- If you're not in a place
to hear quite brutal, really just, really just very
bad references to orthorexia, the dangerous obsession
with healthy eating, as well as forced anorexia, this will not be the video for you. There'll also be funeral homes
and corpses and malfeasance, but no warning for that,
because on this channel, you know what you've gotten yourself into and you've chosen this life for yourself. - [Man] We used to see them sitting down, lying down all along the road. - [Child] Ma, look how skinny she is. - [Woman] Some nightmares
attach to the memory forever. (suspenseful music) - Welcome to Seattle, Washington. In September of 1910,
two sisters came here to the Pacific Northwest to
embark on a deadly journey to find perfect health. Perhaps I should do my Dame Diana Rigg as host of PBS's Mystery voice through our whole presentation today. What do you think of that idea? - But monsters come in many forms. - I am being told my accent is terrible and you are no Dame Diana
Rigg, you useless cow. Wow, okay. I guess it's just me for
the next 45 minutes or so. You're welcome. The Williamson sisters were
English, from Liverpool. Women of means and breeding. Dorothea, or Dora, age 37, and Claire, 33, were robust, attractive,
and full of vigor. Nonetheless, both sisters, but especially Claire, the younger, had an obsession with healing
themselves from illnesses. As our story unfolds, you may well find some
disturbing parallels to our modern culture of
wellness, influencers, potions, powders, and paleo, tricks and tools of the wealthy to stave off illness and death. - I had an exorcism. - Oh, wow. - It was while the sisters were staying at the Empress Hotel in
Vancouver, British Columbia, that they stumbled on a wellness solution that would forever change their lives. A fasting treatment facilitated by a woman named Dr. Linda Hazzard. Hazzard. Her last name is Hazzard. Merriam-Webster defines
hazard as a source of danger. As in Dora and Claire... - You in danger, girl. - The Williamson sisters
were worldly and wealthy by early 20th century standards. They were seen as progressive,
borderline eccentric. They were vegetarians. (man screams) They didn't wear corsets. (man screams) And the two were incredibly close, marching to the beat of their
own quirky sisterly drum. No mister could come
between these sisters. ♪ Lord help the mister who
comes between me and my sister ♪ - But their independence
was born of much hardship. Both parents had died by
the time Claire was 14 and the only parental figure
they had was their governess, an Australian woman named Margaret Conway, whom they both adored
and treated as a mother. The sisters may have looked to Margaret for love and emotional support, but they needed no financial support. That had been taken care of
by their Scottish grandfather, Charles Williamson, who left them well over
one million US dollars, along with property all over the world. At the time, that was a
startling amount of money for two women to control on their own. They were aware of that and
tended to be rather insular, guarding themselves
against smarmy investors and male suitors after their funds. Listen, ladies, I know what it's like to be incredibly wealthy
and way ahead of my time. It's a burden. When the sisters came
across Dr. Linda Hazzard, it seemed they had found a
woman after their own heart, a real live lady doctor. ♪ Lady doctor ♪ - Building her own sanitarium, designing a treatment that
nobody else was doing, and running her own practice
without a man doctor. (man screams) And yes, man doctors were
out there disparaging her, being haters, claiming she
was killing her patients, but Hazzard was quick to
be her own hype woman. Modesty was for losers. She held firm to what she believed in, which was diet and fasting as the cure to such diverse ailments
as cancer, psoriasis, heart disease, tuberculosis,
epilepsy, insanity. "Overeating is the vice
of the whole human race," Hazzard was quoted as saying. And by overeating, she meant
just eating at all, period. Dr. Hazzard, wait, what are,
what are my fingers doing? Are they making scare quotes? Oh, she's not going to
be a real doctor, is she? This is not starting well. ♪ Lady doctor ♪ - After seeing an ad in the paper, Claire wrote to Dr. Hazzard in Seattle, telling her about Dora's
swollen glands and achy knees and her own stomach problems. A few days later, Dr. Hazzard's book, "Fasting for the Cure of Disease," arrived at the sisters' hotel. They read it aloud cover to
cover in their hotel room, already primed to receive
the book's message. The sisters believed that
traditional medical doctors with their drugs and their science and their schooling were, quote, fools. Instead, they were staunch followers of what the historian
Ruth C. Engs has called the clean living movement. You may recognize the term because the movement has
resurged multiple times in the last 150 years. And the rhetoric from 1910
is going to sound familiar. In order to live clean, one
must only eat natural foods, nothing artificial, never
indulging or overeating. Sugar, alcohol, and sexual
activity, highly discouraged. After finishing Hazzard's book, Claire and Dora, especially
Claire, were like sign me up, convinced that Dr. Hazzard
could finally cure them of their ailments. Claire wrote a letter asking the doctor if she would take on their case. Not only would she take their case, Hazzard told them that if
