This week, we delve into the haunting, forgotten history of George Jefferson Hassell—one of the most prolific yet overlooked family annihilators in American true crime. While infamous figures like Lizzie Borden or the Axeman of New Orleans dominate popular lore, Hassell quietly picked off two entire families across California and Texas between 1917 and 1926, ultimately taking the lives of 13 innocent people.

What We Cover in This Episode:

• The Concept of Family Annihilation: Defining the psychological phenomenon of familicide and comparing Hassell to well-known modern figures like John List, Chris Watts, and Ronald DeFeo Jr.

• Early Criminal Roots & Military Desertion: Hassell’s troubled beginnings in Smithville, TX, his early prison sentence in Huntsville, and his repeating loops of joining and deserting the U.S. Military.

• The Whittier "Death House" (1917): How a WWI financial dispute led to the brutal strangulation of his common-law wife, Marie Vogel, and her three young children—whose remains lay hidden under a garage in California for nearly a decade.

• The Farwell, Texas Massacre (1926): The horrific week-long slaughter of his second wife, Susan (widow of his late brother Thomas), and all eight of her children in rural Parmer County, Texas.

• The Investigation & Unraveling: How an astute sister-in-law in Pittsburgh connected the dots from national newspaper headlines, guiding police to the buried California victims.

• Trial & Execution: The lightning-fast 1927 trial in Farwell, Texas, Hassell's total lack of remorse, and his eventual death in "Old Sparky" at Huntsville Prison in 1928.

Key Episode Highlights & Quotes:

"So I had started and Lord-God I would have given anything in the world if I had not made the first lick, but I had started it and I finished it."— George Hassell, on beginning the Farwell family massacre

• A Striking Pattern: Exploring author Mitchel P. Roth's classification of Hassell as a "serial mass murderer," examining how he repeated the exact same operational blueprint across both massacres a decade apart.

• The Surviving Son: The story of Delbert Laughlin—Hassell's biological son from his first marriage—whose mother fled in 1910 out of fear for their lives, saving them both from Hassell's violent nature.

• Legal Aftermath: Why California dropped prosecution and allowed Texas to proceed directly with electrocution, alongside the ultimate probate handling of the Oklahoma farmland tied to the estate.

  
  

  Victims Honored in This Episode

• Marie Vogel, 32

• Gerald Vogel, 7

• Rita Baker, 2

• Anthony Baker, 1

• Susan Frances "Susie" Hassell, 40

• Alton Hassell, 21

• Virgil Hassell, 15

• Maudie Hassell, 13

• Russell Hassell, 11

• David Hassell, 7

• Johnnie Hassell, 6

• Nannie Martha Hassell, 4

• Samuel Hassell, 1

  
  

  Sources:

• Wikipedia

• NY Times

• Medium

• Man with the Killer Smile by Mitchel P Roth

• The Bookmark

• Eastern New Mexico News