Glennon Engleman: Dentist by Day, Hitman by Night

today's episode of the casual criminalist is brought to you by curiosity stream it's a subscription streaming service that offers thousand documentary non-fiction titles from the world's best filmmakers curiositystream.com forward slash criminalist is where you can go you'll get 25 percent off which makes it extremely affordable more about them in a bit hello everyone and welcome to a brand new episode of the casual criminalist i as always i'm your host simon what happens here is callum has written me a script our dear writer here on the casual criminalist this one's glennon engelman dentist by day hitman by night i feel like hitman don't they make like tons of minorities that just in movies in reality i imagine it's really like hitman like yeah it's just people who aren't particularly skilled and have turned to crime it's probably not all elite assassinations that cost millions of dollars it's probably more like no no yeah give me a grand and i'll knock off that guy you don't like so maybe they do need the day job uh what i'm serious callum has written it i'm going to read it i've not read it before people have described it as a cold read that's what this show is and then of course jen our fantastic editor for this show we'll sprinkle in some music some images all of that wonderful stuff so it makes it into more of a polished production let's jump in [Music] it takes a certain kind of person to be able to kill another human being yes it does it we use the word psycho a lot on this channel and i feel we can use it right here those words ring true but those kind of people are often the ones we would least suspect case in point the man that that quote it takes certain kind of person to kill another human being belongs to glenn engelman aka the killer dentist on this show we've covered plenty of gang land hit men twisted sexual predators and mad cult leaders that's all par for the course with true crime it's true we haven't covered a lot of dentists although we have covered doctors we've covered two doctors if not two then the second will be coming soon but glennon himself stands out from the list specifically because he doesn't really stand out few expected that this unassuming st louis man would actually turn out to be one of the most prolific serial killers in the city's history oh my god from the 1950s to 1980s he lived a shocking double life filling cavities in the day and moonlighting as a semi-pro hitman does a hitman count as a serial killer i mean i guess like technically yes but i feel like serial killers are more like the i i don't want to defend hitmen that is the last thing i intend to do on this show but it's like you're doing a job like if you were in the military and you killed like 10 people they're not going to be like you're a serial killer it's no you're a soldier and i am really sounding like i'm defending hitman so i'm just gonna stop and be like yeah yeah yeah they're serial killers fair play now a lot of you probably already assume that your dentist is an evil satan oh my god that angelman was on another level death dealing was his greatest passion and he took great glee in executing carefully calculated plots that left the police scratching their heads in confusion today we'll be looking into the deadly dentist's twisted genius and how his murderous bravado eventually got the better of him deadly gold digging on september 5th 1976 newly married dental nurse carmen 24 was walking through a countryside park near pacific missouri with her husband peter harm 26 the young couple were on their way to a car show at the six flags theme park when they decided to stop off and explore some of the caves dotted round the area i get the feeling they are going to be murdered the fields and glades were mostly empty that day bar the odd family out for a sunday walk carmen and peter made their way to a secluded area in the middle of the park a pond tucked away in a clearing as they stood on the banks looking out over the water the tranquil ambiance was interrupted by a loud crap a bullet ripped through the air pierced peter's back and set a spray of red mist out from his chest oh this is so sad it's like this sounds like a beautiful like sunday afternoon you're gonna go do something fun look at some cars you stop by a nice park it's the 1970s i don't know why that makes a difference but you know it's the past it's like they don't have twitter bothering them all the time it was still worse though it was always worse in the past don't forget it a family walking nearby came running when they heard carmen screams and found her husband bleeding out on the floor not knowing what to do she ran off down the path back towards the car park the family did their best to save peter but it was hopeless he was declared dead on arrival hospital when the police scared the scene later that day they discovered a six millimeter rifle with a telescopic sight buried under a pile of leaves about 50 meters from the body at first they theorized that it might have been an accident the area was a well-known was well known as a popular spot for target shooters what how on earth are you allowed to just go shoot targets in the park with a gun is that really allowed in america surely just go to a gun range or do it on private property if i went to the park and people were shooting guns at targets i'd be like yo why hasn't anyone called the police yet but then another wanderer who was there that day reported a curious little detail as carmen ran back toward the roads in hysterics she was intercepted by a man who burst out from between the trees the passerby called out just in case she was in trouble and the man disappeared back into the woods who was this mysterious figure and why did he reveal himself to the victim's wife that day did she take out a hit on him i mean it's always the wife i mean i don't think so they seem very happy from the two lines that i read about them but maybe this was some sort of weird like i got him did you get him yes confirmed go back in the bushes i won't leave you hanging to find out it was our guy glenn engelman he was the one who fired the shot from the bushes which passed just inches past the dead man's heart so why was he comfortable showing his face to the soon-to-be widow that day well