The Tragic Tale of Kate Van Winkle

Kate Van Winkle was born in 1860 and died in 1936. Her life was full of tragedy and despair fit for the silver screen. It's a story stranger than fiction and, until now, has been forgotten to time. Did Kate purposely shoot Dr. Collins that morning? We'll never know for sure, but at least we have unearthed this incredible story and have even brought a small amount of justice to some souls beyond the grave. 

Transcript

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What do dressmakers, skunks, and Danish royalty have in common? Stay tuned to find out on this episode of Forgotten Felonies! Welcome back to Forgotten Felonies. I'm Monica. And I'm Olivia. And this is where we take you back in time to rediscover the tales of vintage villainy. Time forgot. The case we have for you today is one that has truly been forgotten. So how did you hear about this case? Well, so that's kind of a fun... Funny story. Remember our first episode about Burt Garrett using dynamite to blow up his house with the whole family inside? Mm-hmm. Well, he wrote his suicide note to... William House and was blaming the family annihilation on the doctor because the doctor didn't believe that Bert was sick. So, a couple weeks ago, I was just looking up Dr. House in the newspapers because I wanted to see if I could find more information about his credentials to see, like, what kind of a doctor he was, to find out more about his career. That sort of thing. I thought I would just be finding more articles related to the Burt Garrett case, but the article I opened was about this case, and I could not believe it. What I was reading. It's an insane case that happened just a month after Burt Garrett murdered his wife and daughters. And Dr. House testified as an expert in this trial. I was so excited to see that literally nobody had saved any of these old articles. And it's shocking because this case has so much drama. Like, so, so much. There are so many articles with so many juicy details. It's really hard to believe that people aren't still talking about it. So listeners, we are going to tell you about a woman who lived such a tragic life and at one point killed her husband. Or did she? But before I tell you that story, I have to tell you this one, because I can't think of a better place to start than with good old Mark Van Winkle. Mark Van Winkle was born December 19th, 1844, over in Indiana to Delia and William Van Winkle. At some point, Mark wound up over in Oakland, California, and we really don't know much more than that. Yeah, all of these people involved had not been researched before, so there was next to nothing about them in the databases. We really had to start from ground zero on all of this. Oh yeah, there was some really creative searching done to find everything that we did find. What we did figure out is that when Mark Van Winkle was 32 years old, [ years old], we know that he was in Oakland, California, marrying 16-year-old Katie Kantz. It was September 27, 1876, to be exact. The couple soon moved to Oregon, and we know that on September 19, 1877, just about a year later, they welcomed a baby girl named Gertrude to their house. Family. Gertrude was born in Portland, Oregon. Then, on January 1st of 1879, they welcomed little baby Roy Van Winkle to the family. So these kids were just a year and three months apart. By the time Roy was born, they were living in Oak Grove, Oregon. There's not a whole lot of detail about their life together, but we do know that they were living in Grants Pass, which is in southern Oregon, by September of 1884. This was right around their eight-year wedding anniversary when the kids were seven and almost six years old. And wouldn't you know it, Mark Van Winkle simply vanished. Oh, yes. Mark Van Winkle completely disappeared, and that left his wife, Kate Van Winkle, all alone with Gertrude and Roy. Now, when I first saw this in a new... newspaper article, I said to Olivia, 'Oh my gosh, I wonder if we can figure out where Mark went.' And oh boy, did we ever. Mark's family member—they were just as shocked as Kate when Mark disappeared, and they were very supportive of her. He had at least a couple aunts and uncles living up in Portland. They were all either lawyers or judges, or they were married to lawyers or judges. Now, Mark's mother was Delia Stratton, and his father was William Van Winkle. William was a lawyer. Now, Olivia, tell us a little more about Mark Van Winkle's most famous relative in Portland. Okay, one of his aunts was married to a very prominent Portland man who did quite a lot of notable things. His name was Parrish L. Willis. Parrish had come to Oregon over the old Oregon Trail, and so did Mark Van Winkle's mother and all of her siblings back in the 1850s. The aunt that married Parrish was actually seven when their family came over the Oregon Trail. Parrish Willis and his wife both graduated from Willamette University and had been classmates there. Parrish was then appointed by the Oregon State Governor, Governor Gibbs, to be the state librarian in 1868. He was later the city recorder of Salem, and in 1879, he began working as an attorney in Portland. He was a state senator by 1890, and then he was appointed as the police commissioner in May of 1895. By 1899, he was elected as a judge in Portland. Both Parrish Willis and his wife, who was Mark Van Winkle's biological aunt, were incredibly supportive of Kate and her two kids, and by 1889, they had moved up to Portland just to be closer to them. Yes, so Parrish Willis was a very powerful guy. And I'm sure he and his wife, who we only know as Mrs. P. L. Willis, I'm sure they were very horny. By Mark's treatment of his wife and kids. So Parrish, who by all accounts was a very responsible and upstanding guy, he was doing right by Kate Van Winkle, Gertrude, and Roy. Now, I'm not sure when it happened, but by 1891, the mystery was solved, and Mark Van Winkle had been located. Kate and a witness by the name of Mrs. Elizabeth Hunt went to court, and she filed for divorce in February of 1891. It was found that her deserter husband was now a plasterer living in Drain, Oregon. He had deserted his wife and two kids seven years prior, 1880. and she was finally awarded a legal divorce as well as full custody. Not like he was going to argue or anything. I mean, he was such a cad. You know, what a louse. What a skunk. A skunk? Yes, a skunk. Apparently, back in the 1880s and 1890s, a man who deserted his family was called a skunk. Oh, brother, this guy stinks. Yeah, super stinky. Something stinks in drain. It's Mark. It's Mark. That's it. Yep. So by the time she got her divorce in February of 1891, Gertrude was 13 and Roy had just turned 12 the previous month. He had missed seven years of their lives. I mean, those poor kids, you know, where did their dad go? He's just gone. So messed up. Well, in March of 1892, one year after the divorce, a little blurb in the Eugene Guard says, 'Mark Van Winkle of Drain was in Eugene last night. He is a marshal of that village and also runs a blacksmith shop there.' Then in October of 1893, a year and a half later, there's another blurb that states, 'Mark Van Winkle, the blacksmith, who is well known in Lane County, has a shop now near Lewiston, Idaho, and is doing well.' Now, I scoured the newspapers, and there's literally nothing about Mark Van Winkle prior to that blurb in 1892. Nothing at all. That man was in hiding. And trust me, I looked because, at this point, I have an unhealthy vendetta against this dead man who I have absolutely... no relation to. Maybe he was using a different name until they found him and she got her divorce. Like, I have no idea. But he was not openly blacksmithing and having a shop that would get little blurbs in the papers. And so, I mean, I am mad at this dead man. And then, you know, there are several articles in Idaho about how he becomes an incredibly popular police chief over in Grangeville, Idaho, you know, at least by 19... and how everybody just loves him and how he does such great things for the community, like shoveling snow off the sidewalks as an added touch. And then on September... 