Crime Junkie - INFAMOUS: Alice Crimmins

Episode Date: July 8, 2019

Long before Casey Anthony, there was another mother America loved to hate... Alice Crimmins. When her children went missing from their room one summer night, the police and the press were quick to point the finger at the "sex-crazed" mother. At the start of the women's lib movement, Alice stood for everything that threatened the status quo of how a wife and mother should behave. But over 50 years later we can re-examine the case and her multiple trials to see if there really was a case against Alice or if she was the victim of a witch hunt. For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/infamous-alice-crimmins/    

Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And first of all, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who purchased a Season of Justice shirt or water bottle to help support the DNA Doe Project. We just closed the store, so we haven't, like, tallied all of the numbers yet, but we hope to have an update for you next week on how much we've raised.

And if you want to find out even sooner, be sure to follow us on social media, Crime Junkie Pod on Twitter or Crime Junkie Podcast on Instagram. And we're going to make a post as soon as we find out exactly how much that number was, but spoiler alert, you guys, I think we're going to have a lot of solved cases. But until then, I want to tell you a story about a very infamous woman, a woman whose infamy

could only be compared to that of O.J. Simpson, Scott Peterson, or even Casey Anthony. In the 60s, she was all anyone could talk about. Her face made the front page of newspapers and she was hated by the public, accused of killing her two young children. But now, half a century later, we can finally reexamine the case from all sides and see

if the public hate was really warranted or if maybe, just maybe, she was the victim, having lost her children and then put on trial as part of a witch hunt just because the police didn't like her. This is the story of Alice Crimmins. That's right. In 1965, Alice Crimmins was living a life far from the public eye on a quiet street in Brooklyn.

Her life wasn't glamorous, it was, in fact, the exact kind of mundane and messy that you often find behind closed doors. She had married her husband, Eddie, very young, and now that they were in their mid-twenties with two kids, she just wasn't happy anymore. Eddie would stay out late drinking with the boys after work, and Alice wanted more passion, more sex, more happiness, just more. In 1965, Alice and Eddie were separated at the time. Eddie had gotten a new place while Alice stayed in their apartment with their two kids, Eddie

Jr., who was five, and four-year-old Alice Jr., who they actually called Missy. Now, in June, the two parents were deep in a custody battle over the kids. Eddie was furious that Alice was sleeping with other men, and he didn't want his children exposed to the comings and goings of men, which he was sure was happening. And to be fair, it was, like, Alice had a reputation with the people in their neighborhood that she was this smokin' hot redhead who loved the company of men. And honestly, today, I'm not sure many people would look twice at her for what she was doing, but in the sixties, at the very cusp of the women's liberation movement, Alice stood

for everything that threatened to ruin the status quo. But there were things that Alice did that gave Eddie somewhat of a good case for custody. So for example, one day, Alice left her kids with their maid, and she went to some, like, farewell party that was on a ship or a boat or whatever. And the maid eventually had to call Eddie when Alice just never returned. Like, she was gone for a couple days, she didn't say anything, she didn't leave money, the maid says. Yeah.

That's not a good look. Yeah, and what happened is Alice says that she accidentally got stuck on the boat, which ended up, like, sailing off, but to everyone else, it looked like she just went off to party and didn't have a second thought about her children. Now, Alice's lawyer assured her that everything would be okay, courts wanted to keep the kids with their mother during this time, and since she already had them, it would probably take a lot for them to be removed. Plus, Eddie wasn't exactly perfect, like, his love for Alice bordered on, like, an unhealthy

obsession. After they separated, Eddie would spy on Alice, like, follow her around town, watch the house to see who came and went, but even more, he fully bugged her apartment. What? Yeah, there are times when he would go further and he would have these bugs, but he would then actually sneak into the basement below Alice's bedroom and listen to her as she was with other men, and sometimes he'd stay there quietly through the entire event, and other times he'd barge in and interrupt them, sending her lovers running naked to their

cars. Oh my God. Yeah, it's a little messed up. And Eddie didn't date or so much as look at other women from what I can tell. He was fixated on Alice, even if she was fixated on other people. So their life was messy, and each felt that they were suited to be a better parent. Alice didn't want the kids with Eddie, and I'm not sure if Eddie didn't want the kids with Alice, or if he just wanted to hurt Alice, or maybe he even knew that she wanted the

kids so bad, and if he had them, maybe she would want him. It seemed in mid-June of 1965 that this was the worst of their problems, but they wouldn't know how wrong they were until the morning of June 14th. Alice woke up that morning and went to go get the kids. They were usually up well before her, making noise, but this morning was eerily quiet. And when she opened the door to the room that they shared, she was surprised to find the kids' beds both empty. She knew they were nowhere else in the apartment.

She would have heard them, and so her first thought is to call her ex, and she asks Eddie, do you have the kids? He says no, and she says do not fool around, and he insists. They're not here, Alice. I don't have them. And she just says, Eddie, please don't do this to me. And she's pleading at this point, pleading for him to stop with the battles between them. But I think deep down, also pleading with him to say that he did have them, because the

alternative was so much worse. Eddie swears he doesn't have the kids, and he tells her to go check outside. It wasn't that long ago that he lived in the house as well, and he knew the kids could wander off. Like, they had snuck out in the winter before and were found by a neighbor outside, like just in their nightgowns. So he tells her, go check with the neighbors, go check back outside, I'm heading over. But the neighbors didn't have them, and when Eddie arrived, the two were confronted with

the realization that this wasn't a cruel trick, and a call was placed to the police at 9.44 in the morning. Just a patrol officer was sent at first, and most of the detectives who heard the radio call out didn't even really give it a second thought. These are just two kids that wandered off. It happened all the time, because really, again, what was the alternative, the idea that someone would take two children from their own bedroom? At this point, something like that was almost unheard of and seemed impossible to the police.

But there was an investigator named Jerry Peering, whose spidey senses perked up when he heard this. Something felt wrong, and he was going to go to the scene. This would be his case. And from the moment he walked in the door, he knew what it was that was wrong. It was the mother. She claimed that she had woken up, found the kids missing, then called her husband, and then they called the police.