he and she were already well acquainted simon i mean well done for spotting it but then not so well done for immediately being like nah wasn't her even though he's always the wife come on in fact the two had been working together on this murder plan of course they had before she and her husband even met what are you up to this is very elaborate it all began when she started working alongside our deadly dentist at his clinic on the south side of saint louis she had known a woman for most of her life and he was her first boss while she trained for her dental nursing qualifications despite being a 3 out of 10 at absolute best glennon saw himself as a ladies man and prided himself on being able to bring women especially young attractive ones under his control at that point carmen was in her early 20s and was pushed and he was pushing 50 but it's thought they started a sexual relationship at the office i'm sure they sterilized the dental chair afterwards ah calum no why would you no i don't want to think about my the chair i sit in at the dentists in that way oh god couple is ladies man persona with his love for firearms and it's clear that engagement thought of himself as a bit of a james bond type character except james bond is not three out of ten any of them and also he's not a assassin is he or a dentist or american or anything like you at all other than having a gun when his latest money penny worked with him at the clinic she was still called by her maiden name karma miranda not one of the fruit hats as she hadn't found a man to settle down with yet one day she came into the clinic complaining of financial problems and engelmann made her a proposal not a marriage proposal he was already married to his third wife although his idea did include a marriage wait so she's gonna find some rich guy get married to him and then he's gonna shoot them that is so elaborate one day and then she gets half the money through his inheritance or whatever the dentist's idea was that carmen should find a good honest hard-working bloke to marry so that he could murder him in cold blood for the life insurance payout okay just finding a regular dude with a life insurance policy okay probably not the advice the young nurse was expecting but after a bit of trepidation she began to come round to the notion oh my god i mean credit to this guy that is some persuasive skills right there on the one and she would be making self a co-conspirator in a horrible cynical murder but on the other hand money is quite nice i mean agreed but you know things i wouldn't do for money kill someone or get involved in a plot to kill someone i mean that would be pretty intense as for practicalities engemen told him not to worry he had done this kind of thing before with zero issues dude you just admitting your crimes to someone just all right after a bit more convincing she was fully on board engelmann talked her through the kind of guy she should be looking for i'm not sure what criteria he laid out but if i had to guess someone with a tolerable personality should be spending quite a lot of time with him after all someone young the older you are the lower the insurance payout and someone trusting enough to be easily manipulated then they spent the following months whittling through a long list of eligible bachelors from carmen's personal life i've had some grim episodes in my romantic life but imagine finally bucking up the courage to ask out the woman of your dreams and she's just planning on having her pervy old boss assassinate you for a few grand super depressing isn't it oh god that's the miserable situation that peter unwittingly found himself in when he and carmen started dating in 1975. carmen you psycho to like go through all of that hassle and just you psycho they were married within the year and carmen quit her job at engleman's clinic to avoid arousing suspicion the two kept in close contact with her older lover instructing her on how to go about taking out life insurance policies on her new husband meanwhile she had to keep up the life insurance policies when anyone's taking out like multiple any any anyone who's got multiple life insurance policies uh especially taken out by someone else you should like if you if that's you if your wife has taken out multiple insurance policies on your life just be careful all right you know just pro tip here from from simon just you know keep an eye on things people are going to be in the comments being like what's wrong we have multiple life insurance policies i don't understand my wife says they're brilliant and i mean it's probably legitimate reasons like if you do die it's it's good to have money because especially if you like soul bread we actually have a sponsor on another channel that i do which is all about life insurance and why it's a good thing but they don't ever say anything about multiple policies the only time i've heard about multiple policies is like in crime someone is getting killed meanwhile she had to keep up the facade of a happy healthy marriage a fake double life that her partner thought was reality after about six months of fake marital bliss the deadly gold digger and her murder coach started phase three the assassination itself engemen had his accomplice robert handy the cue to his bond procure the rifle on the black market meaning it couldn't be traced back to him also dude you're making another classic criminal mistake you're involving other people in your crimes like we've talked about this there's already two people involved in your crimes which is just risky it's risky business because they can turn on you if you're gonna do crimes do the crime solo then he and carmen scouted out several locations around missouri where engelman could take the shot and make a quick getaway on two separate occasions he even had the target in his sight but had to keep his figure off the trigger when the arrival of potential witnesses ruined the opportunities third time's a charm though after settling on the park for this try glennon and carmen went there for a dry run a few days before the planned date he gave explicit instructions on where and how they should stand so he could pull off the kill with minimal risk you've already seen what came next england lay in the bushes and blasted a hole right through the innocent man's chest