 adds her to during the podcast that are not in my voice or placed by third-party agencies outside of my control and should not imply an endorsement by Weird Darkness or myself. Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. In the eerie depths of Wisconsin's haunted past lies the story of the Morris Pratt Institute. Born from a vow whispered amidst the ethereal whispers of a séance, this strange establishment emerged as a beacon of spiritualism, casting a chilling shadow over the town of whitewater. From its inception, the Institute was shrouded in mystery and macabre tales. Morris Pratt's solemn pledge, sealed in the ghostly embrace of the unknown, beckoned forth dark forces to weave their tendrils into the fabric of reality. With the aid of Mary Hayes Chinoweth, a conduit for other worldly powers, Pratt's vision materialized into a grand edifice, a temple to the spirits that prowled the fringes of the living world. Within the Institute's hallowed halls, students delved into the arcane arts, their minds ensnared by whispers from beyond the grave. Yet, as the shadows deepened and the veil between worlds grew thinner, whispers turned to wails and the spirits unleashed their wrath upon the unsuspecting. Through the Great Depression, the Institute began to fall apart, yet even in its darkest hour, the echoes of spectral voices persisted, guiding the Institute to a new home in the heart of Milwaukee, a city cloaked in secrets darker than the grave. But Whitewater, forever marked by the Institute's ghostly legacy, has remained a nexus of the supernatural. From haunted cemeteries to whispered tales of unholy rites, the town's streets still pulse with an otherworldly energy. Shadows continue to dance to the tune of unseen spirits in Whitewater's streets, and the veil between worlds grows even thinner. The legend of the Morris Pratt Institute, a chilling reminder of the spectral forces that lurk in the shadows, will likely continue to haunt this town for eternity, its secrets forever intertwined with the fabric of the supernatural. I'm Darren Marlar, and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome, Weirdos. This is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. Coming up in this episode… The Wild West had many drifters with troubled pasts. One found himself at the heart of one of the most infamous crimes in American history. Ben Kuhl went from horse theft to stagecoach robbery to murder, from notoriety to infamy, all in pursuit of elusive riches, finally arrested and convicted due to a bloody handprint. Fred West was just a regular boy, or so it seemed. But behind closed doors, in reality, he was becoming evil incarnate and upon meeting his future wife Rose, it only expanded his predatory predilections. Fred and Rose descended from petty crimes to unspeakable horrors of rape and murder even of the most young and innocent. From their house of horrors, the depths of their depravity was acted out, hidden from sight. But as the walls closed in and the truth emerged, the true horror of their crimes was laid bare. But first, Whitewater Legend says that the bizarre experiments conducted at the Morris Pratt Institute of Spiritualism in Wisconsin to communicate with the dead have left the town cursed by witches and haunted by restless spirits. It is no wonder it has garnered the nickname of Second Salem. We begin there. If you are new here, welcome to the show. While you are listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com for merchandise. To visit sponsors you hear about during the show, sign up for my newsletter and our contests. Connect with me on social media. Hear my other podcasts, including Church of the Undead and a sci-fi podcast called Auditory Anthology. Listen to free audiobooks I've narrated. Plus, you can visit the Hope in the Darkness page if you are struggling with depression, dark thoughts or addiction. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. The Morris Pratt Institute, singular of birth, unusual of purpose, sheds a weird intellectual light in a world of great darkness, according to historian Fred L. Holmes, who wrote this in 1939. The school attempts to radioize the students, he said, to catch the spirit messages from the world of the ether. Wisconsin is a long way from spiritualism's 1848 birthplace in the home of the Fox sisters in Hidesville, New York, but it wasn't long before it became one of the most important centers for the practice in the country. Madison, Milwaukee, and the Fox Valley area were all home to large spiritualist communities by the late 1800s. One of Wisconsin's earliest supporters of spiritualism was Nathaniel P. Tallmadge, a senator from New York who was appointed the third governor of the Wisconsin Territory by President John Tyler in 1844. Tallmadge had recently purchased land in the territory in preparation for his retirement, but he decided to move his family there when he accepted the governorship. Nathaniel and Abby Tallmadge's 19-year-old son, William, visited from law school to see the family's new home in the spring of 1845. He fell in love with a large hill on the property, telling his family that one day, when he died, he wanted to be buried there. Just two weeks later, William's life came to an abrupt and unexpected end, and he was buried in his spot at the top of the hill. By 1853, Nathaniel was a devout spiritualist. In a book published that year, a letter Tallmadge wrote to one of the authors, described how his youngest daughter Emily, then 13 years old, was being taught by spirits to play the piano. Morris Pratt, another New York native, emigrated to Wisconsin in the 1850s. He built a successful farm in the Whitewater area, where he and a number of neighboring families who frequented the seances in Lake Mills, home of the legendary Rock Lake Pyramids, would host renowned mediums from around the country to commune with their dead loved ones in their homes. Pratt was known to engage in frequent arguments with ministers who criticized spiritualism. He was forcibly ejected from a church on more than one occasion. Frustrated, he wished for a way to teach what he believed were the scientific truths of the spirit life. During a seance in the early 1880s, Pratt vowed that if he ever became wealthy, he would dedicate much of his money to spiritualism. To his good fortune, a powerful mystic was present that day whose psychic abilities would soon help him achieve his goals. In 1853, a 27-year-old schoolteacher in Waterloo named Mary Hayes Chenoweth had an experience that changed her life forever. She was in the kitchen of the family farm where she lived with her parents when she felt something she described as a force take control of her body. Mary felt herself dropped to her knees and she began to pray in a language neither she nor her father nearby could recognize. The force told her that she would spend the rest of her life healing others. Afterwards, she discovered she had the ability to peer into the bodies of the sick, to see the diseases ailing them and remove them. She learned how to take the sickness into her own body which would cause her to break out into blisters and rashes but otherwise didn't harm her. Spirit knocking and other supernatural phenomena were being practiced by mediums across the country in exchange for money. Mary believed those were mostly hoaxes and did no such thing. She began accepting sick visitors into her home as well as traveling around Wisconsin healing people for free. She believed she needed to use this power given to her by God to help those in need rather than faking spirit communication to make money from the