they could come to Seattle, she could begin treating them right away and eventually move them to
her beautiful new sanitarium when it was ready. An excited Dora and
Claire set off to Seattle, but concerned about being gossiped about or dismissed as fatists,
they didn't tell any friends or relatives about their plans. Behind me is the historic
Northern Bank and Trust building, now the Seaboard Building
in downtown Seattle. Today, it's mostly
upscale condos and retail. What isn't, these days? But in 1911, this brand new
building held the office of Dr. Linda Hazzard. (scary music) It was 11:00 a.m. on February 27th, 1911, that Dora and Claire
Williamson arrived here and finally met the doctor face to face. Dr. Hazzard was imposing in every way. 43 years old, tall, fit,
wearing a plain white dress that resembled a nurse's uniform. She cut a fearsome
figure, the type of woman that vulnerable people
were desperate to impress. When the sisters arrived
in Hazzard's office, she wasted no time in diagnosing them as sick, sick, sickety sick. "Your conditions are
quite serious," she warned and insisted on starting
treatment at that very moment. When Dora asked if the good
doctor didn't maybe want to perform any sort of
physical exam on them, Hazzard pushed back, saying, "It is no use to do an examination
for any organic disease "until the fast has
proceeded for some time." Hazzard then regaled them with anecdote after anecdote
of her medical successes and her prominence in Minneapolis, conveniently excluding the legal troubles involving starved patients and missing jewelry she
left behind to go west. The sisters were dazzled. Well, Claire certainly was. Dora, the elder, was
once again a bit dubious, but Dora would soon learn how much Linda Hazzard did not
like to be questioned. Despite Dora's concerns,
the sisters submitted to their very first osteopathic treatment, essentially Hazzard pounding
against their backs, heads, and foreheads. Before they left their first appointment, Dr. Hazzard instructed the
sisters on their new regimen. They were to boil tomatoes
in a quart of water to make a vegetable broth, no
salt, no sugar, no seasoning, only a thumbnail's amount of butter. They were to drink one cup of
the tomato broth twice a day, later incorporating asparagus
broth and orange juice. No other food was
allowed for several weeks or until Hazzard told
them they could eat again. In addition, the sisters
were told to walk, walk, walk as fast as possible to purge the poison that filled their bodies. For a fee of $60 per sister, Dora and Claire would see
Hazzard five days a week for massage, AKA, the physical pummeling, internal massage, AKA enemas,
and near scalding hot baths. They left the office that day to move into the nearby
apartment Hazzard had arranged for them to rent. The sisters were a little disappointed that they wouldn't be going
straight to the sanitarium across the sound in Olalla, Washington, which was still under construction. It was no secret that
the promise of a cabin in the majestic Pacific Northwest woods, where they would walk among
the woodland creatures, was part of the wellness journey that originally hooked them. Then, as now, the aesthetic
vacation-like experience of wellness was part of the package. You say potato, I say potato. You say vacation, I say starvation. Potato, potato, vacation, starvation. Let's call the whole thing murder. It was here at their new home, D8 in the Buena Vista
Apartments in Capitol Hill, that Dora and Claire began
their new treatment regimen. Fasting, massages, and enemas. Enemas that began at around 30 minutes, advanced to hours long,
and then day-long sessions. That's right, I said day-long enemas. (man screams) Day-long enemas. The pain became so excruciating that a type of hammock had to
be strung up over the bathtub for when the sisters eventually
fainted from the pain. Very quickly, the sisters'
physical appearance began to deteriorate, as did
their ability to walk. Fainting and collapsing became so common that the sisters just kind
of started to ignore it when one of them would keel over. As the weeks progressed, the neighbors in the
building became disturbed by what they saw and heard, moans of agony coming from apartment D8. (woman screams) So appalled was one
neighbor by the, quote, hideous skeletal appearance of the sisters that she took to avoiding
them in the hallway. Nellie Sherman was a nurse and
loyal employee of Dr. Hazzard who cared for the sisters at
the Buena Vista Apartments. Dr. Hazzard had told
Nellie that the, quote, "two English girls at the
Buena Vista were in a bad way, "and it shouldn't be long." Wasn't Dora's original ailment
chronically achy knees? Shouldn't be long for what, Doctor? ♪ Lady doctor ♪ - One night, Nurse Nellie
knocked on the door of a new neighbor at the
Buena Vista, Clara Corrigan, asking her to come over and
have a look at something that had come out of Claire's enema. Welcome to the neighborhood. I made you some banana muffins. Also, could you come glance at the contents of this enema bucket? Clara had already been over
to meet Dora and Claire while Hazzard was there working on them and she was shocked by what she saw. Despite Claire's skin being
drawn tight over her bones, Dr. Hazzard was not holding
back in pummeling her. - It's for the best. - [Man] Sweetie, please! - Clara also overheard Dr.
