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Are there two sides to every story?

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I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson.

I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime.

And I'm Paul Holz, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved them.

Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes.

And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.

Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st-century lens.

Some are solved, and some are cold.

Very cold.

This is Buried Bones.

Hey, Paul.

Hi, Kate.

How are you?

I'm doing well.

I have a question because every once in a while I get very down about true crime.

It's hard to work in this space all the time.

It can be very sad, of course.

And I think

the more that I allow myself to be affected by it, the more I'm sort of like, oh my gosh, I need the inspirational stuff.

So since you were in the field and you worked for so long, what were the things that you saw, or maybe it's cases that you worked where they could have been awful, but you were inspired by something.

I don't know if it's the family or a survivor or anything like that where you just kind of thought, wow, this is a new perspective and one that I would not think somebody would be able to muster this up, but they have.

Can you think of anything like that?

Well, I can think of multiple examples of, I guess, surprising resilience.

Most notably, there's a case.

This is the Ziana Fairchild case.

Seven-year-old girl.

She goes missing, and she's missing for a long time.

Her great biological great aunt, Stephanie, but she was the one who actually raised Zianna because Ziana's bio-mom was in prison at the time Zianna was born.

Stephanie raised Ziana, believe it or not, out here in Colorado Springs before moving.

When BioMom wanted her daughter back, Ziana went to Vallejo, California with BioMom and the boyfriend.

And Stephanie ultimately moved out to Vallejo when Ziana went missing after having to walk alone to her bus stop.

She was a missing girl.

I forget exactly how long, like a year.

And then her skull was found in in the Los Gatos Mountains.

A dog brought her skull back.

Stephanie reached out to me when she found out about who I was and asked if I could help on Ziana's case, which I did.

And I became friends with Stephanie.

And here is a mother, you know, when, like, I'm trying to find Ziana, the rest of Ziana.

That was part of my goal is to get Stephanie, Ziana back.

And I distinctly remember I was so crushed when I found out that where Ziana had been dumped, this is where you have wild boar.

And wild boar eat carry-on, bones and all.

And I had to tell Stephanie, you know, I was like, oh, I don't think you're going to get, you're going to find Ziana.

I don't think she's out there anymore.

And I so dreaded that conversation.

And I kind of led into this going, it's going to be hard.

And Stephanie just, you know, straight up looked looked me in the eye and said, I need to hear it.

And I told her, you know, and you could see her eyes waver, but she just became even more resolute after that.

And then ultimately, you know, she's confronting Ziana's killer, who was Curtis Dean Anderson.

She's literally going into jail, confronting him.

She's having to correspond with him.

And I know she.

has a book out about her correspondence with her daughter's killer, you know, and you could see through the letters, the exchange of these letters, the torment that he was putting her through, because this is when she didn't know Siana was dead.

It was before the skull had been found.

But

in many ways,

she was inspiring because even with such a horrific tragedy, she

really showed kind of perseverance.

And, you know, there's so many aspects to her story that, you know, it's just, it is one of those things where you go, yes, this is, she's, she suffered through so much,

but she really sets the bar in terms of showing a level of strength and optimistic outlook in the face of the worst thing imaginable.

Wow.

And I know you've experienced that with Golden State Killer, you know, survivors and families and stuff.

And, you know, I think what an awful way to see that, to get you have to be able to get an inspiration from it.

But I think about that too when we talk about our cases and the way that people particularly in the 1800s just tracked down killers and the you know the detectives with the magnets on the fishing line trying to find desperately find a weapon that's been thrown in the river and and you know spillsbury i think pulling off some like these amazing things in the 1930s and 40s in england i think you know i i always am trying to pick out the things that are not the things things that I think people find entertaining.

I think it's the things that are, for me, are touching and that really do show character.

And I tell my kids that when you see whether you have grit and what your character is, oftentimes is when terrible things are happening.

And hopefully, terrible things don't happen.

But at the same time, it's like, wow, who would have thought that the person could have gotten through that?

So I was thinking that you've witnessed so many of those types of stories that you must run into families where you just go, man, I don't know how somebody can do all this.

And then it's inspirational.