grieving. Mrs. Hayes was not a medium, her son J.O. Hayes wrote in 1938. In her young womanhood she became very much interested in the question of man's immortality and prayed for two years very earnestly and devotedly that she might know the truth regarding it. As a result of this effort, she passed through an experience somewhat similar to that of Jesus in the wilderness as recorded in the Bible. She spoke in tongues unknown to her. She restored those possessed to a normal condition and did untold miraculous things that cannot be explained by the use of any ordinary human methods. From that time until her death, a large part of her time was given to healing the sick and she did this without charge or financial compensation. Pratt's vow captured Mary's attention. She had been attending seances in Lake Mills and Whitewater at the recommendation of her friend Warren Chase. Chase published a weekly newspaper called The Spiritual Telegraph and discredited with being the first to spread spiritualism around Wisconsin and Illinois. He had expressed to Mary a desire to open a school in the area. Do you intend, if made wealthy, to carry out your promise? Mary asked Pratt. Pratt confirmed that he meant what he said. He would use his money to support the movement of spiritualism. Mary then told Pratt, along with her two sons who were lawyers with interests in mining, to invest in a barren and seemingly worthless tract of land in northern Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Mary claimed to have been guided to this land by her controlling spirit, an old German professor, while in a trance. Pratt and Mary's sons did as Mary instructed. The Hayes Brothers Company, with Pratt as a stockholder, bought the land, opened the Ashland iron mine and began digging. The land yielded nothing for the first couple of years. Pratt came to Mary with doubts on several occasions, but she urged him to be patient. Then in 1886, a discovery was made. The land Mary recommended was found to be the heart of the massive Gogebek Iron Range and was filled with high-grade Bessemer ore, some of the best in the region. Pratt and the Hayes Brothers became wealthy practically overnight. Pratt set out to fulfill his promise without hesitation. In 1888, he laid the foundation for a building in Whitewater without knowing exactly what purpose it would serve. He just told people it would be used in the interests of spiritualism. Locals scoffed. The construction became known around town as Pratt's folly, but Pratt didn't back down. I made a vow before I made my investment that I would erect a temple to the spirit world with a shade of the profits I was to realize, he told his detractors, and I intend to do so. Upon its completion, Pratt and his wife left their farm and moved in to occupy several rooms within the ornate three-story building. They held public seances there for many years before Pratt decided to make Whitewater the mecca of modern spiritualism by opening the world's only school dedicated to the study of the spirit world. In 1902, while making plans to open the school, Pratt's health began to give out. He reportedly gave the deed to the estate to seven spiritualists, a sort of board of trustees whose names have never been accounted for in any written documentation. Pratt died just a few months later. His funeral was presided over by a man named Moses Hull, a former Seventh Day Adventist minister turned spiritualist whom Pratt had tapped to carry out his plans for the school. In his discourse, Mr. Hull gave the spiritualist's idea of death and the spirit world, a paper reported of the funeral. He claimed the death was neither to be dreaded nor feared, it is as natural as any events in life, in fact it is only a birth out of the physical body into the spiritual world. Hull carried out Pratt's wishes and the doors of the Morris Pratt Institute opened the following year. The terrible loss of life in the civil war that fueled America's interest in spiritualism had faded by the time the school opened, but there were still some who sought to learn the art of talking to the dead. Students came from around the country to study general subjects like mathematics, history, grammar and literature as well as the philosophy of spiritualism and psychic culture. It had living quarters and facilities for up to 50 students, seeing as many as 45 at a time at its height from 1910 to 1915. The school was known by that time to apprehensive whitewater residents as the Spook Temple. Still, the curious public showed up when the doors opened every Sunday evening for seances or education electures like the 1924 program Medium Ship Explained. On the walls hung spiritualist iconography, memorials to the original Hidesville community and artwork like the piece Fred L. Holmes described when he visited in the 1930s, a painting of a beautiful woman who, according to the medium, returned from the spiritual world to speak for a moment to earthly loved ones and tarry long enough to be sketched. The third floor, however, was off limits to everyone but members of the spiritualist church. That space was a hallowed chamber where everything was painted white, a space not to be profaned by a non-believer and editor of a local newspaper once described. He too had been denied access to the room. Famous Chicago lawyer Clarence Darrow, known for his agnostic beliefs, once visited the institute. Of his experience there, he said he was unconvinced but mystified. Funding for the Morris Pratt Institute dried up during the Depression, forcing the school to close its doors in 1932. It reopened a few years later but to considerably fewer students than before. Interest in spiritualism had long since faded. The institute sold the building in 1946. The new owners briefly opened it as a rest home for aged spiritualists. Later it was used as a girl's dormitory for the nearby Wisconsin Teachers College. It was torn down in 1961 and replaced by a new office for the Wisconsin Telephone Company on the corner of Center Street and Fremont. Recalling the paranormal history of the town, a 1981 issue of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater newspaper, the Royal Purple, wrote, Long distance communication with the dead had been replaced by long distance calls to the living. But that was not the end of the Morris Pratt Institute. After selling the building and Whitewater, the school moved to Milwaukee where it still exists today, remaining one of the few places in the world along with Wisconsin's Wanna Walk Spiritualist Camp dedicated to the study and practice of psychic phenomena such as telepathy, clairvoyance, mediumship and psychic surgery. Horse offerings include claircentience, psychometry, spirit photography, materialization and dematerialization, teleportation and apportation, the history of the human aura, levitation and out-of-body experiences. Graduates, go on to serve in one of more than 90 churches and camps around the country that belong to the National Spiritualist Association. No matter how many years have passed since Pratt's Spirit House was raised, Whitewater was forged from the earliest of its traditions and remains haunted by the superstitions of its practices. Whitewater today is so steeped in legends of ghosts and witchcraft that it has come to be known as Second Salem. Rumors abound of dark rituals carried out in secret tunnels beneath the city and around the historic Stonewater Tower in Staren Park, said to be a place of great significance to the witches of Whitewater, of a forbidden book locked away in the basement of the Anderson Local Library, said to drive readers to madness and suicide