Hazzard talking with Nellie about another patient who had just died and whom Hazzard was in
the process of autopsying. She specifically heard
Hazzard say she needed a bigger kettle to dismember the corpse. Clara was like, the hell
building did I move into? (scary music) Naturally, Clara had been troubled by this encounter ever since. And now she's being asked
to examine an enema bucket. Nellie showed Clara the
strange white matter floating in what had apparently come out of Claire. Both women were scared. Nellie, though loyal to Hazzard, went behind Hazzard's
back to another osteopath, Dr. Augusta Brewer, for help. In no uncertain terms,
Dr. Brewer told Nellie that the sisters had to
eat more than tomato broth, but it was no use. They would not do anything
unless Dr. Hazzard told them or allowed them to. This control had begun to
go beyond the treatments. Hazzard had also decided that Dora, who basically slept all day because she could barely stay conscious, was out of her mind and
could not be trusted to make decisions for herself. She instructed Claire to never
discuss finances with Dora and insisted that the sisters' valuables, like jewelry and land deeds, must be kept in a safe at her office. Hazzard was fixated on
the sisters' finances, asking if they were beholden
to anybody but each other over their money and property. Unfortunately for them, they were not. At last, it was finally time for the sisters to be
transferred from Seattle to the Olalla sanitarium. Dr. Hazzard called the sanitarium Wilderness Heights Institute
of Natural Therapeutics. Folks in Seattle called it Hazzard's Lodge and the locals in Olalla
called it Starvation Heights. (scary music) On the morning of April 22nd, two ambulances arrived at the Buena Vista to pick up the sisters and
bring them here to the pier to catch the ferry to Olalla. The ambulances were provided
by Seattle's premier mortuary, ER Butterworth and Sons. Now, an ambulance provided
by a mortuary really wasn't all that strange in
the early 20th century. Butterworth and Sons considered themselves a full service mortuary,
which means in addition to the funerals and burials they provided, they also had a fleet of ambulances alongside providing morgue
space for death investigations for Seattle's King County coroner. The mortician, ER Butterworth, also had a unique business relationship with Dr. Linda Hazzard, a relationship that
would come under scrutiny in the next few months. When the sisters were wheeled out, the people here shuddered. Both now weighed about 70 pounds. Claire could barely speak. Dora's head looked like a skull. They were made to wait here
in the ambulance for hours. Finally, Hazzard's attorney
John Arthur showed up and scuttled into Claire's ambulance. What happened in that ambulance? John Arthur helped Claire,
who could barely move, write a letter to Margaret Conway, her beloved governess in Australia. Claire wanted Margaret to know that her will was being updated to leave money to the Hazzard Institute and for her body to be
cremated by Dr. Hazzard. I know I'm always encouraging you to get your wills and
advanced directives done, but Claire... - You in danger, girl. - And on that ominous note, Dora and Claire were
finally off to Olalla, their magical wellness retreat. (horn blares) We've made it to Olalla, the
small unincorporated community across the sound from Seattle. From what I have observed, people in Olalla love their
history and their stories and Starvation Heights,
grim as that story is, is a huge part of that. During Linda Hazzard's time in Olalla, it was a working class town
with a population of 350, mostly Scandinavian immigrants. Its main industries were
farming and logging. Linda Hazzard did not fit in. The people of Olalla regarded her with a mix of awe and trepidation. Her husband, Sam, was hulking,
handsome, and ex-military, and they had an aspiring actor son, sort of a Logan Paul figure. They were the kind of upper-crust elites that the early 20th century
working class citizens of this farming community didn't
know quite what to make of. More curiosities than community members. It didn't help that Linda
Hazzard was interested in the esoteric, theosophy,
spiritualism, and mediumship. We were privileged to be met
in Olalla by Gregg Olsen, a writer and the researcher
who really is the guy when it comes to Hazzard
and Starvation Heights. So much of what we know about this story would have been impossible
without his work. This now dilapidated structure was the original Wilderness
Heights, Dr. Hazzard's home, and first sanitarium in Olalla. It's where Dora and Claire were brought when they came off the ferry. - So what we're looking at
here are parts of the main... This would be the main living room. And right here would be where she would have
a big tub of hot water and the enema treatments
would be right here in the living room. And you know, if you read the story, you know that some of those
treatments lasted eight hours or longer. - I think I really, at one point, I'm just like all-day enemas. Day-long enemas. - What's up with that? The internal bath, she
liked to call it, you know, like I can just imagine people coming in while somebody's here with the enema bag. - With their terrible enema situation. - Right, right. - You know, I wasn't expecting, it's just, it is just a house, but it is kind of a... Maybe it's because it's dilapidated now, but there is an eerie sense in here. - I will tell you this. I don't know what I think
