After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - The ‘Genius’ Killer: Murderer with Largest Brain in History

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

The so-called 'Genius' Killer was a murderer who seemed to be both philosopher and psychopath, whose brain was one of the largest ever recorded. But was Edward Rulloff really as smart as all that?Maddy tells Anthony the story of a husband who murdered his wife and child, killed an innocent shop clerk in a petty theft, and still somehow managed to convince the world he was a 'genius'.Edited and produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code AFTERDARK sign up at https://historyhit.com/subscription/ 

To the editor of the Tribune. Sir, I believe in capital punishment. I believe that when a murder has been done, it should be answered for with blood. I have all my life been taught to feel this way, and the fetters of education are strong. Feeling as I do, I am not sorry that Edward Roloff is to be hanged. But I am sincerely sorry that Edward Roloff is to be hanged, but I am sincerely sorry that he himself has made it necessary that his vast capabilities for usefulness should be lost to the world.

In this, mine and the public's is a common regret. Here is a man who has never entered the doors of a college or university, and yet, by the sheer might of his innate gifts, has made himself such a colossus in abstruse learning that the ablest of our scholars are but pygmies in his presence. What miracles this murderer might have wrought, and what luster he might have shed upon his country if he had not put a forfeit upon his life so foolishly. But what if the law could be satisfied, and the gifted criminal still be saved? If a life be offered up on the gallows to atone for the murder Ruloth did, will that suffice? If so, give me the proofs, for in all earnestness and truth,

I aver that in such a case I will instantly bring forward a man who, in the interests of learning and science, will take Ruloff's crime upon himself, and submit to be hanged'm anthony no you're not oh i'm maddie i see what's happening here we're so smooth seamless our media training course is now available if you want to subscribe. In this episode, we're off to 19th century America, as you might have guessed by Anthony's beautiful voice work there. We're delving into a strange, dare I say, cerebral story today, that of the so-called genius killer. Now, the letter that we heard up top was written on the 29th of April, 1871, by a man called Samuel Clemens, but perhaps better known by his pen name, Mark Twain, of course, the author of Tom Sawyer and its sequel, Huck Finn.

It's asking for clemency in a murder case on account of the killer's intellectual abilities. And although it was intended as something of a satire, it reflects contemporary sympathies for this man, Edward Ruloff, who in 1871 was about to be hanged for murder. This, from the little I know about this particular case is a difficult one to keep up with actually don't you think maddie like there are so many twists and turns we were just talking earlier and it said we remind it reminded us of the american ripper case where there's so much going on so many details so easy to get lost in them but also then you have this psychology layer on top of it and some of his skills and abilities, his intellectual skills

and abilities that have then been seen as, oh, well, maybe he could be useful or he's this genius. So it's a tricky, tricky case. But before we get into it, give us a bit of a context of what's happening in the 1870s. Sure. Yeah. And as you say, it is a little bit of a tricky case in terms of keeping up. We're going to give the bare bones and some flesh and colour to this, but I do urge people to go and look at the entire story in its entirety. It's fascinating. There are twists and turns. Right, the context. Here we go. So in Britain, I know this story's setting in America, but in Britain, the empire across the world is still growing. In Paris, in the 1870s, the Impressionists hold their first ever exhibition in Paris.

Lewis Carroll publishes Through the Looking Glass. It's also a decade, and you'll see what I've done here, a decade of invention and so-called genius men. Not all of them killers. It should be caveated immediately. Wow. We've got the telephone, invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. And in 1879, Thomas Edison comes up with the light bulb.

So it's a time of empire, imperial growth. It's a time of artistic innovation, scientific advancement. Now, in America, just to give you a flavour of what's going on there, in the Midwest, we've got Jesse James and his gang of rogues very much active. Also, I didn't know this, Yellowstone National Park is established in this decade. It's a bit of a weird one in the development, because on the one hand, we're coming out of the tail end, the fallout from the Civil War a decade earlier. So there are huge rebuilding programs. There are challenges that administration is grappling with in terms of the abolition of slavery and in terms of integrating those former Confederate states back into the US. On the other hand, America is about to enter what's termed the Gilded Age, this moment of expanding wealth, of really almost perceived excess. And interestingly, linking back to Mark Twain, who we heard from at the beginning, that the term the Gilded Age