and have a haunted triangle formed by the city's three cemeteries, the center of which is the original location of the Spook Temple. According to local lore, witnesses have seen a coven of witches conducting rituals around or inside the tower. This stigma only increased when the original fence was accidentally installed backwards. Spikes meant to deter trespassers were unintentionally pointing inward as if to keep something inside the tower from escaping. Whitewater legend says that every building is haunted with the nearly perfect isosceles triangle formed by the city's three cemeteries, a supernatural nexus of increased occult significance known as the witches' triangle. Whether it's due to seances or witchcraft is unclear, but it's within the cemeteries themselves that much of the town's bizarre history can be found. Legend says that an old crypt in Oak Grove Cemetery is the final resting place of Mary Worth, an axe-murdering witch who not only cursed the town when she was executed for her crimes but may have been the inspiration for certain bloody Mary legends. Her ghost can be seen wandering among the tombstones on Halloween. Oak Grove is also said to be the site of ritual sacrifices in the 19th century. Those who conducted the sacrifices, local loreses, were buried upright in the cemetery around their altar. According to some stories, the public receiving vault at Hillsdale Cemetery is the real grave of Mary Worth. Receiving vaults were used to store the bodies of those who died during the winter months until the ground thought enough to bury them, not for actual burials, but it does look like a fitting tomb for an axe-murdering witch. Other notable internments at Hillsdale include Sarah Posey, who may be haunting the Hamilton House, as well as Edward Shoud, the unfortunate husband of the poison widow Myrtle Shoud, and even Morris Pratt himself. For a man who dedicated his life to communion from beyond the grave, however, Pratt's grave is surprisingly quiet. In Calvary Cemetery, which borders the land once occupied by the Shoud Farm, it is now the UW Whitewater Sports Complex, is the grave of Nellie Horan, who may have poisoned her entire family. A few miles south of the city is Whitewater Lake, where fishermen in 1923 claimed a large creature with tentacles overturned their boat and dragged them under. They fought against it and eventually broke free but found themselves covered in small bite marks. Residents of Whitewater Lake also tell the story of a series of strange, unspecified events that happened over the summer of 1944. To make it stop, men from the area gathered at a small local cemetery where they are said to have dug up all the coffins there that had been buried vertically in the ground. The men brought the coffins back to the lake, weighed them down with rocks and threw them in. That put an end to whatever strange occurrences had been plaguing those who lived on the lake. Decades later, in 1992, three Whitewater students who were renting a house on the lake stumbled upon a late-night ritual being performed on the beach by four men dressed in strange black clothes. They were chanting and swaying. At first, the students just thought the men were drunk, but then a thick fog rolled in from the lake and a green light glowed through it. We heard the water start splashing in this deep gurgling noise, one of the students said. Their names were withheld from the reports as they were scared and wished to remain unidentified for their own safety. We all just looked at each other but then we heard this slurping sound and saw something coming out of the water. We ran like hell. Another resident also witnessed the incident and called the police. They weren't able to respond right away, but by the time they arrived in the morning, the group was gone. On the beach, however, they found the remains of the ritual, small bones and rocks arranged in strange patterns in the sand. Cult activity was suspected, which had also been prevalent in an area just a few miles away, where the beast of Bray Road was terrorizing residents of the Elkhorn community around the same time. It experiments to pierce the veil and reveal the mysteries of the spirit world inside Pratt's restricted inner sanctum open doors for sinister energies to take hold in Whitewater? Or is it that the town's unusual history, as it is whispered around the UW Whitewater campus year after year, filled with just enough mystery that our imaginations can't resist filling in the blanks? How much communication, if any, the students managed to experience between the spiritual world and themselves is unknown, the Whitewater Register wrote in 1972. We can be certain, however, that legends surrounding the Pratt Institute will be alive in Whitewater for many years to come. Up next, Fred West was just a regular boy, or so it seemed. But behind closed doors, in reality, he was becoming evil incarnate, and upon meeting his future wife Rose, it only expanded his predatory predilections. Fred and Rose descended from petty crimes to unspeakable horrors of rape and murder even of the most young and innocent. From their house of horrors, the depths of their depravity was acted out, hidden from sight. But as the walls closed in and the truth emerged, the true horror of their crimes was laid bare. That story and more when Weird Darkness returns. Strange creatures, gruesome murders, oozing organisms, unfathomable abductions, enigmatic expeditions, an age-old malevolence, and much more. Author J. C. Moore delivers a collection of dark horror tales that are both chilling and poignant. Dark Intrigue's book one is filled with horror fiction for fans of short story anthologies, horror collections, ghost fiction, suspense, possession, and more. Dark Intrigue's book one by J. C. Moore, available on Kindle or as an audiobook narrated by Darren Marlar. Find Dark Intrigue's book one on the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash audiobooks. A quick warning. The following story has graphic descriptions of violence and sexual abuse even of children. Listener discretion is advised. Fred West became one of the most horrific serial killers known to the United Kingdom. With he and future wife Rose responsible for the dismemberment and murder of women and young girls including two members of their own family. West was awaiting trial for 12 murders when he hung himself on January 1, 1995. Frederick West was born to Walter and Daisy West on September 29, 1941 in Muchmarkle and Herefordshire Village in England. Some say he seemed like any other young boy growing up, with his aunt eventually telling the press that he's always been such a nice boy. One neighbor described him as a bit cheeky, a bit mouthy, but that was the way these kids were. One of six children, West was reportedly his mother's favorite child. There have been reports however that cast a dark shadow on the West family. Some have claimed that West was sexually abused by his mother. West himself later told authorities that his father had incestuous relations with young girls although this was never substantiated. West didn't do well in school and eventually dropped out to become a farm laborer. When he was 17, a motorcycle accident left him comatose for a week with serious head injuries. A metal plate was placed in his head that may have affected his behavior and impulse control according to some experts. The young West incurred another head injury and possibly permanent brain damage upon falling off a fire escape at a local youth club. West's subsequent behavior was erratic and he became known to the police for various petty crimes. Then in 