Badger Bizarre

Scott and Mickey have a longform discussion about one of the most bizarre and talked about murders in our state's history: The murder of the reclusive Kunz Family.

On the night of July 4th, 1987, somebody walked into the Kunz household, killed 4 members of the family, while Helen Kunz, a 70- year-old mother and sister to the murdered, went missing.

The murders, however, were only half of this story, as the lifestyle and shocking secrets of the Kunz Family, revealed to the world during the investigation, became almost a bigger point of attention.

Tune in and find out why...

Main sources for this episode: https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Relative-Portrait-Mass-Murder/dp/0929387910

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Opening Trailer:

Ed Gein Sound Byte : "Hard Copy" - Paramount Domestic/CBS Televsion

Frank Lloyd Wright and Jeffery Dahmer Sound Byte - WISN 12 News - Milwaukee, WI

Jeffery Dahmer Quotes: "Inside Edition" - King World/CBS Television/CBS Media

Attribution for Music:

Trailer: Composer: Adam Phillip Zwirchmayr https://www.pond5.com/

Intro: https://pixabay.com/

Outro: Composer: Viacheslav Sarancha https://www.pond5.com/

Attribution for logo design:

Red Claw Scratch Photo

For 21 years, a serial killer terrorized a north side neighborhood in Milwaukee, often times working right under the nose of the Milwaukee Police Department.

Suspected of killing at least 10 women, ultimately convicted of 7, Walter E. Ellis stalked those living in the seedy underbelly of the Cream City, preying on those often most vulnerable, struggling themselves to make a life.

Beginning in 1986, young women began turning up murdered in numerous abandoned properties, most of them strangled, in a two mile radius in north Milwaukee, leading to the residents of the area to suspect a serial killer was on the loose. Unwilling to endorse the one-killer theory, police struggled to crack the case, leading to accusations of not taking it seriously, as the majority of the victims were African-American and usually suspected of being sex workers.

As DNA technology advanced, and a task force was formed, police began to hone in on a suspect, one which had been in their midst for decades, working with them as an informant, incarcerated numerous times, and repeatedly given leniency for unknown reasons.

Scott and Mickey discuss this story which entails missed opportunities by the Milwaukee Police Department, Department of Corrections, Department of Justice, and the state legislature which could have curtailed these murders from happening and literally saved lives, along with the larger social and economic issues at play which helped create a monster like Walter E. Ellis, though also sadly dismisses those he took away from us.

Walter E. Ellis during a court appearance .

2 children of Irene Smith, a victim of Ellis, murdered in 1992.

Michael Lesy's 1973 book Wisconsin Death Trip examines the harsh lives of many Wisconsinites during the years leading up to, and just after the turn of the twentieth century.

Murder, suicide, disease, and madness devoured the state, though the era was seemingly mysteriously forgotten until, in 1968, Lesy came across the work of former Black River Falls photographer Charles Van Schaick, and newspaper articles of the day, to paint a truly horrific period of our state's and nation's history.

Combined into an art, and quasi-history book, Wisconsin Death Trip has since become one of the most iconic "cult classics" in American pop culture history.

Contact us:

Facebook

Twitter

Website

Email us: [email protected]

Attribution for logo design:

Red Claw Scratch Photo

Attribution for Music:

Trailer: Composer: Adam Phillip Zwirchmayr https://www.pond5.com/

Intro: https://pixabay.com/

Outro: Composer: Viacheslav Sarancha https://www.pond5.com/

Opening Trailer:

Ed Gein Sound Byte : "Hard Copy" - Paramount Domestic/CBS Televsion

Frank Lloyd Wright and Jeffery Dahmer Sound Byte - WISN 12 News - Milwaukee, WI

Jeffery Dahmer Quotes: "Inside Edition" - King World/CBS Television/CBS Media

Photo from book. Man next to child's open coffin. Photo from book. Van Schaick's studio work.

Photo from book. Van Schaick's studio work.

Still image from movie. Man hanging from tree.

Static X 1999 Album "Wisconsin Death Trip," inspired by the book.

Known since the 1970's as the "most haunted house in Wisconsin," Summerwind Mansion's ghostly legends have dominated the Badger State's folklore for decades.

Built in 1914 as West Bay Lake Fishing Lodge, it was converted into a summer home by Robert Patterson Lamont and his family in 1916. Lamont was a wealthy businessman and steel industry tycoon who later became Secretary of Commerce under President Hoover in 1929. Their time at the mansion was fairly quiet, according to the lack of written records and verbal accounts of the time, until the 1930's, when legend says Lamont was so startled by a full-bodied apparition in his kitchen that he attempted to shoot at it, leaving bullet holes in a door still reportedly visible decades later. This frightened the family so badly that they left the home suddenly after that event and never returned.

In the decades that followed, the home had several mysterious changing of hands and was vacant for many years until 1969 when it became the home of Arnold and Ginger Hinshaw and their 4 children.

What followed was the family being tormented by disembodied voices, paranoia, items seemingly moving on their own, a reported partially mummified human skeleton found hidden in the walls, and a descent into madness which led to the family leaving the home, and ultimately, an end of the marriage itself.

After being abandoned again for many years, the home burned to the ground under mysterious circumstances during a storm in 1988, leaving a stone foundation and 2 large chimneys as the only remnants of a once grand home.

In recent years, more rumor and innuendo have painted a possible much darker history to the home than previously thought...

Summerwind as it appeared, abandoned, in the 1980s.

The ruins of Summerwind Mansion.

