Episode 45: The Cookie Monster Killer

[Music] Hello, my lovely, hello, hello! This is Lory and Tory coming into you from the haunted corners of New England, and you're listening to the Something Wicked Podcast, the show that delves deep into the topics of true crime, haunted histories, and all things paranormal. Dedicated to those that love to know all the spoopy and gruesome details about psychosocial killers, ghastly ghouls, and creepy cryptids with tales to make you sleep with the lights on. On today's episode, we are going to go over another crazy killer, Harrison Graham, aka the cookie monster killer. The cookie monster? Yep, that's right folks, you did hear that directly, the cookie monster killer. I know it sounds completely off the wall, but I promise I will explain. This is truly a tragic tale from both sides of the coin, and I am so excited to get this started. So, turn down the lights, pop some corn, and let's get it. [Music] [Music] [Music] Hello and welcome back to the show, and for those of you new to the podcast, I'll say thanks for tuning in. As we said in the intro, we are going to go over the life and crimes of Harrison Graham, the cookie monster killer. He was also known by his other names like the Death House Killer and the Corpse Collector, which in my opinion fit a lot better, but for today, he will be known as the most popular and funniest. He was also affectionately known to his neighbors as Marty, so that's what I will be calling him throughout. How people got Marty from Harrison is beyond me. I was just thinking about that. But that's besides the point, when the fuck did Marty come from? Yeah, and here we go. Wee! [Music] Between 1985 and 1989, investigators in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania were called into three separate cases of serial murder. That was a lot for one city, but the 1980s had seen an increase in serial murders across the country, especially those that involved uniquely gruesome details. From Night Stalker Richard Ramirez, with his pawnshaunt for Satanism, to Robert Bridella's torture of imprisoned men, the 1980s seemed to inspire killers to realize their worst fantasies. Someone dubbed the Frankfurt Slasher stab seven people to death in a Philadelphia neighborhood, even as the police learned from an escaping victim about Gary Hydnick, who was holding female prisoners in the basement of his house on North Marshall Street. One had died from hanging in chains and one had been killed. The police found three more intended victims in the house chained up in starving. Hydnick had used them as sex slaves and was planning to add more. After his arrest, he admitted to eating pieces of one of the victims and feeding some to his captives. Then, Leonard Christopher, a black man, was arrested and convicted of the Frankfurt area murders, even as an eighth woman was similarly murdered, so his conviction became controversial. One set of witnesses had seen a white man with some of the victims, but others stood by their identification of Christopher. Hydnick had worked in the fish market where the seventh woman was found dead, had many inconsistencies in his story, was seen with the victim and with a knife, and had spots of blood on his clothing. Well, if he works in a fish market. Also, on a sweltering August day in 1987, the police were called to a two-room apartment in a rundown brick row house in North Philadelphia. The tenant of four years, a black man named Harrison Marty Graham, who liked to talk like the cookie monster from Sesame Street, had been evicted at noon that day due to a horrible odor emanating from his apartment. Before leaving, he nailed the door shut to one of the rooms and said he would be back for the rest of his stuff. Landlord Nathaniel Choice had sent his son and nephew to take care of this business, and when they found their access thwarted, they peeked through the keyhole. That's when they called the police. Harrison Frank Graham was born on September 9, 1959 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to a 16-year-old mother Lillian Graham. There is no information that I was able to find on his father, even whether he was on the birth certificate at all. There's also no real information on the first few years of his life, and Lillian had difficulty raising a child when she was still one herself, so she ended up placing Marty in foster care when he was two. Oh, there's no definitive confirmation what his life was like in foster care, but Marty later in life would say that he was subjected to all different kinds of abuse, and that he was bounced around from home to home until he was seven. This unfortunately happens frequently in the foster care system, not saying that all families are bad, but it doesn't help when CPS has had such a bad reputation, and there's multitudes of damning evidence against them, just to throw out one example that most people know about the Gabriel Fernandez case. I will say it's a recommended watch, but at the same time, it really fucked me up, so word of caution before going into it blindly, it is very disturbing. Yeah, it. it broke me hard. I'm going to go on a little side rant here real quick, because I really want to bring into light the severity of this issue, also that it's relevant to the case we're covering, because unfortunately, with a lot of killers, it is a thing that the type of environment they grew up in plays a role in how they go on to commit their crimes later in life, more often than not. There will be something that is controversial and has many strong opinions from both sides, but I refuse to sit here and pretend that it's not a real issue. Yeah. So, to give you a background, child protective services, or CPS, is an essential government agency entrusted with safeguarding children from neglect and abuse. With the noble mission of protecting vulnerable children, CPS plays a critical role in ensuring their well-being. However, beneath the service of the seemingly benevolent institution lies a troubling reality. In some cases, children who are removed from their homes and placed under CPS care find themselves exposed to even more heinous crimes, such as being pimped out, forced into prostitution, and subjected to various forms of exploitation. I'm talking about this to shed light on these dark stories, exposing the distressing truth about a system that is meant to protect, but instead perpetuates fucking trauma. CPS intervention typically occurs when a child's home environment is deemed unsafe due to abuse or neglect. Parents who fail to meet their children's basic needs may face the removal of their offspring, with the intention of placing them in a safer environment. However, it is within these alternative arrangements that the vulnerability of already traumatized children becomes magnified, as they often fall prey to unscrupulous individuals who exploit their defenselessness. One of the most harrowing examples of such exploitation involves children being pimped out and forced into sexual exploitation. These innocent victims, often housed in hotels or other temporary accommodations, are subjected to the unimaginable horror of being made to engage in sexual acts with individuals who pay for their services. These crimes are particularly abhorrent because they occur under the guise of child protection. The individuals responsible for orchestrating these nightmarish scenarios are the very case workers assigned to protect and advocate for the children in CPS custody. This betrayal of trust is an egregious violation of their professional responsibilities. The case workers who are meant to be the lifeline for these children exploit their positions of power and manipulate the vulnerable victims under their care. This kind of corruption not only perpetuates physical and emotional harm, but also exacerbates mental health issues, leaving lasting scars on the lives of these children. The consequences of such exploitation extend far beyond the immediate physical harm inflicted upon the victims. The traumatic experiences endured by these children often result in severe long-term emotional and psychological damage. The very system designed to safeguard their well-being becomes a catalyst for perpetuating the cycle of abuse and trauma. These victims are left grappling with profound mental health challenges, including post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD, depression, anxiety and a host of other psychological issues. The revelations of children being exploited and abused within the CPS system underscore the urgent need to form an increased accountability, addressing this deeply rooted issue requires comprehensive measures such as rigorous screening and vetting of CPS personnel, improved training to identify signs of corruption and enhanced oversight mechanisms to prevent exploitation and ensure the safety and well-being of the children under CPS care. Additionally, strengthening collaboration between CPS law enforcement agencies and social service organizations can help create a united front against exploitation. sharing information, implementing joint investment. investigations and prioritizing victim to support services are crucial steps towards dismantling these criminal networks and providing justice for their survivors. The distressing dark stories of children being pimped out and exploited within the CPS system reveal a devastating reality that demands urgent attention. We must acknowledge the failures within the system and work towards creating a secure environment for vulnerable children by holding those responsible accountable, implementing reforms and prioritizing the well-being of children in CPS custody, we can begin to repair the broken trust and prevent further harm. Every child deserves a safe and nurturing environment and it is our collective responsibility to ensure that CPS fails its intended purposes. That's why it's always the line with anyone anywhere if you see something, say something. Because it is fucking ridiculous, the amount of kids that go through this shit. Exactly. And I'm sorry guys, but as you can tell, this makes my blood boil. Anything to do with kids really pisses me off when it comes to stuff like this. It's extremely unfortunate because obviously we've all seen CPS or DCF cases. That's how it was known up here for the longest time. Yeah. And unfortunately out of the several that I've seen, only one has turned out the way it should have. Yeah. And sometimes there are situations where kids shouldn't be removed from their homes at all but they do for asinine reasons and then end up in these unfortunate situations when they could have been safer at home as well. Anyway, getting back to it again, I apologize guys, but I feel the reason that Marty ended up snapping the way that he did was due to an environment that he was living in later