The Denver Spider Man’s Deadly Phrogging
Divulgation/YouTubePolice inspect the attic where Theodore Coneys was phrogging.
Before the creation of the fictional crime-fighting Spider-Man, there was the very real Denver Spider Man. But the Denver Spider Man was a far cry from his superhero counterpart — in fact, he was a murderer.
As the Denver Public Library recounts, the murder took place on October 17, 1941. Philip Peters, a retiree of the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad, was home alone. His children had grown up and moved out, and his wife Helen was recovering in a local hospital after breaking her hip during a fall.
Peters entered his home that night to find a gaunt, disheveled man raiding his icebox. The two soon got into a fight, which ended with the intruder beating Peters to death with a cast iron stove shaker.
An hour later, Peters’ neighbors found his body and called the Denver Police — but the authorities could find no sign of where the intruder had gone. The investigation began, and Helen was released from the hospital, now a widow living alone in the same home where her husband was murdered.
Before long, Helen began to experience strange things — missing food, odd sounds, items not being where she last left them — and she became convinced that her house was haunted. After some time, she moved to Grand Junction to live with her son, and the house stood vacant. But neighbors kept reporting strange sounds and foul smells coming from the home. Each time the police came around, though, they found nothing.
The American WeeklyAn artist’s rendition of the Denver Spider Man phrogging in the attic, featured in The American Weekly in 1942.
Then, one night, in July 1942, detectives Roy Bloxom and Bill Jackson staked out the house. No one had reported anything, but the detectives thought this might work to their benefit — and they were right. They saw a man in the house and went inside, but when they got there, the man was gone.
Or so they thought — until they heard a noise coming from the attic, the entrance to which was in a closet upstairs. That was when they saw two legs disappearing into the hole in the ceiling, and they pulled on them to reveal the full body of a man named Theodore Coneys.
Authorities later learned that Coneys had met Peters through the Denver Guitar Club, and when Coneys fell on hard times, he went to ask Peters for help, only to find the home empty at the time. That’s when he decided to break in and steal some food. A few days later, he did the same thing, but that time Peters found him. Coneys claimed it was a split-second decision to kill Peters, after which he made a “nest” of sorts in the cramped attic.
One officer went up to check out the space, and the smell was so horrid that it made him vomit. He later said, “A man would have to be a spider to stand it long up there.” Thus, the “Denver Spider Man” story was born.
Coneys was ultimately convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
After reading these chilling stories of phrogging, check out these nine creepy stories from history that seem almost too disturbing to be true. Or, read these nine stories of people mistakenly believed to be dead.