So he was expecting to see this distraught mother weeping and inconsolable, but instead Alice Crimmins looked impeccable. Not a hair out of place, her makeup fully done, and he didn't like her almost immediately, and his distaste and distrust of her grew more and more as he looked around the home. The first thing that caught his attention was the hook and eyelatch outside of the children's room. On the outside? Yeah, on the outside, like almost as if she was locking the kids in the room.

So he was going to make sure to ask Alice about this when he interviewed her. Now he also notices that there's this bureau underneath the window where the kids would have presumably crawled out of, if that's the way that they went. And in a later testimony, Jerry would swear that there was a layer of undisturbed dust on the bureau, like right on the top, dust that couldn't have been there if anyone crawled in or out of that room, meaning to him that the kids would have had to have left through their door, and it was someone who was in the apartment that took them away. So Jerry keeps walking around the apartment some more, checking the kitchen.

And in the kitchen, he says that he spots a box of Manicotti in the trash, and then he sees leftover Manicotti in addition to the fridge. And things that didn't mean anything to him at the time, but this would play heavily into his interpretation of the case later on. Now along with the Manicotti box in the trash, he also noticed a dozen or so liquor bottles. So weird feelings in the kitchen, he moves to Alice's bedroom and he finds a small address book, and just a cursory glance of it showed him that it was filled with the names of men.

Something that Jerry thought was wrong for a married woman and mother of two. Then, then he finds the thing that in my opinion, sent him over the edge. There was a bag underneath Alice's bed filled with cards and letters and signed programs from other men. And some of these men were pretty prominent. Like for example, there was this program from some event signed by Senator Robert Kennedy, and there were letters from other men in political power who referred to Alice affectionately as Rusty.

And at this point, Jerry knew that it was time to get Rusty talking, but he knew that he had to do it separately from her husband. So Jerry tells his partner, okay, you take Eddie and I'll take the b**ch. Wait, he called her what? Yeah, I mean, that just shows you. I mean, he's been there for like what, a couple of minutes, a half hour, and he already has this idea of how much he dislikes Alice Crimmins. So not only did Jerry not like what Alice represented, I think he looked at her and

saw an opportunity. Careers and promotions were made on big cases back then. And Jerry thought this could be his big case. And Alice knew from the very first interaction they had that Jerry had no interest in finding her kids, his only interest was in Alice. When they sit down together, Alice recounts the day before for Jerry in detail. She says she slept in a little bit that day, and then around 2.30, she'd taken the kids for a picnic.

They stayed there for a couple of hours and then left around 4.30. And she remembers this clearly because she needed to call her lawyer about the custody hearing. So she was sure to make sure she got to a payphone before five o'clock because she was afraid that her lawyer would be gone by then. But when she calls her lawyer, he told her, listen, I'm going to be working late. I'm super busy right now. Give me a call back a little bit later.

So she decides then to go to the store and pick up some things for dinner before returning to their home. When asked what she purchased, Alice said she got some frozen veal, string beans, and soda. Now, witnesses would later say that they saw Alice get home with the kids that evening and she was carrying a big brown paper sack. She walked into the house with the kids running in front of her. So things are seeming like they're kind of adding up.

So she fed the kids, called her lawyer back, they talked about the custody hearing a little bit that was coming up and it was coming up in just like a week. And specifically, they talked about that former maid who was like saying that Alice left the kids with her. And she was also saying that Alice owed her $600 of back pay and was threatening to testify against Alice. Now, she, again, like I said, was the one who'd been left with the kids. And she does this shady thing where she's basically like, I'm going to testify against

you for Eddie unless you can pay me the $600. Yeah. That doesn't really seem legit. It kind of feels like extortion. Yeah. And I think that's what Alice thought too. And like Alice swears like she only owed her like $150 tops. And here's the thing about Alice Crimmins.

And I think this is important to remember throughout the rest of the story. She is a woman who refuses to be messed with the fact that this woman was trying to exploit her custody battle to get money only enticed Alice, not to even pay her the $150. She said, listen, let her testify. She isn't getting anything out of me for being a liar. So after that phone call, after dinner, Alice suggested to the kids that they go for a drive. So she piles them into the car and then takes off. But the drive wasn't aimless.

She wanted to go by her ex-husband's new apartment. Is there a reason why she would want to do that? Well, you know, partly to scope it out. He just recently moved there and I think she wanted to see it. But also they had this very unhealthy relationship. Like I told you, Eddie bugged her police and he'd hide in her basement or scope out her house looking to see if there's anyone else there. Right.

Well, she would sometimes drive by Eddie's house to see if he was watching her or if he was home, in which case she knew that he wasn't able to follow her. Like it was a very messed up situation, super unhealthy, but divorce is a messy business. So she scopes out her husband's house or her separated husband's apartment and she doesn't think he's following her. So they drive for about an hour or so and then head back home where she bathes the kids and gets them ready for bed. Now here's an interesting tidbit.

The kids screen had a hole in it and replacing it was on her checklist of things to do to get her house ready for inspection because of her custody battle. So somebody was going to be coming in, checking the place, like again, deciding if the kid should be living with Alice or if they should be living with Eddie. And actually this was Alice's reason for why there were so many liquor bottles in the trash can. She said that like, no, I didn't go on some drinking binge. She was like, I was throwing away all of the alcohol in my house because I wanted to get

it totally ready for this inspection. Right. To make it look more presentable. Right. So that night she also has to replace this like screened in thing and that night she removed the kid's screen because again, it had a hole in it and she went to replace it with this other one that she had, but she realized that the screen was super dirty. And so she's like, you know what?

I'm just going to clean it the next day before I put this in there. And for whatever reason, she places the old screen back in, but doesn't bolt it into place. So it's just kind of like propped in the frame. Yes. Like that's exactly like how I took it. So if someone was watching the house and they saw her put this broken screen in, that could have been assigned to them that they could get in without making a lot of noise. Right.

Yeah. I mean, I would think it's totally possible. So after the kids are ready for bed, she sat with them while they said their nighttime prayers. And this was about eight 30. And just at this time, a young girl named Teresa was passing by the window. She heard them praying and she recognized little missy's voice because she had babysat for them in the past.