theory is one thing but practice is entirely another perhaps the reality of actually seeing her husband shot dead was too much for carmen as she ran off engelmann thought she might be coming down with a bad case of buyer's remorse a bit late commerce he showed himself for just a second to make sure that she didn't blow the whole thing after that carmen managed to play the role of damsel in distress to a tea while engemen made his escape she went to flag down help from a passing car and brought the paramedics to the scene then after it was over she waited long enough to avoid suspicion and collected 75 000 from her late husband's insurance policies about 350 000 in today's money which is a lot of money but it's not millions of dollars and you gave up like was it years of your life to do this crazy thing and then risk going to prison for murder what is up with you around six months after the killing the trigger man got his cut at modest ten thousand dollars for his troubles delivered by carmen's brother who was on who was in on the plan okay so now there's four people involved in this murder plot carmen's brother what are you doing you just a delivery man for crime money why on earth would you get involved it's how much are you getting paid also if i was that dentist i'd be like yo i want half that money i pulled the trigger what are you talking about also i'm in charge i feel like the dentist guy was in charge it was his idea why is he only getting 10 grand he killed someone are you crazy she received all the sympathy of a grieving widow and he returned to his dental practice satisfied with another job well done any question marks left hanging over the death of peter harm and the minds of the investigators would remain unanswered for now yeah i'm getting the feeling we're gonna get answers in this one because there's a very detailed explanation of the crime that sounds like it we have it because it was solved just wild ass guest there now before we continue with today's episode let me tell you a bit about today's fantastic sponsor who make this possible that would be curiosity stream thank you so much curiositystream are a subscription streaming service that offer thousands of documentaries and non-fiction titles some of the world's best filmmakers including exclusive 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criminals 25 off 14.99 the whole year so affordable i mean i get those other streaming services as well a whole bunch of them and they are like that much a month curiosity stream's a great deal please go check it out supports the show and let's get back to today's episode license to drill but but before we deal with what came next a bit of background what exactly drove an innocent everyday hit man to pursue the sadistic career path of dentistry his biography doesn't offer many clues no trauma no mental health issues nothing beyond the suggestion that maybe he was just born this way glenn engelman was born to a working-class family in saint louis in 1927. an average student throughout education he went on to serve in the armed forces and he had his college dunked through the gi bill dunked i guess that is like another word for like comped like he got it for free like a scholarship he learned something new every day he graduated with a degree in dentistry from washington either that is just a typo and everyone just learned a word learned a word wrong including me i'm gonna be like yeah i'm getting my college dunked what are you talking about for free dunked for free no i don't know sorry he graduated with a degree in dentistry from washington university in 1954 and returned to saint louis to set up his own dental practice engelmann soon became known as a pillar of the community offering free dental care to the disadvantaged and generally being a stand-up guy except when he was assassinating but behind this public persona was a hidden self cheery unassuming glenn was a self-admitted sociopath who relished the idea of outwitting the police and killing without remorse and when you have zero regard for the sanctity of life what's a life insurance policy put a bounty on someone's head it's so dark yeah there's one of these people it's like why are you so why are you a psycho i don't know i just am just i'm just a sociopath i you know just damn it's like that did you guys ever watch that dexter tv show so although he saw his parents killed brutally in a murder when he was like three but he's also like why are you a psycho it's just i am i just am i have to kill i don't know why there are just some people like that glenn sees to be one of them that's psycho as far as we know the idea for homicidal insurance fraud first struck glenn back in the late 50s this was when he and his first wife ruth the ruth the mother to his only child got divorced after three years of marriage after the split they stayed on good terms and continued a sexual relationship as i mentioned before sex is a recurring theme in many of engelmann's crimes the new york daily news reported that he had a hypnotic hold over women and used his animal magnetism to draw them to his plots the daily new york daily news reported the ad an animal magnetism didn't we describe this guy as a three out of ten animal magnetism again i can't stress enough how how little his mug shots convey the supposed irresistibility i guess it just proves that confidence is key but it wasn't enough to hold the relationship together eventually ruth went on to remarry shacking up with a guy called james bullock but as you might have already guessed this entire relationship was engineered bengalman from the outset and the clock was ticking for bullock oh my god glenn how many people are you involving with your crimes have you got away this seems to be like is this this is five plus you really about a year into their marriage in 1958 the couple were walking near the san luis art museum when mr bullock was shot down by a hidden gunman of course engelman was a suspect in this murder as spurned ex-husbands tended to be but the cops never found anything to definitively link him to the killing they were suspicious of ruth from the outset too partly because of her reputation as quite an unstable explosive character also i'm just gonna guess there might have been some life insurance policies involved probably