The Mad Gasser of Mattoon

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V. Welson. It's a History Mystery Day. Yay. These are fun. This is the thing that some people use this like a Halloween episode. That doesn't feel right to me. I'll talk about why. In nineteen forty four, though, a small town in Illinois was gripped with fear that there was a person spraying a toxic gas into their homes as they slept. And while there have been several explanations of what exactly was going on, there is not any one explanation that's recognized or accepted as the truth. So it will stay a mystery. But the mystery perpetrator, if there was one, got a lot of nicknames in the press, including the gas Fiend, the thin Man of Mattoon, the Mad Phantom, the mad Gasser, the Anesthetist Prowler, and the screwball Chemist, among others. And the thing that's really fascinating about this entire thing to me is that it is a story that plays out in a very condensed timeline. It all happened over the course of just ten days. So to tell this story, we're mostly going to pull apart the news coverage of it and then look at the various explanations that were given both at the time and in more recent history. So Mattoon, Illinois was a relatively small community in nineteen forty four. It had a population of about eighteen thousand people that had been founded in eighteen fifty five as a railroad community at the place where Illinois Central and the Terre Hate and Alton railroads crossed. It was named for railroad executive William B. Mattoon, and as it developed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it continued to be an important shipping center. During the Second World War, the town also became an oil center. There were drilling fields opening just outside of the town. As we mentioned in the intro, in the fall of nineteen forty four, the town of Mattoon, Illinois was the site of a series of very strange reports over the course of a couple of weeks that September, multiple households claimed that they had awakened in the night to an odd odor described by some as sickly sweet, and then they experienced some odd symptoms like nausea and limnumbness. The first report was on the front page of the Mattoon Journal Gazette on September second, nineteen forty four. Under the headline anesthetic prowler on the loose, it stated quote, A prowler who used some kind of anesthetic or gas to knock out his victims was on the loose in Mattoon Friday night. This first article featured the account of Aileen Kearney, who was at home with her daughter Dorothy Ellen and other family members while her husband Bert was at work a taxi. Eleen's statement to the paper was this quote. It was shortly after eleven o'clock Friday night when I went to bed, taking with me my daughter Dorothy. My sister, missus Edgar Reedy, was in the living room with the home and my daughter Carol Too and Missus Reedy's son, Roger Too, were in another part of the house. I first noticed a sickening, sweet odor in the bedroom, but at the time I thought it might be from flowers outside the window. However, the odor grew stronger and I began to feel a paralysis of my legs and lower body. I grew frightened and screamed for Martha missus Reedy. When Martha Reedy got into the room, she also noticed the odor, and it seemed to come from outside through an open window. Reedy called Earl Robinson, the next door neighbor, and Earl called police. Both Robinson and police searched the Kearney's property. They found nothing. Bert Kearney was contacted. He immediately went home. Mister Kearney got there around twelve thirty am, and as he pulled up, he saw quote a man at the window wearing dark clothes and a tight fitting cap. Bert Kearney chased this man, who evaded him, and then he called the police, but the police could not find anyone matching the description when they searched that neighborhood. The Kearney's and the Readys left the house and stayed with another relative. Helen Kearney's symptoms subsided pretty quickly. Within thirty minutes of the first onset. Their daughter Dorothy, was totally fine by the morning. That first report offered up an assortment of theories about what had happened exactly and what the motive may have been for someone to target the Kearney home. The guesses as to the nature of the gas included it possibly being chloroform or ether, and the police thought it was probably sprayed into the room quote in a fine mist. The paper also stated that Missus Kearney and Missus Reedy had been counting quote considerable sums of money that evening in a location in the house which could be seen from the street. I don't know about you, but that seemed really odd to me, but it was offered as a possible motive. But it turned out the keirne Ham was not actually the first one to have experienced this odd smell accompanied by temporary limb paralysis. The Kearneys were just the first ones who went to the press. On September fifth, the Journal Gazette ran a story titled Anesthetic Prowler covers City. This opened with quote, the scope of the activities of Mattoon's Anesthetic Prowler ranges across the entire city. It was disclosed today as four more cases, including one several months old, were brought to light. This account listed as the newly accounted for victims Urban Raife and his family and Lyssa's home address of eighteen seventeen Grant Avenue, missus George Ryder and her two children, Joe and Anne Marie, and a woman and children who lived near of writers whose names were withheld. It also mentions Missus Olive Brown and her daughter, Miss Chrissy, who had a similar experience several months earlier. The night before the Kearney home smelled the mystery smell, the RAFs had a very similar scenario play out at their home. According to the newspaper quote, mister Raefe said today he and his wife were made sick by the