27th of 1903, he got remarried to Abby Hare, which I find really maddening because he had been married to Kate on September 27th of 1875. So he was reusing the same wedding anniversary, September 27th. I wonder if Abby knew that. I wonder if she had any idea that he had abandoned his two children and that they were awesome kids. I mean, it's just. How would you feel? How would you feel if, I mean, you... Let's get married on the same day. Then I know I won't forget our anniversary. That's just weird. It's like getting married on a holiday. I mean that's not that bad, but I mean, to be like, oh yeah, well, if you get married on like Valentine's Day. Yeah. And it's like... Well, I only need to get you one gift. Yeah. Yeah, there is that. Yeah. But I feel like getting married on the same day as you married your other wife. Yeah, that's a little much. The one you ran off on. Like, did she even know that Kate existed? Probably not. This was 1903. Right. It's not like she could just go to newspapers. com. Speaking of newspapers. com. Oh, yeah. Use our affiliate code FORGOTTEN20 for 20% off. Yeah. Then, in December of 1903, he resigned as chief of police so he could be a blacksmith at the Atlas Mine. And Abby was going to run the boarding house. town of Grangeville was so sad about him leaving. Now, findagrave. com didn't even have Gertrude or Roy listed as Mark's children. They were not even connected on Find a Grave. So I went ahead and fixed that. And I also added an image of the divorce filing that shows that he deserted them. So yeah, I think he deserves to be called out for that, even in death. Thank you for watching. So now that that is out of the way, we really must talk about Kate. That poor woman had been through so much. Olivia, please tell us what you were finally able to find out about Kate. Okay, so it was really, really hard to find Kate. Initially, the sources said that her maiden name was Canby, but you had actually found the wedding announcement that said Mark Van Winkle was marrying a Katie Cans, and that was the clue that Canby might not actually be her maiden name. Anyway, after jumping through a whole lot of hoops, I found out that Kate was actually born Catherine Kantz. She was born in 1860. She was born in New York to two German immigrants. Her father was named Franzikus Kantz, and her mother was Katharina Dotsenberg. Catherine liked to be called Kate, and she had four siblings. I couldn't find out when it happened, but her family seems to have moved to Oakland, California at some point. Her oldest sister and her descendants are all buried in Oakland, and we know that Kate was married in Oakland when she was 16. And there is mention of her mother having been in Oakland in some of the articles we've read. Yeah. So Kate's husband, Mark Van Winkle, you know, he up and disappeared in 1884 when Gertrude had just turned seven and little Roy was six. And one thing that we should note, another thing that made this difficult was in the census records, Roy was actually listed as being named, what was it? Archie. Yes, he was listed with the wrong name because, even when a descendant had contacted you, she said something about Archie. Like when you sent me a... a copy of like the email or whatever. But yeah, so there was a lot of misinformation because, on Gertrude's death certificate, that's where it said that Kate's maiden name was. So, I mean, it was crazy having nothing available and then what was available was incorrect. And so, I mean, it was just so crazy. Having to start there to find everything. But anyway, any descendants who are listening, his name was actually Roy, but okay. So. Back to this. So Mark Van Winkle, you know, he disappeared in 1884. And Kate decided that she was going to do what she had to do for her kids. Now, don't get me wrong. struggled. I mean, obviously she had bad days, but she wanted her kids in the best schools and she wanted to live in the best neighborhoods. So Kate Van Winkle picked herself up by the girdle, and she got busy. She started sewing for people, and she was a remarkable seamstress. Like, I don't think you guys understand. She did custom sewing for everyone around, and she worked every week from Monday morning to Saturday night. And I mean, I saw an ad in the paper for Kate Van Winkle's sewing. I've seen pictures of her in the paper in these dresses that she most definitely sewed herself. And they're just glamorous and amazing. But yeah, so Gertrude and Roy, they absolutely thrived. And if you look up their names in newspapers. com, you find their names over and over again. Again, getting mentioned by their elementary teachers for their perfect attendance and their excellent grades. Well, five years after Mark vanished, so we're talking 1889, Kate and the kids had moved up to Portland. Mark's aunt and uncle, Judge Parrish Willis, and his wife, you know, they were up there and they had offered to help Kate out. By now, Gertrude was about 12 and Roy was... 11. Kate had been working hard. She'd been saving money. She was so smart and her seamstress business was thriving. This woman was talented. and incredibly good with money. Her nerves, though, her nerves weren't so good. When she first got to Portland, she stayed with the Willis family because, I mean, Kate wasn't doing very well. In fact, the reason Kate and the kids had moved to Portland was because Kate had become quite ill. She was very high. and things were getting to her. For five years, she had lived for her kids, basically, you know, to keep them in those good schools. She was toiling away from Monday morning to Saturday night with a needle and thread in her hands. And now she was at a breaking point. Kate and the kids moved in with Judge Willis and his wife, and they actually had to watch Kate day and night for six weeks because she was, quote, afflicted with insanity. An article in the Oregonian, dated Tuesday, October 12, 1909,