Main Sources:

Bell, Devon - Haunted Summerwind: A Ghostly History of a Wisconsin Mansion

Cleaves, Enid; Nehring, Craig - Wisconsin's Most Haunted

"Ghosts of Summerwind," A Haunting Television Series - New Dominion Pictures/Discovery Communications

Attribution for logo design:

Red Claw Scratch Photo

Attribution for Music:

Trailer: Composer: Adam Phillip Zwirchmayr https://www.pond5.com/

Intro: https://pixabay.com/

Outro: Composer: Viacheslav Sarancha https://www.pond5.com/

Opening Trailer:

Ed Gein Sound Byte : "Hard Copy" - Paramount Domestic/CBS Televsion

Frank Lloyd Wright and Jeffery Dahmer Sound Byte - WISN 12 News - Milwaukee, WI

Jeffery Dahmer Quotes: "Inside Edition" - King World/CBS Television/CBS Media

On August 15th, 1914, while Frank Lloyd Wright was away on business, an unspeakably horrific event occurred at his home, Taliesin, in Spring Green, WI. Frank's mistress, Mamah Borthwick, her 2 children, Martha (8) and John (12) were killed, along with 4 draftsmen and laborers, in a hatchet attack by a live-in house servant, Julian Carlton. In 1903, Frank, by then a world-renowned architect and married to Catherine (Kitty) Wright, was commissioned by a neighboring couple in Oak Park, IL, a suburb of Chicago, to design their new home. The couple, Edwin and Mamah Cheney, were looking to move just over to the north side of town, and Frank accepted the commission. Soon after, Mamah and Frank began an affair which became headline news in the Windy City. Mamah was granted a divorce by Edwin. Frank, however, was not granted a divorce by Kitty, who hoped that he would recognize his mistake and return to her. The press coverage became so vicious, as Frank and Mamah were said to be living outside of the proper norms of society, that the two left their families and eloped to Europe for almost a year. Upon their return to the states, Frank and Mamah knew they could not go back to Oak Park, as they were vilified there, so Frank built them a refuge - a sprawling mansion and architecture studio he called "Taliesin," a Welsh word meaning 'shining brow.' The place he chose to build it was just outside of his mother's hometown, and where he spent much of his youth, Spring Green, WI, on what he remembered as his 'favorite hill' growing up. After moving into the home in 1911, Frank and Mamah were living as normal of lives as possible. The press continued to run scandalous, salacious stories on them, referring to the home as the "Love Bungalow," or the "Love Cottage," but the townsfolk seemed to be accepting of them more and more. Frank also began working more regularly (after his commissions took a hit from the bad press) and they seemed to have weathered the storm. In the summer of 1914, Frank was in Chicago putting the finishing touches on his current work at the time, Midway Gardens, a large indoor-outdoor concert venue that turned out to be short-lived.

August 15th, 1914 was a Saturday and Frank was due to be home the next day. Mamah's children were visiting her for the summer, which was an annual occurrence. On this particular Saturday, Mamah and her 2 children, John and Martha, were on the terrace off the main dining room of Taliesin, awaiting lunch. 4 laborers and 2 draftsmen were also in the home awaiting lunch, although they were in another dining room, approximately 80' from the terrace where Mamah and her children were. As events are believed to have occurred, Juilan Carlton, a servant who had just been hired by Frank 2 months prior, off of a recommendation, served the men their first course of lunch in their dining room. After leaving the room, the men all likely now talking and eating, Julian then went to serve lunch to Mamah, Martha and John - before killing all three with a shingling hatchet. After having done so, Julian then went back to the room the draftsmen and laborers were in, who apparently did not hear or were aware of anything that had happened outside of that room, poured gasoline under the door, and lit the room on fire. As the men fought their way through the smoke and panic out through the door, Juilan was waiting for them outside with the hatchet, killing 4 of the six men. 2 men survived and were able to run for help. When authorities and residents arrived on scene, they were horrified. Taliesin was on fire and 7 innocent people, including three children, would eventually die from the attack, as would Juilan, who was found cowering in the furnace of the home, having attempted suicide by drinking a vial of hydrochloric acid. Frank arrived home later that night after receiving a call about the news while working in Chicago. Devastated, he entered into an era of deep depression and personal turmoil. Always the creative genius, Frank Lloyd Wright eventually reinvented himself as an artist, and was able to channel his grief as motivation. He would create some of his most impressive works, in a lifetime of impressive works, after the horrific events of August 15th, 1914.

Frank and Mamah:

Onlookers surveying the carnage the day after:

The only known photograph of Julian Carlton and the murder weapon:

Main Sources:

Drennan, William R - Death in a Prairie House

Hendrickson, Paul - Plagued by Fire: The Dreams and Furies of Frank Lloyd Wright

McCrea, Ron - Building Taliesin: Frank Lloyd Wright's Home of Love and Loss

Attribution for logo design:

Red Claw Scratch Photo

Attribution for Music:

Trailer: Composer: Adam Phillip Zwirchmayr https://www.pond5.com/

Intro: https://pixabay.com/

Outro: Composer: Viacheslav Sarancha https://www.pond5.com/

Opening Trailer:

Ed Gein Sound Byte : "Hard Copy" - Paramount Domestic/CBS Televsion

Frank Lloyd Wright and Jeffery Dahmer Sound Byte - WISN 12 News - Milwaukee, WI

Jeffery Dahmer Quotes: "Inside Edition" - King World/CBS Television/CBS Media