more than one because we know that that's always about crimes allegedly but without any proof the community rallied behind her and accused the police of harassing a grieving women so women so the investigation never came to anything and ruth received 64 500 from the life insurance payout sometime later she gave an unknown amount to the gunman it was glenn by the way shocking this was his first recorded murder and would be far from his last glenn engleman had successfully switched out his dentist's drill for a hit man's gun and had reaped the rewards afterwards he returned to his day job maintaining his cover as an unassuming dental practitioner while secretly mulling over fresh murder plots each and every day who's my ex-wife going to marry next although if the next person is also shot and killed and she gets a life insurance payout that circumstantial evidence is gonna lead to her going to prison so he needs a new he needs a new person wife woman to find a mark but then we're involving person number six in the murder crimes dude it's not a good idea is it the satisfaction of that first hit led him to hatch more ambitious more intricate and more profitable plans as the years went on the dentist of death earned quite a prolific track record in his side gig over the next 20 years dude how you're not getting caught for like 20 years and you're involving so many people in your crimes and they're so obviously crimes what's up police we haven't had to go at the police in a while come on come on and since a huge part of his motivation was the thrill of clever planning and meticulous execution he didn't restrict himself to guns his next known kill happened in 1963. by this point england had spent some of his ill-gotten gains fulfilling a childhood dream he bought he bought pacific drag strip in franklin county after just a few years of operation the racetrack proved to be a financial disaster for everyone involved glennon and his business partners were saddled with high operating costs that sapped away at their savings good news he could top him up with murder to get out of that rut the deadly dentist decided to do what he did best no not dentistry he was apparent don't dentists get quite well paid i feel like dentist is a well-paid job do you really need to be out murdering people for like 10 grand he was apparently pretty average in dentistry he was actually going to murder one of his business partners and use the proceeds to cut his losses the target this time was eric frey one of several buddies who chipped in for the investment apparently everyone back then was just desperate to see their husbands killed because mrs frey eagerly accepted the offer and now we're bringing in another person to the circle of murder crimes well done you're getting caught seriously is a divorce plot not a lot smarter you get half his stuff with zero risk of jail time but that was no fun for the murderous mastermind glenn was in it for the thrill of the kill and everything else was secondary yes but the wife should be like whoa whoa whoa what are you talking about why would i kill my husband i don't need all his money i'll just take half i don't want to go to prison you psycho i'm calling the police did you really just suggest that to me glenn how on earth does that not be part of his life the fatigue dealt eric was one of the most brutal imaginable one day engelmann asked for his help borrowing blowing up a well on the drag strip property how do you blow up a well you like just why would you blow up a well just put a cover over the top the plan was to toss half sticks of dynamite down to collapse the hole in on itself but when just put a lid on it how complicated can it be but when eric walked to the side of the well and peered down the depth england grabbed him by the waist and hoist him over the edge oh my god eric tumbled down to the bottom of the well and landed in a crumpled heap before he had time to collect his thoughts he heard a hissing sound approaching from above a stick of dynamite landed right next to him eric was blown to pieces by the blast and glennon went running to tell everyone about the horrible accident that had just occurred i'd struggle to imagine a more terrifying way to go at least it's quick i mean i g he survived that fall down the well didn't he well i wonder how deep the well was because if it's deep you're not going to survive the fall and then you're going to get blown to pieces which is going to be like oh my god but then it's over and it's you're not going to feel much pain getting blown up i inside a well it's going to be very contained it's going to be very messy but at least they just just put a lid over the well and uh just be like yeah yeah that's your grave now this is so dark why are we talking about this so much england's unlikely story that eric fell in by accident and blew himself up stuck with the insurance investigators and the death was ruled an accident just like the last time egoman took his cut from the widow a few months later his biggest score yet the next permanent kill was the one we started with peter helm in 1976 which after which engelman's confidence as a killer skyrocketed his next murder plots became more were the most ambitious yet despite being married to his third wife he still couldn't turn off that super human sex appeal and ended up having an affair with a patient named barbara boyle she became his latest accomplice with long-time collaborator john handy they started planning another life insurance better plot this one was going to be bigger than ever because engelmann was desperate for cash to pay off from outstanding debts with the irs his past scores were pretty modest after all especially since he took only a fraction of the total payouts is gonna pay tax on that murder money to make it worthwhile they would have to stack up a pretty hefty pile of insurance policies on the next unlucky bachelor are they going to be like where's all that money coming from it's like yeah yeah here's your dentist income and what's this like random 10 grand that you're getting it's like uh that's my murder money okay this time it was the turn of ronald goose well after getting the green light from glenn barbara managed to worm her way into the target's life and the two were soon joined in holy matrimony while poor ron was