Terror Talk: True Crime, Serial Killers and Horror

Who did H.H. Holmes actually kill, and why did a Philadelphia detective have to search two countries to find out?
⚠️ Trigger warning: this episode discusses the murder of children.
In the summer of 1895, detective Frank Geyer walked the streets of Toronto with a photograph and a box of letters three children wrote to their mother, letters Holmes never mailed. Therapists Shannon and Cathy go through the victims the record can support, the insurance scheme that killed Benjamin Pitezel, and the coercive control that kept a mother and her children apart in the same cities.
CHAPTERS
0:00 Frank Geyer in Toronto, 1895
0:50 Welcome back
1:55 Julia and Pearl Conner, Christmas Eve 1891
3:28 Emeline Cigrand, the secretary
4:50 The heavy trunk and the badly typed letter
6:48 Emily Van Tassel, possible victim
8:01 Minnie and Nannie Williams
10:10 Idealization, extraction, erasure
13:52 July 4, 1893: the Ferris wheel and the last sighting
17:35 Anna Betts, claimed but not confirmed
18:07 Expressive vs. instrumental homicide
20:21 Benjamin Pitezel, Holmes's right-hand man
21:07 St. Louis, H.M. Howard and train robber Marion Hedgepeth
23:09 1316 Callowhill Street: the insurance scheme becomes murder
25:04 Fidelity Mutual pays out
25:53 The dark triad
29:07 Horror Facts with Holmes
30:26 Carrie Pitezel and the children
32:46 The children's letters
34:34 Detroit, and "Howard is not with us now"
37:44 Coercive control
41:19 Burlington and the nitroglycerin
42:04 Why children trust the adult they're handed to
43:14 Amnesia, Gilmanton and Georgiana
45:37 Arrested in Boston on a Texas horse theft warrant
46:12 Frank Geyer follows the letters
47:07 16 St. Vincent Street, Toronto
48:18 Irvington, Indiana
49:05 Why did H.H. Holmes kill?
49:57 Next week: the trial
IN THIS EPISODE:
• Julia and Pearl Conner, Emeline Cigrand, and Minnie and Nannie Williams
• Emily Van Tassel and Anna Betts: the names on the legend's list the record can't support
• Benjamin Pitezel, the B.F. Perry insurance scheme, and the $10,000 Fidelity Mutual payout
• Marion Hedgepeth, the train robber Holmes stiffed out of $500
• Carrie Pitezel and her children Alice, Nellie and Howard
• The letters the children wrote home, and the detective who followed them
• Arrested in Boston, November 17, 1894
• What Frank Geyer found in Toronto and Irvington in the summer of 1895
CLINICAL TERMS: instrumental vs. expressive homicide, dark triad, Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, coercive control, Biderman's chart of coercion, isolation, monopolization of perception, intermittent reinforcement, idealization, discard, attachment
H.H. HOLMES SERIES:
• Part 1: The Man Who Invented Himself (Nov 4)
• Part 2: the victims, Benjamin Pitezel, and the detective who searched two countries for three children (you are here)
• Part 3: the trial, the 27-murder confession, Jack the Ripper, and the grave (Nov 18)
CORRECTIONS• 2:10: Julia Conner's husband was Ned (Icilius) Conner, who ran the jewelry counter in Holmes's drugstore, not a Dr. Lawrence Conner.
📚 The full reference list for this episode is on Patreon.

Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes.

