Along with new tours and a soon-to-be revised website, Freaky Foot Tours is adding historic images, notable dates and a monthly blog to our eclectic pages. This month I (Susan) am writing the entry, though the author may change from time to time. Two themes came to mind for August. One is gentle. The other has kept me up at night for 11 years.
August, the in-between month
August has always seemed a nebulous month to me. Lovely, yes. Still summery, still carrying that carefree feeling of plenty of time to play outdoors. When I was very young, August felt like an extension of July. Now it feels like a month of transition. By the 31st the days are noticeably shorter, the nights are cooler and spooky season is just around the corner.
We use this month to plan ahead for September and October. With historical ghost tours now running in Tucson and Prescott as well as Flagstaff, there is triple the eeriness to sort through. Our guides keep coming up with new material, and friends, guests and other local businesses keep pointing us toward corners of town we have not explored yet.
The Walkup case, 88 years on
The second theme is near to my heart and definitely darker: the Walkup family tragedy. The 88th anniversary just passed, and like every July 22nd for the past 11 years, I spent a good part of the day mulling it over. In the summer of 1937, Marie Walkup took the lives of her four children and then her own. If the case is new to you, start with our overview of the Walkup family tragedy; the full account is in my book, The Walkup Family Murders, from The History Press.
How and what I think about Marie is always changing, and the same goes for her husband, JD. Mothers taking the lives of their children is not unknown in our culture, think of Susan Smith or Andrea Yates, so it is not that the tragedy is incomprehensible. And yet, to me, there are elements of the Walkup story that simply do not fit together.
What do we really know about Marie Walkup?
Less than you might think. When I was researching the book, one source was dismissive of her ("I guess she felt she had a right") and another wrote that people found her "a bit much." The Sun article at the time of the deaths called Marie "attractive and home-loving ... with many friends." Another newspaper described a "fine, conscience mother." The locally printed speculation was that she was morbidly obsessed with a mysterious stomach ailment.
I have often thought that stomach trouble is a key to how Marie managed it relatively early in the evening. She had been in frequent contact with Dr. Fronske that summer, with growing concerns about her stomach and fears her children might contract the same trouble. In that era, laudanum, a tincture of opium, was commonly prescribed for abdominal pain. I doubt we will ever know for certain, but I suspect Marie drugged the little ones that night, maybe at supper. When 9 p.m. rolls around every July 22nd, I still cannot believe four healthy youngsters were sound asleep at such an early hour.
The questions I keep circling
Was Marie mentally unstable? I would say so; no one who is merely low believes taking their children's lives will improve the situation. Was her instability building, think of those repeated calls to Dr. Fronske, until a precipitating incident caused her to snap? That was one scenario the psychiatrist I consulted for the book suggested. If so, was the trigger JD driving a few female softball players down to the Phoenix tournament?
There is not enough blog space to walk through every angle that crowds my mind when I go down the Walkup rabbit hole. Is this a Medea scenario, or one of temporary insanity? I have a lot of sympathy for Marie, and still one question always works its way in: why the children? Why not herself alone? And why drive out to the old Flagstaff Country Club to end it, rather than staying home, close to her little ones? So many questions I would like answered in my lifetime, and likely won't be.
Hear it where it happened
Stories like Marie's are why our tours exist. The Flagstaff Haunted History Tour runs nightly at 7 PM, with an 8 PM walk added Fridays and Saturdays, $29 for adults and 75 minutes through historic downtown. The Walkup case comes up along the way, and the rest of that story gets told on the tour.
Enjoy your August, everyone. Autumn is just around the corner. BOO