1961 he was accused of impregnating a 13-year-old girl who was a friend of the West's causing his banishment from the family home. He became a construction worker but was soon caught stealing from his employers and again having sex with minors. At his trial for the rape of the young family friend he escaped a jail sentence as it was claimed that he was suffering fits as a result of his head trauma but he was convicted of child molestation. He became involved with Rina Costello, a Scottish girl who had a police record for burglary and prostitution. At the time she was pregnant with another man's child. She and West were married in November 1962 and a child was born in March 1963 whom they called Charmaine. But trouble continued to brew as West's new job as an ice cream van driver gave him steady access to young teenagers who fell prey to his interests. In 1964, Rina bore West's child, daughter Anna Marie. It was also at this time that they met Anna McFall with some sources listing her first name as just Ann. McFall was a friend with whom they moved to Gloucester where West found a job in a slaughterhouse. According to some researchers this profession may have catalyzed his morbid obsession with death, mutilation and dismemberment. While living in Gloucester there were eight reported incidents of assault where the perpetrator's description fit West but he was not immediately linked to these crimes. The West marriage became increasingly unstable and Rina returned to Scotland leaving her children with West and McFall but she returned some months later to find them living together in a caravan. Early in 1967 McFall became pregnant with West's child urging him to divorce Rina and marry her instead. West, unwilling to do so, killed the pregnant McFall that July and buried her near the caravan park cutting off her fingers and toes a signature mutilation that was to become a common feature in his future crimes. Rina moved into the caravan following McFall's disappearance. Within six months of McFall's death West was linked to another disappearance that of 15-year-old Mary Bastholm who was abducted from a bus stop in Gloucester in January 1968 although only circumstantial evidence was ever produced to corroborate this. Then in November 1968 he became acquainted with Rose Letts who was to become his next wife and lifelong accomplice. Rosemary Rose Letts was born in Devon on November 29, 1953, the result of a difficult pregnancy with both of her parents suffering from mental illness. Electroconvulsive therapy administered to her pregnant mother for deep depression may have caused prenatal injury that contributed to Rose's poor school performance and bouts of aggression growing up. She also had a weight problem in adolescence and developed an interest in older men. The marriage of Rose's parents was a turbulent one. Her father was a paranoid schizophrenic prone to violent behavior serving as a terrifying dictatorial presence. Her mother Daisy moved out of the family home taking Rose with her. Rose however decided to move back in with her father again around the same time that she became intimate with West during her teens. Her father objected strongly to that relationship, resorting to contacting social services and threatening West directly, but to no avail. Rose was soon pregnant with West's child and found herself looking after his two children by Irina Costello when West was sent to prison on various petty theft and fine evasion charges. Rose gave birth to daughter Heather in 1970. It is thought that the pressure of caring for three children while still a child herself was a trigger for Rose's violent erratic tendencies, and it is believed that she murdered eight-year-old Charmaine, West's eldest child in 1971 during one of these outbursts. Whatever the true circumstances, Charmaine suddenly disappeared. As West was in jail at the time, it is likely that her body was hidden by Rose until West's release. He was then thought to have moved the body, again removing the fingers and toes, as with his first victim, before burying her. This knowledge of Rose's murderous act undoubtedly gave West a significant hold over the young woman. When West's first wife Irina came in search of her daughter, she was strangled, dismembered and also had her fingers and toes removed. She was buried in the same general area as West's first victim, Anna McFall. Fred and Rose West were secretly married in Gloucester in January 1972, and their second daughter, Mae, was born in June of the same year. With a growing family, they moved to 25 Cromwell Street, which was large enough to enable them to take in lodgers to assist with the rent. By this time, Rose earned extra money as a prostitute, and West committed acts of bondage and violent sex acts on underage girls. He fitted out the cellar at number 25 as a torture chamber, and his daughter, Anna-Marie, became one of its first occupants, subjected to a horrifically brutal rape by her father while her stepmother held her down. This became a regular occurrence, and the child was threatened with beatings if she told anyone of her ordeal. Their behavior extended beyond the family circle when in late 1972, they engaged 17-year-old Caroline Owens as a nanny. She was incarcerated, stripped and raped. Despite threats that she would be killed and buried in the cellar, Owens was able to make an escape and reported the Wests to the police. Charges were brought against them. Incredibly, despite his existing criminal record, West was able to convince a 1973 court magistrate that Owens had consented to the activities. Owens was too deeply traumatized over what she had survived to give testimony. The Wests both escaped with fines. Rose was pregnant at the time with their first son Stephen, who was born in August. Over the next several years, Linda Gough, Lucy Partington, Juanita Mott, Therese Sighenthaler, Allison Chambers, Shirley Robinson and 15-year-old schoolgirls Carol Ann Cooper and Shirley Hubbard all became victims of the Wests. After brutal sexual attacks, all were murdered, dismembered and buried in the cellar under 25 Cromwell Street. Rose had several more children and daughter Louise was born in 1978. Not all Rose's children were believed to be fathered by West. Barry joined the brood in 1980, with Rosemary Jr. following in 1982 and Luciana in 1983. The children were aware to some extent of the activities in the house, but West and Rose exercised strict control over them. West's sexual interest in his own daughters didn't wane either, and when Anna Marie moved out to live with her boyfriend, he switched his attentions to her younger siblings, Heather and May. Heather resisted his attentions and in 1987 told a friend about the goings-on in the house. The Wests responded by murdering and dismembering her and burying her in the back garden of number 25 where son Stephen was forced to assist with digging the hole. Given that the West's vicious sex acts did not result in murder every time and the sheer number of attacks, it was inevitable that someone would expose their activities. Detective Constable Hazel Savage led a search at Cromwell Street in August of 1992 that found pornography and clear evidence of child abuse. West was arrested for rape and sodomy of a minor and Rose for assisting in the rape of a minor. In the course of the investigation, Savage uncovered the abuse of Anna Marie, as well as the disappearance of Charmaine and Heather, warranting further investigation. Rumors also arose about what might be buried under the patio. The younger West's children were taken into care and Rose attempted suicide at this time, although