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Was H.H. Holmes's Murder Castle real, or did the newspapers build it?
Herman Webster Mudgett, better known as H.H. Holmes, was born in Gilmanton, New Hampshire, in 1861 and arrived in Chicago in 1886 with a new name and a talent for paperwork. Therapists Shannon and Cathy go back to what can actually be proven, run him through the diathesis-stress model and Cleckley's mask of sanity, and walk you through the building everyone calls the Murder Castle to show you what was really inside.
CHAPTERS
0:00 The Murder Castle story you've heard, and why it's mostly not true
1:03 Welcome: the first of three episodes on H.H. Holmes
2:13 Herman Webster Mudgett, Gilmanton, New Hampshire, 1861
4:43 Do hard childhoods make killers? "Hurt people hurt people"
7:07 Nahum Wight, the town's dissection doctor
8:50 Tears, important friends and a sad story
11:33 Clara Lovering, wife number one
13:14 Medical school, and the insurance scheme he "dreamed up"
14:49 "I firmly believe that he would commit murder"
15:46 The diathesis-stress model
18:01 Chicago, 1886: Herman Mudgett becomes H.H. Holmes
19:26 Dr. Elizabeth Holton's drugstore, and the widow who didn't vanish
22:05 Myrta Belknap, wife number two
25:04 Antisocial personality disorder and financial exploitation
28:58 Horror Facts with Holmes
30:37 63rd and Wallace, and a $75 bill for the roof
32:21 The 1893 World's Fair and the Sweeney Todd myth
34:44 The fire, H.S. Campbell and the insurance trap
35:53 Hervey Cleckley's The Mask of Sanity
40:09 Jung's persona: personas instead of a self
42:47 Inside the "Murder Castle": what the 1895 search actually found
47:53 Why did we need a castle?
49:23 The bodies weren't a myth, and what's coming in Part 2

IN THIS EPISODE:
• Herman Webster Mudgett's childhood, and the skeleton story he told about himself
• The abusive-father story, and what historian Adam Selzer found in the newspapers
• Nahum Wight's dissection room, and the teaching job Holmes cried his way into
• Clara Lovering and Myrta Belknap, two of three wives he never divorced
• The fake-death insurance idea he blamed on a dead classmate
• Dr. Elizabeth Holton's drugstore, and the legend that she vanished (she didn't)
• 63rd and Wallace: unpaid builders, lawsuits and furniture hidden from creditors
• The 1893 World's Fair, the hotel he never ran, and the H.S. Campbell insurance trap
• Legend vs. record: gas chambers, trapdoors, a body chute, and what the 1895 search actually found
• How the newspapers turned a fraud into a "castle"

CLINICAL TERMS: diathesis-stress model, antisocial personality disorder, psychopathy, Hervey Cleckley, the mask of sanity, Carl Jung, persona, identity manipulation, compartmentalization, white-collar offending

H.H. HOLMES SERIES:
• Part 1: The Man Who Invented Himself (you are here)
• Part 2: the victims, Benjamin Pitezel, and the detective who searched two countries for three children (Nov 11)
• Part 3: the trial, the 27-murder confession, Jack the Ripper, and the grave (Nov 18)

CORRECTIONS
• 22:05: Holmes married Myrta Belknap in January 1887, not 1886. 1886 is the year he arrived in Chicago.
• 33:06: The Devil in the White City (Erik Larson, 2003) is narrative nonfiction, not a novel. The point stands, though: historians including Adam Selzer argue its Holmes chapters lean on the legend.

📚 The full reference list for this episode is on Patreon.

Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes.