Now, Teresa was actually on her way to babysit for another family at that time. And she had no way of knowing that it would be the last time that she'd ever hear little missy's voice. But she notices something interesting that again, she wouldn't realize the significance of until the next morning. But when she walked by just a little bit down to the street from their apartment, like their window, there was this stroller with like a box on it that belonged to another neighbor. And again, not anywhere near the kids window at the time, but would later be moved.

So Alice goes on to tell detectives more about her night. She phones her friend, Tony, and Tony was one of the men whose names lived in her little black book. And he was a favorite of hers. And they don't talk for very long. Tony's out. He's busy. He's at one of his like usual hotspots.

Now, Alice suggests that maybe she could come out and meet him for a drink. But he says, no, no, no, no, like I'm going to be leaving soon. Don't even bother. Wait, if she was wanting to go out, what was the plan for the kids? Was she bringing in a sitter or something? They don't say. Like it's very weird. So, and then again, this is all the stuff that's making Jerry think that she's a bad

mom. Like you just put your kids to bed. You've got them like this hook and eye latch on their door and you might just leave them alone all night. Yeah. And they hang up, he says, he'll call her back, but never does. Now instead, Alice ends up getting a call from a man named Joe. And this is another man that she has a history with, but someone who lately she's been

less enamored with. Now Joe was married with seven kids. Whoa. Yeah, a lot of kids. At one time, he had this like wildly successful company. He would whine and dine, Alice, spoil her. But his love for booze and other women was causing cracks in the veneer of his perfect life and things were slipping.

He was on the verge of losing everything, drinking more than ever. And while Alice still like entertained him, she didn't look at him in the way that she looked at Tony. And I say that and I think I know that because that night Joe asked her to come out and she tells him no. And her reason is because I can't get a sitter. But we know just a few minutes ago, she was going to find some way to go see Tony. Yeah.

So Alice lounges around the house for most of the night. And at midnight, she takes little Eddie to go to the bathroom and she tried to get Missy to go to the bathroom as well. She tries to wake her up and stir her, but like she was out cold. She just like turned over and went back to sleep. So Alice just let her sleep. She left the room and now she can't remember if she did or did not lock the kids in. And this is where Jerry, I think, kind of asks her like, what is that lock all about?

And in his mind, he's seeing it as like, okay, that when she's done with her kid, she puts him in that room locks him in and then she doesn't have to worry about them. And the night is hers. She does whatever she wants, has men come and go, maybe she comes and goes. And she swears that that's not the case. She said the only reason that she put that hook and eyelatch in was because little Eddie used to wake up in the middle of the night and like go ransack the fridge and she didn't want the kids.

Yeah. I was going to ask if like either the kids had like a history of sleepwalking or like we're kind of known for like getting up and kind of playing in the middle of the night or anything. Yeah. So, so yeah, that's why she said she did it. I don't know. And this is maybe a great question for you.

Like, again, not a mom over here. Like I don't have kids, but this seems really weird to me. Like if I saw a lock on the outside of the kids door, it would be so bizarre. 100%. And I think I even mentioned like when we were looking for houses, there was a house that had locks on the outside of the bedroom doors. And I remember it because it was super creepy. And I feel like it's almost unfair for me to answer as a parent in 2019 because there

are so many like child-proofing things that like you can kind of trick the kid into feeling not necessarily feeling that they're locked in, but like disabling them from getting out of a place that you want to keep them without making it, I don't know, as weird or dangerous as locking them in their room. Yeah. Like what if, what if the kids like needed you in the middle of the night or something was wrong? And they're like, it's bizarre.

Okay. This is what's bizarre to me. It's bizarre to Jerry. But again, Alice just says she was trying to keep Eddie out of the fridge. So after she puts them back in the room, again, she doesn't remember if she did or did not lock it. She ends up going and taking their dog Brandy for a walk. Now Brandy was having to pee a lot lately and Alice had no idea that it was because

she was pregnant. She just thought something was going on with the dog. So she goes out and this is again around like midnight, takes the dog out, when she got back to her apartment, she sat on the stoop for just a little bit and then went inside to her room, turned on the AC and then fell asleep on her bed fully closed. Then something and she couldn't say exactly what something woke her up around two 45. Now during this time, she doesn't go check on the kids. So whatever it was that woke her up to her, she's saying didn't cause her any kind of

concern. Now about this same time though, her phone rings and it's her ex husband, Eddie. And they talk about all the drama with the maid, the owed money and the conversation doesn't last long. It's all about this like custody thing and the maid testifying and this is at like two o'clock in the morning. It's at two 45 in the morning, like, which again, very weird for me, but I think it was normal for both of them.

So when I was researching this, I learned that they kind of kept weird hours. Like after this call, Alice doesn't even go back to bed. She walks brandy again and then takes a bath and then goes to bed for good. Finally around like three 30 or four o'clock in the morning. Yeah. Those are really weird hours. It's strange. And again, and this is something that leads into everyone saying that Alice Crimmins was

a bad mom because what I read in this book was that she would often like keep the kids locked in their room, like while she slept well into the afternoon, like she would keep crazy hours. They would, she would sleep in the kids would just have to learn to like be fine in their room unless she had like a maid or a babysitter come over. And again, I don't know how often that happened. The day that the kids were found missing, you know, it was like nine o'clock in the morning. So I, you know, who's to say this was 50 years ago, right?

So after recounting this story, I don't think Jerry liked Alice at all. She left the screen unbolted. She may or may not have locked her kids in their room. She was talking to other men who weren't her husband late at night. He felt like all of his instincts about her were absolutely spot on. And now what Jerry's partner learned from Eddie to me is just as if not more damning. Now Eddie tells Jerry's partner that he played golf that day. He had some beers at the club and then he did a drive by of Joe's house.