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'She entirely lost her reason, having what is known as melancholia. She neither ate nor slept and was suicidally inclined.' What exactly is melancholia? Well, I looked that up. Back in 1909, that was basically the word for major depressive disorder, but we can see that Kate's went beyond that. Kate had major depressive disorder with psychotic features. So remember, psychosis is when they're having hallucinations or delusions. Some people with major depressive disorder will have a severe form and they will have depressive episodes that bring psychotic episodes with them. People who have psychotic depression are at a higher risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors compared to those with depression without psychotic features. So during that six-week period, Kate was really, really in a bad way. She had severe delusions. She believed the whole world was wicked. She believed that she had committed a murder. She believed people were persecuting her, and she was carrying around a key that she thought was giving her protection. She also thought that this was the key to her bedroom, and she thought that if she lost it, someone would get into her bedroom and hurt her. After a while, she let the Willises just tie the key around her wrist with a string so that she didn't have to constantly hold it. Once, during that six-week period, she randomly jumped up from the dinner table and ran out of the house, crying hysterically, saying that the house was on fire and the world was ending. Another time, she ran outside in the middle of the night without changing out of her nightgown or putting on a coat or anything, and it was pouring down rain outside. Nine times a Dr. Giuseppe had come to the house to treat her during that time, and he brought her some liquid medication. I was unable to identify what it was. It was. I Googled, like, you know, what were they using to treat this back then, but I couldn't figure it out. But she refused to take it because she said that it was making her stomach burn. So other people tried taking it, like, they tasted it and they said that it didn't cause any burning at all. And so this was just another like delusion that she was having. Hmm. Interesting. So after six weeks of trying to help her, Kate's mother, down in Oakland, California, sent for her. So she had Kate go down there. So Kate stayed with her mom for a while. And I'm not sure how long she was down there, but eventually she improved. And then she went back to Portland to carry on, to pick up the pieces and raise her kids. So she resumed her sewing business, making those amazing dresses for some of the wealthiest families in Portland. And life went back to normal. Life got pretty good and just went on. Now, thank goodness for the Willises and their patience and their hospitality. And I'm still mad at Mark. This was two years before they found him and she got divorced. right? I mean, that skunk. Or you know what? Maybe she broke down because she found out where he was in 1889 and it stressed her out. Maybe it would have been less stressful to find out that he had just died or something, you know, instead of purposely abandoning her. You know, I mean, what a skunk! So, yeah, life went on. Gertrude and Roy finished school. Gertrude Van Winkle went on to earn a teaching diploma from Portland University. in July of 1896 when she was almost 19 years old. Now, Portland University is not the same thing as today's University of Portland. Portland University existed between 1891 and 1900 and eventually merged with Willamette University. Gertrude remained a single lady, unmarried, and living at home with her mother, Kate Van Winkle. Roy, though. Olivia, tell us what Roy got up to in 1898. In 1898, Roy Van Winkle was 19 years old and he was feeling very patriotic. The Spanish-American War began between Spain and the United States in April of 1898 when the USS Maine was sunk in the Havana Harbor of Cuba. The ship mysteriously exploded, and the U. S. and Spain had already been in a dispute over control of Cuba, so this just escalated things. Congress declared a state of war on April 21st, and it was four days later that President William McKinley asked Oregon for a regiment of infantry to go and fight this war. He specifically wanted these men to be from the National Guard. By May 11th, Oregon had organized and mustered in the 2nd Regiment, Oregon U. S. Volunteer Infantry. By May 25th, Roy Van Winkle and the rest of the infantrymen set sail for the Philippines, and this was the first time that members of the Oregon National Guard fought on foreign soil. I imagine Kate was both very proud of Roy for taking up the call to fight for his country, but also scared to death for his safety. I was an army wife for 10 years. I can tell you firsthand that it is terrifying when they go off to war. I was an army wife during the Iraq war. And I mean, trust me, that is a lot of worrying. Now, unfortunately, Roy Van Winkle died while he was in the service. The details of this are murky. I know from the Oregon Encyclopedia . org that, out of all of the members of the 2nd Regiment, there were 16 killed in action or died of wounds and 48 dead of other causes. Actual battles took place between February and June of 1899, and then they sailed for home, landing back in California. There are pictures of the Oregon Battery in California in 1899, so I know they stayed in California for a while after they returned. There's a newspaper article that says Roy passed away in California. So I imagine they were doing military training down there. There's an article in the Oregonian on March 2nd of 1900 with the title, 'Funeral of Battery Boy.' It says that the commander urgently requests every ex-member of the Light Battery Oregon Volunteers in the city to assemble at the armory on March 2nd at noon for the purpose of attending the funeral services over the body of Roy Van Winkle. The services will be held at the residence of P. L. Willis at 1 o'clock p. m., but they were supposed to gather at the armory at noon so that they had ample time to gather and then march from there to the residence for the funeral. And then Roy was buried at the Riverview Cemetery. You can imagine that Kate Van Winkle took this pretty hard. According to the newspaper, Kate had another bout of melancholia after Roy's death. It actually... said she had dreams which she believed were true, her senses failing to correct the false impression which they gave her. The streetcars did not run as far as Riverview Cemetery at that time, and she would walk out in bad weather and sit or lie for hours upon her son's grave in abject melancholia. Well, that was in 1900, and Kate continued to live with her daughter, Gertrude, and continued to sew and save her money, and she was really good at saving money. According to the Portland City Directory, Gertrude was a schoolteacher. But then, Gertrude met Charles Garber. And in 1907, Gertrude got married. Gertrude moved out after the wedding, and this did not sit well with Kate either. She had more bouts of melancholia, and one of her sewing clients later reported that, whenever Kate worked on a certain color of fabric, it would raise in her mind forebodings of danger. And another friend of Kate's said that, when they went to her house for dinner, Kate would pass the different serving bowls of food