she was found by her son Stephen and revived. The case against the Wests collapsed when two key witnesses decided not to testify against them. Savage continued to pursue her search for Heather, questioning the West's children repeatedly, but they had been well trained by their parents and failed to cooperate. In February 1994, a warrant was obtained to search the Cromwell Street house and garden. Police found the remains of two dismembered and decapitated young women, one of whom authorities suspected might be Shirley Robinson. West claimed sole responsibility for the murders and when Rose heard of the confession, she denied all knowledge of Heather's death. Then, inexplicably, West admitted the presence of the bodies in the cellar to the police, who discovered the remains of nine individuals, establishing the identities of each victim was a mammoth task. Continuing to cooperate, West revealed the whereabouts of the remains of first wife Rena, lover Anna McFall and daughter Charmaine, who were all buried away from the Cromwell Street house. As the case against them developed, Rose tried increasingly to distance herself from West, claiming that she was also a victim, but police were not convinced of her innocence, given the sheer number of murders which had occurred and her participation in the rapes. On December 13, 1994, West was charged on 12 counts of murder and taken into custody at Winston Green Prison in Birmingham, where on January 1, 1995, he hung himself in his cell with knotted bedsheets. Rose West went to trial on October 3, 1995, in the glare of a media frenzy. Witnesses, including stepdaughter Anna Marie, testified to her participation in sexual assaults on young women. Her defense counsel tried to argue that evidence of assault was not evidence of murder, but when Rose testified on her own behalf, her violent nature and dishonesty became clear to the jury and they unanimously found her guilty on 10 separate counts of murder on November 22, 1995. She received a life sentence, having to serve a minimum of 25 years in jail. Rose West's sentence was later extended to a whole life order sentence by the Home Secretary effectively removing any possibility of parole. There remains a widespread belief that Fred and Rose West's victims numbered far more than the 12 with which they were charged. Rose West refused to accept her fate and launched appeals in 1996 and in 2000, claiming variously that new evidence clearing her had come to light and then that huge media interest had prevented her from receiving a fair trial. The 1996 appeal was rejected and she dropped the later one. She remains incarcerated. The West's home at 25 Cromwell Street, or the House of Horrors as it was dubbed by the media, was raised to the ground in October 1996. In its place is a pathway that leads to the town center. Rose was again the focus of media attention in January 2003 when it was claimed that she was to marry Dave Glover, the bass player of rock group Slade following a courtship via letters. Glover disputed that there was an engagement and said that the media attention over his letters to Rose had cost him his position with the band. When Weird Darkness returns, the Wild West had many drifters with troubled pasts. One found himself at the heart of one of the most infamous crimes in American history. Ben Cole went from horse theft to stagecoach robbery to murder, from notoriety to infamy all in pursuit of elusive riches, finally arrested and convicted due to a bloody handprint. That story is up next. Sometimes you feel a bit nutty, especially if you're a weirdo. If that feeling transfers to your taste buds as well, I've got some great news for you. Weird Dark Roast Nutty Mummy coffee. Wrap your taste buds around this medium dark roast blend with shrouds of almond, honey, and chocolate. Each bag of nutty mummy is exclusive to Weird Darkness and is roasted to order. Then bandaged, I mean bagged specifically for you to ensure a maximum freshness for you, your mummy, and anyone else you share it with. Entomb your old coffee and bring your taste buds back from the dead with Weird Dark Roast Nutty Mummy at WeirdDarkness.com slash coffee. Ben Cole was born in Northern Michigan sometime in the year 1884. A school dropout with alcoholic parents, some would say that Ben Cole never had a chance at an honest life from the very beginning. As a teenager, he drifted west and in 1903 he was arrested for horse theft and sentenced to a term of one to ten years in an Oregon state prison. It's not known exactly how long Ben Cole spent in prison, but what is known for sure is that by the year 1916, at the age of 32, Ben Cole had both literally and figuratively drifted his way into the remote and isolated mountain town of Jarbridge, Nevada. Upon his arrival in town, Ben took up residence in a tent with two other drifters named Ed Beck and Billy McGraw. He worked for a stint as a cook at the OK Mine, a place just outside of Jarbridge where miners from all over the American West hoped to strike it rich by finding gold. By 1916, the small frontier town of Jarbridge located in Elko County, Nevada, only about 10 miles from the state border with Idaho, was home to some 1500 people. The word Jarbridge itself is derived from a Native American word of the Shoshone people, meaning devil. Indigenous people who lived in the area considered the mountains that surrounded the town to be haunted by demonic spirits. And as it was, even among the white settlers who first came to the town in droves in the year 1909 during a mini Nevada gold rush, Jarbridge was notorious for its harsh and unforgiving climate, arid and hot summers followed by frigid and snow-filled winters. Jarbridge, Nevada in the year 1916 was the kind of place where only the possible presence of gold and a chance to strike it rich would make men want to go, and Ben Cole was no exception to that rule. Not long after his arrival in town and employment as a camp cook, Cole was promptly arrested and put in handcuffs for trying to jump another man's gold mine claim. But fights over finding gold were all too common in Jarbridge back in 1916, and Cole was promptly released from the local jail after doing no more than a few days behind bars. By December 1916, Cole was once again spending his days drinking at the Jarbridge saloon and spending his nights cavorting with his two vagrant buddies Ed Beck and Billy McGraw. In 1916, due to its isolated location and recent status as a gold mining boom town, Jarbridge, Nevada still retained the flavor of an old West town like Deadwood or Dodge City in the 1870s and 1880s, even at a time when the 20th century had long since left the lawless days of cowboys, gunfights and stagecoach robberies long behind. By 1916, more Americans owned automobiles than horses, but apparently no one had given Ben Cole or his compatriots that memo. On December 5, 1916, Ben Cole and his two associates Ed Beck and Billy McGraw attempted to pull off a crime that would have made even Billy the Kid proud. Today, the town of Jarbridge, Nevada is definitely no longer haunted by any devils of Native American creation. It is a town of less than 100 permanent residents that sits on the banks of the Jarbridge River, nestled in the valley of a canyon and surrounded on all sides by verdant mountains. Jarbridge today is very popular with both campers and hunters who are drawn to the location because of the large population of elk that roam the surrounding area. However, even over 100 years later, Jarbridge, Nevada cannot entirely shape the ghosts of its Wild West past. Because of what happened there on December 5, 1916, Jarbridge