about the paranormal, but I do feel an energy here that I think is absolutely true. I've had people talk about
cold spots in the house that they really feel
like a shower of cold air. I don't know if it's because we know something
terrible happened here and we're thinking it,
or if there's an imprint of the terrible thing happening
here that's affecting me. - So Dora and Claire
had this idea of coming to the romantic sanitarium
in the woods with cabins, and then they get here and Hazzard puts them in
this tiny little attic. - Right. I mean, it was in much better
shape obviously, back then, it wasn't derelict like this. But yeah, when you look at this space, it's got this low roof and it's also right above
Dr. Hazzard's bedroom, okay? So there's a lot of talk about being able to hear them at nights, moving around, clawing their way on the floor. - Crawling around. - Crawling around up here. They were so weak. So they were kept here
together at first in this spot. And then after they got weaker and weaker, they were separated and
Dorothea went in this space. - In the attic, the sisters
were placed in beds, partitioned off from
each other by a screen. It was Hazzard's orders that the sisters should
be separated at all times. She claimed they would never recover if they weren't kept apart. This also allowed Hazzard
to continue to tell Claire that she was the sensible one and Dora was deeply mentally
ill and not to be trusted. After the sisters arrived in Olalla, it wasn't long before
Hazzard started telling those around her that
Claire was going to die. Let's be clear, when Claire
came to Linda Hazzard, she was a robust and energetic 100 pounds whose only recorded serious
illness was diptheria as a child. By the time Claire's death was imminent, she weighed approximately 50 pounds. (scary music) Here are some other things
that weigh 50 pounds or 3 1/2 stone. A bearded collie dog, a sack of potatoes, a 50 inch flat screen TV. Point is, 50 pounds for
an adult human is nothing. And while everything seemed to be going as planned for Hazzard with Claire signing over
more property and more funds as she wasted away in her attic, a miscalculation loomed in the distance. Margaret Conway was headed to Olalla. (horn blares) You remember that letter Hazzard's lawyer helped Claire write? It wasn't the only letter
from Claire to Margaret. On April 30th, Margaret
received a strange cable gram from Claire, which Gregg
believes was snuck out by someone on the property and sent from the Olalla market store. A store that Gregg, by the way, now owns. It read, "Come, SS Marama,
May 8th, first class. "Claire." Margaret was expecting
Claire to come visit her in Australia that spring, but the first class was out of character. Claire would never brag about
her superior accommodations. So Margaret looks into
the SS Marama's itinerary. It turns out that that ship
left Sydney on May 8th. Claire wasn't coming to Australia. She was in trouble and needed
Margaret to come to her. (horn blares) Sure that something was very wrong, Margaret finagled herself
a spot on the full ship. On June 1st, Margaret Conway's ship
finally arrived in Vancouver. Sam Hazzard, Linda's
husband, was waiting for her. - [Man] Miss Conway, I have
something I must tell you. Ms. Claire has died and Ms.
Dora is helplessly insane. I am sorry. - Margaret was devastated. It was too late. Claire had already been
dead for several weeks. For the time being, her grief silenced any further questions. Sam Hazzard handed her a handkerchief. The next day, Sam escorted
Margaret to Seattle via steamer ship, and then
to Linda Hazzard's office at Fourth Avenue and Pike Street. Sick with grief, literally vomiting over
the rail of the ship, Margaret had no idea how much worse her day was going to get. Dr. Hazzard met Margaret
in her typical clipped and to the point manner. She told Margaret that Claire
and Dora had already been in a terrible state when they came to her. Hazzard moved immediately
to discuss the autopsy she had personally conducted
on Claire in great detail, such as how her liver had cirrhosis and was so hard I could not
get a knife to penetrate it. How her blood was powdered, how her internal organs had shrunk. So this is the tub where
Hazzard performed her autopsies. - That's right. - Did they ever use these
bathtubs for the treatments or anything or was this
purely her autopsy tub? - Yeah, it was an autopsy tub. Beautiful enamel tub. - Why was she so interested
in the autopsies? Like she knew why they died. - Well, it's to cover
her tracks, you know. It was so interesting that the doctor who was pronouncing
the illness was the one who did the autopsy. So, you know, instead of
somebody being like, you know, saying they starved to death, she could say cirrhosis of the liver or clogged arteries or some kind of thing that had really nothing
to do with the truth, which was they weighed 40 pounds. - Margaret barely had time
to register the visceral, literally visceral in this case, details of Claire's
innards when Hazzard asked if she'd like to see Claire's body. Margaret thinks, come again? My dear Claire's been dead for weeks. And Hazzard replies, "Worry not, I have her
beautifully embalmed." If you've been with me for a while, you just know when some doctor that's already sort of shady
busts out with the line, "Worry not, I've embalmed
the body beautifully," it's just a one-way train to weirdsville. Choo choo, folks, it's downhill from here. Claire being embalmed
truly horrified Margaret. Keep in mind, embalming was