around the table without waiting for the dinner guests to actually dish themselves some food from the bowls. That was a fancy meal. I wish I could eat more. And she would stare blankly a lot. So she was going through another rough patch when Gertrude moved out. Definitely. Yeah. Why do you think that upset her so much? I mean, I get that she had empty nester syndrome or whatever, but why would she have another bout of psychosis? Wouldn't she like be excited to maybe be a grandma or something? Well, here's what I think was going on for Kate. See, women and girls are very relational creatures. We tend to put a lot of importance on the quality of the relationship. In our lives. Females do this a lot more so than do males. If a female doesn't have a lot of good friends, we tend to internalize that and think that it means that we must be bad somehow. It goes beyond that, though. A female will actually wrap her very sense of identity into whichever relationship is the most significant in her life. So with her husband, for example, if that's the most significant relationship in her life, her very identity will become— this man's wife. And if that man then becomes abusive, it becomes very, very hard for her to leave him because she doesn't know who she is. Without him. Does that make sense? Yes, it does. So that most significant relationship, it could be with anyone or even like with a substance. You know, maybe the most significant relationship in a female's life is with alcohol. And maybe she's choosing her alcohol addiction over her children because she's like kind of identifying with her addiction. So, I mean, that happens a lot. People will be like, how could you do that? You know, whatever. But anyway, so in the case of Kate Van Winkle, I think the most... significant relationship in her life in 1907 was with Gertrude Van Winkle, her daughter. Mark had skunked out on her; he skunked out on her. Her son, Roy, had tragic died in 1900, and Gertrude had been by her side, living with her for the previous seven years. They were two adult women living together as roommates, but also mother and daughter, with that relationship that a mother and an adult daughter have with each other. So I think they were really good friends, and Kate cherished that. And she was Kate's closest friend. And now Kate felt like she was losing a piece of herself. So I think it caused a bit of an identity crisis. Now, before Gertrude moved out, she and Gertrude had been living together on Washington Street. But then Kate moved to 566 Cooch Street, which was a place where people could rent out rooms. And all this time, she had been successfully sewing, making dresses, and saving up her money. Soon, she was sitting on $2, 000 in savings. Olivia, how much would Kate's $2, 000 in savings be worth today? $70, 000. Wow, that is not too shabby. So in 1908, Kate was living at 566 Cooch Street, but now I need to tell you about one of her neighbors. Electropodes. Remove unpleasant bodily odors. The excess uric acid in the blood, which comes out in perspiration, is the cause of bad odors from the feet and armpits. Electropodes remove these odors by neutralizing the excess uric acid. Electropodes feed the body a gentle flow of electricity throughout the day, strengthening the inside nerves and buildup of the tissues. Electropodes are sold under guarantee, and if after 30 days trial they should prove unsatisfactory, your druggist will refund you the one dollar you pay for them. What are electropodes? Electropodes are metal insoles worn in the heels of the shoe. One is of copper, the other of zinc. Forming the two poles of a galvanic battery. The nerves of the body becoming the connecting wires. Buy Electropodes from your druggist. And if he cannot supply them, have him order a pair for you from Stuart and Holmes Drug Company. Okay, I'm ready. All right, we need to chat about a man known as Dr. Collins. Olivia, please tell us a bit about Dr. Collins. Gladly. Dr. Collins was born Roy Asbury Milton Collins. He was born December 14th of 1874 in Kearney, Iowa. His dad was shot dead by a cowboy when he was just a baby, and then his mom remarried a man named B. J. Miles. His stepdad was the superintendent of the Iowa State Home for Boys. When he grew up, he graduated from Iowa Eclectic Medical College, and then he practiced medicine in Des Moines, Iowa. Thank you. So in 1902, Dr. Collins was 28, and he married a 17-year-old girl named Nora Lang. Less than a month later, she publicly accused him of adultery. Adultery and really damaged his reputation. Now, I don't know when it happened, but Dr. Collins had moved to Nebraska and that's where they got married. And anyway, Nora was— was incredibly jealous of any female patient that Dr. Collins treated. She would often insist that he not make professional calls, like house calls. Know, as a doctor, because, you know, they used to do that in the early 1900s. So if it was a female patient, she told him he was like not allowed to go to their home to treat them. In 1904, they moved to Portland, Oregon, and at first he worked as a salesman for the Woodard, Clark & Company retail store, which was on 4th and Washington Street. Now, apparently, Nora had nothing better to do than lurk and loiter because several times while he was at work, like selling stuff, she would publicly interrupt his sales to women customers because she thought he was talking to them for too long of a time. Oh, Nora. Well, around the time they arrived in Portland in 1904, their child, little Donald William Milton Collins, was born. They called him Billy for short. To Dr. Collins, Nora wasn't all that interested in taking care of Billy. She was about 19 when he was born and he had to tell her to give him a bath and to do all the All those things that, you know, parents ought to do. She just didn't have those motherly instincts. So she didn't know, like, 'I should wash my child every day.' So, yeah, I wonder where Billy was while she was watching Dr. Collins at work. In the stroller? I know. She probably had him there, like, just hiding around, like, the pillars or something and watching. Don't let daddy know we're here. Yeah. Just here's your bottle or pacifier. Be quiet. Yeah. So crazy. I don't know what they sold at that store. I just imagined furniture. Like he's trying to sell a couch or something. Yeah. Buy your couch and leave. This is my husband. I know. Hurry it up. Just hand over the money. Buy it already. Taken. Yeah, so weird. Well, eventually he was able to start up his doctor practice in Portland. So that was good. But then in 19... wait, something crazy happened. A blonde fellow from Denmark, a man of royal blood, and I am not making this up. His name was Count Viggo von Holsting Rathlow. He happened to come through Portland, Oregon, and he caught the eye of 23-year-old Nora Collins, who promptly ran away with him. A skunk. A skunkette? I guess, yes. A skunk arena. Off she ran. Forget Alvin and the Chipmunks. Nora and the skunkettes. So yeah, she ran off with the count. It was August, if you believe her story, August of 1908. She and the count ran off to Denmark to meet his father. And they did