will forever have an ignominious reputation as the scene of one of the 20th century's most infamous crimes. A plaque, which sits in front of Jarbridge's historic jail that was built in 1911, sums up what happened there about a century ago. It reads, Most noted inmate was Ben Cole, who robbed the Rodgerson Jarbridge stage in December 1916, killing Fred Searcy, the driver, the last stagecoach robbery in the U.S. and the first conviction based on a bloody palm print. The Rodgerson Jarbridge stage was the root taken on a regular basis by a two-horse United States mail wagon from the larger town of Rodgerson, Idaho, across the state border and into Nevada. Ben Cole, who had worked earlier in the year at the OK Mine, knew that December 5, 1916 would be payday for most everyone who worked in Jarbridge. He knew that the stagecoach would be coming into town with loads of cash on that day because Rodgerson, Idaho was home to a United States bank from which most of the hard currency that flowed into Jarbridge was drawn. There was only one dirt road between Jarbridge and Rodgerson. The road was impassable to automobiles in 1916 and that's the reason why Jarbridge still relied on a horse-drawn United States mail wagon to communicate with the outside world. The driver, Fred Searcy, set out from Rodgerson on his way to Jarbridge on December 5, 1916 in a driving snowstorm, never to return. At first, even though Searcy did not return when expected, some time was allowed to elapse because the postal authorities assumed that his progress must have been delayed on account of the snowstorm. But worried about Searcy's faith on that night of December 5, United States Postmaster Scott Fleming had an experienced outdoorsman named Frank Leonard ride throughout the canyon into Jarbridge and attempt to locate Searcy and his wagon in the snow on the road into town. Leonard reached the top of the canyon and rode along the entire route to and from Jarbridge but found no trace of Searcy or the mail wagon. The authorities grew very alarmed. By dawn, December 6, nearly two feet of snow had fallen in and around Jarbridge, making any rescue mission extremely hazardous. A local woman named Rose Dexter, who lived about a half-mile outside Jarbridge, said that she had seen the stagecoach pass by her house earlier in the day on the 5th and that she had even waved to the driver who had waved back. But she also said the driver had, quote, his collar pulled up and was leaning forward and seemed at great pains to cover his face from the driving snow, unquote. As United States Postmaster Scott Fleming organized and launched a rescue mission, he already feared the worst, that Fred Searcy had been blown off course by the driving snow and drowned in the icy Jarbridge River. But within hours of setting out, the rescue mission's search party located the stagecoach, purposefully hidden in a copsey of willow trees several hundred yards off the main road from Rogerson to Jarbridge. Searcy was found slumped over in his seat. It seemed initially as if he had frozen to death where he sat. The mail had been carrying two large sacks when it first set out from Rogerson. The first mail sack contained parcels and letters for the residents of Jarbridge. The second contained $4,000 in cash or the equivalent of about $100,000 in today's money. The searchers quickly found the first sack containing letters and parcels. It had been left in the wagon and undisturbed, but the second mail bag containing the $4,000 cash was missing. Although at first the search party had thought that Searcy had frozen to death as his body thawed, burns in gunpowder residue were observed around a small hole at the back of his head. Searcy had been shot with a .44 caliber revolver at point blank range in the back of the skull. Animal tracks were noticed in the snow and a stray dog walked up to the search party and started to follow those tracks. The dog stopped and began to dig in the snow and scratch at the dirt. That's when the second mail bag with the cash was discovered, buried beneath the snow. The bottom of that mail bag had been cut open and all $4,000 in cash and coins had been stolen. Law enforcement scoured the sagebrush and the snow-covered wilderness in the area around Jarbridge. Eventually Ben Cull and his two associates Ed Beck and Billy McGraw were discovered sheltering from the snow in an abandoned cabin a few miles outside Jarbridge. An ivory-handled .44 caliber revolver was found in Ben Cull's possession and all three men were arrested, taken into custody and charged with the first-degree murder of Fred Searcy. Immediately, Cull contended his innocence. He claimed that he had spent the night on the fifth drinking at the Jarbridge Saloon. A trial, a series of several witnesses confirmed that, yes, they had seen Cull at the Jarbridge Saloon at different hours throughout the night, but since none of them were certain exactly of the time when they had seen him and because all of them had been drinking, the prosecution asserted that their testimony was meaningless and that Cull's alibi was made up. The prosecution contended that Ben Cull had hidden himself in the sagebrush on the side of the road during the snowstorm and waited for Searcy and the mail coach to pass by before jumping aboard the wagon to kill Searcy by shooting him in the back of the head and taking control of the stagecoach. Nevada State historian and archivist Ben Roca claimed that Ben Cull confessed to him years later that he had committed the murder but said that he had only killed Searcy over a dispute about how to split the money. This would imply that the so-called stagecoach robbery had been an inside job between Cull, his compatriots, and Fred Searcy of the United States Postal Service. A trial of Ben Cull for first-degree murder was held in the Elko County Courthouse with future Nevada Governor Edward P. Carville as the prosecuting attorney. Most of the evidence against Cull was circumstantial. The prosecution tried to dismiss his alibi despite the presence of several witnesses. They brought up his damning criminal record, mentioning repeatedly how he had been arrested in California and sentenced to a prison term in Oregon for horse theft and they brought up how he had been arrested and jailed in Jarbridge that very same year. Still, given the fact that the money could not be recovered and that there was no concrete physical evidence directly tying either Cull or his associates to the crime, the jury's decision hung at the balance until two forensic scientists from California testified for the prosecution. These forensic scientists asserted that a bloody palm print found on an envelope that was aboard the U.S. male stagecoach that had been robbed identically matched the palm print of Ben Cull, which would directly place him at the scene of the crime. This evidence, the first ever use of forensic evidence in American history to convict a man of murder was enough for the jury to find Ben Cull guilty of first-degree murder and for the judge to sentence him to death by firing squad. Cull's sentence was later commuted to life in prison. All three men, Cull, Beck and McGraw, were transferred to the Nevada State Prison in Carson City in October of 1917. Ben Cull spent nearly 28 years in prison prior to his release on May 16, 1945. He never publicly confessed to the murder of Fred Searcy and never mentioned where the $4,000 was hidden despite the fact that the state of Nevada repeatedly offered him a reduction in his sentence if he would help them to find its whereabouts. To this very day, rumors persist about the existence of buried, stolen