still a relatively new procedure in the American funeral industry. But in England and Australia, bodies were buried straight
away with no preservation. Embalming just wasn't done and Claire would never have
asked for such a procedure. Unfortunately for Margaret, the horror show was just beginning. This is the Butterworth Building in Seattle's Pike Place market. You know, where they throw the fish and home of the first Starbucks ever, it's about a building over. It's where Steven slapped Irene
in the real-world Seattle. Gosh, that is a dated reference. I'm a geriatric millennial. It was built to house
ER Butterworth and Sons, Seattle's first mortuary, founded in 1903 by Edgar Ray Butterworth. And it was where Hazzard brought Margaret to see Claire's embalmed body. Butterworth and Sons
was smack in the middle of a massive transition
in American death care. In just a few decades, around
the turn of the 20th century, the status quo shifted from
taking care of the dead in your own home, where the
undertaker was just some guy who rented you the carriage
or sold you the casket, to a growing all corpse
care included industry. Butterworth and Sons was a beacon of this new mortuary capitalism, a five story full service funeral home, the likes of which the world
had never seen in the 1900s. The Seattle Daily Times called it the most complete establishment
in the United States. ER Butterworth came to
the mortuary business, if you're a fan of
American mortuary history, in the most typical way. He owned a furniture store and saw an opportunity to
expand to building caskets when black diptheria broke out in his home of Centerville, Washington. There was a real furniture
slash cabinet maker to undertaker pipeline in
early 20th century America. From there, he expanded his
business and moved to Seattle, where more business
opportunities kept coming. Opportunities in the form of cholera and influenza and tuberculosis. And let's not forget our
old friend, the plague. It was rats, rats, rats, rats. Yes, that was in Seattle
in the early 1900s too. James Ross Gardner wrote of
Butterworth's booming business, "There were so many ways "for a Seattleite to meet his or her end, "ways that would be unheard
of 100 years later." But I'm not claiming Butterworth was only in the funeral trade for the money, though that is arguably the cornerstone of the American funeral industry. In fact, before furniture making, ER Butterworth got his start in Kansas as a literal bone collector. He would roam the plains
in the late 19th century in his wagon, searching for buffalo bones. He would sell them to
manufacturers for $10 a ton, who would then grind the
bones to make fertilizer. One day, while searching for bones, he met a settler whose wife
and child had just died and was digging holes in
the dirt to bury them. Since ER himself had lost his
wife in childbirth in 1870, he took pity on the man,
dismantling his own wagon and using the boards to build a coffin. A mortician was born. In the years since moving to Seattle, ER became very wealthy. His lavish home in Queen
Anne could host parties for 300 people at once. His funeral home, Butterworth and Sons, there were five of them,
by the way, five sons, was like a Victorian mansion. Writes Gardener, "It
included a crematorium, "a columbarium, an elevator
for transporting bodies, "and a casket showroom. "A chapel spacious
enough for 200 mourners, "a choir loft, and a balcony." ER rigged the chapel with
a system of light signals by which a paid choir could be queued to begin or cease singing. So influential was Butterworth that part of his legendary status was that he may have coined the
terms mortuary and mortician. In 1895, "Embalmers'
Monthly" put out a call for more customer friendly
terms than undertaker. (dramatic music) This was a huge rebranding
period in the funeral industry, with undertaker going
out in favor of new names like mortician and funeral director. The winning submission to "Embalmers' Monthly" was mortician, and this is likely
apocryphal, but who knows, maybe Butterworth was that guy. But all this success was put in jeopardy with the death of Claire Williamson. Margaret was escorted up to the blue room on the fifth floor. It doesn't look like there's
five floors, there are. Of Butterworth and Sons to
see Claire's embalmed body. Keep in mind, Margaret has
had a terrible last 24 hours. She learns that her
beloved Claire is dead, she gets a graphic
description of her autopsy, and now she's going to
see her embalmed corpse, a process that she knows that
Claire would not have wanted or asked for. More confusing, when the
body is revealed to Margaret, it was not Claire. Sure, the body was wearing Claire's dress, but the hair color was
wrong, her hands were wrong, it just wasn't her. As Margaret stands there
quietly puzzling over this, Hazzard went on and on about how the embalming
job was just exceptional and how Claire had expressed
wishes to then be cremated and, quote, "Have her
ashes buried at Olalla." This further baffled
Margaret, as to her knowledge, Claire never had any
interest in being cremated and wanted to be buried
in Australia or England. It was all so weird. When Hazzard asked her to confirm that she recognized Claire's body. It's Claire, right? Tell me it's Claire. Do you recognize your sweet Claire? Margaret only replied, "No, not really." As Margaret left Butterworth and Sons, she was almost relieved
that the day was almost over and soon she'd finally see
her precious Dora in Olalla and hopefully find some
answers and comfort. But there was no comfort to be found. The night Margaret Conway arrived at the Hazzard Sanitarium
