11. The Papin Sisters - The Eyeball Snatchers
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Hello everybody, welcome back to our podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Peyton Moreland. And I'm Garrett Moreland. And he's the husband. I'm the husband. We have a couple shout outs to give to some podcasts that very kindly mentioned us in some of their episodes. So I want to give a shout out to the podcast Lacking Fundamentals. It's a comedy podcast for people who just want to shut their brains off at the end of a long day and

These two guys are hilarious and they truly show the joy of lacking fundamentals in their own lives. And then the other podcast is a news radio podcast. It's called The Neil and Julie Show. And yeah, that's also a really good one. Now, I'm not going to lie. Both of these podcasts are my parents' podcasts. I don't think we're that cool. Yeah.

But I did have to give him a shout out if, you know, your husband or your wife kind of likes the opposite of what we're talking about. These are two very different podcasts from what we're talking about. And I think they're awesome. Yeah. I was thinking while you were saying all that, it's kind of weird that we're only doing one a week.

Because I just feel like we haven't done one in so long, you know? Yeah. I mean, I want to thank everyone for being understanding about us moving to once a week. And also don't forget that if you want more than one a week, share the podcast with your friends and family. Give us a quick shout out on wherever you connect with friends online. Leave us a review. The more exposure that we can get, the better this podcast can grow. Exactly. And the more we can do it. Yeah, exactly.

Also, our English listener never did reach out to us, but they did listen to the episode where I completely botched every word. Same thing with our German listener or listeners. Because I think we actually have multiple now with the German murder that we did. And...

I've had a couple people reach out and be like, hey, did the English listener ever hear your accent? Did the German listener ever listen? And I was like, they both did, but I don't think either have reached out. So, hey, you guys, even our American listeners want to hear from you. It's not just us. So get to it. At least just follow us on Instagram or Facebook. It's all we want. And like, just shoot me a DM because I'm not, I don't know. Sometimes if you're private, I can't really figure out where you are. That's true.

We have almost hit 100 followers. Oh, yeah. Which is pretty cool. Big time. Yeah.

So, yeah. I think that's all I had to cover. Awesome. Should we just get into it? Yeah. First, I just want to give credit where credit is due. I got my information from Murderpedia.org, TheLineup.com, AllThat'sInteresting.com, TheVintageNews.com, and a YouTube channel called Obsolete Oddity. And he has quite a few subscribers, and he just kind of covers stuff like this. He does, like, an amazing, amazing job. So...

If you kind of want to watch stuff and not just listen, I would suggest looking him up if you're into that sort of thing. That's awesome. So this story dives deep into the social class divide that we see and

but that we also saw even more apparent and uncared for in our historic times. We see the mistreatment and hardship that came with being lower class in this story. And although this still happens today, I do like to believe that we as a society have gotten better at seeing human life as equal. And I hope that this story can further push this narrative for us and we can learn from our mistakes. And I just wanted to get that out of the way.

Okay. So this is the story of the Pappin sisters. And this one is kind of, I mean, if you're really into this stuff. So I'm interested to see how many people have heard this one before. Yeah. So in the early 1900s, two sisters were born into a turbulent and unstable family. Christine, the older of the two, was born in 1905 and Leah, the younger one, was 1911.

Right from the start, their childhood was troubled. Their mother, Clements, was said to have had affairs with men that she worked for, and their father, Gustav, was not happy about it. I mean, okay, first let's address these names. Those are awesome. This is the early 1900s. Anyways, so their father, Gustav, is not happy about it, and they fought intensely, Gustav being an abusive alcoholic. So right from the start, it was pretty rocky for them. Yeah.

Clements and Gustav actually had their first child, Amelia, in 1901 before Christine and Leah. And they seemed to actually take care of her somewhat. But when Christine came around about four years later, it seemed too much for them to bear. And Clements, the mother, was said to be like unsuited for motherhood. And so she eventually just gave Christine to her aunt, Gustav.

Gustav's sister. Just because they liked being alone together? Well, they already had one kid, but I think one kid was enough. Got it. And their relationship was kind of rocky. Okay. So Leah, who was born six years later, and they decided that they would parent her too. So now they have two kids and the other one's living with the aunt.