🎧 Support the show and get bonus episodes on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/cw/terrortalk
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How did Lizzie Borden walk out of court a free woman, and why are we still arguing about it more than 130 years later?
⚠️ Trigger warning: This episode includes discussions of murder, graphic violence, and speculation about sexual abuse. Listener discretion is advised.
On August 4, 1892, Andrew and Abby Borden were killed with a hatchet in their home in Fall River, Massachusetts. Their daughter Lizzie was tried and acquitted. Now Ryan Murphy's Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story has brought the case back, alongside Countess Elizabeth Báthory and Aileen Wuornos.
Therapists Shannon and Cathy separate the record from the myth and ask how ideas about women shaped the verdict, the nursery rhyme and the Netflix series.
CHAPTERS:
0:00 More than 130 years of Lizzie Borden
0:42 Just watched Monster? Here's what happened
1:13 Cara Robertson's The Trial of Lizzie Borden
3:06 The rhyme versus the record
4:46 Why Ryan Murphy's version works
6:12 The acquittal, and why she stayed in Fall River
8:29 "How could the deed be done by a woman?" Anchoring bias
12:21 Andrew Borden
14:23 Abby Durfee Gray Borden
17:57 Father, daughter, stepmother: the real relationships
19:46 Lizzie and Bridget Sullivan
21:23 Countess Elizabeth Báthory
24:13 Aileen Wuornos
25:13 Axey Facts with Cath
26:36 What we know about Lizzie's psychology
30:48 The series and its cast
35:08 Parricide and women who kill
36:09 How fictional is Monster?
38:10 Nineteen blows and ten: reading the overkill
40:19 "Nothing new to say about female rage"
42:31 Axey Facts answers
IN THIS EPISODE:
• Cara Robertson's The Trial of Lizzie Borden and Edmund Pearson on a case "without parallel"
• Abby took 18 to 19 blows and Andrew 10 to 11, not 40 and 41
• The handleless hatchet, the burned blue dress and Andrew's locked doors
• Maplecroft, animal welfare and 34 years in Fall River after the verdict
• Bridget Sullivan, and why there's no evidence of a romance or an accomplice
• The 2018 film Lizzie and the origins of the affair theory
• Nance O'Neil, the actress Lizzie befriended after the trial
• The Báthory blood bath legend, first recorded a century after her death
• Ella Beatty, Charlie Hunnam, Rebecca Hall, Billie Lourd, Vicky Krieps, Jessica Barden and Sarah Paulson
CLINICAL TERMS: female psychopathy, anchoring bias, parricide, expressive and instrumental homicide, overkill, reactive and predatory violence, dissociation, emotional numbing, compartmentalization, grief, HCR-20 risk assessment
CORRECTIONS:
• The jury deliberated about 90 minutes, not 40.
• When Abby was killed, Bridget Sullivan was outside washing windows. She went up to rest in her attic room after Andrew came home, before his murder.
• Monster was created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, not Brad Falchuk.
SOURCES: Robertson, C. (2019) The Trial of Lizzie Borden · Pearson, E. L. (1937) Trial of Lizzie Borden · Netflix (2026) Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story · Famous Trials (UMKC) Borden chronology. Full APA list on Patreon.
Where it all started: our first take on the case, from Season 1, newly remastered.
PROFILE: Lizzie Borden, The Fall River Axe Murders Part 1
PROFILE: Lizzie Borden, The Fall River Axe Murders Part 2: The Trial
Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes.
PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/cw/terrortalk
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The Conjuring universe keeps asking one question: why do we need the devil to have done it?

⚠️ Trigger warning: This episode includes discussions of murder, the deaths of children, possession, and allegations of child sexual abuse and domestic violence. Listener discretion is advised.

In 1981 in Brookfield, Connecticut, Arne Cheyenne Johnson's lawyer wanted to tell a jury the devil made him kill. Ed and Lorraine Warren were ready to back him. The judge said no, and forty years later the defense became the title of The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It.

Therapists Shannon and Cathy put James Wan's Conjuring universe on the couch: possession as a language for trauma, the Warrens as a secure base, and why it's easier to fight a demon than face what's inside us.

CHAPTERS:
0:00 The devil made me do it
0:48 Why we need evil to be outside of us
3:03 The Perron family and The Conjuring
3:38 Enfield, the Hodgsons and The Conjuring 2
4:51 What a supernatural explanation gives a family
8:32 Possession as a language of trauma
9:53 The Nun and The Nun II
12:27 Children and the failure to protect
13:46 Annabelle, Annabelle Creation and Annabelle Comes Home
15:25 Ed and Lorraine as a secure base
19:22 Why do we believe the Warrens?
21:41 The Judith Penney allegations
24:10 Valak and evil that wears the face of goodness
31:11 Why James Wan makes films about needing demons
32:34 Malignant: the one time the monster was inside