was seared into her memory. Margaret was sent to a cabin that Hazzard said was
built especially for Dora, a cabin that was
essentially a chicken coop. Margaret was equally
unprepared for Dora herself, a woman who now looked
and smelled like death. - After her sister died, she was relocated to what Dr. Hazzard had always promised, which was cabins in the woods. And at that time, they built one cabin. They had one cabin available
called Cabin Claire in honor of her sister. - About a week before
Margaret arrived in America, John Herbert, Dora and Claire's
uncle from Portland, Oregon, had rushed to Seattle
when he had gotten news of Claire's death. Dr. Hazzard informed him that
Claire had died on May 19th. John was furious. He had seen the sisters right
before they went to Seattle and they were healthy. He demanded to know why he
hadn't been told sooner. Hazzard gave the excuse that
they didn't know his address and the sisters didn't really want anyone to know where they were. "What caused her to die?" asked John. To which Hazzard answered,
"I will show you." Remember Hazzard graphically
describing Claire's autopsy to Margaret? Here, she took uncle
John into another room where she brought out a small
cloth pouch tied with string. Inside the pouch were
Claire's stomach, liver, and some intestines,
which she showed to John as evidence of how shrunken they were. - If you can imagine that? Like sitting there with a family member, saying, oh, well, here's her lungs. - Well, at my funeral home, we're very into being
honest with the family and having that discussion,
but I will tell you I've never- - Whipped anything out a bag? - A pair of lungs and showed
it to the grieving family. - You know what, that just
sets you so apart then from the others. The other thing she was doing
here with the bodies was the dentist lived across
the street, Dr. Black. And she would excise the
gold teeth from the bodies and basically sell them to him. So... - And she did that with Claire. - Yes, and she did that
with a lot of people, a lot of times. I mean, she had a really good
little business over there. She'd do the autopsy, she'd get the teeth, she would make up a death
that would fit a storyline that wasn't true. - Uncle John was flabbergasted by the presentation of the
organs and inquired after Dora. Hazzard curtly informed him that she was mentally incompetent. You should never talk to
her at all about finances. And she would soon die. John Herbert attended Claire's funeral, a funeral Dora was barred from attending, and also found himself in the presence of "Claire's" embalmed body
at Butterworth and Sons. John was more forthright
than Margaret would be that this was not Claire. What had Dr. Hazzard
and ER Butterworth done with Claire's actual body? After her arrival, Margaret became Dora's full-time caregiver at Wilderness Heights,
moving into her tiny cabin and sneaking her food
at every opportunity. The disturbing discoveries about
Dr. Hazzard were piling up. Margaret discovered that
Dora had been tricked into giving Linda's husband
power of attorney over her. She also suspected Dr. Hazzard
of forging long sections of Claire's diary, where
Claire gave Hazzard control of her remains and all her
possessions and her diamonds. Margaret was immediately suspicious at the terrible spelling,
very unlike Claire, and a time where she referred to herself in the third person as
Claire, rather than I. But perhaps most
heartbreaking was the account of how Claire had died. Dora snuck across the
attic to be at her side, but suddenly Dr. Hazzard appeared. (scary music) Dora begged her to be able to say goodbye to her sister alone, but Hazzard refused and
started loudly monologuing over Claire's desperate last words. Hazzard then asked the dying Claire if she'd like a treatment. Without waiting for an answer, she inserted herself between the sisters and pummeled Claire's empty stomach. Claire's eyes rolled up into her head. She passed out and shortly after was dead. It's easy and necessary to
ask, why didn't Dora leave? The first night Margaret
arrived at Wilderness Heights, Dora begged her to help
her get out of Olalla, but then backtracked on her plea to leave and said she wanted to stay
and finish her treatment. - When you're weak, this
is what I would think. When you're weak and when you feel like,
oh gosh, you might die, if somebody is telling you,
a doctor's telling you, you're going to be better
tomorrow, trust me, there's something about
that that is powerful, especially when it's a
charismatic, commanding presence like we know Dr. Hazzard was. I mean, she was somebody
who you listened to. And listening would later
morph into maybe fear. You would fear either displeasing her or the wrath of her when
she's giving you a massage. So I think there's some of that too. I like your idea of
thinking about, you know, I'm going to get better and
I put so much into this, so let's go the distance. - I've literally lost my sister to this and if I give up and
flee now, I have nothing. Actually nothing that I got from this. - Right, totally. - But Gregg thinks he knows the moment that Dora finally found
the courage to escape. In an encounter with Hazzard
shortly after Claire's death, Dora was staring out over a deep ravine. Out of nowhere, Dr. Hazzard
appeared and asked Dora if she was perhaps considering
flinging herself into it. - I do believe that that
incident where she is saying, "Dora, you want to jump into