is taken from a Twain novel. So there's so much going on here. Society is changing. America is changing. What America stands for, the foundation upon which it's built, is all to play for in these decades. And it's been less than 100 years since America declared itself independent from the British Empire in 1776. So this is a country that's still finding its feet from the 1830s. It never really found its feet prior to the 1870s. Financially, it was struggling after the revolution financially. Then it was struggling in the 1830s quite badly and went into Great Depression. And then, of course, we have the Civil War, which is financially a disaster as well in many ways. So we're coming into this brighter age, coming into maybe the building of an America that we're a little bit more familiar

with now of excess, of achievement, of greatness, of the American dream. But how does Edward Roloff fit into all of this? Who is he and where does he come from? Well, he's not an American for a start. Which is quite an American story in its own way, right? Absolutely. And that's what's so interesting about him, I think, that he is in some ways, maybe not an exemplar of the American dream, but he's certainly a beneficiary of that system and that idea, that aspiration. Of course, he goes about it in a pretty dire way. So he's born in 1819, possibly 1820. The records are a little bit sketchy. He's actually born in New Brunswick in Canada to Danish immigrant parents. As an aside, just thinking about the technological advancements of this period, his brother, who's called William, goes

on to be one of the leading photographers in San Francisco, which I just think that's fascinating. And I actually looked up a lot of his images. And it's so interesting to think about the infamy of his brother during William's own lifetime, and the work that he was doing in San Francisco, doing portraits of people, capturing them in completely different ways, and slightly less criminal ways as well. So Edward Ruloff, a lot of what we know about him is from a biography that's published in 1871. That's the year that he's executed for murder. And he's described in that biography as a man of two lives. And this tells you everything you need to know about him.

He's someone full of contradictions. And what I think particularly captured the attention of 19th century Americans is this contrast between his intellect. and we'll go on to talk about the form that this takes, but he becomes very well known for being, quote unquote, a genius. And on the other hand, the crimes that he commits. And these two things are really hard to reconcile. People have a really difficult time comprehending that anyone could be a criminal and intelligent, which tells you a lot about the society in this moment. By the time he's 20, and this is in New Brunswick in Canada, he has worked for a law firm. He'd stolen money from the law firm and he served two years in prison. Now he's

a manipulative character. He's untrustworthy, but he's very, very intelligent. He always seems to be one step ahead of everyone else. So to give you the sort of starting point then of his career in crime, he's come from immigrant parents. He has worked his way up to a relatively respectable job really early on in his life and made a complete mess of it immediately by turning to crime. He's been punished for it. He spent his two years in prison, but he needs to leave the place that he's grown up in because he's no longer seen as respectable in New Brunswick and Canada. So in 1842, when he's

just 22 years old, he served his two years, he leaves Canada and he heads south and he arrives in upstate New York. Now, when he arrives, he's not the respectable lawyer's clerk that he once was. He is penniless. He looks like a vagrant. He is charming when people speak to him, but he doesn't look respectable. However, because of this manipulative power that he has, it's not long before he's taken into the local community. And within no time at all, really, he gets a job as a teacher with what qualifications? Unclear. So he's working teaching young people. And he also takes up the role of a student himself under the tutelage of a local man called Dr. Henry Bull, who is a medical doctor. And with him, Edward Ruloff starts to study botanical science,

amongst other things. So he's got this voracious appetite for learning, for self-improvement, for education, all things on the American Dream checklist, sure. This itinerancy as well, this moving around and reinventing himself, we're going to see that again and again in his life. And that's what makes people like him and the man that was known as the American Ripper, that's what makes it hard to keep up with them, as it would have had at the time. And it's what bought them time in their own lifetimes to get away with some of these crimes was that they were able to evade and be quite elusive. But it also makes for a very interesting archival dive because you're hopping all over the place. You're like, wait, he was just there and now he's here.