It wasn't until Clements found out that Gustav had raped their oldest daughter, Amelia, who was only 10 at the time that she decided to file for divorce. Oh my gosh. So Clements wasn't just upset with her husband though for the rape. She also expressed anger towards Amelia claiming that she had seduced her father into having sex with her. Keep in mind she was 10. Yeah. So there's some, this mom is not very fit to be a mother. Like apparently, uh-huh.

So because of this, Clements decided to send Amelia, the 10-year-old, to the convent of Les Bon Pasteurs, which was a place where badly behaved children could be raised by nuns. So it was basically like a Catholic orphanage.

And this place showed discipline and harshness to the extreme. Think of like the stories you've heard of like atrocious places where adults basically abuse children and chalk it up to like raising them, right? It's kind of like that situation. I don't know how many people will get...

this reference but it kind of reminds me of this is a little far but in nacho libre when he's like you know he's raised by nuns i don't know why that's the first thing that came to my mind when i when he said raised by nuns has nothing to do with murder or anything but i've never seen okay i'm sure maybe our listeners have it but i don't know just keep going that's a crack okay so um

She also pulled Christine from the loving care of the aunt who had been taking care of her and sent her to the orphanage with Amelia. She was feeling angry at everyone. Apparently she thought I'm going to discipline and punish these kids for being horrible to me, even though they hadn't done anything. I'm going to send them to this place. That's going to be so hard. So Clements obviously decided that she no longer wanted to be a mom.

and her children having betrayed her in her head. So she also sent Leah, the youngest and last of her children, to live with her great uncle. So now she has no more kids at home. She sent the older two to the orphanage and the younger one to live with an uncle.

She obviously just didn't want kids. Yeah. And she just divorced Gustav. Yeah. So although the environment at the Catholic orphanage was strict and harsh, Amelia and Christine seemed to flourish in the environment. Actually, stability and expectations seemed exactly what they needed coming from a place of extreme violence and abuse. Wow. When Amelia came of age, she took vows and actually became a nun herself and

and Christine wanted to follow exactly in her footsteps like when she came of age she was like I'm going to take the vows and I'm going to become a nun too when all of this information got back to Clements the mom she was completely outraged feeling further betrayed by the fact that her plan of punishment turned into a good thing for her two daughters so she decided to pull them out

of the convent as soon as they were old enough to get a job and give the money to her. So then she no longer saw them as children, pissed off that they're flourishing in this place. She's like, I'm going to pull them out and make them go to work and give me the money. So probably she could just do that. It's the early 1900s. True. Okay. So she expected them to work as live-in maids, which I think she had been doing as well.

So when she was able to, she couldn't get Amelia out because she was already too old. But she got Christine out of the orphanage and she forced her to find work in the middle class households of their place living in France. It was called Le Mans. Le Mans.

Lay mans. How's it spelled? L E space M A N S. Lay mans. Yeah, maybe. There you go, baby. Good job. We were just, me and Garrett were actually just talking about this whole thing the other day, um, about how everyone used to have mates. Like it was this, they're working for middle class households and it was just expected if you weren't in the lower class.

That you had a maid that just sucks. That's a weird concept. Yeah, so christine did very well as a live-in maid um Due to the lifestyle of order that she had been taught at laban pasture And all the employers that she worked for seemed to like her very much like she was strict She was a hard worker. She got everything done. All the kids seemed to really thrive off this structure Yeah, any type of structure they received because they never got it growing up. Yeah

And so Clements, her mother, on the other hand, was distraught about the amount of money her daughter was bringing in when she would hear the employers, like, say she was so good and everything, feeling like it should be higher. So she kept making Christine quit. Like, she'd get a job, and then they wouldn't pay her more, and so then she'd make her quit and go find a new one. And so Christine just kept getting thrown into these different live-in maid positions with all these different middle-class families in France. Poor girl. Yeah.

So it was around this time that Clements realized that she could actually get her youngest daughter back from her great uncle and put her to work with Christine as well. Like thinking, I could just make double the money off of these girls. So she gets them.

And the two sisters start to grow a very close bond, spending all of their free time together. They're giving all the money to their mom and they do the same exact job and they haven't seen each other their whole lives basically. And so they just get this really tight bond, their best friends really making up for the time that they had missed in their early years of life.

In 1926, Christine was 21 at this point and Leah was 15. Keep in mind, Christine is 21 and still sending her paychecks to her mom. Yeah. How? Why? Like, how's that? Well, I mean, we're in France and we're in the early 1900s. I don't think there was much like much structure. Also, keep in mind, you lived with your family for a long time back then. Like families just live together forever. Yeah.

So it probably wasn't that weird that she was sending her checks. So then how old was the oldest one? Amelia? Yeah, how old's Amelia? I mean, she's probably not in the story anymore. I think she's like 25 because she was only four years older than Christine. And it's 1926 now. Okay. So Christine locks down a job as a live-in maid and a cook for the Lancelin family. The family consisted of Renee, who's the dad, and Leone, who's the mom.

And then they had two daughters. One had moved out and was married and living with the husband. And then another daughter, Genevieve. How'd that sound? That was good. And she lived at home with her two parents. So it was one kid, one daughter, two parents, and then Christine was their live-in maid. Hola. ¿Cómo está? Hola, ¿cómo estamos? Want to learn a new language? Well, the best way is to uproot your entire life, move to Spain, and live there for the rest of your life.

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Christine convinced Leonie, the mom, to hire her little sister Leah as a chambermaid after only a few months of service for the family. A chambermaid as in like a prison in the basement chamber? No, a maid who cleans bedrooms and bathrooms, especially in a hotel. Okay. So I think she just took care of all the rooms. Okay.

And Christine, and so they do it. They hire Leah. And so Christine and Leah are like completely ecstatic about their new conditions. They finally are going to live together in a house that's not with their mom and they're going to work and they're going to get to spend all of their time together. And it said that they never really even left the Lancelin family house. They would go to church on Sunday and that was about it. They spent all of their time together at the house.

Like every other day of the week. And at some point during this, the Papin sisters visited a local fortune teller who told them that they had been married as a husband and a wife in a previous life. And that's why their connection was so deep. Okay. So according to Obsolete Oddity, the YouTube channel, local people commented on the odd behavior of the sisters calling them cold and distant and just weird. Like they just...

Like made people feel uncomfortable. So despite these whispers, though, the Lancelins were very pleased with the work of the two sisters, finding themselves lucky to have found maids who didn't care to go find husbands. They weren't courting and they didn't even go out for fun. Like they just stayed home. The only time they go out is for church. And they worked excruciating hours for the family, never taking time off.

Other households at the time around in this town were jealous of the Lancelands and the servants that they had, like calling them the luckiest family because of how hard workers the girls were. I guess that makes sense because...

They had each other. So they were like, why do we need to go out? And they were each other's whole life at this point. Yeah. That's crazy. So the sisters got along fairly well with the family. It was kind of a big deal. They were given a heated room in the house, which a lot of live-in maids weren't. And they were actually being paid like the standard minimum wage for the time, which a lot of maids were paid under. So they were also very grateful for the job because it was a pretty good job.

According to Obsolete Oddity again, when Leone found out that the girls were sending their paychecks to their mother, she immediately put a stop to it. And the girls kind of referred to the Lancelin family as their family. They felt that they were treated pretty well as servants. And they didn't talk a lot to the family. Like it's kind of, I saw in a couple sources that the only time the mother, Leone, would talk to them and give them orders was on a piece of paper. Right.

So like they never actually talked in person to their masters, I guess you could say. They were just... It was just like a very cordial relationship. They got... Were treated well and they worked hard for them and that was it. It wasn't like a... Like this big old family unit. That's so interesting. Yeah. So just don't get that misconstrued. Okay. That was a good clarification. So...

As time goes on, though, it's rumored that Leone started to struggle with mental illness a little bit. It's said that due to these untreated struggles, she started to take things out on the Pappen sisters and actually started to talk to them, but wasn't talking to them nice. Started to criticize their work. Mental illness as in depression or? They didn't clarify, but I'm guessing something. Yeah.

So she forced them to work longer hours, around 14 hours a day. She would make them work. They couldn't go to their rooms until they had finished 14 hours. And she had immaculate expectations for them. She started putting on these white gloves and walking around and like brushing the furniture to make sure there was no dust on it. And if it was, they would get in big trouble. So...

She even began to physically assault and abuse the sisters, punishing them for their bad work that they had been doing. So what was once everyone was jealous and envious is now turning into a very what we see dominating. Why wouldn't they just leave the sisters, right? Why would they just be like, I'm going to leave? Because they've quit so many others. You feel like...

Which their mom made them. True. But they were lower class, which I mean, it's not like they just had every option. It was probably like, well, we have a job. We get paid well. Yeah. And they had been with them for about seven years. So it wasn't just like, oh, it's been two years. And, you know, like seven years is a long time to live somewhere and think this has been seven years of these girls living.

never leaving never talking to anybody else just being never even talking to the people that they lived with it was only them two they only spoke to each other

So on February 2nd, 1993, the Lancelin family had a day like any other day. Renee, the father went to the office and Leonie and Jenna Vive went shopping for the day. Um, the family had plans to go to dinner that night at a family friend's house and

And so when Mr. Lancelin arrived home from work that night to pick up his daughter and his wife to go to the dinner, he found that the front door to their home was bolted shut from the inside, which he thought was weird because he thought he was picking him up. Yeah. Sorry, before we keep going, do you know what the husband thought of this? Like his wife abusing them and being mean to them? So it said that the husband never, the wife wouldn't let the husband and the maids communicate. So they never ever were in the same room with him alone or anything like that. Okay. And... You know what it kind of sounds like? What? Yeah.

handsmaids. Handsmaids tells? A little bit, you know, a little bit. Yeah. It was kind of like that though. Like they didn't, they wouldn't. Interesting. For that reason, for adultery. It was for that exact reason. Makes sense.

So he also notices that all of the lights in the house were off except for one flickering from the maid's rooms, which he didn't find odd because they're home. And so Rene thought that maybe his wife and daughter had already left to the dinner plans on their own and were just expecting him to meet them there. And so he got back in his car and he made his way to the dinner party. Upon arriving at the family friend's house, he walked in hoping to see his family, but the host informed him that they had not come yet.

And so like startled, like, well then why weren't they answering the door? Why was the door locked? Why were all the lights off? He gets back in his car, bringing his friend along with him. And one of the sources said the friend was a brother-in-law, but it only said it on one source. So I'm not, I don't know for sure. And they go back to their house to find the wife and daughter thinking, okay, maybe they were just waiting in the house and I just didn't, like I just left assuming, right?

And so they get to the home and he knocks on the door and nobody answers. And he just keeps knocking and nobody answers. And so at this point, he's a little freaked out. He's like, well, where could they be? And so they get in contact with the police and like thinking maybe the police can get into the house. Right. So once the police arrive, they find their way in and they stumble upon one of the grisliest crime scenes that they had ever seen. So a couple of things before you go forward. Why didn't the husband just break into his own house?

I mean, I don't know. Like the police didn't even break in the front door. It said they like climbed over a garden wall, something and got in. Also, it was a townhome. It was like a row of homes. Okay, got it. If that makes a difference. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. So. Okay. Oh, no. So keep going. Okay. So let's bounce back earlier that day when Leone and Genevieve arrived home from shopping.

They walked in and into their house. They walked into their house and all of the lights were off. Their electricity was not working. So Christine rushes down to explain to Leone that they had plugged in an iron and that it had blew the circuit. And Leone bursts into a violent rage attacking Christine. Like she just flipped. Oh, wow.

In self-defense, Christine fought back and Leah, her little sister, came running down the stairs after hearing the commotion. Keep in mind, Leah's only 15. Yeah.

According to allthingsinteresting.com, when Genevieve hopped in on the action trying to defend her mom, Christine screamed to Leah to smash Leonie's head into the ground and tear her eyes out. Oh my gosh. So this is when self-defense turned into something else. Yeah. Doing as she was told, Leah literally gauged Leonie's eyes out with her bare hands. You're kidding me.

Yeah. Like a whole eyeball popped out. Oh my gosh. Christine. Now fighting the sister, Genevieve, did the exact same. So now they've pulled both of the eyeballs out of the mother and daughter with their bare hands. Holy crap. Yeah. So somewhere in the attack, Christine smashed a pewter jug over the head of Leone. And that, I don't know if you know what that is, but it's like,

Kind of like a Kool-Aid. Uh-huh. Like, what's that called? A Kool-Aid jar? Yeah, yeah. Kind of like that. And when she did it, she yelled, I'm going to massacre them. So keep in mind, these girls have been isolated for seven years. Only talking to each other, working as maids, whose masters won't even talk to them, and for the last couple years had been physically assaulting them. Yeah. So...

This is where their heads are at. That is crazy. Once the Lancelins were lying down, obviously completely blind and helpless because their eyeballs had just been scratched out of their head, the Papin sisters then retrieved a hammer and a knife and continued to attack them. So it was no longer self-defense. No, it was like getting anger out, resentment, whatever it may be. So the murder of Leone and her daughter Genevieve went on for two hours.

So it was way past a murder. Like these girls were messed up in the head at this point. And the Papin sisters bludgeoned the pair until they were rendered unrecognizable. So they were just cutting them apart. Oh my gosh. The sisters mutilated the bodies. I'm not going to go into detail of what they did.

Because it's intimate. So you can find those online if you want. Okay. And one of the sisters said later that they were, they opened a recipe book and followed a recipe from a rabbit dish that was in the cookbook using the bodies as the rabbit.

So like think about a turkey, how you'd like cut it open, stuff it. That's kind of what they were doing. It's like, what's that other murder? Yes. Like Catherine Mary Knight. Yeah. So they said that they prepped the bodies like they were prepping a rabbit for a rabbit dish. So that's, they were just playing with the dead bodies at this point.

Like completely messed up. Do you think it's because they were like in isolation for so long? Like what? Because were they pretty normal at this? None at this. What was that place called again? The Catholic orphanage. Yeah, the Catholic orphanage. I think so. But also I think normal is a hard word because it's the early 1900s. A Catholic orphanage is not going to be a healthy place. And they weren't raised very well.

Well, no, I guess it's the best way to put it. I mean, I'm not making excuses at all. Yep. But if you think about their past and also think about getting raised in a Catholic orphanage in the early 1900s, like we've heard stories about what those places were like. I was just trying to figure out what made them do that. And seven years of isolation, only talking to each other, being live-in maids. That's so crazy. Yeah.

And they're obviously messed up like there's more to it than just that. Right. Yep. So once the sisters were satisfied with the attack, they locked all of the doors in the house and they went up to their room preparing to go to sleep and took a candle for light because the electricity was out. And so that was the light that he saw flickering in the window.

Just didn't even run away. No, they went upstairs, locked themselves in their room, and turned down for nighttime. Oh, my gosh. So the cops, when they came in, obviously now that I've said what they did to the bodies, they could not fathom the bloody mess that they saw in front of them upon entering the house. They found Leonie's eyeballs in her scarf that was around her neck. They had fallen out and landed in her scarf. And then one of...

jenna vives was under the mother's body while the other one was laying on the staircase it had flown all the way up to the staircase that's that's how brutally they tore those things out of their face that's just like i can't even comprehend that yeah and it feels like to me it was pre like they had talked about doing this because they were just attacked they were just basically wrestling and then she screams to leah tear her eyeballs out and leah does it

Almost like before they talked about, oh, I want to kill them so bad. I want to hurt them. I would tear their eye. Yeah. So also because I think that tearing someone's eyeballs out is like...

That's horrible. That's so aggressive. So I'm like, I feel like that hadn't been talked about before. So Renee, the dad told the police to rush up to the maids room at once because he was worried that they had come upon the same person who had attacked them had probably attacked the maids as well. And he's worried that they've met the same fate, you know?

And so they go up and they hear whispers in the room. And so they knock and no one answers. And so they bust open the door to the girl's bedroom and they find Christine and Leah. There was two beds. It was two twin beds for them. They find Christine and Leah cuddling together in one of the twin beds, completely naked.

Oh, they're just holding each other completely naked in the bed. And there was a candle burning in the room. And then they also brought the hammer up and put it on the chair. And like the hammer still had like pieces of scalp. Like it was completely bloody.

They cleaned off every other murder weapon. They cleaned off the knife. They cleaned off everything, but they kept the hammer and put it up and like sat it up on the chair in the room. They're not okay. No, no. Oh my gosh. So the Pappin sisters immediately admit to the crime. Completely calm, like unfazed. The cops are like, what happened? And they're like, yeah, we did that. And they claim it was self-defense. And the cops are like,

Okay, but you gauged their eyeballs out. Like you didn't just kill them, like you overkill them. So the case obviously spreads like wildfire through the town, right? And everyone knew about it and everyone had an opinion about the case. Although people could admit that what had happened was completely wrong, they also seemed to have empathy for the sisters because at this point, maids and all that stuff was kind of under like,

And so they said that, and even intellectuals even wrote about it, like these really famous people wrote about it and said that

that this was a crime of class struggle and that people thought that this was the lower working class rising up against the masters. Wow. So that like, almost like people started to say they deserve it because we shouldn't have servants and we shouldn't be treating people like this and like this overpower of dominance, which it shouldn't. Interesting. It shouldn't be happening. I mean, they were getting paid. Yeah. They were getting paid. It's a job, but I mean, they were also getting abused. Yep. And so they, and,

I mean, they were well-treated servants.

And so imagine how the other servants in the town were being treated. I still can't believe that they gauged their eyeballs out. I know. You should see Garrett's face, you guys. He's still in like just stunned. I'm usually, I feel like I'm pretty quiet until all the crazy stuff, this stuff starts happening. I'm just like, oh my gosh. Like really? I just like. That's nuts. I can't even fathom. Yeah. Anyways. That's just crazy. It's unbelievable. So yeah, there's people that are like.

Good for these girls for like rising up against the man. Like they started a revolt or something. Almost. But like it wasn't like everyone in the town was doing it, but people wrote saying that's what had happened in this case. So, and this case is actually still used and taught about in schools for this exact reason. Really? Of like when you treat people like this, this is what happens. Yeah. Well, maybe...

I mean, maybe a lot of it did have to do with the fact that they were sick of being made. Maybe there's more to it, right? Yeah, and I think so. I mean, I think seven years of someone only having the respect to talk to you through a piece of paper. Self-isolation. Self-isolation. And then also... She's being rude. Then she started abusing them like...

There were times where she said like they would miss a piece while they were dusting and she would grab the back of their heads and like shove them on the ground and be like, pick this up, do this, you know? Yeah. I mean, it makes sense then. Okay. No. Gaging someone's eyeballs out does not make sense. But it makes sense. But why the scholars were writing about it and everything, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um...

A lot of people think that the girls were just driven to insanity after taking orders for that many years and being treated like that. Right. That's what it was. It was straight insanity. Yeah. So the rumors also start to fly when the details get out that the girls were found naked in bed together. And yeah,

I forgot about that. Everyone kind of already thought that their relationship was strange, you know, when they would go out to run errands in the town for the family. But this really confirmed their suspicions. People really thought that the girls were having an incestuous relationship.

I'm sure they actually probably were. I mean, I can't make assumptions, but if they were cuddling naked in bed, that's what it would seem like. But we could be wrong. So the Pappin sisters were separated immediately after the arrest. And from the beginning, Christine did not handle that well. She didn't care that they were arrested. She didn't care that she had just completely destroyed someone. She cared that they were separating her from her little sister, Leah. Yeah.

And so she went into severe depression. She would have fits and tantrums all the time after they had arrested her. Okay. And like in the, like while they were interviewing her, while they were holding her gathering evidence, like the whole process, she was a mess. Okay. Um, and when the cops finally did allow the girls to see each other, hoping that it would help Christine because it had gotten really bad, her tantrums had gotten really bad. The girls ran to each other in the room, um,

And then Christine started taking off Leah's blouse. And then they had a conversation while that was happening. And this basically confirmed that they were having a sexual relationship. Wow. The conversation that they had when they met. Okay. Because everyone was in the room. It wasn't in private. And it was insane. Like it was erratic behavior. Like they weren't even hiding it.

Wow. So Christine and Leah protected each other from the beginning, both taking sole blame for the crime, saying, no, she didn't do any of it. I did it all and vice versa.

And the girls were appointed lawyers who immediately claimed the insanity defense. The girls had multiple relatives who were institutionalized, who had suffered from mental illness. One of their uncles had tragically taken his life. Mental illness was a big thing in their bloodline is what I'm trying to say. And the, like the defense used this and the prosecution combated this by putting up three medical experts who claim that they had evaluated the Papin sisters and that they were sane of mind.

saying that their crimes were overkill and that they cleaned up, locked the doors, you know, hid in their room. I'm just going to say in the 1900s, I'm not quite sure how accurate the evaluations, the psych evaluations were, especially if people were out to get people. So I personally don't think they were of sane mind. No, it doesn't. So, I mean, I don't know. I think something was obviously wrong. I think maybe they knew what they were doing was wrong, right?

But something was not right in their minds. It's hard, though, too, because they obviously, just because they claimed insanity doesn't mean they should be in some public eye because... Or it doesn't mean that they don't deserve... What? You know, some time in a hospital or stuff like that, you know? Somewhere where they can't do this again. Do this again. So...

This ultimately swayed the jury, the medical examiners did, and it only took the jury 40 minutes to convict the sisters guilty. Back then, that was pretty common. There was no long trials and all that stuff. So Leah got 10 years, the little sister. She got 10 years because authorities believed that she was in a submissive, dominant relationship with Christine and that she wouldn't have done it without her. She was 15.

And Christine originally was sentenced to death by guillotine, being scheduled to be put to death in the public square in the town in front of everyone because it's the 1900s. I guess I didn't realize that. Oh, yeah. That's crazy. When I was looking at pictures of this, like...

It's sometimes hard for me to picture what was going on during the 1900s. You know, like it's hard to put yourself back and say, well, what exactly was going on? And I was looking at the way they were dressed and they wore like the big like head pieces and their dresses were really like poofy on the bottom. And they had like three layers of dresses on, you know, and like the lace up boots. So then it was really back to, oh, wow, we were this was a while ago. Yeah. Like, whoa. So she was put to death by guillotine. That's crazy. Yeah.

Oh, okay. Keep going. Sentenced to. So not soon after the court changes Christine's sentence to life in prison. Okay. I think that her behavior started to get erratic again. And I think they couldn't justify the fact that she was insane mind. Got it. Like, I think they were like, kind of like, we kind of think this girl's insane. She's crazy. We're not going to take away it, but we're just going to make it life in prison instead of killing her.

Which just goes to show you once again that it was just kind of a quick trial, not much thinking to it and stuff. Yeah. So because they got separated again after they were convicted, Christine started to have violent fits again. She became so outraged one day that she tried to dig her own eyeballs out of her head with her fingers, causing severe damage and subsequently was put into a straitjacket. So she's lost it. Yeah, she's crazy.

And she and it was it wasn't because she was put to death by guillotine It wasn't because she was life in prison because she had killed so it was strictly because she could not cope being away from her sister Wow, that was all it was. She wrote in begged. Please. Let me be with my sister Please let me see leah, please and they wouldn't like there was an unhealthy relationship. Yes, and so she Refused to eat and she just dived into this deep depression. Yeah, so

They freaked out a little because I'm sure you didn't see this all the time. And so they transferred her from prison to a mental hospital due to the conditions. And at the hospital, she continued to refuse to eat. And I think nowadays they would use tubes to probably force feed, but they didn't have that. And so she eventually died on May 18th, 1937 due to literally wasting away. Starvation. She literally just didn't eat until she died.

Yeah. Which is hard. Yeah. So Leah, her other sister actually did pretty well. She served eight of her 10 years and then was released and she claimed a new identity upon release and went back to being a maid. Whoa. Yeah. And she lived for when she died? It said that she died in 1982. Okay.

But a producer who was making a movie on this pretty recently claims that he found a woman who he actually believed to be Leah, but she had had a stroke and was unable to speak. And that woman died in 2001. So no one actually knows. That's interesting. I don't think like, okay, 1982, I feel like the record should have been better. But I mean, I don't know. Yeah, you would think 1982 would have some better records, but okay. Yeah. So we actually don't know when she died. And I mean, okay.

If the woman had a stroke and couldn't talk. Yeah, that's hard. That's hard. That's really hard. So doctors now have done their best to try to go back and help diagnose the sisters to explain this horrible situation, right? Like they don't think it was the doctors were had tried very hard in the past. They don't think the situation was taken care of very well. And so they have gone back now, studied and said, you know, this is what we think was going on.

So they have concurred that Christine appeared to suffer from paranoid schizophrenia. Sadly, in the 1930s, there was very little acknowledgement about this. And so especially for the lower working class. And so and there wasn't enough research to help those who were suffering with this back then. So it would have just gone untreated and like, oh, no, she's fine. Yeah. Even though something was obviously wrong.

And then doctors believe that Leah showed actually no signs of diagnosed mental illness. She was just shy and she had a rough upbringing and she suffered from panic attacks. They believe that Leah lost her personality after spending seven years alone with Christine. She was an impressionable person and making her a slave to Christine, basically. So they actually call this, they have, they like have diagnosed this and it's called shared paranoid disorder. And,

And what happened is Leah attached her personality to Christine, making them share a personality. So they were no longer two people. They were one person in their heads. Kind of like what the police thought with this whole abusive relationship. And so basically, if Leah had not been around Christine for seven years alone, only talking to her, she would have never done it. Like she would have been completely fine. She was completely fine after.

It was just that she had been completely dominated and taken over. She completely lost herself. So I just wanted to... Okay, so that's the end of the story. That's the Pappen sisters. But I did want to talk about something. So I think that they had a sexual relationship. I mean, it was never confirmed, but everyone back then said that they think they did. And I do as well. Only because...

When you spend seven years with someone and one's 21 and one's 15, if the 20 and because of the weird, you know, shared paranoid disorder they were having, I think it is very probable that that was happening. I mean, obviously I can't say for sure, but I would say that they probably did. Yeah. And then I also wanted to bring into that that the Catholic orphanage makes me feel even more that that's true.

But everyone also said that they thrived and did really well in the Catholic orphanage. As in they followed and wanted to become nuns. I think that when you...

When they have the rough upbringing and then they go someplace like that to the total opposite extreme where there was probably physical abuse going on. Definitely in the Catholic orphanage, like they were definitely punishing them physically. And then you have this, I want to be a nun. She didn't even, she, you had to take vows to become a nun. And then you're pulled out of that and stuck together with someone for seven years and you're already a little messed up.

Like, I think that gets to you. Like the, like, I just think that that is a perfect combo. What did the mom say about these murders? I don't know. They never, they never said, I wonder if she just pretended like she didn't actually said that Leah, when she got out of prison, moved back in with her mom. Really? Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Um,

And then obviously mental illness is a big part of this case. It's talked about the whole way through from multiple sides. Uh-huh. And I just want to remind everyone that it's okay to get help and that it's something that they didn't do a very good job addressing back then, but it's very addressed now. Yeah. And we're very, you know, we're more aware of that the brain is stronger than we think it is. Mm-hmm. And so I just wanted to address that too. Yeah. But yeah, that's the Pappin sisters. Wow. That was a pretty crazy one. Yeah.

That one's kind of tragic for me. Yeah, it is kind of crazy. Because I, you know, something was wrong, but I really do feel like it was a recipe for disaster. Man, all these stories with cooking body parts and eyeballs just blows my mind. So isn't it weird that it gets to that? Yeah. Because at that point, I don't feel like it's, I feel like it's something within. It's not something that they were just trying to get revenge for.

I feel like they had just gotten so lost after seven years. They had gone so deep down within themselves, had turned so inward that they didn't have a sense of reality. There's just, yeah. Yeah. There's just so much to the brain and so many unknowns still that I think we just can't comprehend still. It's crazy. It's crazy. No, it's a good one. Yeah. Well, it's a bad one. Yeah. But yeah, I mean. Well, Peyton and I,

Are gonna go eat some food Yeah, we're starving, but hopefully that this sounds a little better We put it up in one of the we put up in my little office. Yeah, so hopefully there's not too much of an echo um

Again, we'll be here next Sunday. Yep. Well, Peyton will be here telling another story. I'll be here too, listening. Remember that if you want to hear a story from my point of view or you want us to cover something, DM us. I mean, I will cover anything that you guys are wanting to hear. So shoot us a DM. Follow us on all of our social medias. They are linked in the episode notes as well as all of the sources for this story are linked. And yeah, we're looking forward to hearing from you guys. I love it. And I love it.

And I hate it. Goodbye.