Hi, I'm Ashley Flowers, creator and host of the number one true crime podcast, Crime Junkie. Every Monday, me and my best friend Britt break down a new case, but not in the way you've heard before, and not the cases you've heard before. You'll hear stories on Crime Junkie that haven't been told anywhere else. I'll tell you what you can do to help victims and their families get justice. Join us for new episodes of Crime Junkie every Monday, already waiting for you by searching for Crime Junkie wherever you listen to podcasts. Poe is a 2021 Audio Chuck Original made for our friends at SiriusXM. We hope you enjoy this exclusive content, re-released for free on Full Body Chills. And for the best experience, we kindly recommend you listen with headphones. You should always speak from the heart, unless of course you've something to hide. As long as you're alive, your guilty secrets live with you, meaning the skeletons in your closet might come crawling out. You can lock the doors and sweep the floors. You can borrow suspicion with a smile. But the one thing you can't do is silence the heart. Listen, somewhere in this house, there's a confession just pounding to break free. In this story, the terrible truth will surrender itself, revealing the Tell-Tale Heart. The Tell-Tale Heart, written by Jake Weber, based on the story by Edgar Allan Poe, 2021. It was the eye that did it. A milky pale blue eye with a film over it, like a vultures. When it looked at me, my blood ran cold. I was seeing it in my sleep. If I didn't excise that evil eye, I would never rest. I would go insane. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I am insane. How could I have done what I did and be in my right mind, right? I'm here to help. I'm not crazy. Okay. There is evil inside me, and I am hypersensitive, but I am not crazy. What do you mean by hypersensitive? My senses are heightened. Only my hearing and sense of smell. And I'm sensitive to people. I can sense malevolence. I can feel it. Did you sense malevolence in your victim? No. He was always nice to me. When I came in, he was always appreciative. When I cleaned up, changed his bed clothes, and made sure he had what he needed, he was always grateful. Some of the elderly in my care are mean. Some of you can't blame. They're in various stages of dementia. But some are just shitty human beings. They don't get a pass for being old. They were probably always shitty human beings. Just more shitty now. Now the evil inside was surfacing. It wasn't as well disguised. Those people you can't do enough for, no matter how hard you try. But your victim was not one of those? No. He was a nice old man, but very frail, practically invalid. Did he have family? He never had visitors that I knew of and didn't talk much. He never told me about a family. He was just a guy alone at the end of his life waiting to die. And why did you kill him if he was kind to you? You're looking for motive. I'm just trying to understand why you killed him. You think it's because I'm crazy? I don't think anything. I'm here to help. Then listen. I am totally sane. I knew exactly what I was doing. I was calm throughout the preparation and execution of a man who had done me no wrong, who was nice to me, but was disfigured and because of that had probably lived a lonely life because who would marry a man like that? A man who was so ugly. You killed him because he was ugly? I killed him because I couldn't not kill him. I knew what I was doing was wrong, but it had to be done. That I had invaded my life. It had set up residents in my psyche. The I was me. Wait, how was the I you? It spoke to me. The I talked for God's sake. No, the I didn't literally speak to me. I'm not some wacko having conversations with organs. Don't be so fucking literal. The I was the evil in me. I was now directly faced with it. It could no longer be ignored. Get it? Not exactly. Why? Why not stop working for him? I didn't work for him. I was employed by an elderly care management service. I couldn't refuse to care for a patient because he smelled like egg salad and had a funky eye. They'd fire me. Well, they did fire you. You're here incarcerated. You're a young woman who had her whole life ahead of her. If this was, as you say, premeditated murder, why did you risk all that? I didn't think I'd get caught. Isn't that what all murderers think? But you showed the police the body. Why would you do that if you didn't want to get caught? You're not very good at what you do, are you? Why do you say that? Why are you asking me stupid questions? Asking questions is my job, so I can help. I've already said why. Not to me, you haven't. Have you done absolutely no homework? Well, I'd like to hear it from you. That's a joke. Who are you guys? You, the cops, the shrinks, the judges, you're a joke. You're dumb as bricks. I handed this to you on a silver platter. I have nothing to add. Go away. Well, I'm the only thing standing between you and Death Row, so how about you knock it off with a hostility and talk me through the events that led you to take the life of an innocent old man? Who said he was innocent? Well, you did. You said he was a nice guy. That doesn't mean he was innocent. One is guilty of something. What are you guilty of, counselor? Quit playing games. You want my help or not? If I did have a chance, you would not be the man to keep that needle from my arm. But because I'm a little idle at the moment, because I happen to have some time on my hands, I'll tell you all about how I took the life of the vulture. The vulture? The week before I killed him, I was especially attentive. I had always tried my best to be kind, even though the sight of him would send shivers down my spine and his smell would turn my stomach, because, you see, I knew that week would be his last. I brought him spumante and strawberries and brie. Have you ever had strawberries and brie? I have not. Try it sometime. You see, I have a ring. Bring some home to Mrs. Public Defender. So the vulture had Italian champagne and strawberries and double cream brie, and he said to me, why are you doing this? You don't have money for this. And I said, you