I don't understand how it can be quite lengthy putting all of this together, can't it? It's a tricky pattern to put back together seamlessly. Yeah, it did take me a long time doing the research for this episode, I have to say. And I feel like there is so much more to say about him. And there's a book-length amount of work that you could do on him. He's fascinating. Yeah, the constant reinvention, the constant moving. He also, talking about the sort of struggles with finding him in an archive,

he also uses aliases and different aliases at different points. So there's that to bear in mind as well. I'm going to call him Edward Ruloff all the way through just for clarity, but he does go under different names. So here he is in upstate New York. He's ingratiated himself into the lives of a local community. He's teaching young people. He's studying under a respectable doctor. Everything's going well for him. He's managed to move on and up from his origins. He's even managed to put the two years in prison behind him. It's all going well. But of course, as we're going to find is a pattern with this man, he's going to mess it up for himself. And the way that he does that is he starts a romantic relationship,

and I'm using that term very, very loosely in adverted commas, with a young girl called Harriet Shutt. Now, Harriet in some accounts is 17. In other accounts, she is 15. Either way, big red flag. She's his student. He's teaching her. She's also, and this is presumably how he comes into contact with her. She is the cousin of the doctor, Dr. Bull, who's teaching Edward Ruloff botanical science and other things.

And it's important to point out here, right, that by this time, by the 1870s, this idea of teenage marriage or marrying a teenager is very well passed at this point, particularly around the ages of 15. You know, often you'll have people saying, oh, well, it was happening during the time. This is unusual, even for the time. And from what I understand from your research is that Harriet's family were not pleased by this. Well, first of all, they had no idea that it was going on, which again, tells you so much about Edward Rudolph's character, his manipulation, how he ingratiates himself with certain people and abuses those relationships. So to begin with, they have no idea. But the pair soon announce themselves that they're going to get married. The family are disgusted. And so the couple have no choice,

seemingly, but to flee from the town that they're in to Lansing in New York. So they've gone elsewhere to start a new life. For poor Harriet, who is maybe 15, maybe 17, this is her only experience outside the small place she's grown up in, protected by her family. And she's been taken in by a man who seems respectable on the surface and seems like he, in terms of his intelligence, in terms of his ambition, can offer her the world and a great start in life, it's not going to materialise. And what she's really married is a ruthless man who is going to better himself at any cost, including if the cost is her. Ruloff was a jealous husband, and from the earliest days of their marriage, accused Harriet of being unfaithful. He would regularly fly into a rage and, on at least one occasion, attacked her with an iron pot from the kitchen, knocking her unconscious.

By the time their daughter, Priscilla, was born, Harriet was all too familiar with her husband's dangerous and changing moods. But despite the volatility inside their home, Ruloff and Harriet's neighbours in Lansing did not observe any outwardly strange behaviour. The couple seemed to them normal. couple seemed to them normal. That would soon change. In July 1844, Ruloff attacked his wife for the final time, landing a catastrophic blow on her head and killing her instantly. He then proceeded to poison the infant Priscilla before taking the bodies of mother and baby and committing them to the depths of nearby Cayuga Lake. Harriet's absence was soon noticed and, in an attempt to misdirect suspicion, Rulov told his community that his wife had taken the child and abandoned him.

Few bought his story though and soon whispers that he had killed them began to spread. Harriet's family travelled there in search of her and before long the lake was drained. But no bodies were found and without evidence a charge of murder could not be brought. Instead, Ruloff was arrested for kidnap and dragged to court. From the dock, this one-time lawyer's clerk defended himself, though to no avail. He was found guilty and sentenced to 10 years hard labour, and this should have been the end of Ruloff's story. A man committed to prison and broken by the bone-shattering work he was forced to do, committed to prison and broken by the bone-shattering work he was forced to do. But for the so-called genius killer, his career in blood was only just beginning. Thank you. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and this month on Not Just the Tudors, I'm joined by a host of experts to tell the stories of the six queens of Henry VIII,

who shaped and changed England forever. Subscribe to and follow Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so far, I see absolutely no traces of genius. I'm waiting for those to present themselves. Also, I have this image now of the slimy, pathetic little man in my head. He seems to just evade things yet again. So just to wrap up what we've heard

and just to make sure that we're all on the same page, we have Ruloff and we have Harriet and we have their child and he is abusive towards Harriet. The neighbors weren't aware of this, but at one particular moment in time, he hits her so hard that he kills her, then proceeds to poison their child

and then disposes of their bodies in a local lake. He says she's left him. The families don't buy this and the local community don't really buy this. Oh, this is where he seems like such a, like he's giving me the creep. Well, they all, a lot of people on After Dark, who said this at the start, Maddy?