So wait, which one's Joe? So he's the guy that called Alice that night for the second time, the one that who has all the kids is business is failing. He wanted her to come out and she's like, no, okay, got it. So Joe is someone who'd been around in Alice's life for a while. So it's someone Eddie knew about and Eddie did a drive by of his house because he wanted to see if Alice's car was there. And I don't know if he wanted to catch her in a compromising position or just proved

to himself that he was right. But either way, he didn't find anything Alice wasn't at his house. So he ends up going back to his house. He gets back around like five o'clock. He says he stayed until 11 and then he ran out to get some pizza and a soda, brings the food back home and eats it there, but he's not calling it a night. After the pizza, Eddie decided to go back and get some gin and tonics at a local bar, which Brett, you and I love a good G and T, but other people point out that it was weird

for Eddie to be drinking them that night. Like normally he was just strict beer drinker and he was also extra chatty with the bartender. And people later speculate that maybe he was ordering something memorable and talking to the guy to establish some kind of alibi. Yeah. Again, who knows if that's real or not. I don't think G and T is like stands out, but whatever. So he finishes up at the bar around 245 and admittedly he went to Alice's apartment.

And like I said, he did this all the time, he would drive by to see if she was home, see if anyone else was there. But when he goes by, now I don't know, here's the thing is like, I've seen reports that he says he stayed in his car, but there's also people who said they saw a man matching his description standing outside of the apartment near the kid's window. Either way, his story is that when he went by, he saw no strange cars parked, but he did see her lights on. So he decided to leave and that's when he goes home and calls her and they have that

conversation. So he says he calls because he knew she was up. He watches the TV movie and then falls asleep around 4am. Again, they're both going to bed at like 4am. Seriously. So when police have both parents story, they're led out of the home and to the police station for further interrogation while the house is processed. But I should know the house wasn't processed properly.

Years later, other investigators will come into the case and be furious with how the crime scene was handled. Pictures were few and far between because the photographer received little to almost no direction from the lead investigator about what he wanted photographed and important things weren't collected from the crime scene. For example, they got fingerprints from inside the kid's room, but they didn't bother getting any prints from anything outside, like the exterior of the window or anything like that. Oh my God.

That's huge. Yeah. And there was, remember that stroller I said that Teresa saw as she was walking past the window? Yeah. It had like a box in it. Yeah. Well, when police come, the stroller with the box is like right underneath the kid's

window. And as far as I can tell, I couldn't find any report about that even being collected, much less tested. Now there was a single fingerprint that they found in the room that didn't seem to belong to the kids or their parents, but they would have to find other suspects to test that against to figure out if it meant anything at all. Sometime in the middle of the day, amongst the probing and repetitive questions, the mood suddenly shifts.

Alice was put back in a police car because there was something that Jerry wanted her to see. He didn't tell her where they were going though. He just drove and drove and then he marched her out of the car. And it took Alice a little bit to realize what was happening, but she got about 10 feet away from what Jerry wanted her to see and then she realized what it was. It was her daughter's lifeless body. Missy was laying on her side, liver mortis had already set in.

She was still dressed in her nightgown and there was a pajama top tied loosely around her neck. Now Jerry made Alice identify Missy right there in front of police, in front of reporters, and he didn't have to do it this way, but Jerry wanted to see what her reaction would be. Would she cry? Would she scream? Or would she do nothing like she'd been doing all day?

So Alice cried and collapsed in front of the cameras and this is what Jerry recalls. He says that as soon as they were out of the view of the cameras that she stopped. Now when she was asked later, Alice said that she can't even remember how she reacted. In fact, she doesn't remember anything as if it's been blocked from her memory. She can't recall seeing Missy's face. She can't recall what she was wearing or if she was wearing anything at all. She can't remember. I mean, she was in shock.

Oh yeah. She's like, I can't remember if anyone said anything to me. I can't remember if I said anything. She was in complete and utter shock. After being taken back to the station and being questioned for hours, Alice was finally returned home at 11 PM where her mother joined her for support. Her daughter was dead, her son was still missing, and the house that she usually shared with them felt oddly quiet.

So neither Alice or her mother could eat. They couldn't sleep. They couldn't even speak of what was happening. So together they just cleaned all night until their hands were raw. They cleaned. On day two, when Jerry came back to the house, Alice was again flawless. Makeup done, well dressed, hair pinned up and teased like a movie star. And he hated this so much.

And this routine went on for days. They would even say, just turn on the other one and tell us who was involved. But that speech was mostly reserved for Eddie. They wanted him to flip on her. But he had nothing and he swore that he wouldn't hurt the kids and Alice wouldn't either. But when Missy's autopsy report comes back, it's just more proof to Jerry that Alice is capable of lying. And if she can lie about the little things, surely she's lying about everything.

When Missy's report is given to the police, there are a couple of things that stand out. The first is that Missy was not sexually assaulted. The report did make note of her sphincter being unusually open, but they couldn't rule that out as just the body's natural reaction to death. So at the end of the day, their finding was absolutely no sexual assault, which I kind of have to trust. But the thing that really stands out in this story and in her autopsy report are her stomach contents.

In Missy's stomach, there were carrots, potatoes, some kind of green leafy item. The coroner thought maybe it was like lima beans or string beans. There was macaroni, chewing gum, and small dark brown fruit seeds. Now this macaroni stands out because if you remember, there's manicotti in the fridge and a box in the trash, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's the box in the trash, there's leftovers in the fridge. But according to Alice's story, she said that she fed them veal that night.

That she picked up from the store earlier, right? Yeah. So she's definitely lying, but why lie about what you fed your kids for dinner? So here's the thing. To say that she's definitely lying, I think would be irresponsible. I think her lying is definitely an option. But like you said, why lie about that? People speculate that she's trying to make herself look like a better mother by saying

she fed them something nicer. But like, I love macaroni. What's the difference? It's not like she didn't feed them at all. I was just going to say, manicotti is delicious, so. Yeah, it seems like a dumb thing to lie about. Can I interject as a mom real quick? Yeah.

So there are times that I make dinner, but it's not what my kids eat. Is there a chance that she may veal for dinner and Missy refused to eat it so she's like, fine, you can have this leftover manicotti? You know, I never thought about that, and that's never come up in the stuff they've looked at, but totally. So Jerry uses this as proof to say, listen, if she's lying about this, she's lying about everything. But I disagree, like, so there's your option.