It is, you know, because I think about, you know, what if it happened to somebody that was close to me?

Yeah.

You know, how would I respond?

Yeah.

You know, so to see Stephanie, to see some of these other victims that I've interacted with

and how they've

used these negative experiences and these tragedies in order to do good afterwards, you know, that's very inspiring.

Good.

Well, I'm glad to hear some of those.

And I wanted to start with that question for you because the story we're going to talk about is one of those, for me, very hard stories.

And this is graphic, for even for me, graphic.

There's a sexual assault, so we're going to do a trigger warning for that.

But particularly some of the details that we'll talk about with the injuries in the murder are difficult.

And I just want to tell people that we're going to do a really good job, I think, of making sure we only include the stuff we need to include.

I just really, I cannot stand it when I either read or hear or watch something in the true crime space where it's so graphic and there's no point because now I can pick out the things that you would want to hear.

And if it's not something that's going to add and it feels gratuitous, I don't think it's good to add, you know?

Sure.

That's that's part of the struggle.

Like if I'm listening to a case or being asked about a case, you know, for me, I need to know all.

I know.

Right.

And I'm used to having all, you know, and trying to, you know, juggle the true crime aspect versus me doing what I know I can do if I have all the information.

That's always been a struggle.

Yeah.

And I give you all the information, but I really try to think about it as making it not gratuitous because, boy, it bugs me.

Anyway, we are going back to the 1800s, which makes me very happy.

We're going to Pembroke, New Hampshire.

So let's go ahead and set the scene.

So this is relatively rural New Hampshire.

It's 1875.

And most of the people who live in this area are farmers or they work for one of several nearby mills.

And this town is about seven miles away from the city of Concord, which is New Hampshire's capital.

So small area.

And we're talking about a couple of different towns, and I'll explain why in a little bit.

So here's the main family.

It's the Langmaid family, and they live on a farm about two miles outside of Pembroke.

So even more rural.

and they're in a village called Suncook.

They have two kids.

One's a girl named Josie, who's 17, and they have a boy named Waldo, love that name, who is 16.

And both of these kids attend school at the Pembroke Academy, which is in Pembroke in the town.

Their normal schedule would be that they would walk together.

the sister and the brother, and then they would meet up with one of Josie's friends, who is a girl her age, called Lilia Fowler on the way, who is a neighbor.

So here's what happens on the day that we need to focus on.

The morning of October 4th, Josie is running late and her brother Waldo is ahead of her.

He says, I've got to go to school.

I don't want to be late to school.

And she says, fine.

Lilia waits for Josie.

She's there.

Josie's there.

But Lilia says, I've got to go.

I can't be late for school.

So she catches a ride into town on a passing wagon, which I guess was a thing.

I mean, you just hitch a ride with somebody who's, you know, probably a neighbor.

These are small areas.

They probably knew each other.

So, you know, her brother and her friend had seen her.

And obviously, Josie's going to be the focus here.

And she was at home trying to get out the door.

So the path that these kids would normally take would be past all the neighbors' houses.

And then there's this stretch that goes through some woods.

By the afternoon, Josie's parents learn that she never made it to school.

So Waldo made it to school, and then Lilia, who caught a ride on a wagon, made it to school.

Josie didn't.

So this is in the afternoon.

The question was, once the parents found out, who do they talk to?

They talked to the people along the pathway where Josie would have gone by herself, including through the woods.

So they said, where's our daughter?

Have you seen her this morning?

Witnesses in several of these houses, including the one that is the last house before you enter the woods, say they saw her walking that morning when she was, you know, just running a little bit late.

She was walking briskly in the direction of the school.

The parents find out that she never made it to school.

They're talking to the neighbors.

The neighbors spread the word.

Investigations back then were primarily handled by local constables and city marshals.

I wanted to find out because I was thinking, okay, when are they going to sound the alarm to investigators?

But these are, you know, these investigators were far-flung, especially in these little rural towns.

So it looks like they were doing their own investigation first.

The officers worked part-time, so they were like tax collectors and officers at the same time.

And obviously, you know, they had investigated cases, but this might have been outside their range.

So within a half an hour of the parents finding out that their daughter's missing, there's a search party.