that ravine, don't you?" It was, she said at trial, more of a command than a question. Certainly not a concern. - Dora surprised Dr. Hazzard
by responding with force. "I don't think it's right for
you to bring up such things, "considering what I've been through. "Why would you mention the
subject of suicide to me?" - And that's when you think,
okay, why is she saying that? Because she wants everything I have. She's taken my sister and now she wants what little I have left, which is the money and the land. - And for me to go away, for me to die and not be
able to talk about it. - Yeah, I mean, Dr. Hazzard was
wearing her sister's clothes like the next day, you know,
and her jewelry and stuff. So that's another clue I mentioned. Dora certainly must have known that it wasn't gonna end well for her. - And with that, Dora was ready to escape. Margaret snuck a cable gram to Uncle John, asking him to come help. John Herbert returned
to Olalla to get them. But even then, Hazzard kept her hostage, saying Dora owed her thousands of dollars. Eventually, they paid
$900 in essentially ransom to secure Dora's freedom. On July 22nd, 1911, Dora fled to Tacoma, weighing barely 60 pounds. The press eventually got
wind of the Dora escape and a photo of her corpse-like state after leaving the
sanitarium ran in the press. She had done this with numerous patients, but was never truly punished. But Dora came under the
British Vice Consul, who was horrified that
His Majesty's subjects had been abused as Dora and Claire had. The Vice Consul began doggedly
investigating Linda Hazzard, looking into Hazzard's past patients, especially those of British birth, and their pesky habit of dying. At the very end of July, a trial was held over Dora's guardianship. At one point, attorney
Frank Kelly asked Hazzard where exactly had she studied medicine? She replied, "At two
osteopathic institutions, "but it would be useless to name them, "for they have both ceased to exist." To that, attorney Kelly replied, "Did you prove fatal to both?" Ooh, that's a burn. And yeah, she's not a doctor. ♪ Lady doctor ♪ - She had no medical degree, but a loophole in the law
in Washington granted her a license to practice alternative medicine as a fasting specialist. The judge voided the guardianship and all of this was
adding up to what appeared to be a strong murder case
against Linda Hazzard. The Vice Consul and the
lawyer continued to dig and soon discovered an
understanding that existed between Linda Hazzard and the ER Butterworth and Sons mortuary. The Vice Consul found proof that Hazzard had slowly killed
one of her previous patients, a New Zealand man by the name
of Eugene Stanley Wakelin, to secure his wealth for her own purposes. No shock there. We already know what Hazzard is up to. The surprise was that when he died, Butterworth and Sons charged
an exorbitant amount of money for his funeral services. Why charge so much? Allegedly, it was Butterworth's
fee for their silence to give Hazzard free
reign to do as she pleased with these bodies, autopsying them, moving them around in the night, taking the organs to her
office for show and tell. And we'll never truly know this, though we can strongly suspect, they helped facilitate
replacing Claire's body with a more robust, less emaciated corpse in order to hide her
starvation from her family. The reason I say we'll never truly know is that there have been many
cases of horrified families who believe a funeral
home has presented them with the wrong body, only to
learn that it is, in fact, their mom and that the process
of embalming can just make a body look very different. Remember, her family, especially
the Australian Margaret, are likely to have never
seen an embalmed body before. But it doesn't help Hazzard
and Butterworth's case that they secretly came to pick
up Claire's body from Olalla without a removal permit
from the health department. And she was also cremated
without the proper paperwork, overseen by Butterworth. And that it was believed
that the King County coroner, who rented morgue space from Butterworth, was also working with Linda Hazzard. You know what they say, where
there's smoke, there's fire. Or a crematory. In this case, both. Butterworth told the papers that all these accusations
were a result of the schemes of the political ring in
Bremerton who are jealous of us. Yes, 100%, never take your crown off to make your haters feel
comfortable, Butterworth. Warrants were issued for
the undertaker's arrest, but no criminal charges
could ever be brought against Butterworth and Sons. They were, however, named
in a lawsuit against Hazzard for desecrating the body and it sullied their reputation for years. Finally, the trial of Linda Hazzard for the murder of Claire Williamson began on January 15th, 1912. The trial was practically a slam dunk. Hazzard's defense was
weak, her witnesses weaker. Twice, the jury had to be
asked to leave the trial when Hazzard was caught
signaling her witnesses and feeding them answers on the stand. Well, at least she was
feeding someone something. There was no doubt that not
only had Linda Hazzard been after the Williamsons'
money from the get-go, but that she also had a history of doing such to her patients. The very land her sanitarium
occupied was given to her by a former patient who
had died under her care. How many people do you
think died under her care? - Yeah, that's a really tough number. I think it is, I always
say between 20 and 40. I know there's a big gap there, but there are at least 20