enjoying the honeymoon phase as bry's his bride got working on 14 14 separate life insurance policies this insane is a bit unusual for a 33 year old man oh my god is it just have one life insurance policy with enough money with 14 if you've got look right now if you're listening to this and you've got 14 life insurance policies that you didn't take out i mean get your affairs in order okay because you're getting killed with england's help she forged her husband's signature and opened the policies via mail to call 190 000 of total value this is really small life insurance policies that i guess this was back in the day so what you add a zero so what 1970s less than a zero let's say it's a million bucks but 14. they're quite small individual policies as they were building up this lucrative bounty the conspirators discovered something else which sweetened the deal ronald's parents were pretty darn rich he and his brother were the heirs to a minor oil fortune which was worth far more than the insurance money itself there was just one problem though the parents weren't exactly old and they stubbornly refused to get knocked down dead by a car engemer would have to handle them as well if he wanted his bonus pay so he set to work scheming how to kill barbara's new in-laws also he's like doing all the scheming and then he just gets like 10 grand at the end of things it seems like he's taking all the risk i mean granted the the barbara woman's got to go and marry this guy and you know that's going to be not a great time i don't have any sympathy for you though because look you're involved in this crazy murder crime plot but england was doing all the work and he just gets at the end of it it's like yeah here's your 10 grand so i guess you're just okay with it because you'd like killing you psycho his plan was set in motion of the winter in the winter of 1977. robert handy picked up engelmann at his house and drove him to the farmer house in madison county where arthur 61 of anita 55 gusfold lived they pulled up at the back of the property as the sun was starting to go down and handy passed the hitman a briefcase inside was a pistol and a length of rope engleman slipped on the gloves and straightened his tie the plan was to impersonate an official from the farm bureau an organization that the couple themselves were a part of to gain easy access to the house he walked up on their porch and rang the bell handy watched from the car as the gas wells invited the killer inside they told engemon to take a seat at the kitchen table where he opened his briefcase and produced a 22 caliber pistol he shouted them to get on the ground so he could tie them up with the rope but that was never his intention as soon as they lay down angleman shot them both in the back of the head three times for the wife twice for the husband dude it feels a bit unnecessary you can check can't you like why are we doing this also i was like in a previous casual christmas i was reading the comments i think it was on youtube or maybe someone hit me up on twitter and i was like 22 calibers a very small bullet and someone was like yeah yeah simon but if you shoot someone in the head with them it doesn't cause an exit wound so it just goes in and rattles around and really kills them badly and i'm like why do you know that but i don't want to say like you listen to too much crime podcasts or watch too much crime stuff on youtube because you're literally doing it watching it you know my one i appreciate it but maybe you watch too much crime you're like yeah yeah the 22. that's the one rattles around in the head really scrambles the brain we know this happened sometime around 6 50 p.m because veneto's wristwatch stopped at that exact time her own blood clogged up the mechanism with the two occupants dealt with engelman ran around the house pulling out drawers and topping over furniture to make it look like a robbery gone wrong handy remained in the car with the engine running and the two made their getaway less than 10 minutes after arriving it seemed like another clean calculated flawless hit from lewis's best semi-pro hitman but it wasn't quite as successful as it first seemed amazingly arthur wasn't killed outright he regained consciousness and was able to call the emergency services after engelmann disappeared dude you were shot twice in the head by a t2 and i made that whole talk about scrambling the brains was the tutti person on twitter wrong cause i mean his brains were not that scrambled then were they his speech was extremely slurred on the count of the two gunshot wounds to the head but he managed to explain that a couple of day guys had robbed him and the paramedics couldn't get a decent description out of him before he lost consciousness again arthur eventually succumbed to the wounds before 9 30 pm that was phase 2 of the plan done and dusted now all that was left was to kill the original target and reap the rewards engelmann knew that he couldn't rush things though the only way to avoid suspicion was to spread the plan out over the course of several years so each of the tragedies looked unconnected that meant that barbara ended up living with ronald for over a year after her ex-hus ex-lover murdered his parents she slept in the same bed as him helped him grieve the loss even helped raise his kids her step kids when they visited all with the knowledge that her beloved hubby was next to die it was only a matter of time before engelman came knocking just that one paragraph description i know i described you before as like being a fairly horrible thing to do but that makes you a piece of doesn't it barbara that makes you a total piece of fifteen months after his parents were brutally murdered ron's time came the cold-blooded trio met to discuss engelman's plans for the murder which handy later described as go in and tie her barber like it was a robbery and she was there and then when ron came in he was going to kill her on like a resistance throw some furniture around and break some lamps and then leave barbara tied up in the bed and then when the children or somebody come by she would be found a fake home invasion and sexual assault to distract from the murder itself they even discussed leaving barbara tied up for over a day and having her sole the bed just to give it a bit of authenticity