not accept Nora. They didn't like this American. But Count Vigo was dead set on marrying her. And so he was disowned by the family. Huzzah. Yeah. And then back to the States they came. But anyway, meanwhile, Dr. Collins filed for divorce in Portland. His wife wasn't. even in the country, so she couldn't respond to the divorce filing, and he won by default. The divorce was granted on September 15th of 1908. Collins got his divorce and full custody of three-year-old little Billy. I believe Billy was just about to turn four. And then he promptly gave Billy to his mother and stepfather who lived in Salem. That's what you do when you win custody. Surprise! And through this messy time, while he was getting this divorce figured out and handing his wee son over to his mother, Dr. Collins rented himself a room at 566 Cooch Street. You don't say. And that's where he met... Drumroll, please. Kate Van Winkle. Now, Dr. Collins was in a bad way. Not only was he humiliated by his wife's elopement with Count Viggo von Holstein-Rethlo from Denmark, but he was in some really tough financial straits. Now, it turns out that his wife, Nora, had quite the spending habit. She had very expensive tastes. I mean, if she's going to run off with a count, you can imagine. had some expensive tastes, but yeah. So she had dug him into quite a hole of debt. And, um, so his medical practice was in ruins. He wasn't making. Enough money to pay off all of her debts. That room at 566 Couch Street cost $12 a month, and he could not even afford to pay rent. He was not doing well, and his friends described him as despondent and downhearted. But there was Kate Van Winkle, sitting on $2, 000. feeling lonely, with nothing but love to give. And apparently, Dr. Collins saw this as an opportunity. Now, let's look at the numbers here. Olivia, how old was Kate Van Winkle in 1909? 49. And how old was her daughter, Gertrude? She was 32. And how old was Dr. Collins? He was 34. Huh. Interesting. Okay. Just wanted to set the stage for the listeners. So Dr. Collins was a young doctor, and he sees this 49-year-old dressmaker with a lot of money. And he starts reading to her every evening. And he brings her flowers. And he asks if she would like to go see the movies. And he tells her that he'll treat her ailments for free. And he tells her that she's on the brink of insanity, but he can help her with that. And he starts medicating her. And she, she's paying his rent. And she's lending him money here and there and everywhere. And she falls madly in love with this man who is giving her all of this attention. And he's getting everything paid for. He's got his sugar mama. And she is all doped up on love and pills. In this one, you can't even tell who the true villain is. It's rough. It's so good. Why is no one talking about this story? Where's the movie? I know. I know. She deserves it. Well, Kate Van Winkle is not on the right medications. I don't know if that's a surprise to anyone. And she is getting more and more unstable. I don't know what he was giving her, but it was certainly malpractice, any way you want to look at it. So he convinces her. In February of 1909, that they ought to take an ocean trip to Hawaii and says this will be good for her health. She foots the bill. Of course, to take her personal doctor with her to Hawaii to stay with her from February through May, because that would be cheap, right? And while they are in Honolulu, according to Kate, she told him that she couldn't live without him. And she said that he told her at that point that he would marry her. Her if that was the case. So the two got married and Kate Van Winkle became Mrs. Kate M. Collins. And then, well, he had access to all the money right off the bat. Somebody had to pay all the bills. That bank account was drained so fast. Literally, they got back to Portland in May and that bank account was empty by July. See, I'm telling you, he's the villain. Yeah. And after they got back, Dr. Collins met someone else. A beautiful young actress and opera singer by the name of Anna Lichter had come to see Dr. Collins seeking treatment for her throat. See, Anna Lichter had first been a patient of Dr. Collins. Dr. Frisbee, who was a very good friend of Dr. Collins, and he had sent her to Dr. Collins. I don't know if he did it on purpose or what, but anyway, so she had gone to Dr. Collins. seeking treatment for her throat. Anna Lichter was a prima donna, very, very popular in her day. She was a favorite at the old Tivoli in San Francisco, and she sang in many operas. In the spring of 1909, Anna was in Portland acting in The Patriot and The Toymaker. So something happens with Anna's throat, okay? I don't know what it was. She needs to see a doctor, and somehow she gets set up to visit with none other than Dr. Collins. And Dr. Collins... falls head over heels. In fact, it turns out that she needed money for something. I mean, I don't know what for. Maybe he just wanted to give her a gift. I don't know. But about $300 from, you know, Kate's money went to Anna Lichter. And then do you know what he did? Pretell. Okay. So here's what he did. He told Kate. So now Kate thought that he was a god, right? I mean, this man was so wonderful, right? She used those very words to describe him. Actually, you know, this man who treated her so well, doting on her, giving her flowers, reading to her every night. He'd been laying it on really thick, you know, to get at her money. And she loved him like she'd never loved before. Her bosom burned with passion for this man. And he just told her the truth. He told her that he had never loved her, that he was in love with another woman, and that Kate should probably leave him. That's what she told her. That's what he told her. So, Olivia, what happens when Kate receives bad news? Melancholia. Yeah. So yeah, Kate's mind doesn't react very well to crises. Kate spirals. And let's not forget that she is. being overmedicated already on the wrong medications because her very rude husband was plying her with meds. Well, this time was no different. Kate went into crisis mode. She told her husband that she was going to kill herself. And she even told her husband that she was going to kill him. You know, she was beside herself. Of course, he tried to calm her down. He told her, 'You'll be fine. You'll be happier, you know, without me.' But he also... had told her, 'You know, he never loved her and that didn't make anything any better.' So she reached out to one of Dr. Collins's best friends, Dr. Frisco. [ who I just mentioned, Dr. Collins had actually graduated from medical school in Iowa with Dr. Frisbee. So they had known each other for quite some time and they were very close friends. Everything really came to a climax in the summer of 1909. So stay with me, folks. This is where the dominoes begin to really fall, and it ends very badly. It's a bit of a whodunit, kind of. You'll see what I mean. A man named Major Sladen and his wife were planning to leave on vacation for the summer, and they asked Dr. and the new Mrs. Collins to house-sit for them over the summer. Summer. So the newlyweds moved in. Shortly after moving in, that's when