always have to make room for special things, especially at special times in your life. And he said, why is this a special time in my life? And I said, because it's the end of your life. And if that's not special, I don't know what is. And he cried then. I've noticed people nearing the end can become emotional at the littlest thing. Not saying the end of your life is a small thing, not minimizing that. But I don't think that was the only reason he was emotional. I think it was also the act of kindness. He wasn't used to that because he was so disturbing to look at. Go on. I had a set of keys to his apartment. He was mostly bedridden. It took a lot of effort for him to answer the door. I was having trouble sleeping at the time. I'm better now. But if I closed my eyes, that milky cataract would appear and dash any hope of rest. It had pierced me. It had pierced my identity. Those nights, I would go to his apartment and quietly let myself in and watch him. When my grandmother died, they had asked me what of hers I wanted. And I chose an old lantern that she had from her own mother. I loved it. I don't make things like that anymore. You could direct the light anywhere you wanted with total precision. It had a shutter on each side with a perfect seal so no light would bleed through. I brought this lantern with me when I would let myself in on nights I couldn't sleep. I would crack open one of the shutters and direct the light into that murky eye. Even with a beam of light directly on it, it wouldn't open. When I killed him, it had to be open. That I had to see what I... Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a second. Why did it have to be open? Stop interrupting me. You're like a child with all these questions. Stop fidgeting and listen. And all will be answered because I have nothing to hide and nothing to gain. Where was I? I knew that I had to be open if I were going to exercise it. Only then could I be rid of it. The evil eye had to know who had destroyed it because you see, it was a piece of me. It had to be vanquished and it had to know who was the victor. Each night, I would go in and wait. Wait for that eye to open. But it was impervious to light. I knew he could see through it because I had felt it following me about the room. He could see just fine. Understand my fight was not with the old man. It was with the eye. The eye was the threat. The old man was harmless. He was just an ugly old man who happened to be the host. But the eye was a reflection of my soul. My evilness was staring back at me. The man and the eye were separate in my mind. And it was unfortunate that I could not destroy one without the other. You were the evil you saw in that man? Sorry, I mean that eye. We hold these truths to be self-evident that some are born evil. That men are born evil? That some are born evil. Pay attention, counselor. And you were evil? Well, I did kill a man in cold blood. What would you call that if not evil? Why didn't you put out the eye instead of killing him? Top of his class is one. I'm going to answer your question with a question of my own. Why would I put the old man through all that pain in the short time he has left? And don't you think he'd tell the cops that his caregiver plucked out his bad eye with a dessert spoon? Was I supposed to Gloucester him? Gloucester him. The Earl of Gloucester was a weak, stupid man who got both his eyes put out. Do you know Edgar Allan Poe? He was named after one of Gloucester's sons in King Lear. I never read it. Never mind then. Where was I? The lantern. Four nights in a row, I came into his apartment with the lantern. On the fifth night, before I could open the light on his eye, I was careless and I made a sound. And the old man sprang up in his bed. Hold on. First off, why did you keep directing the light to the victim's eye if it had no effect? And if it was pitch black, how did you know he was sitting up? Because I was mesmerized by the eye. Isn't that obvious? And I could tell by the trajectory of his voice that he was sitting up. Is that how you're going to cross-examine? I kept very still and so did he for what seemed like an hour, but it was probably only minutes. I knew he hadn't moved in the bed. He was dead still and so was I. The thing about the senses is that if you're deprived of one, in this case it was sight, the others become sharper to compensate. Why didn't he turn on a bedside light? He was afraid, counselor. He was afraid of who or what he might find. There was no question that someone was in the room and it was a bad situation for him. There is fight, flight, or freeze mode and he was frozen in fear. Did he say anything? He asked who was there, what did I want? He said he had very little to steal what I could have, whatever there was. He said he was dying and to please not hurt him. Did you say anything? No. I just kept very still and listened. Listened to the fear in his voice and the thumping of his heart. I have an acute sense of hearing and that heartbeat was loud, like a drum. Like the drums in the Revolutionary War that would urge the helpless British into the paths of the American Patriots lying in wait. Were the helpless British in this analogy? I was helpless in the face of that eye and driven by that heartbeat towards what in all likelihood would lead to my execution. So yes, the helpless English. Then what? I released a sliver of light, like a thread of silk from a spider, and it landed directly on the vulture eye. I took a few steps toward him and he shrieked in tear, but most of it cracked in his throat. He couldn't get out that full throated horror scream that you hear in the movies. I kept the light trained on his eye as I closed in on him. He stayed still like an animal in headlights, frozen in place, trying to scream, but nothing was coming out. I have a recurring dream like that. Someone's coming at me with a knife and I can't get out enough voice to stop him and he slashes and stabs me over and over and it hurts and it burns. This was my nightmare in reverse. The irony was I was trying to destroy the evil image of myself I saw in that horrid eye, but I was also about to