fumes, which apparently poured through a bedroom window at their home. He said he awoke about three o'clock in the morning and felt ill and as if he were paralyzed. This article goes on to quote Urban Reef directly saying, quote, there was a peculiar heavy odor, and I at first thought it was gas. I asked my wife if she had left the gas stove turned on, but she hadn't. We both had the same feeling of paralysis and were ill for approximately one and a half hours. Persons visiting us, who slept in another part of the house got none of the fumes and were not affected in any way. Missus Ran and her family were apparently affected the same night as the Kearney home, reported awakening to this sickening, sweet smell that temporarily impacted their mobility. The story, as it was pieced together by the paper was that after the perpetrator had been scared away from the Kearney house, he went to the Rider home. Missus Ryder noticed the smell in the night, and when her husband, who worked nights, got home in the morning, she told him she had smelled something that did not smell like chloroform, but which had made her light headed. It's not established why she would know what chloroform smelled like. The third home in that article, the one that was not disclosed by name in the write up, reported more severe reactions. When the woman of the house was awakened by the smell, she discovered that her children were quote ill and vomiting. Olive Brown told the paper that when she experienced the smell and its effects, she didn't tell anyone because quote, it seemed so fantastic, But once she saw the other reports that were so similar to hers, she shared that she and her daughter, while sleeping in separate rooms, had almost identical stories to that of ailing Kearney. The police had been putting together a theory based on the Kearney incident when the other victims came forward, and that, along with two sightings of prowlers, according to the police, that all changed the case. Two days later, the Times Tribune of Scranton, Pennsylvania ran a short piece that said that the quote anesthetic prowler who sprays a sickeningly sweet gas through the screens of bedroom windows was believed by police to have fled the excited community of eighteen thousand. The authorities came to that conclusion, at least, according to the paper, because they had searched the town and had quote failed to reveal a trace of the loan suspect. That article also mentions that the prowler had not entered any homes and that there was no solid theory on motive. Well, pause for a sponsor break, and when we come back, we'll talk about another article that came out the same day but painted a very different picture. So that article that we talked about before the break is wildly different in tone from another that appeared on the same day, September seventh, in the Chicago Tribune. That second article was titled intensify hunt for paralysis gas prowler Matoon orders police on twenty four hour watch. Why was the reporting so different, It's unclear, but it seems like the first story was filed before a new development in the case that took place on September sixth, because that night, a Mattoon couple, Carl and Beulah Cords, found a strange cloth on their porch, presumably not thinking it could be related to the gas spray that had been in the news. Missus Corda's picked up the rag and sniffed it. What actually happened to her when she did this is reported with varying degrees of severity depending on which paper you read. In the Evening World Harald of Omaha, Nebraska, it was stated that missus Corda's quote suffered burns about the lips and throat when she sniffed a rag that she found on her porch. The Chicago Tribune gave more details, stating Quote Corda's reported to police that he and his wife returned to their homes last night about ten o'clock and entered the house by the back door. Missus Cordoes opened the front door and noticed a large white cloth lying on the porch, she smelled the cloth and at once became violently ill. Her lips and face became swollen and inflamed, and she was unable to speak. This condition persisted for two hours. There are also accounts that say she was hospitalized, but not all of them say that so unclear. So, regardless of the severity of Beula Cordas's symptoms, there still was no sign of an actual person who may have left this cloth behind. But Carl and Bula Courtis did find two other things, either on the porch or close to it on the lawn. There was a skeleton key and an empty lipstick tube. Reports suggested that the perpetrator had quote dropped these articles in flight. Once the Courtis home became part of the story, the Mattoon Police asked the Illinois Department of Public Safety for help with the case. I have to admit that I always wonder if a random bird or something had not dropped those like the presumption that someone dropped it while fleeing. Yes, just that it's a presumption, and it's reported as though this must be what happened. It's the fact complination that's some weird pair of items for a person to just have to drop in flight. Yes. And as things played out and more and more reports were made, people around the country and even around the world in some cases, became more and more fascinated with this story, and people in Mattoon started to get more and more scared. On Friday, September eighth, a Long Beach, California paper, The Independent, reported that quote, insomnia in Mattoon tonight was easily understandable. The paper described how the town had gone into a total state of lockdown, mentioning that quote an open first floor bedroom window was harder to find than a pair of nylons. Just in case you need a refresher. That quip was referencing the fact that because of the war, all nylon was allocated for things like parachutes, and people who would normally where nylons