on. I will get to it. That triggered all the trauma from his past in the system and caused him to go on his killing spree. But getting back to his childhood, at the age of seven, he ended up with foster mother named Pauline Williams. There's also not much on her that other than she was a nice lady that raised Marty up until he was around 15 to 16 years old. I mean, that's nice. Yeah. So that's kind of it as far as that. But according to him, he just went through all this shit and then got traumatized again later, which probably, like I said, made him perpetuate the whole situation. In the meantime, Lillian went on to have four more children. She was never able to have Marty come back to live with her in that time. But she was somewhat present in his life. This was assumed because she always knew what was going on in his life. Whether this was through letters, phone calls or visitations, it's unclear. Okay. At age 12 in 1971, Marty was sent to Philadelphia General Hospital for a mental disorder and he ended up being resident in the psychiatric facility until he was 14. During that time in the hospital, he was tested and found to have an IQ of 63, which is somewhere around having the mental capacity of a nine-year-old. And this carried with him throughout the rest of his life. So he never learned how to do things like read a clock or read much in general or anything like that. When he reached the age of 13 to 14, he dropped out of high school and started living on the streets. And for the first time, he found his home there because where he was at that time, there were a lot of intellectually disabled people that were homeless because they were either not able to keep a job or sad enough because their families didn't want anything to do with them. So he was welcomed among them. While homeless, Marty met a pimp. Oh no. This pimp befriended him and took him off the streets and under his wing. Marty said that this was the first time he had ever fallen in love. The pimp. Oh my goodness. And the two ended up having a sexual relationship. And Marty said this was the first time in his life that he felt deeply loved in return, which is really sad in my opinion because here we have this grown-ass man, the pimp, taking full advantage of not only a young boy because he was still 14, 15 at time, but a mentally handicapped young boy. He knew this and saw Marty as an easy target and he tricked him and put Marty through his shit ton of sexual and mental abuse, also pimped him out to a bunch of people on a regular basis. Oh my god. So yeah, this was when Lillian decided to step back in the picture. Not when he was going through the abuse in the foster homes, not when he dropped out of school and became homeless, no. When she was more stable and popped out of few more kids and found Jesus. She claimed she did it to help Marty get out of his immoral lifestyle. Honestly, if you actually paid attention, you realize that it's not a lifestyle you would have chose. You dumb bitch, just saying. Ugh. But anyway. So Lillian called him to come back home to help him get his life back on track. And at age 15 or 16, he moved back in with his mom. So he started going to church with her and he got this job in construction. So things were going well for him. So it actually did turn out pretty good. He eventually made enough money to be able to move into an apartment along this row of houses in the lower North Philly area. So in 1977, the neighborhood that Marty lived in was poverty-stricken and had a lot of houses and apartments that were abandoned. Almost all of the buildings around were in a state of disrepair. And when he moved in, he got to know his neighbors and their children. And he often worked as a handyman for the neighbors whenever they asked for help. He also liked to play outside with the neighborhood kids, like basketball or go on walks with them and just really connected with them. Nothing bad. I know that's where your mind went. Because usually it does. I mean, yeah. That tends to be the best way. No. He was legitimately just like a kid himself. So he liked being with the other kids. Everyone loved him and knew him as this really friendly neighbor that would help out anyone any time. And this is where it starts to get dark. What a spin. The reason things started to turn sour for Marty was because he had a number of lingering mental health issues that were left untreated for such a long period of time. As I was stating earlier, he had a lot of trauma between his time in the foster care system and his time with the PIMP. And on top of having a very low IQ, I only say this because the average adult IQ is between 80 and 110, he was diagnosed with multiple personality disorder, which we know today as disassociative identity disorder or DID. The typical cause for DID is to give someone a way to cope with traumatic experience or events. Your brain will essentially split and create another personality whether it is a regressive personality, so having an age younger than yourself, or it can be a type of protector one that comes to the surface when a triggering event occurs. It is defined itself on having two or more distinct, separate identities with and other than yourself. Again, Marty had experienced a lot of trauma and I think that combined with his younger mind not being able to cope with what he was going through sparked the other personalities of which he had three, including himself. Later on after his arrest and getting the official DID diagnosis from the hospitals and court, the doctors who examined him said that there was no way he was faking it because he lacked the IQ to even know how to fake it, which I will speak on this as well. I believe that it is a real diagnosis and it is not something that should be made fun of or faked because sadly there are people that do fake it whether it's a cry for help or attention or fuck to even get videos on social media sometimes and it really pisses me off. It's not a joke. And it's when Marty was living on his own that his personality started to surface because he had no sense of stability other than himself. So his first and main personality was his own, Marty. Marty is a kind, good, christian man, he loved to help his neighbors, he loved to fix things up, he also greatly loved his mother. The people in his neighborhood would also agree with all of those sentiments and they really genuinely liked him. He even had a long term girlfriend named Robin that was around the same age as him. His second personality was a toddler named junior, when junior came out, he loved to play with the neighborhood kids and most of all he loved to play with his raggedy little cookie monster doll. So he loved to put on like puppet shows for the kids and do cookie monster toys to make them laugh. So it was kind of really cute. It was really cute. It's unclear when and how he got the doll but most speculate that it was a gift from the pen. Why? And Marty said that when things got really scary for him, he would cling onto cookie monster for safety. And that cookie monster was the one thing he had consistently throughout his life. This is why it's really, why I said this is tragic and it's sad because it's like, I know what he did. I know what he did, I'm getting to it but it's just, it's one of those. It could have gone different and I feel for him. Also, side note. I think it's kind of funny that he went by the cookie monster killer outside of this puppet but his last name is Graham, like, you know, Graham cracker, you gotta give it. He is a cookie. Oh my god. Until he wasn't fucking stereotypical crap shit, he was the photo negatives. Exactly. I have to throw a little bit here every once in a while, every time I partially try to get the third personality was a man named Frank. So first off, Frank is Marty's middle name. And it was also the name of his biological father. But as I stated earlier, there's no real info on his dad. So even though some people believe that Frank was an imitation of Marty's father, there's no definitive proof. Frank was not only the one that Marty said used very bad words, which Marty and junior we're not okay with. at all because they didn't use that word. Frank was also very violent, he loved drugs and alcohol and having sex with other men. Now also, some people speculate that Marty is gay and that Frank is his way of being able to be himself without feeling ashamed. I can't say for sure, it wouldn't be a surprise though and how he was raised with his mother, however, it doesn't explain Frank's love of getting drunk and high. Yeah. And also the long-term girlfriend, Robin. Yeah, I think that also partly because having the mind of a child, not really understanding attraction much at all because from what I gather from him and Robin's relationship, it was, they weren't really physical. Yeah. All that much they didn't like to be. They did have sex but they were more like friends and the fact that she was an addict so they kind of just like to do drugs together. That was mostly the thing. But as far as I know, he was gay and it was just the whole thing saying that Frank came out because it was like, he could just be himself without any fucking. Hello filters. Yeah. Yeah. Moving on. In his early 20s, Marty stopped working in construction because his mental health was starting to decline and he was starting to not be able to take care of himself. So this was around the time he started to receive disability and ended up moving into a more, let's say, affordable apartment on 1631 North Street that was only $90 a month for rent. That's list. I mean, it's still the 80s but that's it. Yeah. You'll hear why though. This was a run-down, half abandoned apartment complex. The windows were all smashed out. The water only worked every once in a while. Oh no. There was no upkeep and the building itself was falling apart. Okay, maybe saying more affordable was putting the bandaid on the gaping wound. Yeah. But this place was a shit hole. Pretty much. Yeah. He had to pay anything to be there. Sounds like he's squatting somewhere. Yeah, kind of. And the first thing he did though when he moved into his new place was paint Marty and big letters across the front of his bedroom door. So everyone went to his room. It was like he legit took Marty in big ass letters. Oh, okay. You do you, Bill. When Frank would come forward, he would get involved with different drug dealers. They're being five that live near him in the neighborhood. So eventually, this led to Marty helping them sell and also build things for them. For example, he built a wall in the neighborhood that had holes in it. I'm sorry. It's not where it goes, but I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I could help that. I think I'm trying so hard not to laugh. Because what's the fruit? I'm sorry, guys. What's the first thing you picture? A wall with holes in it. What's that for? But so this was for the dealers to be able to make their deals anonymously and safely with their customers. So they would go up to the holes and change the drugs and money through them. And because Frank loved drinking and doing drugs, his relationships with the dealers worked out, but from doing more and more drugs became my paranoid chaotic and aggressive. Oh, great. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I just cannot get this image out of my head that he built this giant glory hole wall to make the drug deal through. They were like, where the fuck did he put it? Like just random wall in the middle of the street? Like, I mean, it was probably in one of the stupid abandoned buildings or abandoned buildings or one of the alleys or I can see that more realistically. But in my mind, it's just like this giant wooden wall in the middle of the road with fucking holding it. It's just like how I remember these homes. I don't know. That's a good fucking question. Okay. Oh God. The one piece of info I found on him actually being caught doing drugs was when a neighbor had asked Marty to install a carpet in her apartment. But while he was doing the job, he just kept disappearing. So she was eventually like, where the hell does he keep running off to? She looked all over and found him shooting up in the bathroom. So she was pissed and was screaming at him that she was going to kick him out. But she never did. What? And the reason for that was because she thought he was doing such a good job installing the carpet that she had him stay to finish it. Wow. Even though he kept just like booking it out of there to do drugs. Apparently he must have just been really good at what he does. Yeah, clearly. This was the starting point that the neighbors started to notice Marty changing and doing drugs more because he was always disappearing while he was working for them. They were like, huh. Maybe that's what he's been doing. This is no bueno. The problem there in life, the more Frank did drugs, it only enhanced his power and hold over Marty. So Frank was basically in charge any time Marty was under the influence, which was all the time. Yay! Good time. Now Marty's girlfriend Robin was living with him at this time and she felt confused always because of his switching personalities and Frank specifically did not like her at all. And that was the reason she became Marty's first victim. Oh no. There's no exact answer on how the event started, but sources say that while Frank got high, he and Robin started to have sex in the middle of it. He beat her to death. Oh. Marty would later confess to her murder, which I personally think that Frank was the one saying this, but he said, quote, "I wanted so badly to love her, but I could not stop my need to do the other things. I never liked sex and she knew about Marty and his desires. I didn't want her looking at me that way and I've seen God being angry through her eyes." Now I'm guessing that this indicated that Robin knew that Marty was gay and Frank felt that she was judging him for it, so they probably ended up in an argument that resulted in some angry sex and he decided to take her out during so she couldn't judge him anymore. Wow. That's just, I guess. Yeah. I mean it's pretty valid, but like dark. Yeah. After he killed Robin, Marty pretty much snapped. The morning after the murder, Marty woke up Stone Cold Sober and saw Robin's dead body in the bed next to him and freaked the fuck out. Yeah. Because he didn't remember a thing and he's like, "I don't know what to do." So naturally, he did what any person would do in that situation. He dismembered the body. Yep, I guess that's where we're going. He cut her up, hid half of her in a low traffic abandoned area within the neighborhood, which happened to be the building that was connected to the one he lived in. Then he hid her other half on the roof of that same building and sad to say, Robin was not close with her family and she didn't have many friends so no one reported her missing nor looked for her after she was killed. So funny little tidbit, he hid her head and torso on the roof on the other building because after Robin, he had brought another woman up to the apartment and he had the head and torso in his apartment. But he wanted to hide it from her so he shoved it out his back window onto the roof that was accessible to him from that window. Then he got another living girlfriend for a little bit. He ended up telling her about Robin and she saw the body. She threatened to go to the police if he didn't move it so he took the head and torso into the other building and kept some body parts in a bag. While the body had been there in his apartment, he later told officers birds had come to peck at it which bothered him but he never minded the maggots. And this will be even more disturbing later on. Gross, gross, gross, gross. Oh god. This set off a whole new bunch of bad experiences for Marty. Now that he was alone, he did a metric fuck ton of drugs and drank whenever he could. So Frank came out all the time and would often go out to invite women back to the apartment. He offered drugs and sex to them which they happily obliged. Not all of them were victims and one even spoke out at one point saying that he was trying to strangle her during sex and she managed to fight him off and run away and she told the police about it but they didn't believe her. But on the few occasions he got these women high had sex with them and strangled them to death during. Well, between Robbins murder in 1986 and August of 1987, Marty killed six women, so seven in total. And this was a wash rinse repeat for each victim after Robbins. So it was just the same thing he would invite them over, get high, have sex and then strangled them to death dairy. There is very little information on any of his victims other than one being his girlfriend and they ranged in ages between 22 and 36. His second victim was 27 year old Cynthia Brooks. She was killed in early March of 1987. The third was 33 year old Sandra Gavin and she was Marty's downstairs neighbor who he told police was just a stranger from the street and she died in late March of 1987. The fourth was 24 year old Valerie Jamison. She died in April 1987. The fifth was 24 year old Patricia Franklin. She was the victim that the police had the hardest time iding her. There's no definitive death date but there's a gap in the killings between April and August of 1987. So most people believe that she was killed in that time gap. His sixth victim was 36 year old Mary Jeter Mathis and she died on August 5th of 1987 and his last victim was 22 year old Barbara Mahoney and she died the next day on August 6th 1987. Wow. On August 9th 1987 neighbors complained to the landlord. Yes there was a landlord to this building if you can believe it. that there was a terrible smell coming from Marty's apartment. So the landlord sent his son Gregory to investigate. During that week in August, the town experienced a rural nasty heatwave. Oh! So the stench coming from Marty's apartment was about 10 times worse than it normally was. Yeah, just keeps getting better and better from here. I'm just pre-prepping you for you might need a, um, puke bag. Yeah, fun. So Gregory gets to the apartment and without hearing any defense or reasoning from Marty decides to evict him on the spot. Marty doesn't argue at all and tells Greg to wait for him outside that he needs to grab a few things. So Greg's like whatever man and chilled by the door. Then after a few minutes, Greg starts hearing this banging coming from inside. So now he's wondering what the fuck Marty is doing and tries to get in to see where the noises are coming from. But when he went through the main room and tried the bedroom door, he realized that Marty had barricaded the bedroom door shut. He literally nailed boards across the front door like fuck you, you ain't coming in here and books it out the back window onto the fire escape with only a t-shirt, a bottle of water and his cookie monster doll. So Greg called the police. Oh no. An officer familiar with the area from numerous drug busts arrived at 1631 North 19th Street near Cecil B. Moore Avenue where many buildings along that block were boarded up and abandoned. Just that week, the police had arrested someone for dealing in R&T's, Ritalin and Talwyn, a combination of a stimulant and pain killer that offered a cheap high. Although the building at 1631 looked deserted, according to reporters from the Philadelphia Daily News with broken windows and a missing front door, families did live in several apartments. Wow. Yeah, there was no front door to the building at all. Oh and Marty's door too. Also did his bedroom door at least did not have a door knob. No door knob. Oh. Yeah, so when he barricaded the door shut. There was no fucking way. So that's the whole keyhole thing. Yeah. Straight up like fucking gaping door knob. No, no, no, no, there was a keyhole, an actual keyhole. Okay. But no door knob. So you should be able to see Rick. Yeah, I know. It's weird. But yeah, officer Pete Scalatino walked up to the third floor. He could smell the odor of death even before he entered the place. So he assumed he'd find a dead body. He walked into the first room of the apartment and saw waist high piles of trash everywhere. Oh, on a kitchen wall was the drawing of a naked woman with aggressive exploitive scrolled next to it and a smear that looked like dry blood and feces. Yeah. Left by the dragging of two fingers in parallel. Clearly someone had once had a dog or two in here as hardened excrement on the floor contributed to the stench. Mind you, the police noted that the debris and trash were all over the apartment and it was knee high and there was absolutely no floor visible. Gross. It was also infested with fleas, maggots and other insects along with rotten food and mold everywhere. Can you imagine all in a non air conditioned heatwave ridden apartment like that in the middle of August? No fucking thank you. No breath of fuck out of there. The men who'd called him back into the keyhole. So he bent down near a door that had Marty scrolled across it to have a look. He saw a black woman's naked legs. She lay two still so he assumed that this was the source of the offensive stench. Officer Scalatino knocked and announced himself but the figure did not move. Charles Johnson and investigator with the Emi's office joined him. His black van outside quickly drew the attention of neighbors who gathered to guess about what's happening inside. Of course. The vultures have to come diving in. Scalatino and Johnson pride opened the door to get into the second room. The odor nearly overwhelmed them so they don't gauze masks. Yeah because that's gonna fucking hell. Right. Well they were fucking new. They