds of spectators began arriving while it was still daylight outside.
0:53.5	The onlookers were a motley crew of nearby townspeople, reporters, and off-duty prison
0:59.1	guards sprawled outside the main gate of New York's infamous Sing Sing prison, about 30
1:05.0	miles north of New York City and the town of Osning.
1:09.5	They began gathering before word had even officially come down that two of the country's
1:14.1	most infamous convicts had definitively exhausted all avenues of appeal.
1:20.1	Inside the prison, Barbara Vincent de Stefano shaved Judd Gray's face and clipped a patch
1:25.7	of hair from the back of his head, before moving on to Gray's former lover, Ruth Snyder.
1:31.8	There, the barber supervised as matron Lilian Hickey snipped a matching bald spot on the
1:37.5	back of Ruth's head.
1:39.6	Outside, people kept arriving, some from neighboring states.
1:43.8	As relayed in the book The Double and Demnity Murder, quote,
1:47.5	100 private motor cars were parked in two rows, many with their lights on illuminating
1:52.9	the strange scene.
1:54.9	Four guards stood outside the gate to keep order.
1:57.9	Babies cried, children wailed, young couples on dates, necked, and sipped from hip flasks.
	...

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