What if she made one thing, they didn't want it, she makes a second. But what if there's another? What if she did feed them feel? And again, Jerry says he saw these things, and he says that like, you know, they weren't important at the time, that's why I didn't collect it, but like, I remember it so clearly. But what if she fed them veal, and then someone else took them and fed them macaroni? Oh, but you think there'd be a way to tell when they last ate though, right? Like from her stomach contents or even the time of death?

Well, and this is where one of the biggest controversies in this case comes up. The statement first made by the medical examiner was that he could not pinpoint the time of death. He said from the time that she was found, Missy could have been dead anywhere from like six to 18 hours. So the best he could do was put the time of death somewhere between 10pm and 4am. But he kept saying, again, there's no way to pinpoint this, absolutely no way to pinpoint this.

But given time, that ends up changing. Now five days later, little Eddie was found as well, however, he was so badly decomposed that they couldn't even determine a cause of death. And forget trying to find a time of death, although the theory has always been based on how bad he was decomposed that he and Missy died the same night. Okay, so they believe they were killed at the same time, but why were they in different places? I honestly have no idea.

And I've never even really seen a credible theory as to why they'd be in different places. Maybe one of them was the target, not the other, and they wanted to spend more time with one of them. Do you know how far apart they were found? It wasn't very far. I don't have like an exact amount, but it's all like in the same area. And none of it was very far away from the actual house, like all within a few miles. Okay, so it wasn't like a town over or something insane like that?

No, no, no, no, yeah. So again, it's not like they're trying to like throw the police off. It's again, super weird. It's something, it's a big question mark. Now there are theories as to why they were both killed. And maybe not the ultimate reason why, but more like why it had to be both of them. And not just one of them. And the reason people say like both of them probably had to be killed is because little

Eddie was extremely close to Missy. He called her my Missy. He'd say, you know, don't touch my Missy. Where's my Missy? She was a big brother. Yeah. And one time his dad even tried to take him on a camping trip to like have the little like boys weekend or whatever, but they end up having to cut the trip off early and come home

because Eddie like could not bear being away from his little sister that long. He was so upset. So people have always said that if Missy was the true target by accident, by intention, whatever, they would have had to have killed Eddie too, because he would have never allowed something bad to happen to his little sister without putting up a fight or causing a huge scene. Right. So time passes slowly for the criminals.

Eddie and Alice try to reconcile and stay together out of convenience during this trying time, but it was just more of the same. Alice still went out, still saw other men, and it wasn't only Eddie seeing this. The cops were paying attention too. You see, the more time that passed, the more Jerry was sure Alice had something to do with her kid's death. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe Missy got in her way.

Maybe it was intentional, but whatever it was, he had to nail her on it. So what he does is much like her husband. He bugs her new apartment, and for two years after the murders, they set up this post in a hospital across the street from her new apartment where they monitored her every phone call, every living room conversation, every bedroom trist. They heard it all, and for every hour of every day for those couple of years, they had someone posted up there 24-7-365, and it ended up being for almost three years in total. It was an incredibly expensive operation that yielded very little fruit because in all the

time that they were there, they didn't get one incriminating thing on Alice. While monitoring her, they couldn't help but monitor Eddie as well, and it felt weird when he was hanging up Christmas decorations that very winter after his kids went missing. It felt like a sick joke to the officers watching from across the street, but there were other things that Eddie did that were weird too. He was, quote, pathologically curious about his kid's injuries, and it was more than wanting to just know what happened to them. He wanted to know in excruciating detail, almost as if he needed to know how much police

knew because he was keeping tabs on the investigation. Also, someone makes note that Alice had been getting harassing phone calls from somebody, and sometimes that person would say nothing, sometimes they would just heavy breathe into the phone, but sometimes they'd speak, and the voice that was overheard police said sounded an awful lot like Eddie. They did get Eddie to take a lie detector test about not the phone calls or anything, but everything happening with his kids, and he passes. But fun fact, he also had gone to the library the day before he took the test, and he read

everything he could on taking a polygraph test. I'm sorry, what? Yeah, it's super fishy, but do you want to know what's even more fishy? Something that to me makes Eddie look like the prime suspect? Ugh, let's hear it. So I'm not exactly sure when this information comes out, but it becomes known to police that at some point before the kids went missing, Eddie had confessed to Alice that he exposed himself to some little girls at the park.

Oh my god. Yeah. How did this conversation go down? So here's the thing, there are two theories about not why he would have done this, because clearly there's some weird sick perversions happening in Eddie's life, but there are two theories as to why he told Alice about this. And one is that he was trying to show Alice, like, I'm really as bad as you think I am. You make me sound like this awful person, and yes, like all of your suspicions are true,

I am that bad. The other one is it said that at some point Alice was blaming herself for the marriage falling apart, and he was feeling bad again, he like really loved her. And so people say that he didn't want her to take on all the blame. And he was like, well, you know, it's not all you, obviously I'm doing some weird stuff that might be contributing to us having marital problems. Okay, how does that make anybody feel better? And neither one of those makes sense.

Like again, I don't know if there was even a third option that we just aren't privy to because we were not in that home. But none of this explains why he did it in the first place and, you know, what dark stuff he has going on deep inside. And here's the crazy bananas part of 1965. The police didn't care. What? Yeah, police were so willing to just chalk all of this up to like general weird human

behavior. But they take everything that Alice does and make her out to be a child killer because they just didn't like her. My jaw is on the ground. Listen, I know, like they ignore everything fishy about Eddie and in fact, they ignore everything fishy about all other potential suspects and they focus in just on Alice. And literally after three years of surveillance, they have nothing. And this whole time she knows they're listening, she toys with them and she hates them for

it. In fact, the more they look at her, the stronger she vows to be in front of them and she will not break in front of them. And actually here is a direct quote from Alice. She says, see, they wanted me to break down. They wanted me to grieve not for the sake of my children, but for them, the police. I wasn't going to give them the satisfaction. They were my kids.

Nobody was out to see who killed my kids. They were just interested in making me break. So you can see how this like contentious relationship is building and building and building and just feeding into this like vicious cycle. Now over the years, they weren't just monitoring Alice. They were actively harassing her and meddling in her life. Like Alice would get a job. She'd get settled.