found that this room too was piled high with trash but not so much that they couldn't see the victim. The nude female they'd spotted through the keyhole was indeed deceased. She lay on a mattress, piled too high on the floor next to a television set. She'd been dead for some time as she was discolored and bloated. Her limbs a skew from the way her body was decomposing. But next to the mattress on the floor was another female corpse also bloated. She was wearing a denim mini skirt and a light colored shirt with the words "portua" and a red rose printed on it. The men put up their yellow crime scene tape around the building and in the hallway then called for backup. There was no electricity and most of the windows had been boarded up so in the dark room they needed extra lights. While drug overdoses were common in this area and they could have simply died in the building and been dumped here, Scalatino called in a homicide detective James Hanson who had just led the Heidenick investigation. Ambiguous scenes such as this required him to assume murder first. It wasn't that unusual to find homeless people crawling into these places or even the elderly who had no one to care for them, finally just giving up the ghost and hoping that someone would take care of their remains. Still within the filth and trash roaches and flees, syringes and spoons and glass jars filled with yellow liquid. It seemed as though there had been more to this overpowering stench than a dead body. Old newspapers and magazines were piled up along with the mattresses and smelly blankets and there was moldy dog feces and many places. Flies allided everywhere on peeling walls, warp ceilings and pieces of rotting garbage. No one was eager to look but this was their job in that gruesome place. I do not envy them. Noops, so ever. Then at around 3.45 pm, they turned up yet a third set of remains wrapped in two sheets and buried under rags and other debris that had been beneath the second body. So there was a woman on top of the mattress and the next to that there was a woman on top of a pile of trash and garbage and then underneath that pile of trash and garbage was the other guy. Oh my god. What they had this time was nearly skeletal but the remains had shreds of clothing that might assist in identification. This was the body of Patricia Franklin. This is why it was so hard for them to identify her because she was just a skeleton at this point. As they made room for this one to be photographed and removed, they started to toss broken pieces of furniture and piles of clothing through the window to the lawn outside. Less than two hours later, the searchers turned up a fourth set of mummified remains, also wrapped in sheets and stuffed under a pile of trash. Detective Hanson said to reporters that this could be the first time to my knowledge that we found four bodies of suspicious death in the same house. Higher ranking officers were called and they prepared for a very long night. The place was small. Each room was about 10 by 12 feet but it contained a lot of trash. The forensics team searched through the debris with care and Johnson had sent for the medical examiner who'd not usually come to routine death scenes but this one was unfolding in a way that sent it apart from the door. The fifth body was found at around 530, pulled out of another area of debris but the peculiar detail about this one was that he or she they couldn't tell had been sandwiched between two mattresses and clearly had been there a long time. The body had been so flattened that the police compared it to a dried pressed flower between the pages of a book. They also assumed that due to the condition of the body that the owner of the apartment had been sleeping on top of the mattress that covered that body for quite a while. That's fucking awful! Yeah! All compassion I had towards this guy's gone has been gone since like the second body. For the next several hours the investigators brought in more lights and kept going through the disgusting contents of the rooms. It appeared as though the tenant had resided in one room and had kept the adjoining room as his own private mausoleum. In the front room it seemed that he'd been preparing to erect a new wall. So as I said the place was small like 10 by 12 feet but with each room being so small the search was painstaking. Another two hours went by before the sixth body was located, crammed inside a tiny six inch deep closet sitting up, wrapped in a sheet and tied with white electrical cord. This was a body that they assumed that he was actually joined in mummified because of how the remains were in there. They were basically mummified. Oh my god. So yeah I don't know why he just decided that one body was just like we're going to turn this one into a mummy. Why? I mean one curiosity probably. No possibly. Words spread quickly around the neighborhood as people asked about the crime scene tape. They'd found bodies in there at eight or nine of them. People came out of their houses despite the light rain to watch as more official vehicles pulled up empty body bags went in and full ones were carried out by men and masks. Joseph Grace wrote, "The curious crowded into the narrow block of north 19th street and the steaming Augusteat to watch the grim parade of body bags." And John Morrison for the Philadelphia day news wrote, "one after another less than an hour apart six bodies were removed from the debris through an apartment. Off they went to the morgue for examination. There was little doubt that this was going to be yet one more case of serial murder. Well no shit once you hit three year officially a serial killer." Yeah. Dusk was settling in so the police used high-powered searchlights to go through the rest of the building just in case there were more bodies churned about in other abandoned rooms. Eventually they called off the search but resumed again at dawn the next day. On the roof they discovered a moulder in canvas bag under a dirty mattress that contained a leg and some foot bones. Once again the ME came to have a look. While one team made preparations to dig up the backyard where Marty reportedly had been seen digging at various times and the empty law across the street another went to locate the missing tenant. What he'd have to say about all of this was anyone's guess. Marty's photo a fuzzy rendition was circulated citywide to police districts to the highway patrol into special units. It was also placed in the next day's newspaper in hope that someone would spot him and alert them. But patrol officers began making rounds and asking questions. Oh yeah, because he did. And almost forgot that he was not in the house. No, he just turned the parking apartment. Yeah. Detectives were told about Marty's composition notebooks, which a neighbor had seen in the apartment that allegedly featured crude sketches of naked women and dismembered body parts, including breasts, feet, heads, and male genitalia. This same acquaintance had seen Marty Dangle, a woman named Renee out of his window. Renee had screamed any pulled her back in and rest warrant was issued, charging him at the very least with several counts of abusive corpse. So yeah, how about murder? Yeah, multiple bodies. They didn't have any proof at the time that he murdered them. That was how they could get the arrest warrant was abusive of a corpse because it was a dismembered body. And he had the drawings in his apartment of dismembered body parts. They had to find something to try to get him. Not not the fact that they were a whole bunch of them were stored in a fucking room with his names pre-painted. Yeah, I know, I know, I know. I know. I don't know. I get that it's the 80s. But come on, man. Also, he dangled a woman out his window and somebody saw that. The police did not show up before him. No. They didn't believe that other woman when she wanted the police and she's like, he tried to kill me and they're like, sure he did. Yeah, that's Marty. That's fun. He was non-defrequent three general areas, his building eighth street by Erie Avenue and 56th and Spruce. Here, he had either friends or family, people who knew him offered police tips on where he'd been seen since his eviction, but those who followed up these leads were unable to apprehend him. Marty's mother Lily and Graham was located, but she said that she'd asked him to leave because of his drug habit. She did provide one bit of information. He told her several months earlier that his girlfriend Mary was pregnant. Then on July 4th, he said that the baby had died. So this was the girlfriend after Robin. Oh, the live-in one. She mentioned also, of course, Robin Deshazard, who lived with Marty in her home for a few years earlier. She, too, was drug addict and they lived together on the third floor apartment of North 19th Street. I want to keep the podcast focused on content that entertains and forms and is mindful of your time. One way to accomplish this is direct listener support. Your support would help the show grow so much so I've set up a link where you can quickly and easily support the show. The whole thing will take 30 seconds. It's glow.fm/somethingwicking. That's glow.fm/s-o-m-e-t-h-i-n-g-w-i-c-k-e-d. We're asking for $3 a month, but you can contribute as much or as little as you'd like. If something wicked is part of your day or week and you love what we're doing, please visit glow.fm/somethingwicking and support us any way you can today. It's dead simple and again we'll take no more than 30 seconds. Click the link in the show notes, pay with Apple or Google Pay and click the link of the podcast player that you want to use. You can listen anywhere at any time. Happy listening! The man who had evicted Marty were questioned as well. Greg stated, quote, "He didn't say nothing when I told him to leave." Although he admitted that initially Marty would not let him inside. He continued saying, "I heard him moving things around in there. I heard some banging noises like hammering." Well, yeah, I'd go investigate. Do you tell somebody to get the fuck out? All of a sudden you hear banging your shit. You think that my first thought would be they're destroying the apartment because they're pissed. Right? Yeah. Investigators compiled a profile. They learned that Marty often took long walks and played basketball with local kids. He liked to entertain them with his cookie monster doll. Other neighbors said that he was a loner, but when he got drunk, he acted a little crazy doing things like dancing in the streets. Okay. I mean, I do that sometimes too. No one is drinking. Let's clarify that one. Are you sure about that? I don't know very much. I don't know. You're dancing inside, not outside. You get pretty giddy when you're drunk. No one interviewed me. I'm like dancing. No one interviewed immediately after the discovery reported