Like there's something about this guy that's particularly insipid. Like, anyway, I'll keep rounding up. He says harriet has taken the child she has left him nobody's buying this they then drain the lake but they don't find any remains but he still gets uh imprisoned for kidnapping now this is not the genius kidnapper so i'm finding it intriguing to know how he's going to kill considering he is behind bars now so two really important things happen in prison and just to say I completely agree with you I think he's he's so uncharismatic even though people in the 19th century were so taken in by

him I think from a modern perspective he just seems like such a little shit honestly I see him as a slug I like just some slug imagery in my head i don't know why it's bizarre i don't think that's too far from the truth and i don't mean he was a literal slug but like yeah that is really how i see him as well and it's the ease with which he just disposes of harriet and their baby priscilla they were holding him back or frustrating him in some way so he's just got rid of them and again we're gonna see him constantly doing that with people. So he's in prison for kidnap. He's got 10 years hard labor. This is going to be a pretty boring story if he stays in there for the next 10 years. Two important things happen in prison. One, he begins to study something called philology.

Now this is the history of languages and how languages have developed. And this is where his moniker as the genius killer comes in, right? That he begins what is actually a sort of great scholarly work, or that's how he presents it to the world anyway. So he is doing research, he's writing this, you know, great volume, this great book that he tells everyone in prison, he is going to publish as soon as he gets out. That it's this great work that's going to tell us about the history of humanity, the links between language and human behavior. And this is a growing field of study in America at this time. And I think that he's pinpointed this as something to attach his name to, because he sees himself as above the law and he sees this

as a way to get people's attention, to gain celebrity. It's a very calculated thing. He wants to be famous, not for the killing, but for his mind. And it just speaks to such a strange arrogance. It's absolutely bizarre. So the other thing that he does under this banner of being a genius in prison is that he is allowed by the people who run the prison, the authorities, to teach inmates. And I think, again, thinking back to the 19th century context, he is coming across to people in that period as a benevolent criminal. He's sharing his apparently abundant intellectual gifts, and he's allowing people to better themselves within the prison system. And we talk so much on After Dark about the shift from the 18th century in prison, which is,

you know, it's very much a holding bay as you wait to be taken to the gallows or for transportation, or until you can pay your debts. Whereas in the 19th century in Britain and in America, prison is about reform. It's about the actual being in prison is the punishment. And during that time, you have to change in some way. If you're going to be released, you have to prove that you're not going to do that thing or any other bad things on the moment of your release. so he's kind of fitting into this 19th century very christian narrative of redemption and it makes him palatable to people now on to the second thing that happens when he's in prison he befriends again very manipulative a young man

called albert jarvis who just happens to be and i'm sure it's only a coincidence not the son of the prison undersheriff oh god okay so he starts tutoring him in Latin and Greek he also makes friends with Albert's young mother Jane so he's building a bit of a network of people who are sympathetic to him here. And it is not long before the pair of them, that is Albert and Jane Jarvis, the son and mother, help him to escape. He gets out of prison. Does Mr. Jarvis know about this? Yes. So as far as I know. Well, he does.

He finds out. He doesn't help. As far as I can tell, Albert Jarvis and Jane are then kicked out of the house by the undersheriff, the father slash husband. So whilst they don't die at the hands of Edward Ruloff, he's leaving a wake of destruction, manipulating people into behaving in the way that he wants to get what he wants from them. Anyway, he's out. He escapes, and he must have had help, by the way, because he is literally clapped in irons. There are chains attaching him to the wall. There are something like 12 doors between him and the outside world. He's not doing that alone. So he's escaped with the help of these two people that he's manipulated.

And for a while, he lives wild. He lives in the woods, in the open landscape. He literally just eats where he can find. He forages for things and sleeps under the stars. And eventually, he makes his way to Meadville, which is a city in Pennsylvania. And once again, even though he's had this ridiculous journey and experience in prison and the escape and everything, he just reinvents himself. He just decides he's a respectable person who is deserving of good things. So he calls himself James Nelson, and he basically just introduces himself to all the learned men in

that city. He just pretends that he's a lecturer, a travelling lecturer. And within a few weeks, months, he has ingratiated himself again into a community to the extent where he's being offered a professorship at the local college sorry are you trying to tell me that i didn't need to do a phd at all i just could have pretended that i had i know right like the we think academia is a desperately broken system now and it's so hard and there are no jobs and everyone's working so hard to do the very best in the 19th century if you're a man with no academic training just turn on the murderer to boot you could just turn up be like hey i claim this oh god i mean it's not funny it's actually grim it's so great like it's it's but there is something here about him and his interpersonal