And then like clockwork, the detectives would come make a visit to her employer and inform them that the Alice they knew who was using her maiden name was really the infamous Alice Crimmins. And she would always end up losing her job, having to find another one and the cycle would start all over again. And they would even set her up with Eddie. Like they knew when she was with another man again, because they had her entire place bug. So they would call Eddie and tell him to like come over so he could catch her in the act.

It was all a game for them, but no one was winning. By year three, they knew they couldn't wait anymore. They had to show something for their years of surveillance efforts. Although they couldn't produce anything incriminating, they knew they'd have a case if they could get one person to change their story. And the one person they needed was the medical examiner. And they pushed so hard on him. They needed him to say that the kids were dead before midnight.

If they could prove that in court, then Alice's whole story about taking Eddie to the bathroom at midnight would be a lie. And they could prove that no one else fed them. It took some time, but eventually the medical examiner ends up caving. And he said he'd be willing to amend his statement and testify in court that the kids had to have died before midnight. And just like that, everyone seemed to forget his original statement, and now they had a case against Alice Crimmins.

With this, they got a grand jury to indict Alice on murder. And their case was only made stronger when they found a letter that had been sent to the detectives by an anonymous witness. And here, Brent, I'm going to have you read the letter. I have been reading about your bringing the Crimmins case to the grand jury, and I'm glad to hear of it. May I please tell you of an incident that I witnessed. It may be connected and may not, but I will feel better telling it to you.

This was on the night before the children were missing, but as the press reported that a handyman saw them at the window that morning, it may not be related at all. And actually, I just want to interject here just so people's minds don't go wondering forever. There was a report of this, but it's never been substantiated, so we can ignore that. The night was very hot and I could not sleep. I went into the living room and was looking out the window, getting some air. This was at 2am.

A short while later, a man and a woman were walking down the street towards 72 Road. The woman was about five feet in the back of the man. She was holding what appeared to be a bundle of blankets that were white under her left arm and was holding a child walking with her right hand. He now hollered to her, hurry up, and she told him to be quiet or someone will see us. At that moment, I closed my window which squeaks and they looked up but did not see me. The man took the white bundle and he heaved it into the back seat of the car. She picked up the little baby and sat with him in the back seat of the car.

This woman was thin with dark hair and the man was tall, not heavy with dark hair and a large nose. This took place under street lights and I was able to see quite plainly. The car turned from the corner of 153rd Street to 72 Road and out onto Cassina Boulevard. Please forgive me for not signing my name but I am afraid to. Wish you the best of luck, a reader. P.S. About an hour later, I thought I saw just the man getting into a late model white car.

So they find this letter which they had actually gotten a while before but were like reviewing the case and came across it and police realized they needed this person. They had an eyewitness who could testify Alice was the person that they saw. They knew their case would be open and shut. So they used clues from the letter to track down this writer. They knew it had to be somebody who lived on an upper floor because the person said like they looked up at me but didn't see me. And then based on what streets the person claimed to have seen them going down, they

narrowed it down to just a couple of buildings. And from there, they didn't just go door to door. They went actually to the landlords and asked for handwriting samples of all of their potential witnesses and sure enough, there was only one match, a woman named Sophie. And when they went to her door, she opened it and just said, I knew you would find me. Oh my gosh. And she's an interesting character. Her friends say that she loved to exaggerate and they had to figure out that like when

she told you a story, you take what she tells you. You subtract all the lavish parts and figure out like what is actually what you need to know out of the story. Yeah. Yeah. You subtract a little bit and then you can get to the truth. And she had this history of this like, whoa is me attitude where she would get a job but then she quit the job almost immediately because no matter where she was or who she

worked with, they never appreciated her. She couldn't work under those conditions. So she just kind of had this like, I don't know, bad reputation maybe is the right word, but you know, she just wasn't well like, she wasn't super popular. And she knew Alice from the neighborhood and Alice was everything Sophie wasn't. She was good looking. She was young and maybe a small part of Sophie envied her or even just disliked her. So the prosecution had Sophie and the medical examiner and they were ready to take Alice

Crimmins to trial, but not for the murder of both kids, just Missy since in Eddie's case, they couldn't even officially determine a cause of death. Like how are you going to get someone convicted of murder? So they just go to case with Missy's case. After Alice is arrested and makes bail, her lawyer waited a few months like waiting for the court to like bring the charges, come to trial. And after months and months and months, he ends up like asking for a dismissal because he's like, listen, you know, you got to do something otherwise.

If you don't have a case, you have to drop the charges. They're violating a right to a speedy trial. Right. So 1967 turns to 1968. And that's when the judge is finally like, listen, they're not wrong. Like he gave the prosecution ultimatum now or never, boys, either you bring this thing to trial or I'm dismissing the case. So the trial went forward and Alice didn't get a fair shake right from the start.

Her, you know, quote, jury of her peers were a bunch of middle-aged white working class men. I knew you were going to say it was a bunch of dudes. Yeah. Like at this time, women could sit on juries, but all they had to do was either say that they had to be home with their kids or how a lot of the women got off this jury trial was they told the judge like during voir dire, I think she's guilty and I can't even be unbiased in this case and they were dismissed.

So she had 12 white middle-class men looking at her and all of them looked a lot like the lead investigator on paper. And this is the same lead investigator who said that if Alice were his wife, he would have killed her. So you know, it's going to go well for her. Oh, totally. Definitely. Now the prosecution paraded a number of people on the stand.

Of course, Jerry was one of the first ones to get out the investigator. He swears he saw undisturbed dust on the bureau proving that the kids couldn't have left that way and they had to have left like somewhere through the house, but it's hard for me to even believe this. Again, he didn't take pictures of this at all, but you know, we're told that like Eddie and Alice looked for the kids. They would have like put their hands on it to like look out the window. There was an officer who was smoking when he first like got there, the patrol officer,

and he would have gone like out the window to like dust off or I don't smoke. It would be like de-ash your cigarette. Well, and even Alice the night before putting the screen in and out a couple of times should have disrupted it, right? That's such a good point. Yeah. So he's swearing to this, but there's no proof. But of course, like everyone is taking the lead in best years, a police officer like,

you know, sworn by the state. So then they bring up the medical examiner to testify to his brand new story. And he says the kids were dead before midnight. There's no way her story about taking them to the bathroom was real. The last thing they had to have eaten was the manicotti, which she said she fed them veal. None of it makes sense. And then they put Sophie on the stand who now has this even more elaborate story than

she even put in her letter. It's like filled with all these details. And it's not just like a dark haired woman that she saw now. She points to Alice at the defense table and says that that is the person that she saw that night. And then she even throws in this detail about overhearing Alice talking about her pregnant dog, which if you remember, Alice didn't know, yes, Alice didn't know that her dog was pregnant.