aggression on his part, but eventually several women said that he tried to rape them or hit them in the head. A drug user who wanted to remain anonymous told reporters that a person could get any kind of drugs in Marty's apartment. She had assumed that the foul order in there was due to toilets not working and mounds of trash laying around. The landlord reported that he always paid his $90 per month rent and his income of $300 per month came from Social Security Disability Funds. Wow. I love how it like wreaked of death. And I was like, oh, that's probably just all this stupid trash everywhere. Yeah. No, because nobody cared enough, honestly. I mean, they're all there to get drugs. Yeah. Whoever smelt, just give me my drugs. Yeah. Whoever Marty was, he remained a mystery for the time being as he continued to allude the police. Robert L. Catherman was the acting medical examiner who had gone to North 19th Street to view the remains. News media had crowded near him to hear his comments, but he'd merely said that they knew nothing at the moment about the identity of the victims. They didn't even know whether some of them were male or female. In the morgue, the corpses were put through painstaking procedures to try to identify them and determine the cause of the manner of death. It was believed that the first two found both black females had been dead just two or three days, but due to the intense summer heat, they decomposed quickly. Both were in their late 20s or early 30s. One had been nude and the other partially clothed. A sweater pulled up over her head. There was no obvious signs of violence such as a bullet or bludgeoning. The other bodies would take more work. They were not identifiable, even for race or sex. An anthropologist would need to assist by reading the bone structure. Holy shit. Damn. Yeah, it could be difficult they knew to determine a cause of death as well, although two days later, thanks to a broken hyoid bone, they managed to determine that the fourth victim found had been strangled. Okay. By August 11th, it was clear that the two most recent deaths had been murdered by strangulation. That made three. Then the leg and foot bones from the canvas bag were also identified as being from a female. Autopsies on two more of their remains, what little could be done confirmed that they had been black women in their 20s, but determining the cause of death was impossible. The Emmy adjusted the time of death on the first two as having occurred within the past 10 days rather than two or three. A woman had come to the scene after hearing about the house of whores on television because a friend of hers who lived in the building had been missing for several months. She was 33 years old and her name was Sandra Garvin. Okay. This acquaintance believed that Sandra could be among the dead. Within a day of the discovery, three more women were suggested as potential victims. All had known Marty and all were missing. One woman who'd lived with Marty had not been seen for two and a half years. Jesus. A man recognized the clothing from the second victim and believed that she was his wife. In the meantime, the police continued to look for the man who could clear up some of the mystery. The building on North 19th Street was officially condemned for several code violations and those three tenants who were still there were ordered to leave. They were given temporary shelter by the Department of Health and Human Services, thankfully. I'm sorry, several code violations. The severer? Yeah, murder, I don't know, like broken fucking toilets apparently, no electricity, water just not running at all. No front door, broken windows, the building was falling apart, but the landlord kept it nice. That bitch should have been condemned for a long before Marty got there. Thanks to the picture in the newspapers and to neighbors who knew that the police were searching for Marty, numerous sightings were reported. On August 11th, he'd been seen on Broad Street, on a septibus, at a soup kitchen, and at a car wash. The police arrived too late in each instance to arrest him. One person who saw him getting a meal at the Cathedral of Deliverance Evangelistic Church described him as having a glassy eyed stare. He was carrying a bucket full of rags and was dressed in white pants, a striped jacket, and a black cap. The police came in only moments later, showing his picture, but we're still unable to catch him. Come on. Yeah. Just Christ, is he a fucking ninja? Apparently. In the meantime, the crime scene team going through the waste hide debris in the apartment had found items that they believed might assist in victim identification. Three earrings and a ring were retrieved. Two earrings, one heart shaped, had been next to mummified remains of the third victim, and the ring and third earring had come off of another set of remains. The ring was crudely made and the earring had a grid design. The newspapers printed this information to get relatives to identify the victims. Two women reported missing had been found alive, so they were removed from the list of potential victims and onto the list of potential witnesses. One of them had lived with Marty without miss half. Oh shit. Another neighbor came forward to tell the police that she'd seen Marty beat Robin a dire warning that she could be among the dead. Local forensic dentist Haskell Askins came into the case to assist with identification via dental records. We're looking for uniqueness that could be found in a single tooth. He told Philadelphia Inquirer or reporters, or a fragment of a tooth. He would also need to have the actual dental records of a suspected victim for comparison purposes, which meant that the relatives who feared that a loved one was among the carnage had to produce those records. At the very least, he said he could give an age estimate. Only of the six full sets of remains recovered had not had dental work done. So for to identify Robin essentially they used a fragment of a single tooth because that is all that they had to be able to possibly identify her. Oh my god. That's how bad they were. The digging around the building did produce bones but they turned out to be from dogs and reports indicated that Marty had once owned three different dogs and had buried them after they died. No more human bodies or parts were recovered although several blackened pieces of recovered bone were sent for analysis. Marty's family put out an appeal for him to turn himself in. They did not believe that he had killed the women. One younger brother told reporters, "Marty was afraid to go to our grandmother's funeral. He stayed outside." He was certain that Marty could not have been sleeping in the same room with the corpses. Like of course your family doesn't want to believe that shit about you. Yeah of course. On August 15th six days after the initial discovery there was another grisly find. In the basement of a building three doors down from Marty's and owned by a relative of the man who owned Marty's building, a human torso and skull wrapped in a brown blanket and tied with an electrical cord were found beneath a debris. This was similar to the way the body had been stored in Marty's closet but this one had been partially buried under a mound of coal ashes. The task was now to determine if they were parts of the same victim as the leg bones or whether this was yet an eighth unidentified person. The Emmys office stated that six of the victims had been black females and one had been identified. Mary Geter Mathis, 36, the mother of five children. Oh my god. Yeah. While DNA analysis had been used in several forensic contexts that same year it was not yet a common method for a victim identification. That's, oh my goodness. Now and it really sucks because at that time DNA evidence was a thing but not everyone had access to it. Yeah not everything was accessible either. Yeah no they didn't know how to identify by so they had to go off of dental records, pieces of clothing like other things that the families were forced to look at to identify the victim. Right. Just as investigators were working on that project the suspect now in the target of an intense manhunt surrendered. On August 17th, Marty Graham stood waiting on a North Philadelphia street corner while his mother directed the police there. He'd asked her to bring him some food, she said, and she had gone to him and persuaded him to surrender. The police took him in for questioning and by evening had charged him with seven counts of murder and seven counts of abuse of a corpse. Because this clothing was stained they obtained warrants to have his pants and jacket tested. According to Lily and Graham her son claimed that the bodies had been in the building when he'd moved in and he had not killed anyone. Oh my god. But in custody under interrogation he eventually confessed. At first he said he only killed two but then he admitted that he'd strangled all seven female victims while under the influence of drugs. He was full of remorse and told police according to the Philadelphia inquire that he wanted to straighten out his life and he offered the names of five of the victims. During breaks Marty would sketch faces of women. The detectives were surprised to find that Marty was articulate, was a talented artist, and was not as they'd assumed illiterate. He apparently read the Bible avidly. In the end the detectives had Marty's ten-page statement which included details about each murder and his feelings about what he'd done. He insisted many times that he hadn't meant to kill anyone and to him the deaths were accidental. They were due to his sexual technique. He'd held them around the neck and had probably pressed too hard. I'm sorry, that was a horrible, horrible image that came into my head. Oh no. Because all I could think is like, "I tried this but it pressed too hard. I played with the puppy too hard, George, and now he's dead." Oh my god. Oh fuck you with Mason Man. Anyway, Marty was a rain, dressed in pajamas and slippers, and held without bail while a preliminary hearing was set. At issue was his background of mental illness which also raised questions about his competency to have waved his right to a lawyer and to have confessed. He received a public defender, Joel S. Medovsky, and went into solitary confinement at the city detention center. The two sides squared off in preparation for battle and court. Medovsky who insisted that Marty should have been given a public defender right away learned he'd been handcuffed in that chair for hours while he was interrogated and that a public defender had been available in the building. Apparently, Marty hadn't realized he could have asked for that person's assistance. When this procedure was criticized in the press by the city's chief public defender, Benjamin J. Lerner, Detective Hanson