Kate spiraled into that very deep depression because, you know, she's out of money now. And her husband keeps insisting he doesn't love her and she ought to divorce him. All of that came at the same time. He spends all her money and then suddenly, oh, by the way, never did love. You. You should leave me now. But yeah, he can't divorce her because he doesn't have any money. So that's why he's telling her, you know, maybe if you sew some more dresses, then you can divorce me. Ugh, anyway. So you remember Dr. Collins' ex-wife, Nora, right? How can I forget? Yes. So by this time, she is Countess Vigo von Holstein-Rathlow. Well, the Count and Countess have just come back from Denmark after she was, you know... rejected by the royal family, and the Countess goes to visit Dr. Collins at his office on July 11, 1909. What she doesn't know is that he has gotten remarried, and she also doesn't know that Kate is hiding in the closet at the office when she arrives. The Countess and Dr. Collins have some heated conversation about the Countess wanting to see young Billy, who, reminder, that's her biological son. So Dr. Collins also tells her that he is struggling financially and the Countess offers financial help, but Dr. Collins declines. About this conversation later, the Countess said, 'I admit that my conversation with him was not what it would have been had I known she was in an adjoining room, or even had I known he had remarried.' Our conversation was largely about our little Billy. When we first separated, it was agreed I should have him three months out of the year. When I talked to him, he didn't want me to even see the child. A couple days later, Dr. Collins contacted the countess, where she and the count were staying in Portland, and he told her that he was, in fact, remarried. July 16th, 1909, the Count and the Countess showed up at the temporary home of Dr. Collins and Kate. So remember, they are house-sitting. They were at 722 Flanders Street. Dr. Collins' mother, who, remember, was raising little Billy, had brought Billy to the house to visit with his mother. So, you know, they knew that Nora was coming. Billy, by this time, is almost five. When the countess arrived and walked into the living room, only Dr. Collins was in the room. Dr. Collins told Nora that they didn't want Nora to tell Billy that Nora was his mother. Now, I think this is because Nora had been gone since the previous September, and he was about four when she left, so he may not have even remembered her. So Nora began to protest to this, and Kate came charging in and just started flying off the handle, screaming at her. And Kate is quoted as saying, 'I will run you out of town. My, how I hate you. I will kill you one of these days.' Despite all of that happening, Billy was allowed to go with Nora and the Count that night, and he stayed with them for a while. It actually turned out to be a long... while. But we'll get to that. See, for a whole week, every day, Kate had been going to see Dr. Frisbee, her husband's best friend. She's been pleading with him to please talk to Dr. Collins. Please tell him to change his mind about breaking up. Please make him love me again. And according to Dr. Frisbee, he did talk to Roy Collins about it. And every day, Roy Collins insisted that he had never, ever felt any sort of affection toward Kate. Van Winkle, or Kate M. Collins, as she was now known. He said that he didn't know why he had gotten wrapped up in it. He didn't know why he allowed himself to go through with marrying her, and he never should have done it. In one article, Dr. Frisbee said that Kate always swore that she would kill herself if he wouldn't marry her, and Dr. Collins didn't want her blood on his hands. But every other article just says that he didn't know why he married her. Meanwhile, according to Dr. Frisbee, around July 18th or 19th, which would be a day or two after Kate threatened to kill Countess Nora, Kate actually pointed a loaded revolver at her husband, Dr. Collins, with the intent to kill him, and she had also attempted to kill herself. So Dr. Collins and his mother, they had a meeting with Dr. Frisbee, and they talked about having Kate examined and potentially committed to an insane asylum. At the time, Dr. Frisbee took the revolver from Dr. Collins for safekeeping, so it's no longer in the home. Still, Kate continued to come to Dr. Frisbee day after day, begging him to help her change Dr. Collins' mind. He prescribed her a sedative and told her to take one teaspoon every three hours, but she was actually taking a swig from the bottle every hour or so. She sewed and it made her head swim like even faster. So Kate started contacting her sewing clients and she was telling them she couldn't finish their sewing and she would tell them, 'I'm going away.' And then she contacted Judge Willis, her ex-husband's uncle, and she asked him to draw up some legal papers to leave all of her belongings to Gertrude. She said, said to him that she was going away.' Now, he recognized that as her acting the same way that she had been acting back when he and his wife had to watch her for six weeks straight. And he got that feeling that by going away, she meant suicide. Finally, on July 23rd, Dr. Frisbee told Kate that she ought to just leave Dr. Collins. He told her straight up, Dr. Collins is not going to change his mind. And she would be better off without him. She told him, 'Okay,' and that she would give up Dr. Collins, and she said she was going to write a letter to Anna Lichter, the opera singer, and tell her, 'You can come and get Roy, because that's Dr. Collins.' First name, and that she herself would just go away. On the morning of July 24th,

at 8: 46:23

30 in the morning, Kate M. Collins called Dr. Frisbee and said, 'Come to 722 Flanders Street at once. Don't waste a moment.' He tried to find out what was wrong, but all she would say was, 'Don't waste a moment. Come at once.' So he called a taxi and headed over to 722 Flanders Street. When he got there, she was standing in the doorway and waving her arms. She said, 'Come in. He's gone.' She told him that Dr. Collins was in the basement. He took her by the arm, and they went to the basement together. He held her arm in one hand, and he used the other hand to determine that Dr. Collins was indeed dead. And then she started begging Dr. Frisbee to bring him back to life. I'm not stupid, I just got to poo. Many schoolchildren suffer from constipation, which is often the cause of seeming stupidity at lessons. Chamberlain's stomach and liver tablets are an ideal medicine to give a child, for they are mild and gentle in their effect, and will cure even chronic constipation. He asked her where the gun was, and she pointed to a trunk a few feet away from the body. They had been in the basement packing because they had agreed that they would separate that morning and go their separate ways. Kate had indeed written a letter to Anna Lichter to let her know she was free to have Dr. Roy Collins all to herself and that Kate was, quote, going away. Kate was planning to kill herself that morning. Dr. Frisbee opened the lid of the trunk and he saw the gun. Kate