Brandy actually gave birth a couple of days after the kids went missing and it was a huge surprise to everyone. So again, it shows you that whatever Sophie saw, she is adding her own details to this. At some point in the trial, in between sessions, Joe visits Alice in her lawyer's chambers. Now, Joe is someone that the police have been pushing on for the entire three years that they were trying to make a case against Alice. They always felt like he knew more. They always felt like he was going to be the key to the case.

But no matter how much they questioned him, they even used truth serum on him a couple of times. Like he never gave them anything. He always stuck to the same story. He didn't believe she had anything to do with it. He said she never made any kind of weird confessions to him. Never, never, never, never, never. So during the trial, in between sessions, Joe goes to visit Alice in her lawyer's chambers

and he's caressing her. His life is falling apart at this point. He's caressing her. He's begging her to marry him. He loves her. No one will ever be her. And of course, she refuses. She's like, Joe, I'm in the middle of a murder trial.

My kids are murdered. This is not the time. And the last thing I'm thinking about is you. I mean, if you remember, he wasn't even like super on her mind three years ago, like lasting on her mind. But she's like, I can't marry you. And then so in the same breath, he's like, well, then will you talk to my wife for me because she's trying to leave me and I don't want her to leave me?

Oh, OK. Yeah. And Alice is nice enough that she's like, yes, I will talk to your wife for you. So he leaves, but little did she know when Joe left her, he was going to flip on her and work for the prosecution. You see, they had a way of making everyone flip eventually. If someone was going to testify that Alice was a good mother, they would threaten to expose something about their life, like past affairs or whatever, like to keep them from

coming forward. And Joe had his own skeletons. Back in 1965, they found out that he used to frequent drag bars, which was something that he wasn't ready for people in his life to know back in 1965. It was something that police told him would come out if he didn't say something damning against Alice on the stand. So the next witness that was called was Joe. And Joe tells the jury a story that to date he hadn't told anyone so far.

He said that Alice told him things would have been different if he had come over that night, like implying that she had something to do with it and if he would have been there, maybe it wouldn't have happened. And then he says she had actually asked him for forgiveness for killing Missy. And at that point in the courtroom, Alice leapt out of her seat, started screaming, like fists banging on the table, like, Joseph, how dare you do this? It's not true. Like how you have all people, how could you do this to me?

Now when it came time for the defense to put on their case for the jury, it just seemed to fall flat. Teresa, the babysitter testified about that stroller she saw the night before and how the next night it was like underneath the window. You know, obviously the implication is that someone used it to get into the window or to get the kids out. But for whatever reason, it just did not land with the jury. So the defense tries to pull like an ace card and they're going to do something that

most defendants don't do. They were going to put Alice on the stand. But I think it backfired because for everything she tried to say, every record she tried to set straight, every emotion she tried to convey, there is only one part of her testimony that has lived on for over 50 years. And it's a moment when the prosecution is talking to her about Joe and they asked, does he have a swimming pool? She says, yes, he does.

Did you ever go swimming in that pool? Yes, I did. What were you wearing when you went swimming in that pool, Mrs. Cremens? One time a bathing suit, one time no bathing suit. Well, where were your children the time when you were swimming without a bathing suit in Joe's swimming pool? And she said, they were dead. Years later, Alice said that she knew she was nasty to the prosecutor on the stand.

And she said she probably came off poorly to the jury, but she couldn't stop herself back then. And all she wanted to do was tell her side of the story, but all the prosecutor wanted to do was talk about her sex life and to Alice, there was no connection. In the closing statements, the prosecutor compared Alice to a rotten egg. And he does this whole analogy basically saying that the egg is one of the most pristine, beautiful shapes in nature. And when you look at it from the outside, you just expect the inside to be beautiful

as well. And what you can't see until you crack it open is that sometimes you get a putrid rotten one. And he said that was Alice. She was a rotten egg. Now the deliberations were long, but in the end, what juror number nine would say later was that it was the medical examiner's testimony that they couldn't shake. They said it was indisputable evidence that she was lying.

Of course, they didn't know that the own medical examiner had disputed himself previously, but they used that to find Alice guilty of the manslaughter of missing. And here's what Alice said about the whole ordeal of sitting through that first trial. Quote, there is a detachment as you sit there. You can't believe that they're talking about you. At least I never did. It's a very strange feeling. All those things I had done in my life and there they were all brought out and distorted.

It never was really like that. It was never like what they made it out to be. Did the prosecution ever provide any sort of motive? I mean, did she just snap or what? I feel like that's like a huge hole in this case for me. It is for me too. And the prosecutor's story at the time was that Missy just got in her way somehow and she killed her.

But here's the thing. Five years after this first trial, the prosecutor even said, quote, to this day, I know it's weak. I don't know if she did it. It still seems unlikely. I can't believe it. Oh my God. I can't even believe the story I told the jury.

I don't even believe it now. I thought my jaw was on the ground earlier. What? Yeah. The very prosecutor that took her to trial didn't even believe his own story. But the jury bought it. She was sentenced to five to 20 years. But shortly after the trial, the defense finds out that the jury had done some investigating

of their own. Which totally is not allowed, right? Right. The jury is supposed to only consider what they're told in a courtroom and they're not supposed to do any experiments or consider anything they hear outside of the courtroom. But some of them, I guess, had gone to Alice's old neighborhood and tried to see if Sophie really would have been able to identify Alice that night based on the street lights. So because of this violation, Alice got granted a new trial.

And the second one is a lot different. It's 1971 now, though it's not that much later in time. People from the trial have died. Some have moved away. Some have gotten married. Many people got divorced because of the stuff that came out. Alice herself had finally divorced Eddie the year before. And here's the biggest thing that changed.