literally destroy myself because, as we know, counselor, you could be sentenced to die for your actions that night. That's right. I could be sentenced to death. I pulled him hard off the bed. He probably weighed 70 pounds wet and was a small man to begin with. He hit the floor and there was this loud crack as his collarbone snapped. And this time he got out of high-pitched shriek in pain. I took a pillow from the bed and smothered him and held it there as he thrashed feebly at first and then violently with every ounce of his strength. And it's surprising what the body is capable of. I heard of a mother who lifted a car her baby was trapped under with strength. She had no business having. That old man fought to live. He tried with everything he had. He fought and then he died. His body gave in to me and I held the pillow there for another minute or so and then took it off his face and opened up the lantern. The good eye was staring back at me dead and vacant, but the evil eye was closed, closed for good now. That eye would trouble me no more. One eye was open and the other closed. That's right. What did you do next? I took off his clothes, carried into the bathtub, opened up his arteries, waited for the blood to drain. Then I took off my clothes and cut him into pieces. What did you use? I used a meat saw, a butcher saw. You brought that with you? I did. As I said, I had this planned out. I knew exactly what I was going to do after I killed him. Okay. Dismembraying him didn't take long. You cut at the joints. There was very little flesh on him. The bones themselves were brittle and snapped like breadsticks. What took the most time was washing away the blood. While I was waiting, a poem came to mind called Experience of Blood. Would you like to hear it? Sure. I never knew there was so much blood in a man until my son killed himself. I had to wipe away the blood. It took me four hours to do it, but I couldn't have asked anyone else because after all, it was my blood too. It's pretty good, right? I wouldn't know poetry is not my thing. Well, it is mine. What did you do after the blood had drained from the body? I placed his remains in contractor bags and then hid them under the floorboards. Was there no subfloor? There was, but it had a hidden crawl space. How did you know? He told me. When he died, he wanted me to retrieve what was down there. I'm not even sure what there was. Personal items, I suppose. There were some things of value he said I could have. There was a crowbar for the floorboards in the closet. So you took up the floorboards and hid them there? The plan was to take them out in stages as if taking out the trash. So you get the body parts down there and then what? Then I cleaned the bathroom and got dressed again and made myself a tea. I was tired now, so I made myself hot tea. And then? Then the police arrived. Go on. Two of them, a man and a woman, they said that dispatch had received a call from a neighbor who'd heard a scream coming from the home of an elderly man who was in poor health. And I said it was actually me who screamed because I'd seen a rat and if there's one thing I hate, it's rats. And I was dressed because I was going out to find somewhere I could get traps because I wasn't going to be able to sleep in the apartment knowing that there were rats in it. They asked where the old man was and I said that he was with relatives or that's what he told me and he wanted me to house it while he was gone. I was his caregiver and he trusted me with his place. I just didn't know there were rats in it. They wanted to know when did he leave. Yesterday, I said, did I have a number for him? I didn't think he owned a cell phone. When was he expected back? In a few days, he said. They didn't seem suspicious and they had no reason to be. They just wanted the details for their report and I was perfectly calm and replied to all their questions to the best of my knowledge. But then something strange happened. The sound of their voices began to dissipate until I could barely hear them. Their mouths were moving as was mine. I was responding. But I have no idea what was asked of me or what I said in response. All I could hear was the beating of a heart. It was thumping louder and louder until it was all I heard. It was reverberating everywhere. It was deafening. Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. The cops were talking and one of them laughed at something the other said and I was laughing too. But I had no idea what the joke was. We were carrying on a full conversation but all I could hear was the beating of that old man's heart. I can't tell you why I did what I did. Only that if I did nothing I thought my head would split open. The sound was coming from under the floorboards from the crawl space where I had hidden the body. We were all joking, having a grand old time, but I knew what I had to do. I got out the crowbar and I pulled up one plank and then another. The cops were watching me now in silence, puzzled. I reached in and I pulled out one of the contractor bags, untwisted the tie that closed it, and pulled out the vultures head. The eye, the evil eye, had opened again. But the beating of the hideous heart had stopped. The room was silent. It was quiet again. I knew now I could no more escape that eye than I would my fate. But at least it was quiet. It was quiet again. So what do you think, counselor? Not criminally responsible by reason of insanity? Or guilty of premeditated cold-blooded murder in the first degree? Don't think too hard. It's a trick question. Poe is an audio-check original. This episode is read to you by Jake Weber and Ashley Flowers. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? Aargh! Everyone's told a lie, but what happens when one lie becomes a life, a movement, a conspiracy? I'm Josh Dean, host of Chameleon, and I uncover true stories of deception scams so intimate and convincing they fooled the people closest to them. These aren't strangers, they're lovers, friends, and trusted allies. Because the most dangerous cons don't feel like crimes, they feel personal. Listen to Chameleon wherever you get your podcasts.