responded that Marty's mother had been present throughout the questioning. It's all like she could have sent someone. Yeah, around this time, the police teams finished their investigation and placed tin sheets over the open doorways and broken windows of the empty building. They also sealed Marty's former apartment now clear of trash. There would be no more gruesome discoveries, but the legal battle was now heating up. The DA needed witnesses and they soon arrived. On August 25th, the Daily News published an anonymous account by a former lover of Marty who said that in January of 1986, Marty had told her that he'd off to another girlfriend and tossed her out the window. She'd waited one day until he'd gone out and then went to the back window. On the roof below was an old weathered mattress she went out, lifted it and found a skeleton. She hadn't believed his story about murder before, but now she did. Even with his discovery, she stayed with him. Eventually, she informed the police and then moved in with her mother, but the police never located the body. How? It wasn't moved. They didn't look. He might have, at the time, from what I'm guessing, because the girlfriend he brought in. No, no, no, no, no, that was because he brought a woman in and he tried to hide it from her. So he hid that and then he told, oh, it was the living girlfriend. He told the girlfriend that he had killed Robin. Yeah. And she didn't believe him, but then she saw the body when he went out. So, but if it was still there, how the fuck yeah, that's a good question. How the fuck did the police not find them? Because they didn't fucking look. If they had looked, they would have found the other sh*t in his apartment too. Unlike I said, because he'd already killed more people by that time. Yeah, unless like I said, he had moved the remains because she was in the adjacent building in like two different parts. Remember, she was in one part, but her whole skeleton was under the mattress. That's probably a different person. That was killed possibly. Because Robin's head and something else hadn't torn a bag in his apartment. Yeah. Like the other parts were scattered on the roof. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. Yeah, there's just so much fog in it. There's too many bodies, but like I wonder which one this one was that tipped her off. And also, again, they didn't fucking look. Yeah. Because if they didn't, they wouldn't have found anything. When she learned about the body is found in the apartment, she had counted herself lucky. And she said, cool, I get nightmares and I can't sleep. It's like his hands are around my throat and the life's going out of me. Yeah, you think it lucky. Yeah. Eventually, she would lose her anonymity presenting her story in court. At his six hour hearing on August 27th, Marty reportedly rocked back and forth as a detective read parts of his gruesome statement. According to one excerpt to a visitor to his apartment, he'd explained away the maggots as furball bugs. I'm sorry. What? What? To ignore the birds eating a body outside his window, he'd had to stay high all the time. When the police finally came for him, he hadn't known what to do. The corpses of his most recent murders were in the front room, so he tossed them into the second room, boarded it up and fled. Oh, she's Christ. Clearly, the question of his competency to go to trial was at stake. And Joel Medovsky offered the testimony of two psychiatrists. Dr. Robert Stanton indicated that Marty had an IQ of 63 below the level considered mentally competent and that Marty was a serious substance abuser of alcohol and drugs and was thus unable to cooperate in his own defense. He suffered from auditory hallucinations and blackouts and was psychotic with chronic paranoid features. Psychologist Albert Levitt said that Marty was unable to read right or even tell time and he was highly distractible. But obviously, he was able to read and write. Well, you just made the whole fucking statement. But Dr. Robert Sardov, hired by the DA's office, declared that Marty had no significant mental impediment to assisting with his attorney. Sandoff told a reporter, quote, he was able to respond to my questions. He was able to give police a statement. It was coherent and it was logical, end quote. Judge Edward Mechel declared Marty competent to be prosecuted. Four days later, Robin DeShazard's remains found partly in a bag and partly in a basement were formally identified through medical and dental records. She had indeed been the first one to die, although in his confused state, Marty had described killing others before her. The timing cause of her death could not be determined. So that would also explain what, like you just said, when she found the skeleton. Yeah. So maybe he did kill more people. I think so. Honestly, I think so. Months later, on October 6th, as reported in local papers, Marty pleaded not guilty to the charges against him. Judge Charles Durham asked him if he understood the proceedings and Marty just said nope. And he banged his fingers on the bar, mumbled to himself and swayed his feet. He also claimed he didn't know where he was. His attorney reiterated that Marty was not competent to continue. Marty just said he wanted to go home. Durham asked, do you know why you're here? I have no idea. Can you understand? Nope. That's coaching. Someone coached him to say that? Yeah. The DA remarked that Marty was malingering. The judge entered the pleas denying a request from Adolfski for a competency hearing on the spot, as well as in to request to drop the murder charges due to an inability to determine the cause of death. Medolsky said he would get another psychiatric report. Here's one thing that we kind of pushed off to the side. The ID that was probably junior. Yeah, one asked to the questions because he's just like tapping and like avoidance. No, because he continues to be like that like very child like reserved. He feels very vulnerable on the stand so of course he would revert to junior or frank. It's one or the other and I can see it's being something like frank giving the statement. Yeah, exactly. Because in all intents and purposes it could be that frank is literate. He's more intelligent. He's he's the full grown adult. He's the protector's flesh aggressor. Yes, so Marty himself probably could not actually be literate. Right. But as frank, he could be. Right. So even when like I said earlier that I think frank made that statement where he said that oh why killed her and he's like Robin knew Marty's feelings. It's like why would he refer to himself in the third person like that? Exactly. No, that was definitely frank. So they didn't seem to take into consideration the multiple personalities disorder or DID as we would call it now because they didn't have a lot of information back then. But like quite honestly that would make a lot of sense with junior and Marty being completely illiterate and frank being the aggressor protector. No, I can agree with that and I also agree with the name change for the diagnosis itself because it's a case where yes, you have technically multiple personalities. It's a lot more than that that hence the term disassociative because you do in some cases in some cases where of each other some they're not. Yeah, there are some or most cases it's from what I understand is you're not aware of it. You disassociate and therefore you basically cut off the world around you for anyone that goes through disassociation itself. It's just you kind of blank out. You are just what most people know as spacing out and I can understand that combined with that condition because then something else can kind of come forward and present itself and you have zero knowledge of that happening or what's going on. It's like a blackout and you're told about what happens after and then there are some people that don't believe you and it's frustrating. Of course. So when it's a case like this like you said where I could see when he's sitting there and swinging his feet and going nope and I just want to go home it's like that could be junior. That's definitely yeah, junior. That's junior and then when he did that, they won't acknowledge that. Yeah, they don't think it's real. No, they want to say he's all faking it. Yeah. So in January a neurological report indicated that Marty was not suffering from organic brain damage. Nevertheless, Medovsky prepared for an insanity defense scheduled for January 19th 1988. The single unidentified victim with a morgue tag of number 3760 was placed into the hands of forensic sculptor Frank Bender who studio was on Philadelphia South Street. Since 1976, he'd worked with law enforcement to help with victim identification and the age progression of fugitives. He'd gotten his start in this field after he was invited to tour the morgue to better learn about human anatomy. While there, he saw decomposing corpse that had not yet been identified. She only had a number 5233. The woman had been shot three times in the head and dumped near the airport. The possibility of identifying her seemed hopeless, but Bender said he believed that he knew what she looked like. He made a sculpture from her skull and got such a good likeness that 5233 eventually got a name, which led to her killer who was convicted. It wasn't long before he was invited into more forensic cases by the local and state police and even the US marshals. So it was no surprise that he'd been asked to assist with the identification of this victim of Marty's the third one found. She had been a tall, thin black woman said the anthropologist about 59 between 20 and 30 with a narrow skull. She was found nearly skeletonized beneath the decomposing corpse of another woman. At the time of her demise, she'd been wearing khaki slacks and two long sleeve shirts, and two earrings found next to her were presumed to be hers. Bender completely deflushed the skull and placed tiny rubber posts on it to guide him in adding about five pounds of brown clay for the right tissue depth. He then put fake eyeballs into the sockets. The elongated face made this victim more of an individual with a unique appearance, a pointed chin and an asymmetrical nose aperture. Adding a hairstyle that he believed was right for her, Bender had photographs taken for the newspapers, then authorities waited and hoped that someone would recognize her and come forward. An older couple reported that their daughter had been missing for six months. They knew she'd been in acquaintance of Marty's and the description they gave was a match. The Emmy's investigator got the young woman's medical records to compare against the remains. He also showed the family's photographs of the completed bust but they weren't sure. Yet others who had known the missing woman believed that the sculpture resembled her and they recalled the