People weren't as outraged by just the idea of Alice having sex anymore. The women's movement had matured, so people could view Alice in a different light. The prosecution's case was very much the same, except this time they attempted to try her for both murders. So they do the same like Parade again of people. They called up Joe, who by now is separated from his wife. He lost his business. They call up Sophie, who this time is even more than happy to testify.

She loves the fact that she's like so important and something so big. And you should see this ridiculous picture I'm putting in on our website of her coming into court waving like she's freaking Miss America. It's absurd. Oh my gosh. Is it like the princess wave? Yeah, it's absurd. So in trial two, they find another witness though who says they saw the same thing Sophie

did. And it's looking like the trial is going in the same direction that it did before. So Alice does something drastic despite having a gag order placed on her. She went in front of the news cameras one day after court and pleaded with the public if you saw anything, anything at all, or better yet, if you saw nothing that night, that's just as important and I need you to come forward. And it actually worked. A man named Marvin Weinstein called the defense's office and he said, listen, I think the people

that Sophie and this other witness saw were me and my family. That night we were walking down that very street. It was me, my wife, our two kids, and our dog. And now the kids were a little bit younger. They were two and three and a half, but it's like close enough in age. And he's like everything she says, we did. So it very well could be us. And he ends up saying later that he regrets coming forward for how much he and his wife

were harassed for getting involved because again, everyone hated Alice. They didn't want anyone who was on Alice's side coming forward, right? But he's at least got one person to like provide an alternate theory. There was also another new person in this trial throughout the trial. The prosecution kept alluding to the fact that they knew who it was that helped Alice get rid of her kids because remember, that's always been the huge part of the story like Sophie is a main witness. She's walking with a man that night.

You know, they're carrying this bundle. Who is this man? So the prosecution keeps teasing like we know who it is, but like won't say a name. And what they find out is that like who the prosecution thinks it is, is this man who's in jail. Like apparently at some point he had told his cell that he was involved and it's total BS and the prosecution knows it's BS because they won't put him on the stand because when they question the guy, he's like, no, I totally made it up.

But the defense actually does call the guy as a witness. Again, he's like, yeah, no, I totally made it up, I have nothing to do with it. So it felt like maybe Alice had a chance coming out of the second trial. But unfortunately times hadn't changed enough and people still loved to hate her. She was found guilty again, this time for murder in the first degree of both of her children. Oh my God. When this happened, she collapsed right there in the courtroom and ended up having to spend

a few days in the hospital. Two years and an appeal later, she got the attention of higher courts and they ruled that her conviction for Eddie's murder must be overturned because there was no proof he was even murdered since they couldn't even determine a cause of death. But they did uphold the manslaughter conviction for Missy. So Alice went back to prison to finish out her sentence where she remained until her parole release in 1977. As far as the state of New York is concerned, like this case is close.

They know who did it, they got their conviction, but there have always been loose ends. Again, the man who put her in prison the first time didn't even believe his own story. And I wish they would have taken a closer look at other suspects because there were other suspects. There was actually a brain damaged, teenaged boy who ended up taking his own life just two weeks after the kids were murdered. And he had told a teacher that he was responsible and the teacher said that he also confessed that he was responsible to a priest.

And everyone who knew the boy said that he was like frequently seen out and about like around the neighborhood. But after the murders, he became like a recluse, like he would only leave the house to see his teacher or to see his priest. And again, two weeks later, he ends up dying of a self-inflicted gunshot wound that police call an accident, even though he had to use his own toe to pull the trigger, like it feels intentional. Yeah.

Yeah. And it feels like a good suspect, but he was also the son of a police officer, so it never really went anywhere. And again, they had their suspect, like they were only looking at Alice. Now there was someone else that I think looks like a great suspect as well, but like an unknown person. There were reports at the time of a man who was breaking and entering into homes all over Alice's neighborhood.

And usually he would just steal stuff like a wallet, a TV, but just four days before the kids went missing. This person broke into a home just down the street from Alice and the man was taking a wallet from the home when the little boy who lived there like walked in on him. And the intruder asked the little boy to come with him. But the boy didn't because he's like, oh, I'm not allowed to. And the intruder ended up leaving. But this feels like so eerily close.

Why would this person want a young child to come with them? Well, and it feels especially eerie knowing that the kid's window was compromised. Like if this intruder was going to get into the criminal's house, why not use this window with a screen, with a hole in it, right in the kid's own bedroom? And when you think about, I mean, if you remember, they had that single fingerprint in the room that never matched anyone. And I mean, they tested hundreds of people against it over the years. So if you believe Alice did it, then that's just like a red herring.

But if you think she didn't, then there could still be someone out there, someone who takes children from their beds in the dead of night for seemingly no reason at all. After Alice's parole in 1977, she actually went to go live with Tony in Florida. They had married while she was in prison, and they lived out their lives together in solitude away from the press. Now Tony has since passed away, but Alice, as far as we know, is still out there, rumored to have gone back to New York, the place that she once called home with her kids. She never had any more children.

And I think depending on your view of Alice, it could be because she didn't want any to begin with, or it could be because the pain of losing them was just too much to bear. And why would you bring more kids into a world where you know a killer could still be roaming free? If you want to really dive into the details of this case, I highly recommend the book by Kenneth Gross called The Alice Crimmins Case. And if you want to see pictures from this case, you can go to our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com. And like Ash said at the beginning of the episode, if you want to follow us on social

at Crime Junkie Podcast on Instagram or Crime Junkie Pod on Twitter, we'll be releasing the numbers on our Season of Justice shirts very soon. Oh, an interesting fact about this case, it was actually the inspiration for the very first Mary Higgins Clark book, which I'm sure like all of our crime junkies know who she is. Oh my gosh, where are the children? Yeah, yeah, she does this like fictional spin on the story where a woman is accused and acquitted of the murder of her two kids, and she tries to like get away and start a

new life. And then she ends up having two more kids who go missing. It was, I mean, it's a great read, obviously made her the writer that she is. So check that out in between episodes and we will be back next week with a brand new episode. Crime Junkie is an audio chuck production, so what do you think Chuck, do you approve?