had to go without. Residents of Matune, though, were so frightened about this whole thing that they started banding together in patrol groups. No one stayed home alone, and groups of friends worked out arrangements to all stay together in each other's homes at night. And articles appeared in the Times Herald of Port Huron, Michigan on September ninth, titled Madman of Meta Tune. Two more are victims of Phantom Prowler. This particular article really makes clear how scared and frustrated people were starting to feel. It mentions that one of the recent victims who chose to remain unnamed publicly, was a school principle and a woman, so it seems like it would have been pretty easy to figure out who that was for members of the community. But the story transitions to say that the high school laboratory in town was missing a box of chemicals and that police were trying to trace it to figure out where it went. Heads up that the quote that I'm about to read villainizes mental illness, but it shows that the public was starting to see the perpetrator almost as a caricature. This article read quote school officials said a student might have taken the chemicals, or they might be in the possession of a former teacher. Authorities believe that anesthetic is being produced by an insane person with a knowledge of chemistry, perhaps in a weird laboratory in his home. According to The Times, Harold State's Attorney William Kidwell was urging the Office of Civilian Defense to quote organize a core of three hundred persons to patrol the streets after dark. On September twelfth, the Palladium Item of Richmond, Indiana ran a story about the gasser under the headline wave of hysteria hits Mattoon Police Watch amateur Chemist. So this sense of the idea that this entire thing was mass hysteria, but it also clearly states that there was a person of interest. It seems that the fact that there was a suspect has gotten lost or ignored over the years, because many stories about the Mattoon gasings that have been written over the last eight decades make it seem like everyone was just kind of scratching their heads or even engaging in the thinking that some sort of supernatural being might be responsible an unidentifiable phantom and no possible explanation or suspect, of course, is a lot more compelling. We're going to come back to that person of interest. But the idea that what was happening in Mattoon was a hoax or mass hysteria was starting to be mentioned more and more by news outlets. As Mattoon newspapers were starting to question just why the police had virtually no leads. Others started to wonder if everyone in Matuon was having a collective panic. On September fourteenth, Time magazine featured the story of Mattoon's strange gas events, opening with quote, the mad anesthetist of Mattoon, Illinois, population seventeen thousand, five hundred is a tall, thin man who wears a black skull cap and carries an instrument not unlike a flit gun. He moves through the night as nimbly and secretly as a cat, squirting a Swedish gas through the bedroom windows. His victims cough, awaken with burning throats and find themselves successively afflicted with one nausea, two a temporary paralysis, and three a desire to describe their experiences in the minutest detail. This latter result often enables them to overcome their symptoms with startling dispatch. As that opening paragraph suggests, this write up finds the idea of a mad gasser running around a town pretty dubious. It notes that no one has seen this person. It mentions that quote Mattoon's ten policemen, who had been ignoring the arch criminal now sallied forth that night, seeking they knew not what, and not finding it. Time, even skewers the journalists from Chicago who made their way to Mattune to write sensationalized articles about the terrifying attacker who remains so mysterious. As the idea of people simply being swept up in their own fear started to circulate more widely, the police were still getting pressure, and Police Chief c. Eugene Cole, along with Captain Harry Curtis of the State Highway Patrol, issued a statement two days before that time article Pup, which for some people seemed like it kind of came out a left field. On September thirteenth, the Palladium Item reported that Police Chief Coal said that the excitement that came from all the reports of a gaser on the loose was quote a mistake from beginning to end. Cole told the press that the culprit was no man skulking about the Mattoon streets, but a nearby plant, the Atlas Imperial Diesel Engine Company. According to Harry Curtis, the entire affair was quote a perfect example of the working of mass psychology, in which rumors of a gas spraying prowler, spread by a community whispering campaign, blossomed into mass hysteria. Any instances where people reported they had seen a prowler were dismissed simply as coincidence. The chemical that caused the issue was, according to Coal and Curtis, carbon tetrachloride, and that was something Atlas they said was using in its war work. Carbon tetrachloride is not a naturally occurring chemical. It has to be manufactured. It's a clear liquid with a rapid rate of evaporation, It has a sweet smell, and it is toxic, so much so that its use, which was normally in things like pesticide, refrigeration, fluid cleaning supplies, and fire extinguishers, was completely stopped by nineteen eighty six. The symptoms of exposure include headaches, dizziness, sleepiness, nausea, and vomiting. These symptoms go away quickly if a person is only exposed for a short time. Long term exposure has much more serious and damaging effects on the body. Though, and there had been mentioned in the press before this that Captain Curtis in particular was working on trying to identify the chemical substance in play in the case. He told the press that his team was