skills and his i mean you often hear that, don't you? That these manipulative narcissistic who turn out to be murderers are also very popular. They can be very charismatic. They can take people in. They have to fool people. It's part of the persona, I suppose. Yeah, absolutely. And he's a sort of classic hoaxer in that regard, isn't he? He's a scammer. People are obviously so sucked in by him that he just attracts people he's obviously has an incredible magnetism and he's able to convince people of this nonsense that he's making up so again have we reached the end of the road here he's reinvented himself he's escaped his two times in prison literally escaped the second time. Everyone seems to have forgotten about the

double murder of his wife and child. And it all seems fine. He's going to be a professor. It's crazy. But obviously, that's not going to be the end. So Albert Jarvis, the young man who helped him to escape from prison, starts writing to him and he starts to blackmail him saying, I know the truth about you. I helped you escape. He needs money because Albert and his mother have been kicked out of the house for helping Ruloff. And the way that Ruloff deals with this, again, I think it's quite, it shows his sort of innovation, how intelligent he must have been, that he realises this is a problem that's not going to go away and that he needs to deal with it.

But the way that he deals with it is to completely separately from this life that he's made. And this maybe says that he's a bit of a sort of fantasist, really, that he separates these two things in his mind. So he's got this professorship and this respectable life. With Jarvis, he just sets up a criminal enterprise and together they go and rob a jewelry store. And he promises... Oh promises they do it together they do it together so he promises that he's going to pay jarvis the money that they get however he is caught doing the robbery ruloff is arrested and he's in custody again now his identity has been blown open again he's recognized whilst he's in the prison as being the person who's allegedly he did murder harriet and priscilla right his former wife and his child yes so people

even though he's itinerant and he's moving around this narrative this rumor mill these whisperings are starting to follow him now, and he's finding it increasingly difficult to escape them. So he's in custody, and people say, oh, hold on a second, that's the guy who killed his wife and child back in upstate New York. He's not the guy he's saying he is. He's done this, he's done that, he escaped from prison, blah, blah. However, he is either incredibly manipulative to the point where he can change the outcome of his trials, or he just has the most incredible luck. I don't know what it is. Even though public opinion is now so against him, and actually a mob gathers outside the prison he's in in Pennsylvania and promises to hang him if he's not found guilty through the law.

Despite that, because there's no bodies of Harriet and Priscilla, because that evidence was never found because he put them in the lake, he's let off all charges, including the theft of the jewellery store that he's done with Jarvis. How? This is ridiculous. It's wild. He's let off and avoiding the mob, he goes off as a free man again. No, I don't like it.

It's just so confusing and weird. So he's lost his professorship now. Obviously his identity has once again been blown open. Everyone knows he's killed Harriet and Priscilla, but he also has got away with it, possibly because he has this reputation for being this learned scholar, for being this person who's going to advance knowledge and make this great contribution to the American library of information and learning. It's just remarkable. Obviously, though, now he has no income stream. So with Jarvis, who's still knocking around, having helped him escape and ruined his own life in the process,

and that of his mother, together they get some other men on board and they head to New York City where they form a gang and they commit multiple robberies. Stop. He goes from professor to gang member. That is a turn up for the books. Okay. It is. It's really hard to pin down who this man is because these are such conflicting, and you think back to the 1871 biography of him that calls him the man with two lives. He is just that. It's so hard to lift the mask and work out what the truth of this person is. Now, when they're in New York, eventually they do one robbery too many. They go into a dry goods store at night. They break in and they're hoping to just take things off the shelves, take a bit of merchandise and sell it on. However, there are two living clerks in the building. One of them,

Frederick Merrick, puts up a fight and there's a sort of fist fight going on in this tight confined space in the dry goods store. Now, Rulov has brought a gun because of course, of course he has. And he fires a warning shot into the air and Frederick Merrick does not stop trying to fight these robbers out of there. They're all still scrapping. And so Rulov points the gun at Marek and he shoots him once in the head and kills him instantly. Oh God.

The gang disperse into the city and Rulov tries to escape, maybe because he's thinking he's better than everyone else in his gang. He comes up with this idea, rather than trying to save the whole gang, he just tries to save himself by going to the railway station.