tried to grab it from the trunk and said, 'I'm going to kill myself,' and Dr. Frisbee had to, quote, turn her hand down to keep it from her. I'm not sure exactly what that meant, but apparently he left a bruise on her arm. But yeah, so he left it where it was and he called the police. According to Dr. Frisbee, Kate said to him, 'I suppose you want to know why I did it.' And his response to her was. It would be better for you to not talk at all. And then she insisted that Dr. Collins had been very unkind to her. When the deputy coroner arrived at the scene, he saw two bullet holes in the body. One was on the left side of the rib cage and one on the right. At first, they assumed two shots must have been fired, but there was only one shell casing. Well, it turns out that only one bullet was fired. It went into the left side of Dr. Collins, through his lungs and great aorta of his heart, and then exited the right side of his body. Mrs. Kate Collins was at the scene while the body was examined and everything. She fainted three times and she kept making wild statements. Sometimes she said, 'Why did he do it?' Other times she said, 'I am guilty. I did it.' Sometimes she didn't seem to realize that he was dead at all. And when asked how the shooting happened, she would say, 'I must have done it.' She just couldn't give a coherent statement. She really didn't seem to know what happened. She was sent to an asylum that day, and by that afternoon, she had attempted... to take her own life twice. At one point, she had slashed into her arm and had to be restrained. There was no doubt that she was not in her right mind. The trial, surprisingly, did not meet expectations for 1909. On October 12th of 1909, the Oregon Daily Journal reported, crowd is thus far not up to expectations. At every session, there is an abundance of seating capacity, in contrast to most previous murder trials of recent date. And it's crazy to me because those people missed out on a great show. Every day in court, Kate would attempt to stand and moan, and she had her daughter Gertrude on one side of her and her son-in-law Charles Garber on the other. side to restrain her. And they would pull her back down and she would lay her head on either of their shoulders as if she didn't even have the strength to hold herself up. She would say things like, 'You don't have to say it. I know it's true.' or she'd say, 'My God,' or just loud whispers while trying to get to her feet. She would press her handkerchief to her eyes with one hand and clasp her daughter with the other as details of the crime were recited in court. The defense, of course, was insanity. Witness after witness testified to her insanity. Judge P. L. Willis, the man who had to watch her like a hawk, for six straight weeks, he was a great witness talking about her suicidal tendencies, how she wouldn't eat or sleep, how she thought the world was ending. Like, you know, she ran out into the rain in the middle of the night without putting on more clothes. He said that she had even chased his wife around the kitchen with a butcher knife during that time. So yeah, wild. He testified that when her son Roy had died in 1900, she would sit for hours at his grave and she thought that her dreams were real and she wouldn't eat or sleep during that time. He also said that when Gertrude got married in 1907, again, she wouldn't eat or sleep. She was acting so strangely. And that she was very angry toward her son-in-law, who Gertrude had married, for, I guess, taking Gertrude away. And then, right before the killing of Dr. Collins, as you can see, or, you know, it's obvious, she was again in crisis. Just prior to the shooting. She was certain that he was in love with the actress, Anna Lichter, and she would pace constantly and she had that wild stare in her eyes. And she even thought that her husband was crazy, but had no reason for it. Like she was telling Dr. Frisbee that he was crazy and she couldn't explain why. Now, the defense's theory about what happened on the morning of July 24th is this. They said that Mrs. Kate Collins had the gun and was going to kill herself with it, and that Dr. Collins was trying to take the gun away from her, and it simply went off in the scuffle, shooting him in his left side and coming out the right. The state argued that she shot him on purpose because she was jealous and possessive. There was a jury of 12 men. And during deliberations, none of them ever voted to convict. At the first vote, six of them voted to acquit her altogether, and six voted for guilt. Then they asked the judge what would happen if she was found guilty except for insanity. Like, what would be the consequence? And the judge wouldn't tell them and said that they weren't allowed to think about any sort of consequence when they were making their decision. Finally, on October 14th of 1909, the verdict was in. Mrs. Kate M. Collins was found guilty except for insanity. The jury had been out exactly an hour and a half. After the verdict was read, the judge placed Mrs. Collins in the custody of her daughter. He said that it was clear that she was very weak and unwell, and he thought that she may get a lot worse if he sent her to the state hospital in Salem. So he thought it would be best— if she stayed with her daughter for a while. Now, one of the jurors happened to be Reverend Charles T. McPherson from the Epworth Methodist Church. The Sunday following the verdict, October 17th, 1909, he made the Collins trial the subject of his sermon. And he had this to say. The evidence at the trial showed Dr. Roy A. Milton Collins to be a worthless, shiftless, indolent man. He was shrewd and cunning enough to steal away the affections of a tender, sympathetic, loving woman at the time of life when she was longing for someone to love her. At the time of marriage, the bride was 49 years old and the groom only 34. This was too great a difference in ages to ensure continued happiness. To my mind, it was not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Mrs. Collins deliberately took the life of her husband on July 24th, 1909. No one, so far as the evidence went, saw the firing of the fatal shot. The defense, instead of introducing Mrs. Collins' insanity, might have produced sufficient evidence to have justified the jury in bringing in a verdict of not guilty. However, the jury, after hearing all the evidence on both sides, had no reluctance in bringing in a verdict to acquit Mrs. Collins on the ground of insanity. Judge Gattons made no mistake in committing the mother to the care of her daughter for the present. So, yeah, that's the story. Wait, no, there is more that you definitely left out. Oh my gosh. It's such a roller coaster. I know, but we have to tell them. Okay, so Dr. Collins' first wife, who ran off with the count from Denmark, well, she married him, and now, you know, she's this fancy countess, right? So the count adopted little Billy and the three of them were now a family. Well, they couldn't live in Denmark because they had been disowned. So they were back in the United States. States and they had no money and, you know, no skills, nothing but their pretty