earrings that she'd worn that were just like those found next to the corpse. A past chest x-ray that showed an odd characteristic of one rib finally clinched it on January 26, 1988. She was Valerie Jamison, 25, the mother of two sons and she disappeared in April the year before with the victims identified in their association with Marty established. It was time to go to trial. That's really fucking sad. That is so sad. That she only could be identified because of face sculptor. Right. Was able to put something together like thankfully he was able to do that. Yeah, but that's just terrible. On January 28, the pre-trial hearings began. Marty was ruled competent to stand trial based on the reports of five court appointed experts. They said that during his evaluation sessions he'd been calm, friendly and alert. He did show evidence of personality disorders but he understood the legal proceedings well enough to participate. He seemed to understand that he potentially faced a death penalty but believed that God was watching over him and lets me know that he still loves me. He went to court with rosary beads in his belt. Even the defense attorney's psychologist who had initially found him incompetent had changed his opinion. While he was probably mildly retarded he said he functioned at high intellectual level. Two of the experts indicated that Marty had been faking his disorganized state during his earlier hearing. Now he was loosened and clear thanks largely to anti-psychotic medication. Well, no shit. Yeah, exactly. That's bad. I thought it was a different. He was medicated. Yeah. In early February there was a two-hour hearing to determine which part of the prosecutor's evidence would be admitted. More than a hundred gruesome photographs of the apartment were entered as exhibits. When Marty saw them he waved them off as the deeds of a very sick person and then chuckled. Although he added that it hurt his stomach to see them. Judge Robert Lattrone ordered Madulski to keep him quiet or he may bury himself just by opening his big mouth. Charles Johnson, the Emmys investigator, offered testimony about his experiences during the investigation and he described how he'd found each of the seven bodies. He posted the photographs as slides on poster boards and the judge came down from the bench to examine each one. Madulski had requested a closed hearing but attorneys for the newspapers protested. So he withdrew the motion. Journalists from the daily news and the inquirer were in attendance and Dave Recher recorded Madulski's saying that Marty was happy to have the press there because they would then hear how he'd been treated under interrogation. Supposedly the police had been an otherwise coerced him which had provoked an involuntary confession. The police denied these charges. Later during this hearing Marty stood up and growled. You're lying at ADA Roger King. Deputies rushed to control him. Should he show evidence of aggression and Marty's mother present in the courtroom asked him to be quiet. His comment apparently wasn't response to King who muttered you should get a better defender. In fact the entire trial would prove to be an antagonistic and even personal struggle between the two attorneys. Yeah so we now have had a fucking big dick contest going on. Madulski accused King of withholding a statement from his client made by a woman. Mary Hogan who'd once lived with Marty. King denied it and they'd argued over the case. Lettrone warned them to cut down on the animosity. On February 17th Madulski indicated that because murder was inconsistent with Marty's peaceful personality he clearly had been framed for the deaths of the seven women. Madulski said quote he's not a killer he's a lover. Marty had admitted to murder only after the police suggested it because his mental age was that of an impressionable nine-year-old. It was possible that the women found in his apartment had died from overdoses or had been killed by others and dumped where they were discovered. But one of them had a broken hyoid book that proves that she was strangled. Yeah you don't OD from a broken hyoid book. You don't. I don't know where the fuck they got that information. A week later Madulski tried again with another psychiatric expert Dr. Timothy Michaels a psychiatrist stated that Marty could not have comprehended his constitutional rights when he waived them at the time. He made his incriminating statements. He was a heavy drug user mentally retarded and mentally defective in other ways so he could not have known what he was doing when he confessed. ADA King insisted that the doctor's opinion was ludicrous. It was far too removed from the time of the police interrogation to render an accurate judgment of competence at the time. Other experts had already testified that they couldn't make a judgment in the matter. Homicide Sergeant John Finn brought evidence into the courtroom that had been seized from the abandoned building where Marty had hidden during the manhunt. Among the items was his cookie monster puppet which he immediately [BLANK_AUDIO] have, back saying, I sleep with that, but the puppet remained in evidence. The pretrial hearings ran for 14 days, then Judge Lutrone suggested that he was inclined to throw out Marty's confession to four of the murders. When he'd initially been questioned, Marty had admitted to three. When he was questioned later by Detective Hanson, he had added the rest, but Hanson had not read him his rights as he was required to do by law. That made part of the confession for various. That is why it's always important to have your rights read, because the moment you don't, everything they say after that is inconclusive. Yep. I like to have it on over recording, I'm repeating fuck. Yeah. Just like a button on your phone at this point in the app. Right? Or just on your chest, you get a button that has a speaker of you reading the rights. Oh my god. It's like I've already done like 20 arrests today. Boop, you have the right to remain silent, you have the right to get the fucking car. You have to get the car. Honestly, when they get the car, there just should be speakers that say it. Yeah. Oh my god. But in the end, Lutrone allowed the entire statement into evidence, along with the graphic photographs taken at the scene. He also decided to sequester the jury, and selection for the trial began on March 4th, king announced that he would seek the death penalty. Joe Medovsky had honed his defense in preparation for now he was going to fight for his client. It wasn't just insanity, he said it was multiple personalities. Harrison Frank Graham, Jr., according to Daily News, was presented as having three distinct personalities. Frank was a foul mouth drug addict and murder. Jr. was an unmanageable two-year-old who adored the cookie monster and Marty was the likeable handyman who worshipped his mother and had complied with police to confess to the murders. The murder he had apparently fought with another inmate and blamed it on Frank. King dismissed all this by saying that Marty was just a street wisefaker. Marty's mother believed in his innocence throughout. She said that she'd never have turned him in if she believed he would be convicted. It was her contention that he could not have purchased the blankets and sheets in which the bodies had been wrapped so he did not kill them. Someone else did. How could he not, though? He only had to spend $90 a month on rent, and it's $300. And it's not like he was paying for fucking water and electricity. On March 8th, Marty waved his right to a jury trial and chose to have the judge decide his case. Apparently, his attorney and his mother had convinced him that a jury would be offended by the graphic evidence and would then be less objective than the judge. Lattrone had already heard much of the evidence so the duration of the trial would be considerably shorter than expected. Right away, there was a surprise. A woman named Paula testified for the prosecution that she had lived with Marty for three years and during sex, he would place his hands around her throat and squeeze. On several occasions, she thought he was killing her and said that he actually wanted to hurt her. He told her that he'd killed one of his former girlfriends, Robyn De Shazzar, because he'd been angry that she was seeing other men. Marty had threatened Paula with that same treatment. She also said that he'd admitted to practicing necrophilia with the corpse, provoking and outbursts from Marty, who accused her of lying. But she continued to talk about how he'd barricaded her into the apartment, threatened her with the machete, and sometimes raped her when she was in stupor from drugs. Paula also said that she'd visited Marty after she moved out and had smelled a foul stench from the room they'd previously used as a bedroom. He told her it was from a bucket into which he had urinated and warned her, like Bluebeard, never to look into that back room if she was there alone because she wouldn't be able to deal with what she would find. To clear that confusion up, there was a serial killer named Henri Landrou, whose nickname was Bluebeard, so that's probably who he was comparing that statement to. Which I don't know how the f*cking knew about that, because who the f*ck is that, I have to look that up. However, the fact that Marty had beaten Robyn De Shazzar to death rather than killing her by his fixation, coupled with the fact that Paula had survived three years with him helped the defense. In addition, this testimony added credibility to the possibility that Marty was unable to appreciate what he was doing. Two days later, Mary Hogan also testified to having lived with him and survived. She said that they'd have sex four or five times a day. He tried to strangle her as well, and she saw the body of Robyn on the roof. That method, the corpse had been there since October 1986. In order to get out with her belonging, she had to seek assistance from the police, because Marty had threatened to kill her with a machete and had shut her inside the apartment. She did tell an officer about the corpse on the roof, but he didn't believe her. That's probably why they didn't find her. That's what I mean. They didn't believe her, so they didn't go looking, hence they didn't find her. They believed how many people have told them about this one specific and now two different women are saying that they that he locked them in there and threatened them with a machete. That's kind of specific, very specific. The prosecutors seem to want to force her to see the error of her ways by subjecting her to one graphic slide after another of what had been found in the apartment. Even worse, Medalski requested that she pull the cookie monster puppet out of a bag of items that Marty had taken with him from the apartment. She did not want to touch