Illustration of Maria Bickford

Boston Daily Mail report

Trial coverage

Rufus Choate

Karen:

America’s first sleepwalking murder defense

Episode sources:

1. “The Trial of Albert John Tirrell for the Murder of Maria A. Bickford.”

2. “Uneasy Virtue” by Barbara Meil Hobson. 1990

3. “The Murder of Maria Bickford: Fashion, Passion and the Birth of a Consumer Culture” by Daniel A. Cohen. 1990

4. “The Sleepwalking Defense” by Robert Wilhelm (Murder by Gaslight) 2011

5. “The Case of the Sleepwalking Killer” by Abbott Kahler (Smithsonian Magazine) 2012

6. “Albert Tirrell Trial: 1846” (Encyclopedia) 

7. “The life and death of Mrs. Maria Bickford” 1845

8. “Albert Jackson Tirrell” (1824-1880)

Georgia:

Ming, Tiger of Harlem

Episode sources:

1. “From a Cub to a Menace, and Now a Mystery” by Lydia Polgreen and Jason George (The New York Times) 2003

2. “A Tiger’s Keeper Says He Misses his ‘Friend’” by Susan Saulny (The New York Times) 2003

3. “Ming, the Bengal Tiger Raised in a Harlem Apartment, Has Died” by Corey Kilgannon (The New York Times) 2019

4. “A 425-Pound Tiger Living in a Harlem Apartment? Yes, It Happened” by Corey Kilgannon (The New York Times) 2020

5. “A Farewell to Ming, the Siberian-Bengal Tiger Who Spent Three Years in a Harlem Apartment” by Brigit Katz (Smithsonian Magazine) 2019

6. “The Forgotten Tiger King of Harlem” by Zaron Burnett III (Mel Magazine) 2020

7. “It was Just a Friendly Mauling” by Daryl Khan and Rocco Parascandola  (Newsday) 2003

8. “Tiger man sentenced” by Karen Freifeld (Newsday) 2004

9. “A Solitary Tiger” by Lisa L. Colangelo, Michele McPhee and Dave Goldiner (Daily News) 2003

10. “Cops bag a big, bad cat in Harlem high-rise apt.” by  Lisa L Colangelo, Alice McQuillan, Kerry Burke and Tracy Connor (Daily News) 2003

Drew-Hamilton apartment complex

(Jim Henderson)

Police footage of Ming in the apartment

(NYPD)

NYPD with a tranquilizer gun, attempting to get Ming out of the apartment

(NYPD)

Caiman

(Bernard DUPONT / CC BY-SA 2.0 Generic)

Antoine Yates

(ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy)

Ming's resting place in Hartsdale, NY

(HenryJonesnyc / CC BY-SA 4.0)

Recommendation Corner

Books
Hangxiety by Millie Gooch