faces. Well, for the first month after the death of Dr. Collins, they were basically paying for everything on credit. They had an apartment, and where Billy went that night, you know, to go stay with them for the night, they were at this apartment. And they had told the landlord that, you know, 'oh, we're just waiting on a big check from Denmark. It'll be here any day now.' So all the food they ate, the laundry bill, the butcher. This expensive mahogany furniture that they bought to furnish their home at 326 10th Street. Everything was on credit. They were just waiting for this big check from Denmark. And everybody believed them. And then they just disappeared without a trace in August of 1909. But before they were even married... They had been arrested for swindling a guy out of $500 in New York, telling him the same line. They were waiting on a check from Denmark. It would arrive within an hour and they would pay him right back. Then, a few years later, they became fake beauty professors and set up a fake beauty school in Colorado and swindled people out of tons of money. appeared with the money. They were caught and arrested for it in Ogden, Utah in February of 1912. They did time in Colorado. They did time for larceny in New York. time for larceny in Oregon. I don't even know where all they did time, but every time they were in jail, little Billy was apparently in jail with them. If I'm understanding this correctly. He was quoted in one article as saying, 'Which hotel are we staying in this time, mother?' So she was telling him they were hotels. I found one article from 1916 that said they were in New York waiting for deportation as undesirables. I also found on a genealogy website that someone from Denmark was searching for information about Dr. Collins. This person has the last name Holstein. Rathlow and was looking for information about their American side of the family. And as I read through the thread, it turns out that after they returned to Denmark, Nora told the family she was actually an Austrian princess and had grown up in a castle in Austria so the whole Holstein Rathlow royal family, up until the year 2012, believed that little Nora Lang, born in Iowa, was Austrian royalty. These people, I swear, they deserve their own episode. They really, really do. Maybe we should do that. Maybe we will. All right. So. Back to Kate. Life apparently went on. She went back to Kate Van Winkle and she lived in Portland. Her daughter Gertrude lived in Washington with her husband. In 1932, when Gertrude was just 54 years old, Gertrude died of a heart attack. She and her husband had actually never had children. So the little blurb about her death in the paper mentioned that she was the daughter of Mrs. Kate Van Winkle of Portland. So we know Kate was still alive in 1932, living in Portland. But after that, there's no mention of Kate ever again in any newspaper. Nothing about her life. Nothing about her death. It was almost impossible to find anything about her. And it took us until literally yesterday to find anything. Like I even called a cemetery yesterday trying to find where she might be buried. So Olivia, what did you find about her death? Well, we had a couple different ideas about what could have happened. You found a Katie Collins buried over in Pendleton by the old state hospital over there and called them to verify that the burial was indeed from the state hospital, because we know that Kate doesn't handle crisis well. After Gertrude died, she could have lost her mind and been put in the state hospital. But a search through the public vital records didn't really back up that theory, and the date of death was before Gertrude died. And we know from the paper that she was alive when Gertrude died. So then I was thinking, maybe she moved down to California because her younger brother was still alive. The rest of her siblings died in the 1920s, but she still had one brother left. She didn't have any other family in Oregon, so she had no reason to stay. So I did some searching and I found a Catherine Van Winkle with Catherine spelled oddly, but she was listed as having died in Oakland, where most of Kate's siblings died and where she had actually gotten married when she was 16. And this Catherine Van Winkle was listed as dying on April 12th, 1936. That is four years after Gertrude died. So it lines up with our timeline. With the theory we needed to see where her younger brother was living at that time, I looked that up, and sure enough, he was there in Oakland, and even died there in 1944. So I think it's safe to say that we finally found our Kate Van Winkle. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like she was buried anywhere. She probably got cremated and put on a shelf somewhere because there is no record of her burial in any database. Yeah, so that's unfortunate. Couldn't find her. I did create a memorial for her on... So that I could connect her to her kids and to Mark. Be like, can't run from her anymore, Mark. And Collins. Yes, connected. Her there also I saw that they had incorrect information on Dr. Collins's memorial. It said that his first wife was the one who went and killed him, like, because she was jealous of the second wife, like. It was, it was an article that had been written and published in Iowa. And, you know, the old newspapers would change things or get things very, very confused. So I updated his bio. Yeah, well, time for shout outs. Yay, shout out to Ancestry. com, FamilySearch. com, Find a Grave. Newspapers. com. Shout out to Christian for doing our ads. Shout out to... My little brother. Your son. Malcolm. Four. I'm not dumb! Thank you. I've just got to pee. Follow our social media accounts. Forgotten Felonies on Facebook. Forgotten Undercover Felonies on Instagram and also Threads. Send us an email or something at ForgottenFelonies@gmail. com. Leave us a review. And subscribe and tell people about this. Yeah, and if you are a Descendant, we want to hear from you. That has turned into one of the coolest things. Yes. Hearing from Descendants, meeting Descendants. It's been so cool. Leave comments. You can also request us to do a case. Oh yeah, we will take requests. As long as they're forgotten. Yep. Not really, but I mean, you know what I mean. Yeah, as long as there's something that hasn't been covered a lot. But, you know, we're really good at uncovering more detail than other people have found. As long as it's before 1960. Huzzah! Woohoo! What she doesn't know is that he has gotten remarried. She also doesn't know that Kate is hiding in the closet at the office when she arrived, which seems a little weird anyway. Hey, why not? Why not? Well, I mean, one wife was hiding at the store. Which one? What, Nora? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Behind the pillars. I was like, what are you talking about? This is a different story. That's right. She used to hide herself. Anyway, she has no room to judge. Exactly. Right? But see, Kate didn't interrupt and say, 'You're taking too long talking to my husband.' She didn't say a word. Kate's better. Is she? She's the better hider. Oh man. That'll be a good fade out. Uh, okay.