as if the whole thing wasn't going to be traumatic enough for his kids can you imagine them being the ones to walk in and find all of that yes i can because it was vividly described and it just reminds me what an absolute piece you are thankfully though they binged that plan as barbara didn't particularly like the idea of marinating in her own bodily fluids 24 hours straight well honestly barbara you put up with a whole lot worse than that to like get this done didn't you you like faked being married to someone for a year so instead they decided to make it look like her husband never made it home at all march 31 1979 was chosen as the fatal day that evening engelmann drove over to handy's place at around 8 30 pm wearing his trademark murder gloves okey dokey and packing a pearl handled 38 handgun they drove to a shopping center parking lot where barbara picked them up in her own car the two guys ducked down low to make it look like she was the only one in the vehicle as they drove past the other farmhouses on the road they then arrived at her place around 11 pm ron had been working the evening shift at amoco railway in the town of wood river he left about 10 minutes before they got to the house and would be well on his way home when the trio pulled into the garage barbara went inside to chill while handy and engelmann waited there in the dark ten minutes later they heard the car pulling up outside the garage door swung open and the victim took a step inside angerman rushed him firing a shot right into ronald guswell's heart the victim staggered back in shock and zengerman swung at him with a single-handed sledgehammer battering his head over and over again ronald claps the ground and then delivered the final fatal blows to the side of his skull wait the bullet in the heart and the previous hit the head with a sledgehammer didn't kill him immediately ronald you were made of tough stuff i'm sorry you got murdered by these horrible horrible human beings hardly the most elegant method and as you'd expect it left behind a lot of blood angerman shouted a barbara to clean it up and she rushed him with some towels to mop up the evidence meanwhile the two men dragged the body into the car in the driveway why are you killing him like this it's a premeditated murder why are you making it so messy just like strangle him to death or you know there's two of you why why so messy you're just waiting you're just trying to get caught you psychos the next morning at 7am barbara called the police to report her husband missing she told them he never made it home from work the night before it'd be several days before they discovered his fate on the 4th of april some witnesses reported an abandoned car by a motel in east st louis police found ronald's corpse in the back seat with a brown garbage bag over his head aside from the gunshot and head wounds his ankle had sustained twisting fracture from when his body was tracked along the floor when the officers went to inform barbara she feigned shock despite the fact that she spent the last few days scrubbing her partner's bloodstains off the garage floor and painting over the splatters on the wall this is very unpleasant according to court documents at the time of his death rom was worth around 597 000 which is about 2.5 million dollars today all of that inheritance seems to have gone to barbara along with the 190 000 in life insurance payouts it's gonna be mad suspicious that 34 life insurance policies or whatever no one's looking into that after he was murdered and i mean weird engelmann prudently cut of all contact with her until the payments were finalized just in case the police got with the foul play but the connection didn't go unnoticed in the early investigation the cops discovered that barbara had connections to angerman who himself had been implicated in a lot of suspicious events over the years before that investigation could really build up steam a surprise development some random guy decided to take the blame for killing ronald guswell for seemingly no reason this was andre jones who was in prison for three unrelated murders at the time he claims to have shot ron dead in a parking lot during a robbery gone wrong wait okay so in between the time this guy was shot on the confession he went to prison for three unrelated murders all right dude his motives for taking credit for the death of ronald isn't clear in the slightest but it got a woman off the hook for now sounds like someone somehow got word to him i mean you're in prison for three murders you're not leaving prison right it's america although if you kill three people i don't i mean some countries release you because there's like maximum life sentences but like let's just assume you're not leaving prison so it's kind of like what why not take the rap for another murder if someone's gonna give some money to your family or your kids or whatever like why not what are you got to lose they're gonna be like yeah we gave you more years in prison it's like bro i'm already in prison forever so what dentist of doom makes victims go boom please excuse the title i'm gunning for a side gig at the sunday mirror hi international viewers if you're not familiar with the sunday muse it's a bit of a tatty uh uh british british tabloid a montage of murders is almost at an end engelmann had just one more assassination in him before the past came back to haunt him once again this crime began with money problems by the time he murdered ronaldo gus where ingram's third wife also called ruth just like his first and divorced him and even after collecting his cut from the last big job he was still facing difficulties probably because he got like she inherited like millions of dollars he's like yeah what did i get paid you got paid two and a half grand you might be uh come on you could do better the biggest thorn in his side was an outstanding bill from a dental lab in saint louis he owed them 14 500 in outstanding charges oh my lord oh i guess he's it's not like his own dentistry work it's like a bill to his business still i mean that's fairly extraordinary and the owner sophie marie barino was keen to collect she launched a lawsuit against him in the same month that guswell jr was shot dead putting her right at the top of the dentist's hit list oh my god he's gonna kill her i