loot from the last stagecoach robbery in American history in the wilderness around Jarbridge, Nevada. As a man of over 60 years old, after his release from prison at the end of World War II, Ben Cull drifted his way into California, where he is believed to have died of tuberculosis in San Francisco less than a year after his release in 1946. Up next on Weird Darkness, in the strange world of insatiable appetites, gluttony knows no bounds. From the scandalous streets of Georgia and London, to the dark corners of ancient Rome, to the glitz of America's rock and roll, the hunger of voracious eaters defies comprehension. But beware of the shadows, for lurking within is the most infamous glutton of all, whose insatiable cravings led to unthinkable horrors. Coming up... I'm a man of habits. Okay, truth be told, my bride says I'm boring. I like the same stuff, and that's what I stick with, and that includes what I eat. Even for breakfast, I used to opt for a leftover pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers... Did I mention pizza? Anyway, now that I'm trying to lose weight and cut back on the carbs, I've had to make changes for breakfast. Now, instead of a big, heavy breakfast, I just grabbed one of my built bars, the best-tasting protein bar on the planet. Built bars satisfy my hunger with up to 19 grams of protein, and also satisfy my sugar craving, despite being less than 3 grams of sugar. And at only about 150 calories per bar, if I'm REALLY hungry in the morning, I can grab two of them and still feel good about it. Try replacing your dessert, or even a meal, like breakfast, with a built bar. You won't even know it's not really a candy bar. Visit WeirdDarkness.com slash Built and build a box of your own. Use the promo code WeirdDarkness at checkout and get 10% off your entire purchase. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash Built promo code WeirdDarkness. Gluttony is a very public sin. Those of us who overeat tend to become somewhat portly, and so cannot conceal that we partake in one of the seven deadly sins. For centuries in Christian Europe, where famines were common, the clergy reeled against gluttons. Despite the holy hatred of gluttony, history is full of people who found that they were never full and could not satisfy their hunger. Here are a few of the most voracious eaters that ever menaced a table. Edward Dando Today, oysters are regarded as a food of the elite. But at many points in the past, they were simply a welcome addition to your daily diet. In the middle of the 19th century, hundreds of millions of oysters were eaten every year in London alone. Archaeological digs often uncover vast piles of oyster shells wherever crowds of people gathered. Oyster bars in Georgia and London could provide a dozen oysters for a few pennies. Despite the low price, there were some who simply could not pay for their addiction to this delightful shellfish. Edward Dando was the scourge of Georgian oyster sellers. He was trained as a hatter and some would say that he was as mad as the proverbial hatter for his exploits. Some would also call him a thief. To others, he was simply the celebrated oyster eater. Dando was well known for walking into an oyster bar, eating up to 360 oysters in a sitting and then revealing he could not pay for them. The outraged seller would then either beat Dando or have him hauled away to prison. Sometimes he would be released from prison and set out straight away for another feast. When brought before a judge, he simply said, I was very peckish your worship, after living on a jail allowance so long, and I thought I'd treat myself to an oyster. Not that oysters were his only delight. In 1831, he was arrested after he, quote, devoured divers rounds of toast and sundry basins of soup and coffee at the Sun Copy House, Charles Street, Hatten Garden, without paying for the same, unquote. A last Danden's tendency to end up in jail cost him his life when in 1832 he caught cholera in prison and died. Nicholas Wood You know your eating habits are extreme when someone publishes a pamphlet about them. In the 17th century, one was produced with the title The Great Eater of Kent, or part of the admirable teeth and stomachs exploits of Nicholas Wood of Harrison in the County of Kent. His excessive manner of eating without manners in strange and true manner described, unquote. Little is known about Nicholas Wood except that the author of the pamphlet saw and heard of his exploits. We are told that he could consume a quarter of fat lamb and three score eggs, that then but an easy collation, and three well-loarded pudding pies and 18 yards of black puddings. Wood was also apparently not averse to eating a whole duck raw, guts and bones included. At another time he ate a whole raw sheep, including the wool and horns. Wood's fame as an eater did get him into trouble once. Sir William Sedley once bet Wood that he could not eat a feast designed for 30 people. Wood did his best but fell into a food-induced coma before completing the meal. When he awoke eight hours later he was dragged from the house and placed in a pillory for the public to jeer at his inability to eat everything at the table. Miquel Letito Not everyone who has a strong appetite restricts themselves to eating things most people would consider as food. For Miquel Letito, the ability to eat almost anything turned into a lifelong career. Known to his French audiences as Mr. Eat Everything, he entertained and horrified people for decades. Letito's exploits are said to have started when he was nine and he began to crunch glass fragments from a broken tumbler that he was drinking from. Over the course of his life he is said to have eaten eight bicycles, 15 supermarket trolleys, seven TV sets, six chandeliers, two beds, a pair of skis, a low-calorie Cessna light aircraft and a computer. To be fair, some of his meals lasted a long time. He said it took two years to eat the airplane and that the rubber tires were the most unappealing part. There have been doubts about some of Letito's claimed feats. Did he really eat three bicycles per year? There is no doubt though that he certainly put some odd things in his mouth. Vitellius. Some people's gluttony becomes so infamous that it is almost the only thing history remembers about them. All this Vitellius had a varied career in the first century AD. He was said to have been one of the many young lovers of the Emperor Tiberius, a friend to the Mad Emperor Caligula and an army general in Germany before his troops declared Vitellius himself following the death of Nero. But all anybody talks about today is how fat he was. If a bust or statue of a rotund Roman is dug up, someone somewhere will declare that it is the likeness of Vitellius. However, the sources all agree that Vitellius was given to gluttony. The historian Sotornius tells us that Vitellius was known to steal food from street vendors and even from the altars of the gods to satisfy his hunger. To be able to eat as much as he pleased, Vitellius would take an ametic to vomit up his last meal so he could consume another straight away. A becoming emperor, his brother threw a feast that consisted of no less than 2,000 choice fishes and 7,000 birds. It was one of Vitellius' own culinary creations that has gone down in legend. He concocted a dish known as the Shield of Minerva. In this dish, there were tossed up together the livers of char fish, the brains of pheasants and peacocks with the tongues of flamingos and the entrails of lampreys, which had been brought in ships of war as far as from the Carpathian Sea and the Spanish Straits, Sotornius tells