trying to get victims to identify the source of the smell they had experienced by smelling various chemicals, saying, quote, every person who reported a gas attack is being asked to submit to the odors of Lewis U sits mustard gas, methyl chloride, tear gas, and chlorapickrin. Chlora pickrin was the one that Curtis thought might be the culprit because it caused similar symptoms, because it was pretty easy for an amateur chemist to make. The investigator who had been instrumental in this theory was Richard T. Piper, who was sent sim atune by the Illinois Criminal Investigation Laboratory. Piper collected the cloth from the Cortes's porch and made the determination of chloropicrin, though we should mention he was not a chemist. According to the Time magazine article we mentioned earlier, Piper gave himself a crash course in chemistry and kind of made an educated guess. He told the press, quote, it is the strangest case I have ever encountered in many years of police work. There were chemists that were consulted, though, and they said it was probably a hoax. The FBI also got involved and tried to track the chemical. Part of the problem for investigators that while most of them believed some of the attacks were real, there were also likely some that were false instances born out of fear and panic. So it became hard to differentiate between what authorities perceived to be the real crime scenes versus instances of hysteria because they took some calls less seriously than others. There had also been a growing concern among residents that the whole thing was being handled badly. But when it came to that announcement that it was a product of the Atlas plant, State's attorney William Kidwell immediately denounced that explanation. He told the press quote that is simply ridiculous. People working in the plant haven't been affected, neither have people living in houses within seventy five feet of it. I still think there were some authentic gas cases which were the work of a prankster or someone with a more serious motive, And of course the Atlas Imperial Diesel Engine Company was not really pleased to suddenly be named in the press as the cause of people getting sick. The plant's works manager WJ. Webster also talked to the press and made it clear that the determination of Police Chief Call and Captain Curtis didn't make any sense given the evidence. He said that Atlas didn't produce anything that anyone would have described as smelling sickly sweet or like Guardinia's and said quote, after all, we have to live with any condition in our plant. We would be the first to notice and be affected by any fumes. In four years, not one person has been ill at the plant by gas fumes. He went on, quote, the only carbon tetrachloride we have is in the fire extinguishers at the plant. We do use another gas, tetrachlorthylene to clean shell casings, but we never have had one single case of employees working with it being made ill. Webster called for the statement made by Cole and Curtis to be retracted as it was full of falsehood information. The Atlas Imperial Diesel Engine Company also issued its own statement, echoing everything Webster had said, and also noted that an inspector from the State Department of Health had visited the plant just before these incidents began, and stated after the authorities blamed the plant that quote, there was no possibility of trichloroethylene vapors getting into the outside atmosphere in any amount of concentration that would even closely approximate a toxic condition. The company also stated that it believed the testing conducted by authorities used outdated methods and that the true nature of any chemical found on the Courta's rag would probably never be known. And really the most damning part of the Atlas statement, they made a point to say that no one from any of the involved authorities or investigative units had even ever come to the plant. Coal and Curtis did have to walk their statement back. Two weeks after the Coal and Curtis statement, Atlas Imperial Diesel Engine Company took out a full page add in the Mattoon Journal Gazette that definitely reads as though it is post conflict pr It's a statement about the company that's laid out with fancy graphic treatment. It reminds the citizens of Matoon that the company has been working hard during the war and has made lasting friends. It reads in part quote this making of friends builds job security and business security for US, all security based on accomplishment. It goes on to say that the war production months have shown nothing but quality and concludes with quote, we hear in matun can all face the future knowing we have one staunch friends coming up. We'll talk about the way the gassing panic in Matune seemed to die down almost as quickly as it sprang up. But first we'll pause for a sponsor break. So that statement issued by the Whole and Curtis team that we talked about earlier may have included incorrect information from a scientific perspective, but it did seem to have a calming effect on the town. Just to have some kind of explanation, the Mattoon Journal Gazette somewhat playfully reported on September thirteenth the police had gotten two calls in the night, one to deal with a noise that turned out to be a black cat that allegedly purred really loudly, and the other was a reported break in that turned out to just be a doctor breaking into his own office after he accidentally left the keys inside. And though there weren't new attacks or reports of strange gas exposure, there was this lingering fear that someone had been committing these attacks and would never be caught. Today, a lot of people chalk this whole thing up to mass hysteria. It's even used in college classes as an example of how these kinds of things can happen. But there has also been renewed interest in that one suspect that was