honestly i don't know why i didn't see that coming but i didn't see that coming his first attempt took place less than two weeks before ronald was shot dead at his own home on march 20 1979 barbara spotted a strange clump of materials on the floor of her business's garage when the police analyzed it they discovered it was a package of ruined dynamite attached to a precious pressure switch it must have been rigged to blow under the bottom of her delivery vehicle thankfully the explosives were damp and when the switch triggered they only went off with an underwhelming little pop not a bang engelman had failed to blow his financial woes away gallum dude and would have to find another way to settle the score fast forward another 10 months and time is running out a final decision was to be passed on january 21 1980. so england decided to just give the exact same plan another crack one week before the ruling was due barbara hopped into a delivery ban van parked out front of the laboratory she turned the key stepped on the gas and the entire thing went up in a furious fireball she was killed instantly after i found that explosives onto my car i'd be checking my goddamn car every single time or i'd just be like not driving i'd leave the country i'd go like after an assassination attempt like full-on like someone's trying to absolutely murder me and i don't know why i'd be like i'm just going to leave like this investigators act once again found evidence of a pressure switch mechanism just like in the attempted bombing the year before oh it was a year later oh my and concluded that either dynamite or a liquid explosive was used witnesses came forward to report that three men in orange jumpsuits were seen working on the car earlier that morning they assumed it was just some innocent routine maintenance but of course it was angerman and his cronies fixing the car bomb underneath the innocent woman's ride an engleman bringing in more people to his crimes rather than just settle his financial quibbles like a normal person then goldman preferred to spend hundreds of hours planning an intricate murder plot that would wipe the slate clean he would literally rather blow a human being to smithereens rather than face bankruptcy suddenly those unpaid dental bills are starting to look a lot more urgent no yes you may feel a slight sting now i'm no detected but i'm pretty sure one of the first things they get taught in academics is that money equals motive if you have a body one of the first things you should do is check their balance sheets to see who might have financial incentive to remove them from the equation hello following that logic there was little doubt that an angleman had something to do with the bomb that blew barbara sky high but as usual there was no hard proof england was always extremely careful not to leave any physical evidence behind no matter how much circumstantial evidence pointed towards him the investigators they were always lacking the crucial key to unlock the case they found it though in the form of ruth engelmann the diabolical dentist's most recent wife in the end it was engelman's macho bravado that brought about his demise he had let ruth in on some of the details of his crimes during their time together perhaps thinking it would impress her ah yes almost as bad as writing down your crimes the bragging about the crimes and also bringing so many people into your crimes i knew from the very beginning you're going to get caught because like so many people are involved in your crimes and you're telling people about them what are you up to engelman this is a bad idea all round but actually she was terrified reasonably so after it was clear that england wasn't joking ruth started to fear that she might be next on his list of targets so she and the cops collaborated on a sting operation to put him behind bars for good the bureau of alcohol tobacco and firearms provided ruth with a wire which she wore when meeting up with engelmann several times throughout january and february of 1980. the resulting tapes were an absolute gold mine for the prosecution engelmann can be heard saying that sophie barrera deserved to be killed and confessing that he was behind the failed bombing attempt in 1979 of course you're talking about it weren't you he also admitted his part in the first plot we covered today with the dental assistant carmen he even implicated robert handy revealing that the reason he came by shortly after the killing was help him break down his ten thousand dollar payment into smaller denominations to prevent the money from being tracked ruth herself remembered that day and testified to it in court all three of the conspirators were rounded up and charged along with garmin's brother ah yes he got involved in those crimes as well it was a fairly short trial first time round with engelmann and handy facing charges of male fraud and conspiracy what about murder what about lots and lots of murder conspiracy is not part of murder it's not no they were both convicted in august 1980 younger men for 30 years and handy to just 20. 30 years is a lot though and i guess in the meantime they can focus on that murder thing let's just get him put away for now they've got 30 years to figure it out the latter turned full snitch on his old accomplice when the rest of the murder charges started coming to light which was the only way he could escape the maximum punishments for himself yeah look dude you brought people in on your crips they're gonna turn against you when the hits the pan and you're gonna weigh forever or maybe getting a death penalty the federal merger charges which followed frankenman started with the killing of sophie barrera another 30 years were tacked onto his sentence for that and then later that year the murder of peter harm another 50 big ones and the cherry on top came when andre jones retracted his statement regarding the guesswork case in 1985 partway through serving his sentence in an illinois federal prison he pled guilty to all those murders too as for whether or not he his supporting cast of accomplices faced justice it's kind of a mixed bag barbara boyle was sentenced to 50 years for a part in deceiving and killing her husband excellent you deserve it barbara carmen miranda and her brother were busted too excellent but amazingly