us. Vitellius was deposed after just a few months and killed by the forces of the rival emperor Vespasian. George IV King George IV does not have a good reputation in British history. As the heir of George III, the future George IV had to step in as regent while his father suffered bouts of insanity. He had not endeared himself to the public by running up enormous debts while he waited to become the king, up to 650,000 pounds in 1795. These debts had to be paid with funds from parliament and people resented having to pay for his lavish lifestyle. While Prince of Wales, he became very fat from his fondness for food. He was lampooned in the press as the Prince of Wales, W-H-A-L-E-S. A cartoon of the day shows George leaning back in a chair after one of his feasts, picking his teeth with a fork while his waistcoat struggles valiantly to cover his distended belly and holds on by a single button. When he did become king, George kicked off his reign with a feast that cost 27 million pounds in today's money. It featured over 7,000 pounds of beef, 7,000 pounds of veal, and 20,000 pounds of mutton. To be fair, George did not eat all of this himself. At one of George's last recorded meals, he was joined by the Duke of Wellington for breakfast. On the table was an enormous pie stuffed with beef steaks and pigeons. The Duke wondered how many others were joining them for the meal, but it was to be just the two of them. The king polished off most of the pie himself. William Buckland William Buckland was not a man who ate a lot at once, but he did like to consume a lot of different and unusual things. He found fame in the 19th century as a geologist and paleontologist. It was Buckland who wrote the first scientific description of a dinosaur. Fossilized dung, known as coprolites, was among his favorite topics and he even had a table in his home inlaid with slices from them. His interest in the natural world extended to discovering what animals tasted like. All animals. Buckland was a dedicated zoophage. Over the course of his life, he is known to have consumed mice on toast, puppies, panthers, porpoises, hedgehogs, crocodiles, and ostriches. Not everything he tried was a success. Blue bottle flies were apparently disgusting and the humble mole was said to be the vilest food he ever tried. Buckland did not limit his eating to animals. When he was shown a portion of the preserved heart of King Louis XIV, Buckland declared, I've eaten many strange things but have never eaten the heart of a king before and gobbled it down. Buckland's son Francis carried on the family tradition by eating kangaroos, exotic birds, and elephant trunks. Elvis Presley Elvis, the king of rock and roll, was one of the greatest musical superstars of the 20th century but for our purposes we'll be discussing him as one of the greatest eaters of the 20th century. The tales told of his gluttony are legion and have been mythologized. You might see some accounts that say that he ate 65,000 calories a day. Better research though has reduced this to a more modest 12,000 calories, still five times the recommended amount. Elvis loved the food of the American South. Fried chicken and greasy sides were among his favorites. His most famous meal dates from 1976. That year he flew a group of friends to enjoy what he considered the best sandwich in the world, the Fool's Gold Sandwich. This consisted of a loaf of bread, buttered and layered with peanut butter, jelly and a whole pound of bacon. While it was designed to satisfy eight people, Elvis enjoyed a whole one to himself. Charles Domery When a Polish soldier serving in the French Navy was captured by the British in 1799, one of the most extreme cases of ravenous hunger was discovered. Dr. J. Johnston was called in to care for Domery and wrote up what he observed. The eagerness with which he attacks his beef when his stomach is not gorged resembles the veracity of a hungry wolf, tearing off and swallowing it with canine greediness. When his throat is dry from continued exercise, he lubricates it by stripping the grease off the candles between his teeth, which he generally finishes at three mouthfuls and wrapping the wick like a ball string and all sends it after at a swallow. He can, when no choice is left, make shifts to dine on immense quantities of raw potatoes or turnips, but from choice would never desire to taste bread or vegetables. Over the course of a day, Domery was fed four pounds of raw cow's udder, ten pounds of raw beef and a pound of candles. When Domery's initial prison rations proved inefficient, he was known to have eaten a cat and twenty rats. It is said that while still serving on his ship, one of the crewmates had their leg blown off by a cannon and Domery attempted to snatch up the severed limb to eat it. Terraria, the most infamous glutton of all. It is a biological fact that some people are hungrier than others. Sometimes, the signal that lets most people know they are satisfied does not register in the brain. These people have to live their lives always gnawed by ceaseless cravings to eat. The most famous victim of this lived in France at the end of the 18th century. He was called Terraria. Because of his ravenous appetite, Terraria was thrown out of his home by his parents who could not afford to feed him. He began to perform on the streets for money and his act consisted of eating stones and live animals. Terraria joined the army, but even getting four sets of rations, he was never full. He resorted to eating food he found in the gutters. Terraria was hospitalized for being chronically underweight despite his enormous diet. While there he snuck out of the ward to satisfy his urges, he ate awful, discarded from butchers, drank blood, and raided the morgue to try and eat the cadavers. Terraria was only thrown out of the hospital when he was suspected of eating a 14-month-old infant. On Terraria's death, it was discovered his stomach was vastly bigger than that of a normal person. Which, of course, is not surprising. Other podcasts, including Church of the Undead and a sci-fi podcast, Auditory Anthology. Also on the site, you can visit the store for Weird Darkness t-shirts, mugs, and other merchandise. Plus, it's where you can find the Hope in the Darkness page if you or someone you know is struggling with depression, addiction, or thoughts of harming yourself or others. And if you have a true paranormal or creepy tale to tell of your own, you can click on Tell Your Story. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. All stories on Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you can find links to the stories or the authors in the show notes. Whitewater, the second Salem, is by Charlie Hintz for Wisconsin Frights. Bygon Gluttons is by Ben Gazour for Listverse. The evils of Fred and Rose West is from Biography. And the last stagecoach robbery is from Creative History Stories. Weird Darkness is a registered trademark. Copyright, Weird Darkness. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Proverbs 11 verse 4, Riches do not profit in the day of wrath, but righteousness delivers from death. And a final thought, do what you can where you are with what you have. Teddy Roosevelt I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. Hey Weirdos, be sure to click the like button and subscribe to this channel, and click the notification bell so you don't miss future videos. I post videos seven days a week. And while you're at it, spread the darkness by sharing this video with someone you know who loves all things strange and macabre. If you want to listen to the podcast, you can find it at WeirdDarkness.com.