When he gets there, there are some police there because everyone's looking for the killer at this drug goods store and it's a big story. And the police say, can you identify yourself? Who are you getting on this train? Now, obviously, very suspiciously, he refuses to identify himself. And he actually legs it out of the railway station across the train tracks and just off into the countryside obviously the police they grab him they arrest him immediately so once again we have a man in custody who has killed again this time there is a body and it's very clear what's happened to that body someone has pulled the trigger Is he going to escape justice again? Or is this the end of the railway track? Just to interject here, I am keeping my fingers crossed that this is the end of the track for him. This man is an absolute dickhead killer, not a genius killer, because

he is so dumb, actually. What makes a genius? Being able to read a couple of books on linguistics when you're in prison, when you have nothing else to do. He's getting caught at every single turn. He shoots people, which is like, he is a crap criminal. He is terrible at this. Like he's not good. How has somebody named him a genius? He gets caught for everything. What lets him away is the legal system, not his own genius. He needs a rebranding and it's definitely not the genius killer. This man is immensely unlikable. I have nothing more to say. That's perfect. Rulov's luck was about to run out. In custody, he was recognised by one of the judges he had encountered before. The same man identified him and made sure this time, Rulov would not escape justice. Now, the man who had

eluded the noose for so long and dazzled with his intellect was found guilty of murder and condemned to die. Such was the fame of this case that, not long after Rulov's trial, a tell-all biography, supposedly written with his help, was soon announced. Rulov himself, always one to try and control how he was perceived, wrote to the papers denying his involvement. Instead, he said, he wished to be remembered for his scholarly work. Not all thought so highly of him. The New York Times wrote, He was a thief when a boy, a bungler in crime, and a charlatan in learning, great only in depravity.

On the afternoon of May 18th, he was taken to a place of execution. Contemporary, though likely fabricated reports, told how he turned to the hangman and said, Hurry it up, I want to be in hell for dinner time. According to another paper, he simply showed no signs of emotion, except a gentle swerving of the body as he accepted his fate. What is known for definite is that, at 1.35 precisely, a noose was slipped over his head and he was hoisted violently into the air. It failed to break his neck, and to the repulsion of onlookers, Rulov's body lay twitching for a full 15 minutes before life finally left it.

He wanted to be remembered for his scholarship. What scholarship? He didn't do anything. Like, he just lied. I want to be remembered for my scholarship. It doesn't make any sense. And also, what you're saying there about that kind of crafting of his own image, it's actually such a disservice that he is remembered

as the genius killer because he's crafted that image for himself. And here we are still using the image that he has tried to craft for himself. He's a loser. He's a pathetic loser who doesn't achieve anything, even in his criminal life. Yeah, I agree. And I think what's so fascinating in terms of the 19th century fascination with him is that intelligence and criminality are understood to be at opposite ends of the spectrum. And because he seems to unite them both, that's remarkable to people. And I think that says so much about the society at that time, about people's expectation of social class, of education, of criminality, who would become a criminal, why they would commit a crime, what that said about them, what it said about their wider environs and the moment

that they found themselves in. Thinking back to Mark Twain's letter that we heard at the start, where he writes in to a newspaper, I think Twain really has a similar attitude to you, Anthony, where he's very tongue-in-cheek saying, we'd all die for this guy. He's so clever that we'd all happily go to the gallows on his behalf because he needs to carry on his great scholarly work. And what I think is interesting is that some people have read Twain's letter as being quite genuine actually and that he's saying you know he really believes this guy shouldn't be killed but I I don't read it as that I think that he I think he is playing on this idea this ridiculous self invention of Ruloff and undercutting it well I hope so I hope that there were people at the time and it does seem

like there were, but that saw through it. It seems blatantly obvious to me. I'm coming to a topic that says the genius killer, and I'm going, right, this could be, I could see some craftiness emerging here. No, the legal system is crap, and he's just lucky. He's an absolute bungler. Actually, didn't somebody say that at the time? The New York Times. The New York Times called him a bungler in crime. Yeah. Which is so true. Now, there is one final part, though, to this story.

I think we'll give you a sense of why he is called the genius killer even today. And that is that often on this show, we've come across when people are executed, particularly for murder, parts of their body are taken and made into other things. I'm thinking about death masks, where a mould of the face is taken. I'm thinking about, from the top of my head, it's either book or hair, where their skin is used to make various book coverings and objects. And it's something that we come across again and again in the 18th century and into the 19th century. Now, when Ruloff dies, what part of his body do you think is going to be taken? Well, I am presuming, given the picture I'm now looking at, having scrolled down in my notes, that his white cabbage was taken, because that's what it looks like. I'm presuming this is his

brain. It is his brain. So this was taken at the time by a biology professor at Cornell University, where, as I understand it, this brain is still either on display or in their collections today. So yeah, Anthony, come on. You've got the lovely, delightful, charming task of describing the image of this brain to us all. Right. There is a glass container, and it looks like one of those containers that you see when you go into a ye olde sweet shop that has that lid that you can lift off.