the prosecutors let them off the hook in exchange for the brother's testimony against engleman wow i mean you what you you murder for hire and you get let off that's crazy he's already in prison forever what are you up to that was the way they the only way they could be sure of a guilty verdict in the original conspiracy case geyser was so much have you killed so many people come on you're laying these guys off they deserve to go to prison forever especially karma and the brother may be less but prison for some time i think no what that's not justice because the end of the day that was the important thing getting this accomplished sadistic efficient murderer behind bars figured he's gonna go to they should want it all saint louis's most prolific hobbyist hitman was condemned to spend the rest of his life in federal prison with no hope of release also at the beginning i remember talking about how like he's a hitman or whatever and it's like no no dude you're the guy who like organized all the crimes it's not a hitman you're just a premeditated murderer a hitman some guy who like gets paid money and it's like you you know in the isn't it is this just my imagination from the movies but it's like hitman is some guy you go like here's you know a million dollars or whatever i don't know how much it really is unsurprisingly i don't know how much it costs for a hit man but i guess somewhere between a couple of grand and a million um you get paid that money and then you go kill the random person that's a hit man not this crazy this is pre-meditated murder ah he spent the rest of his life federal prison with no hope of release wrap up engelman's killing career was at an end but he almost got the chance to inflict sadistic pain upon others even after his arrest there was talk of letting him to return to dentistry with a job in the prison clinic that idea was shot down promptly the last thing you want is a self-admitted sociopath being able to stick sharp metal objects into other prisoner's mouths so engelmann retired from both of his careers simultaneously good when the damage is tallied up we know for sure that he committed seven murders however that glaring blank spot in the timeline between number two and three is screaming out at me there might be a whole lot more deaths that we don't know about based on the testimony of his friends and relatives some have speculated that the real number might be upwards of a dozen and the scariest thing about glenn engelman is that unlike the majority of egotistical murderers that we featured on this show it seems like he was actually well good at it his macabre talents were undeniable which makes you worry about all the secret serial killers that might be out there hidden in plain sight that will never be caught and yeah he was he was fine at it but then he brought loads of people in and he talked about his crimes and he bragged about his crimes to his wife he was like you psycho i'm going to the police so to call him good at this callum i think would be a bit stretched to be honest had he not been sold out by his terrified ex-wife angelman it just don't tell your ex-wife engelmann that is not of course she's going to sell you out you psycho england himself probably could have kept pulling off his meticulous murder plots for years to come but in the end his bravado got the better of him the lead prosecutor on his case gordon ankney told the papers quote he says he does it for money but i think that's a front he never did it for enough to make it worthwhile he related homicidal intimacy with sexual intimacy there was almost a sexual excitement about killing he said to have quite a sexual drive he has a very macho image of himself rather than shirk away from the cameras he relished the limelight while it lasted but after a few years with no fresh charges against him the sensation died down engelmann was largely forgotten until 1996 when a trashy slasher film loosely based on him called the dentist revived interest in his case the next time he appeared in the papers was after his death on march 4th 1999. for a man who specialized in plotting intricate murders infamous for their inventiveness as much as their brutality his own end was pretty mundane it wasn't a sniper's bullet or a car bomb that finished him off but diabetes glennon passed away in the prison medical clinic from complications during treatment taking the true extent of his crimes to his grave and i'm glad he's dead oh my dismembered appendices number one one of the more peculiar aspects of this story is the surprise interjection of andre jones who took the blame for killing robert guswell his story was that he had a female friend pretend to be a prostitute to draw men into robberies he described a man that looked like ron coming around the corner pistol-whipping him then shooting him he explained he got the case details from interrogators but why take the blame at all he wasn't clear on that although one point suggested he couldn't identify the real killer because he wanted to protect his family's lives dude this is very confusing and that's just made it more confusing haven't you number two well england passed away in prison barbara boyle i was just wondering what happened to barbara was lucky enough to taste freedom again years later no in her premature petition to the pro award in 2000 she said she loved my husband deeply and i still mourn ronald to this day but definitely guess the gold model for mental gymnastics her request was denied excellent but nine years later she was released back into the world if any elderly bachelors in st louis come across the name barbara boyle probably best give her a wide berth yes barbara you you're a horrible person what were you up to this has been an episode of the casual criminalist i hope you didn't enjoy it because that would make you a psycho no this episode was pretty dark um if you did like it please do hit that thumbs up button below if you're watching on youtube subscribe all that good stuff if you're listening to this as a podcast subscribe as well leave me a review that would be grand and i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: The Casual Criminalist

Views: 304,290

Keywords: true crime

Id: 6IExqAce0Ow

Length: 47min 31sec (2851 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 30 2021