people who are unaccounted for after coming out here to Olalla. So maybe it could be 100, you know, we just don't know because
she was good at picking people who had no family. - On February 4th, a verdict was reached. Linda Hazzard was found
guilty of manslaughter and was sentenced to
imprisonment in Walla Walla for no less than two years of hard labor. After she was released from
prison in December of 1915, Linda Hazzard continued to
attract and treat patients, many of whom had heard of her
from coverage of the trial. And I guess thought to themselves, that serial killer doctor
sounds like the one for me. ♪ Lady doctor ♪ - With money from her patients
and from book publishing, Hazzard was able to open her
dream sanitarium in Olalla, which then burnt down in 1935. But the rumor mill in
Olalla continued to focus on all the people mysteriously
dying under her care. Some of them were buried here
at the old Olalla cemetery, but according to Gregg Olson, some were buried on her property, some were thrown in the woods, and still others pitched off
a cliff into the Puget Sound. Hazzard fell ill and died
here in Olalla in 1938, after trying to heal herself using her own starvation methods. You don't think it works? You don't think I'm a real doctor? I'll show you. Which raises the question,
was Hazzard a charlatan, a pure grifter combining
sadism with desire for money, or was there something
of a true believer in her about her deadly methods? Sometimes when people are able to grift for such a long period of time, there has to be something at their core that is a true believer. Perhaps the most terrifying
combination in a single person. But you think that there
probably are people buried on this property? - Oh, for sure. There are so many people that came here and were never seen again. People that, you know,
came for the treatment. And then later, like even in
the 1920s, when she came back, there were a lot of women
who came here for abortions and we believe some of those
went badly, so there are- - Came here to her for abortions? - To her, that's what
she was doing after that. - A match made in hell, really. The Hazzard house will
finally be torn down after well over 100 years. I was able to speak to one of the owners, who had actually grown up in the house. It was part of his history,
but given the shape it's in, he's ready for that story to end. - We're probably the last
people right now, this moment, of anybody being in this house other than the people
that'll tear it down. - ER Butterworth and his
sons were never convicted of any crime in connection
to the Hazzard case. Although it was not a good look for the esteemed funeral family. Then just a few years later, the eldest son, Gilbert Butterworth, heir to the empire of death, was arrested for defrauding the families of sailors. It was during the 1918 influenza pandemic. That's that other global pandemic. And the military was
contracting with Gilbert to casket and ship the deceased soldiers. The military paid him $100 per sailor and then Gilbert turned around and double charged the family. For a host of reasons, Gilbert was declared not guilty at trial and the Butterworths once again got away with some pretty serious
funeral malfeasance. Butterworth Funeral Home
still exists today in Seattle, although it's long since been
out of the hands of the family and is currently owned
by mega-corporation SCI. American capitalism seems to reward those who boldly, nakedly strive for wealth. We have something like 800
billionaires in the US alone. But when someone is supposed to heal us, supposed to help us at the
worst time of our lives, and they adopt that mindset,
it offends us and rightly so. Funeral industry folks
don't want to hear this, but the legacy of Butterworth
and Sons is the legacy of the American funeral industry. And then there's Dora. Through the trial, Dora had been receiving marriage
proposals through the mail. When the verdict was handed
down and Dora was finally free, the press descended, asking
her what her plans were. Coyly, she told them she
would return to Australia with Margaret, where she hadn't
yet said yes to a suitor. There isn't much we know about Dora's life after her time with Linda Hazzard. I hope that means it was
happy and uneventful. Dora eventually married a
Reverend Wyndham Allan Chaplin, with whom she had one child. She died in 1945 at age
71 in Sussex, England. Though Dora was able to live on, no doubt Claire's absence
forever weighed on her. Perhaps Margaret Conway put it best. When reporters praised Dora's
performance on the stand, she said, "We are glad of the justice "that has been given to us, "but then not all of the
punishment in the world "will bring back to life
the one that is dead." Thank you to Gregg Olson and all the other kind people
in Olalla who welcomed us. Thank you also to Bess Lovejoy for her expert consultation and research. These documentaries are
made by our small team and funded entirely by
donations from viewers like you. (slow music)
I just watched this, it's really pretty disturbing.
Saw this earlier today. Super interesting and quite disturbing. What a monster that "doctor" was. Also what's with these quacks and enemas?
Interesting topic but i cant stand the way she edits the doc. Makes it very difficult to watch
Wife and I watched this last night.
can i watch it alone?
Yea.. my ADD kicked in half way through.. would love to know what the outcome was with the sisters and hazards but the Buffalo bones and the furniture maker and the funeral home and bla bla.. I just couldn’t keep going.