IN THIS EPISODE:
• The Conjuring (2013), The Conjuring 2 (2016), The Devil Made Me Do It (2021) and Last Rites (2025)
• Annabelle (2014), Annabelle: Creation (2017), Annabelle Comes Home (2019), The Curse of La Llorona (2019), The Nun (2018) and The Nun II (2023)
• Andrea Perron's account of the Perron haunting in Harrisville, Rhode Island
• Janet Hodgson and Guy Lyon Playfair on the Enfield poltergeist
• Arne Cheyenne Johnson and the possession defense a judge refused to hear
• William Weber, the Lutzes and the Amityville "bottles of wine"
• Judith Penney's 2014 sworn declaration about Ed Warren, never tested in court
• The Nun's release weeks after the 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report on clergy abuse
CLINICAL TERMS: externalization, possession and dissociation, therapeutic alliance, validation, Bowlby's secure base, emotional attunement, trauma response, institutional abuse, covert narcissism, protective factors, introspection, shame
CORRECTIONS:
• Lindsay Clancy's children were strangled, not drowned, and her defense was postpartum psychosis, not possession. Her trial ended in a mistrial in September 2026.
• The denial of Judith Penney's account came from Lorraine Warren's attorney, not the Warrens' daughter and son-in-law. No criminal case was brought; the claims surfaced in 2017 through litigation over the franchise, after Ed Warren's 2006 death.
SERIES: James Wan Part 2 of 2. Part 1: PROFILE: James Wan, Saw, Insidious & The Conjuring Part 1.
SOURCES: People (September 1979) · federal court ruling (1979) · The Hollywood Reporter (2017) · Pennsylvania grand jury report (2018)
Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes.
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How does James Wan turn an ordinary family home into the scariest place in the movie, and why does it work on audiences who think they've seen everything?

Spoiler warning: we discuss endings, including Saw's.

James Wan, the Malaysian-born Australian filmmaker behind Saw, Insidious and The Conjuring, redefined 21st century horror on budgets that started with a puppet built in his own apartment. Cathy leads this Part 1 on the craft: how Wan builds fear like architecture.

Therapists Shannon and Cathy break down why we sit down to horror wanting to be manipulated, and how Wan does it to a jaded modern audience the way a panic attack does it to the body: never the same way twice.

CHAPTERS:
0:00 James Wan and the architecture of fear
1:18 Sundance and the Saw screening
2:05 Who is James Wan?
4:48 Horror like a panic attack
7:15 Saw, Dead Silence, Insidious, The Conjuring and beyond
10:34 Fun facts: the Splat Pack and how Billy was built
14:36 Bringing back 70s torture horror, with characters you care about
16:16 Haunted houses and haunted dolls
18:49 Doing more with less
20:11 The house as a trap
23:08 Which house would you refuse to sleep in?
27:30 Suspense like a blueprint
28:44 Long shots, silence and The Changeling
30:07 Lighting, and fearing what you can't see
33:02 The geometry of a James Wan jump scare
36:02 Halloween's schoolyard scene and false safety
37:36 The Insidious demon reveal
39:28 Lightning round
42:08 Coming up in Part 2

IN THIS EPISODE:
- Saw (2004), Dead Silence (2007), Insidious (2010), The Conjuring (2013), Furious 7 (2015), Aquaman (2018) and Malignant (2021)
- Saw II's needle pit and the reverse bear trap
- Leigh Whannell, Tobin Bell, Lin Shaye and Donnie Wahlberg
- The Splat Pack: Eli Roth, Rob Zombie and Alexandre Aja
- The real Raggedy Ann behind Annabelle
- Why Wan starts every haunting in comfort: the cinematic equivalent of love bombing
- Long takes and the micro delay versus rapid cuts and the fake-out jump scare
- Misdirection, negative space and the threat outside the frame
- The Changeling (1980), Black Christmas (1974), Se7en (1995), Poltergeist (1982) and John Carpenter's Halloween (1978)
- Which household object would haunt you in a Wan film

CLINICAL TERMS: fear response, panic attacks, panic disorder, habituation, hypervigilance, love bombing, abusive dynamics, projection, safe and sacred space, psychology of horror

SERIES: James Wan Part 1 of 2. Part 2 takes on The Conjuring universe through six psychological questions.

Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes.

🎧 LISTEN TO THE FULL PODCAST APPLE PODCASTS: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/terror-talk-true-crime-serial-killers-and-horror/id1435529687
SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/07JEm5Qm7cohukkEUOYt7P
PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/cw/terrortalk
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrortalkpodcast/
📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/newterrortalkpodcast
🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dark.psychology.girls?_r=18_t=ZT-99iWlxm05in

🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising