Ep. 61 - Ouija Board Murders

The Ouija board today is marketed as a harmless game. Robert Murch is the world's foremost expert on the Ouija board and he is chairman of the Talking Board Historical Society. He has spent decades researching the history of talking boards and collecting them, with a collection running into the thousands. From the many interviews I've read with Murch, it is clear that he is mostly interested in the history, rather than proving that one can actually make contact with the other side using a board that is imprinted with letters and numbers. Most people believe that the boards don't do anything. For those that believe that communication can be established, they sit on two sides: the subconscious is controlling the communication or there is an unseen entity controlling the planchette that is flying across the board. Ouija boards get really interesting when they become integral parts of true crime cases.

Ancient versions of a type of talking board go back thousands of years. Many people believe they originated in China as a form of automatic writing. The modern version we all know, appeared during the Spiritualist Movement in the 1880s. Businessmen Charles Kennard and Elijah Bond were the first to commercialize the talking board in 1890, filing a patent on May 28, 1890. They called this board "Ouija, the Wonderful Talking Board" after Bond's sister, who was a medium, had the board spell out OUIJA when she asked what they should name it. The men didn't actually believe that the board could contact the dead. They were trying to make money. They opened up a production facility in Baltimore, Maryland to produce what was marketed as a harmless game. Eventually, the Parker Brothers took over production of the Ouija board and when Hasbro bought Parker Brothers, they continues making the boards. 

I've used a Ouija board a few times when I was a teenager. I first thought my friend was moving the planchette around, but when I used the board with someone who was unfamiliar with it, I had to admit that something outside of us was moving the planchette around. Now, whether this was our unconscious minds or unseen entities, I can't say. But I was unnerved enough, that I never used one again. Would I be willing to believe that these boards could provide answers in murder cases or even convince someone to commit a crime? Let's look at some of these stories.

The first case to be referenced as a "Ouija board murder" took place in 1930 in Buffalo, New York. On March 6, 1930, a woman named Clothilde Marchand (kloh-TEELD mar-SHAHN) was found beaten to death at the bottom of the stairs at her home by her son. Suspicion fell on her husband, Henri Marchand, immediately, but when police learned he was having an affair with a woman named Lila Jimerson, they started looking at her. Henri was a talented French sculptor and was a specialist in precision wax modeling, so the Buffalo Museum of Science hired him to make models for them. Henri had worked closely with the Seneca in the area and Lila was a Seneca woman who modeled for him and one thing led to another. Police arrested Lila and she said that her friend Nancy Bowen had committed the murder. Indeed, Bowen was found with some of Mrs. Marchand's personal effects. Rumors had circulated that Mrs. Marchand was a white witch. She enjoyed picking the mushrooms in the fields and eating them and people believed this proved she practiced dark arts. Bowen's husband had recently died and Lila suggested to Bowen that Mrs. Marchand had cast some kind of spell and killed him. Lila went to the museum and convinced Henri to take her on an afternoon ride. While they were gone, Bowen had attacked Mrs. Marchand. The murder weapon was thought to be a hammer. Lila Jimerson did stand trial and the first ended in a mistrial. By the time the second trial started, Henri Marchand had married an 18-year-old woman - he was in his fifties. Lila tried to blame him for the murder too. The Ouija board entered the equation because Lila used it to convince Bowen that Mrs. Marchand was a witch and that she had murdered Bowen's husband. After all, the spirits on the other side see everything. Bowen couldn't read and didn't understand English, so she believed whatever Lila told her. The case seemed to be fairly weak. Lila was found innocent and Bowen was found guilty, but only sentenced to time served. A year after the murder, both women were free. 

Our next case took place on November 18, 1933. Ernest Turley was out on his property with his 15-year-old daughter hunting down a skunk. Mattie shot Ernest twice in the back and claimed she’d accidentally fired because she’d tripped and fallen. Her father lived for a bit, but eventually died and that's when Mattie changed her story. She said that she had been playing with the Ouija board with her mother Dorothea when it spelled out orders that she kill her father. Dorothea assured Mattie she could not be arrested for complying with the Ouija board’s orders and Mattie believed her. The Rocky Mountain News reported on December 28, 1933, "The death of Ernest J. Turley, 47, retired naval petty officer, at the hands of his 15-year-old daughter, will be charged by authorities to his attractive wife, who, they said, influenced her daughter to shoot her father so that “mother could marry a young cowboy.” J. Smith Gibbons, county attorney, today prepared a murder complaint against Mrs. Turley, and said it would be filed tomorrow. He said a charge of first degree murder also may be filed against the daughter, Mattie, who said she acted on command of a Ouija board. After Turley had been shot twice as he stood near a corral on his ranch he was flown in a transport plane to San Diego. He was making favorable progress when he suffered a relapse and died last night. When it was believed Turley would recover from his wounds, Gibbons recommended to Superior Judge L. S. Udall that the girl, who pleaded guilty to attempted murder, be sentenced to six years in a state industrial school. Today he said he had requested that action on this recommendation be postponed, pending decision on whether he would file a murder complaint against her. Prosecution of Mrs. Turley will be possible, under Arizona statutes, only by independent evidence. To obtain a conviction the county attorney will have to prove, other than by the daughter’s admissions, that Mrs. Turley was the instigator and the influence behind the crime." Dorothea denied it all, but a jury found her guilty. Unfortunately, three years later the Supreme Court of Arizona reversed the conviction. 

The Ouija board may have spawned a killer named Gary Gilmore. Gilmore was born into a life of crime as his own father was a petty criminal that had the family living under an alias. Gary's dad beat him often when he was a child. By the time he was fourteen, he was stealing cars. He got busted and was sent to MacLaren’s Reform School for Boys in Woodburn, Oregon. This didn't reform him and he was back to a life of crime when he was released a year later. He spent the next several years being arrested for larceny, driving drunk, assault and armed robbery. While in prison for the robbery, he was treated with the antipsychotic drug Prolixin. He was free again in April of 1976. His cousin got him a real job, but Gilmore spent much of his time drunk and committing more petty thefts. Gilmore began dating a young woman at this time, but she eventually broke up with him because of his violent outbursts. This sent Gilmore into a murder spree. On July 19, 1976, he robbed a gas station in Orem, Utah. Although the attendant did everything that Gilmore asked of him, Gary shot and killed him. The following day, Gilmore robbed a motel. He shot and killed the manager, Ben Bushnell, a took the motel cashbox. As he was tossing the gun, he accidentally shot himself in the hand. Gilmore called his ex-girlfriend for help and she called the police. Gilmore tried to get off for his crimes by claiming he had acted while insane. The jury convicted him and he was sentenced to die. While people fought to save him, Gilmore pushed to be executed. He even attempted suicide with pills twice. A request for a stay of execution was made on his mother's behalf, but the Supreme Court ruled that the execution should proceed. Gilmore chose death by firing squad. His last words to the executioners were "Let’s do it." This would inspire Nike's slogan "Just do it." Gilmore's brother later wrote the book "Shot in the Heart" and it that he revealed that their mother, Bessie, believed she had conjured a demon spirit through a Ouija board when she was a child. Bessie thought that the demon had remained attached to her and then attached to her children as well. She was positive that Gary's life of crime and his anger and violence were all because of this demon from the Ouija board. 

Anthony Allan Hall was sentenced to death in 1989 for the murder of a Vietnamese immigrant. Hall was one of four young people who were avowed Satanists that had kidnapped, robbed and killed Ngoc Van Dang. He was 22 at the time, as was Daniel Paul Bowen. Bowen had a girlfriend named Elizabeth Rebecca Towne, who was 18-years-old. Surprisingly, the leader of this quartet, was a 16-year-old girl named Bunny Dixon. The group of young people wanted to go to Virginia from Florida and join a carnival in 1983. Dixon had used a Ouija board and told the group that the board told them that they were to make this trip and that they should fund this trip by robbing and murdering a motorist. That motorist ended up being Dang. The foursome hijacked Dang's car, bound him with tape and threw him in the trunk of the car. They drove to the woods near Daytona Beach and dragged him into the woods. There, Bunny carved an inverted cross from Dang's breastbone to his stomach and announced that this had marked him as a sacrifice to Satan. Then Hall shot Dang seven times in the head, neck and torso. When the young people confessed, they told authorities that Dixon had devised the plan on the orders of a 10-year-old spirit named David who communicated through the Ouija board. Hall said that once he started shooting, something came over him and he couldn't stop until he emptied the gun. Hall and Dixon dumped Bowen and Towne in North Carolina because Dixon told Hall that David had told her that Bowen was going to kill them. Eventually, all four were arrested and charged and found guilty. Hall got the death penalty, but this was later overturned.

This next story is crazy in that a jury actually held their own seance and used a Ouija board to come to their decision in Britain. The case involved the murders of Harry and Nicola Fuller. They were murdered by insurance broker named Stephen Young. Young had a lot of business and personal debt and he targeted the Fullers for robbery because Harry Fuller used to brag about his wealth, which was greatly exaggerated. Young shot Harry through the back and he died immediately as the bullet pierced his heart. Nicola was shot four times as she tried to run for her life. The final fatal bullet was to the back of her head just as she got through on 999, calling for help. The tape of the call and that final moment was played during the trial. Young staged the scene to look like a drug related crime as he sprinkled powdered sugar over Harry's body. The evidence that got him busted was a tape-recording of a conversation he had with Harry on the night before the killings in which they had agreed to meet at the cottage the next morning. A bank's security system had filmed his car entering and leaving the area, with an hour's interval in between. Young maintained he did show up for the meeting, but that he found the Fullers already dead. The jury found him guilty. And that's where are story gets weird. 

A month after the trial was over, the headline of the News of the World newspaper read, "Murder Jury's Ouija Board Verdict': 'Booze, Dirty Jokes and then the Ouija Board'." One of the jurors named Adrian claimed that four other jurors had held a seance in the hotel where they were sequestered, Brighton's Old Ship Hotel. The group of jurors had made a crude Ouija board out of pieces of paper and were using a hotel wine glass as a planchette. One juror named Ray asked the spirit to identify itself and it said, "Harry Fuller." Ray asked, "Who killed you?". The glass spelled out, "Stephen Young done it". He said, "How?". The glass spelled, "Shot". T jurors then asked themselves what they should do the following day and the board told them "Vote guilty tomorrow." After the fact, some of the jurors felt they had gone too far doing this. The case became one of the most high-profile examples of juror misbehavior in the world. There obviously was a retrial after this with another guilty verdict.

David McCallum was a 17-year-old Londoner who was a Satanist. He turned his bedroom in his apartment into a shrine to Satan. David had a friend named Pierre Antoine over at his apartment and the two decided to make a human sacrifice. On December 2, 1995, they invited 15-year-old Michael Earridge to come over and use the Ouija board with them. The board spelled out KILL and Earridge became afraid and Pierre prevented him from leaving and hit him. Then McCallum plunged a knife into his chest, multiple times. Antoine and McCallum were indicted on a count of murder and on a second count of manslaughter. McCallum pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to manslaughter on the ground of diminished responsibility and his plea was accepted by the Crown. He was committed to Broadmoor, a high-security psychiatric institution in England. Antoine was ruled unfit to plead by reason of mental disability and two psychiatrists convinced a jury he was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.

Carol Sue Elvaker was a 53-year-old grandmother in 2001 when she was playing with a Ouija board with her daughter, Tammy, and her two granddaughters. A message cane through that said that Tammy’s husband, Brian, was evil and needed to be killed to get rid of the demon. Brian was asleep in another room and Elvaker took a knife and stabbed Brian in his sleep. Then Elvaker got the feeling that her 10-year-old granddaughter was also evil and she turned the knife on her. Tammy managed to get the knife from her and as Brian lay bleeding to death, she piled her mother and daughters into the car. Elvaker was the one driving apparently and drove the four toward Tulsa on Interstate 44. She eventually crashed the car into a road sign in an attempt to kill all of them, breaking both her ankles. They all got out of the car and even with her ankles broken, Elvaker tried to push her 15-year-old granddaughter into traffic. Elvaker managed to run away on those broken ankles and she stripped down to nothing as she made it to the woods, where she hid. Police caught her and arrested her and they also arrested Tammy as an accessory to murder. Tammy had hidden the knife and hadn't called for help for her husband. One of the authorities said, "It’s amazing how the grandmother was able to let this Ouija board consume her life and how she was able to brainwash her daughter and granddaughters." Elvaker was ultimately ruled insane and was committed to a psychiatric hospital.

In 2012, a 15-year-old boy was charged with attempted murder of his 14-year-old friend when he stabbed him in a wooded area behind their high school in Weslaco, Texas. The boy used a 4-inch knife to stab his friend in the stomach, which gave him severe lacerations to his intestine. There was a third person at the scene and the assailant told that witness to claim the victim fell on the knife. At some point, the attacker himself helped bring the injured friend to a nearby auto repair shop to call an ambulance. The victim spent three days in the ICU, but survived. The attacker was arrested and when questioned, he told the police that a Ouija board told him to murder his friend. The boy had no history of mental problems or criminal behavior.  An investigator called the case "a little eerie" but said investigators believe the boy used the Ouija board to rationalize the attack and said, "He actually believed what the Ouija board advised him, that the friend was the cause of his problems. That's kind of the incredible part."

In 2015, British couple Paul and Margaret Carroll were using a Ouija board on Christmas Eve. Their Bedlington terrier was in the room as they conducted a seance and Paul claimed that a demon entered the dog. Paul already was dealing with mental health issues at the time and this revelation to himself, drove him to drown the dog. He took the dog, Molly, out to a ditch to dispose of her, but decided he better cut her up to remove her microchip, so the dog couldn't be identified. Paul was arrested after the drain backed up and service workers sent out to find the problem, found Molly chopped up in the drain. Paul told the police that the demon entered his dog because of the Ouija board. A few days later, Margaret and her step daughter used the board to contact Molly and the board told them that they would both die imminently. Hours later, the house burst into flames and both women were hospitalized before being arrested for arson. Paul got a suspended sentence and a fine and was banned from having an animal for 10 years.

In early 2023, 63-year-old Donald Hartung was convicted of the 2015 murder of his mother and two half-brothers and he claimed that a Ouija board convinced him to commit the murders. Hartung became known as the Blue Moon Killer.  Potential jurors were given unique juror questionnaires that asked about the Wiccan religion and Ouija boards. During the trial, they heard about how a money motivated Hartung stabbed each victim in their throat, struck them with a hammer and buried them under piles of clothes on July 28, 2015. The bodies were found three days later and Hartung was arrested. While in jail, Hartung was recorded by another inmate confessing to the murders and he described how his Wiccan beliefs were involved in the alleged murder plot. he claimed a Ouija board told him to commit the murders. But other testimony revealed that Hartung knew he was out of the will in 2012 and had planned the murders for four years. Before killing his mother, Hartung cut off her pinky finger to get her to tell him the combination to a safe in her room. He gave all the evidence to a high priest in a Wiccan church.

Are Ouija boards just a fun way to pass a sleepover night? Could there be something inherently evil about them? Or are they just a piece of cardboard and wood that has no power at all? Do spirits really come through or is the planchette moving back by the power of the unconscious? Some people claim "The Devil made me do it" while others claim "The Ouiji board made me do it." Are they just using an age old reason to cover their own darkened motives and actions? That is for you to decide.