it, although she said that he'd chatted with it every day. There was drama in the humid courtroom when Hogan said she'd never loved Marty and had not been pregnant as he'd thought she was. At this testimony, he grabbed the witness table, jumped up and shoved aside two deputies. He wanted them to leave him alone. He apparently disliked the idea that he'd been duped or so his attorney said to reporters. When a drug addict companion of Marty's took the stand, he described watching Marty try to choke to women during all occasions. Both were among the dead and one was killed shortly after the man had seen the argument. He also said that Marty had admitted to murdering the other women. And he'd even seen Mary Mathis lying on the bed when Marty had invited him to see the source of the terrible odor coming from his apartment. This witness's statements were set aside when it was learned he'd been found incompetent to be sentenced for his own crime and that he'd been paid for his testimony. After four weeks, the ADA rested his case, then it was Medolfski's turn. The first witness on Marty's behalf was his former foster mother, Pauline Williams had taken care of him from age 7 to 12 and she said that he'd been a slow learner. He was essentially incapable of taking care of himself. She had never seen him learn to read or write. Marty's mother supported this when she said that her son never seemed to learn anything. Unlike her other children, he'd failed to grasp the difference between right and wrong. He was also a troublemaker in school and suffered from nightmares. Another psychiatrist also testified on the issue of insanity. Dr. Timothy Michael said that since Marty could not recall anything about the first five murders, it was not possible to judge his mental state at the time of those crimes. However, during the last two murders, which were still fresh when he was arrested, he had been in a psychotic state. He'd hallucinated the voices of both God and the devil. When cross-examined about Marty's apparent awareness that a discovery of the body on the roof meant he'd be arrested, Michael said that he could not address those crimes. He admitted that if Marty's statements at the police had not been forced since Marty had claimed, then clearly he'd known that what he was doing was wrong. That would make him sane at the time of those crimes, concealing the corpse indicated that as well. Yeah. It's a sign of remorse, it's a sign that you know you did something wrong. Then they discussed the leg bones found in the bag, Marty began to giggle. That's creepy as fuck. Sorry. What the fuck? What a reporter from the inquire later asked him why he said he left out the ankle bone. Oh my God. Wow. You know what? I'm just going to go with it. That was junior. That was junior because that is too goddamn creepy to think that a grown-ass man giggled and talked about a stupid song. Oh, perhaps to affirm the impression that he was mentally unhinged, Marty brought in four furry monkey puppets and set them in a row to play with while the attorneys argued his case. He also wanted to take the stand in his defense, saying according to his attorney, put me on. I'll clear this up. Each day he'd entered the courtroom with a bouncy gate. Yeah, that's junior. That's not. Definitely junior. Yeah, no. In his closing argument on April 22nd, Madulski offered some options. The women found in the apartment may have died from drug overdoses or other people, such as the landlord's relatives may have tampered with the scene. After all, they had found the bodies. Madulski also restated his position in the insanity defense and insisted that his client had been on drugs and may have strangled the women by accident. Doesn't seem like an accident when it's happening over and over and over again. Just saying it. Yeah, and he's hiding them. Yeah, even when he was being evicted, if you remember, he had said that he didn't know what to do with the bodies. Yeah. So he just threw them in the fucking bedroom and then booked it out of there. So that's knowing that they shouldn't be there. That's not a good thing for dead bodies to be in this room. I could get in trouble. That's knowing what get fucking did. Exactly. A.D.A. King declared these statements to be sheer fantasy and urged Judge LaTron to consider only the reality of the evidence. No one, he pointed out, could believe that someone could accidentally strangle seven women. Right? Marty Plain and Simple was a serial killer out of his mouth. He stated, "Judge him." Yeah. I feel like I just said that. Yeah. Just maybe. Judge LaTron found Marty guilty on all counts of first-degree murder and abuse of the corpse. He found, spoke, Marty sat up straight, linked his eyes, and shook his head. Madulski later told reporters, "I assume he knows he was found guilty, but I'm not sure." He then prepared to keep Marty from being executed during the sentencing phase. Despite the evidence, Marty's mother still insisted that he was innocent. "He's taking the fall," she said, meaning that he'd been set up by the landlord and his cronies. He don't know what's going on. Marty actually laughed and signed autographs claiming he was not worried. "That's just how I am," he said. "He turned down the opportunity to allow a jury to decide his sense. He simply wanted his cookie monster back." That's all he said. He didn't give a sh*t about any sense, anything. He just kept saying, "I want cookie monster back. Give me cookie monster back." Like, that's all he kept saying. "Oh," Medovsky thought he should be spared the death penalty so that psychologist could study him. A psychologist, Dr. Gerald Cook, offered a statement. "I really thought that said cookie monster back." No, Dr. Cook offered a statement that he had organic brain damage, although he was not an expert on the subject and this issue had already been dismissed by a neurologist. Cook also said that Marty suffered from sexual sadism, which is not a mental illness that makes a person insane or absolves him of guilt, so he seemed to be an ineffective witness on key issues. During all this, the daily news printed a story about the relatives and friends of Cookie Mathis, you know, that was the nickname. Relatives and friends of Cookie Mathis, a victim discussed how they known when they first heard reports that Cookie was among the victims. Her husband heard about the shirt found on the body and knew it was his wife. He bought it for her. "Oh, yeah, that's gotta be horrible." In May 1988, taking about an hour, Latron offered his decision, although none of Marty's family was present to hear it. Latron did not look at the defendant when he sentenced Marty to six consecutive sentences of seven to fourteen years, six death sentences, and one life turn. Yet in an unusual move, he added that Marty was not to be executed until after he'd served the life sentence. So, according to the judge, would not be eligible for being executed until after he died from serving his life sentence. "What? Who pulls?" "Yeah, that's how he ruled it." "This is a lot of motion." Madulski found this ruling to be salamonic and compassionate. In essence, it meant that Marty had received a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Latron said that Marty's terrible neglect during childhood, along with no prior criminal convictions, had been mitigating factors. The single-life sentence was for De Shazar's murders. She was the first, so there were no other murders to add aggravating factors. King stated that all interests were protected. The sentence was unprecedented and effectively wiped out Madulski's decision to appeal, because he did not want to risk a change that might be worse for his client. Still, no one for saw that would happen. Well, yeah, you don't expect a judge to be like your sentence did life without parole, and then you're gonna get executed. What? It's like, "Oh, that's not how that works." Right? Right? And what wrong is that? They have necromancers on staff now. In prison in Pittsburgh, more. Execute him and then we will study him more. Oh, God. What? In prison in Pittsburgh, Marty studied religion and was ordained. Oh, no. Stop it. Yeah. Fuckin' stop it. Yeah. He seemed happy. But then in 1994, a law clerk for the State Supreme Court submitted the case for a routine review and several officials called the SENS legal. In a unanimous ruling, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said that the death SENS must be carried out, which put Marty in immediate jeopardy of being executed. That too was controversial, because many believe that the justices ought only to have vacated the SENS and remanded it. The execution was scheduled for December 7th, but LaTron stayed it. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case, so the date was reset for August of 1996. Other delays pushed the case into the year 2002, when the U.S. Supreme Court banned the execution of the mentally retarded. Marty's team set about to prove that he had met the standard despite the fact that he was able to function. One psychiatrist said that he tested lower than he function, so even if his IQ was below 70, he was not mentally retarded. Yeah, I know. That doesn't make sense. He has an IQ of 63, therefore he is intellectually disabled, just because he is high-functioning does not mean he's not intellectually disabled. They're trying to argue that because he's high-functioning. That's like saying someone, I mean, I know they don't have the label for any more, but what was Asperger, which is high-functioning autism. That's like saying someone with high-functioning autism can't be autistic because they're high-functioning. It's like, no, that's not how it fucking works. Nevertheless, he'd had an onset of mental illness before the age of 18, and that too was part of the criteria established by the American Psychiatric Association. Finally, on December 20, 2003, some 17 years after his initial sentencing, Marty Graham was deemed incompetent to be executed as the new law stated that it is not ethical nor humane for a person with intellectual disabilities to be executed. His death sentence was vacated in his life sentence restored. He continues to practice as a minister behind bars to this day. So, what do you think, my lovelies? Was Marty a victim of the system that traumatized him to the point of developing a killer personality? Or was he just another really good con man that cheated the system who nearly got away with murder? Thanks so much for listening, we hope you enjoyed the episode tuning next time for more ghastly ghouls and crazy killers. Don't forget to follow us on anger, give us some loves and glow, click the links in the show notes to check out the website and to grab your official something wicked merch, and hop on over to our Facebook group for updates on upcoming episodes. Well, wait a minute.