alluded to in reports of the day but never actually named. In two thousand and three, a science teacher named Scott Marona wrote a short book in which he dove into the case and determined that the mass asteria claim was unfair because there was a lot of circumstantial evidence that pointed to a man named Farley Llewellen. So there's a lot of conjecture about the motivations that Llewellen may have had. In this book, and the interviews that Marouna conducted with people who lived in Mattune during the ten days of the mad Gasser scare all include a whole lot of otherism. They all kind of make the Llewellyn family seem like odd outsiders with poor hygiene. A description of the family's grocery store business describes it as untidy and that there were a lot of cats hanging around in it. That sounds great to me. I wish my grocery store had kiddies, but I know that's not an opinion shared by everyone. Farley's father was known for his kindness in generosity. He was quite well respected, but Farley and his two sisters, Florence and Catherine, are definitely characterized as people no one seem to like to be around. There's also a suggestion that comes out through these interviews that Farley, who lived in a trailer behind the family home where he constructed a chemistry lab for himself, might have been secretly homosexual. And this is kind of all laid out like this whole pastiche of things that could have been wrong with someone in Matune in nineteen forty four. So it's an account that is heavily weighted with the kind of small town gossip that is very dehumanizing to people. Apparently, Farley Llewellen was a very good chemistry student when he attended the University of Illinois, and Maruna puts forth a theory that the gassings were Farley Llewellen's attempt at revenge on a town that never embraced him. That's obviously a lot of theoretical conjecture. Farley is reportedly said to have died in a mental institution, and all of the other Llewellyns were deceased by the time this book was written, which is laid out as the reason that locals were finally comfortable talking about it. And this book offers interesting ideas. You know, it's all theories, but to be clear, the information about Farley Llewellen is based on personal accounts given by people almost six decades after the events that they're discussing, and even in interviews about the book, Maroona has never been adamant that he had like cracked this case, but stated that this case remains so interesting because of all of the possible truths, so it remains a history mystery. It does. Indeed. Oh, I like this one because it's very interesting. I have lots of feelings about it. I have listener mail that has got a completely different subject from all Right are our listener Jesse, who writes, I've been meaning to write this email for almost two years, but I always think of it in the midst of listening to an episode, which means I'm walking and not in a good emailing situation. I started listening during the pandemic and tend to jump around and look for episodes that sound interesting for a given day. When I saw the title Paxton's Crystal Palace. I was immediately intrigued. I'm married to someone who loves to watch a variety of sports, including soccer. Over the years, I've seen the name of English Premier League team Crystal Palace scroll by on the ticker many times. I can't explain why, but every time I see it, I think of some tacky adult entertainment venue and always wondered why that is the team's name. I don't recall anymore, but I don't think you actually mentioned the football club in your episode, which prompted me to do some additional research on my own. After the building was relocated from Hyde Park to Sydenham Hall renamed Crystal Palace, the company that owned it started an amateur football club in eighteen sixty one. The professional club of the same name was formed in nineteen oh five. Could I have learned this year's earlier with a quick and simple Google search. Absolutely, but I'm so glad I happened upon the episode and learned the backstory about the building myself. Is one of our first post COVID travel activities. In twenty twenty one, we spent a short weekend in Chicago. In addition to an architecture walking tour highly recommend. We visited the Art Institute of Chicago. We did not recreate the Ferris Bueller's day Off experience mentioned by Holly in an episode during a listener mail segment, but we did see the attached painting of the Crystal Palace. We ate lunch near Haymarket Square, which prompted a listen to the Haymarket Riot episode on our drive home. Apologies for this lengthy and somewhat rambling email, but I guess that's what happens when you have years worth of info to relate. My husband is always amazed by the random topics that come up where I will say, oh, yeah, I learned about that on stuff you missed in history class. Thank you for making me seem so well educated and for all the work you put into making learning about history enjoyable. Jesse, I love this because it's I mean, this is like the exciting part of history for me, right, is when you realize like the connections of current real world things in your life. Yeah, are still touched by things all the way back to history. Also listen. I love any mention of the Art Institute of Chicago because I love that place. So if you are in Chicago. I highly recommend it's a really good museum. I just love it. It's great, and I I like, I actually love the idea of like some really weird, techy place having a really good football team. So if that happens, fabulous. If you would like to write to us, you could do so at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also find us on social media as Missed in History and if you haven't subscribed yet easiest Pie, you can do that on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.