Do you know, I have one of those that I put reusable, I should say, cotton wool makeup remover pads in, in my bathroom. Yeah, all glass with a little fancy top on the top of it. And then there's a piece of tape just stuck across it that says Roloff's Belt incorrectly, actually, which, oh, that's art right there. And then on the bottom, it says Edward Roloff spelt correctly on a, you know, those label makers.

It looks like it's been stuck on with one of those label makers. Then inside the container, there is maybe two thirds full of some kind of liquid. I presume it's some kind of preserving liquid, formaldehyde or something. And then there is what looks like the core of a cabbage. So it's very white.

It's very textured, but it's a brain. To be honest, it doesn't really look like a brain, but we know that it is. Calling out to Cornell or anybody who might be doing their undergrads at Cornell, email somebody about this, get rid of this. We don't need to hold onto this. This is not notable. This is not something we need to preserve for history and for times to come. No, we can shunt this one in the dump. This is pointless. Well, you say that, but at the time it was recordedunt this one in the in in the dump this is pointless well you say that but at the time it was recorded as being one of the biggest brains in human history per oh was it actually this was in terms of volume this is the biggest human brain ever recorded or one of the

biggest ever recorded whether that makes people a genius i don't know i have an unusually small head so i don't know what that says about my intelligence levels. Oh, I have a very large head. Oh, well, you're clearly a genius then. Yeah. No, listen, get rid of it. I don't. Do you know what?

I very rarely have a reaction. We cover these kind of things so often that we don't become immune to them. I don't think, well, we haven't yet anyway, but we can distance ourselves from all of this a little bit. And I have no horse in this game, but it's so annoying. Like he just feels like a scab. And at the end of the day, we have Harriet and we have Priscilla who are, were they even ever recovered?

Were their bodies ever recovered? I don't believe so. I don't think they were ever found. And yeah, I mean, maybe that's the takeaway from the story really is just to remember them. And Harriet was so young. And obviously Priscilla was a tiny baby when she met her death at the hands of her own father. There is one legacy of this case, which I think is really interesting. And I suppose in a lot of cases, it could be a positive thing so this is called the ruloff rule and this is something that's enshrined in new york law and it states that the absence of a person whether that's a suspected murder victim or someone who's been kidnapped the absence of that person is not enough to convict someone of their murder so thinking thinking about how Harriet and Priscilla's absence was not enough to nail Ruloff for the murder, and actually he's only got for the murder of

Frederick Merrick, the clerk in the dry goods store. I suppose that's a rule that is a good thing in law, but it just feels so disheartening that it's come from such a grim case about someone who is such a clear manipulator and really not someone to be celebrated, despite this 19th century label as a genius that's attached to him. Yeah, maybe we should not preserve him in history like that and call it the Priscilla and Harriet law or something. Harriet Law or something. Like, I don't like that he gets preserved in that way. And I'm not just talking about the brain now. I'm talking about in terms of that law, because it gives him what he wants slightly.

He has his notoriety. And I would imagine at this point, he probably doesn't give two hoots what it is for, as long as he's notorious and he has that, or as long as he's known, at least, I suppose. Yeah, he's pathetic. We don't like him. That goes without saying, I suppose.

But yeah, thanks for bringing that, Maddy. It's an odd one. It's very, I'm actually sweating. Is that weird? I've actually, I've worked myself up a little bit with this one. Like, it just feels a bit, I don't know. I think with the Ruloff rule, that's something that he would have loved.

Yeah, right? It's scholarly, it's legal. He would have loved that. I agree. It should be called the Harriet and Priscilla rule. I'm starting a motion to change that. Listen, thank you very much for listening. Tell us what you think of Edward Ruloff.

Was he really a genius or a slug, as Anthony said? I don't know anything about slugs. I feel bad for slugs now. I know, you've given them a bad rap. I know, sorry, slugs. Please, if you've enjoyed this episode, tell your friends, tell your family, just spread the word.

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