And over that afternoon and into the evening, 100 men accumulate to search Josie's route to school.

And as the night falls, they use torches to light the way.

Before I get to, you know, the next part of this, I'll say they're looking at her last movements, and then they do a, they form a line by torchlight and sweep the woods, which as somebody who loves sort of darker, kind of creepy things, must have been an incredible sight.

It's like nighttime grid search.

I guess it would depend on the conditions, but would they do grid searches and overnight searches in the middle of the night, even today?

I mean, is this usually an all if there's somebody who's missing who's at risk?

Would it be bad weather or what would stop them from doing something, a search at night like this, all night?

Well, it really is down to the exigency, you know.

And here you have a missing girl that's at risk.

The people that are in charge of search and rescue will make the decision as to whether the conditions are not viable for the search.

But most certainly, you see at night, you'll see these these types of searches, not with fire, with flashlights, you know, but you have a grid search where everybody is within arm's length of each other, if not a little bit

wider spaced, and they are told they have to overlap, you know, what they're searching.

So everybody's looking, you know, there's multiple eyes on each spot of land that they're walking through.

And there's other types of search patterns that can be done.

So, you know, back in 1875, to be frank, I'm quite impressed that they are doing a grid search.

The order of magnitude of how tough it is at night to see versus during the day is huge.

You know, you're so much better during the day to see things.

But when you have an at-risk youth, you do what you can.

This October, we're doing something very different.

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It's not just a cruise.

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Well, let me set this scene.

They're in these woods.

I have a picture of the woods, 1875 picture, maybe a little bit older, but I know.

They find her body at nine o'clock.

So it's pitch black outside.

It's just them with moonlight and starlight and these torches.

And they find her about a half a mile into the woods from the road.

This is 12 hours later.

So if you look at your little packet, only look at page one for me.

This to me looks like the road that would be, you know, Academy Road, I believe, is where the road that she took to go through these woods.

Yeah, so this picture is showing,

God, it's maybe half the width of a standard road today, but it looks like it's dirt.

It's going through very dense brush,

trees,

bushes, you know, it's on both sides of this road.

So I can see the road kind of turn to the left in the background and just disappear from sight.

You know, so this, obviously, there's, there's limited visibility, you know, these kids walking down this path, and they would be doing this on a routine basis, you know, so that that comes into my mind as

whoever killed Josie, you know, is this somebody that knew the pattern?

And when he saw that she was isolated, which is unusual considering she's normally with her brother and her friend, that just was happen to station themselves at a location and sees Josie alone, fully expecting kids to be walking through at this, roughly this period of time.

You know, or is there somebody that's just happens?

You know, was this, was Josie a victim of opportunity?

Right now, can't say either way, but most certainly an offender could easily hide along this route and there'd be no witnesses to see that there's somebody there.

Yeah.

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what the investigators say about was this a crime of opportunity or what what happened.

Let me give you the details about what happened with josie so she's 17 and when they come up on her they immediately note many things she's been decapitated her clothes are badly torn and covered in blood her body appears to be badly mutilated though the full extent is not immediately clear and they're not touching her.

So once they locate her, I'm assuming they have people sit there all night until the next day.

The searchers show up and then we'll have a coroner investigator show up too.

The next day, they find her head deeper in the woods.

It's wrapped in a blue oil cloth cape that she had been wearing when she left the house.

Oilcloth is a fabric that's been coated to make it water repellent, probably like linseed or something, linseed oil.

We're going to have three doctors do the autopsy, which is good.

I'm actually impressed with some of the stuff that happens in this case.

We talk about investigators all the time.

But just at first blush, they said that her face has been cut.

There's a a mark on her cheek that resembles a boot heel.

Other things,

close to the road, the searchers find a broken three-foot club.

It sounds like it's cracked, but it didn't break into two pieces.

The club is made of red oak and an inch and a half thick.

It appears to have been cut recently.

One side of the club seems to have been whittled to form a handle.

They also find her schoolwork near this club and an apple, which everybody said she had been carrying earlier that morning.

What do you think so far?

You raised your eyebrows when it was very clear that someone had actually carried her head somewhere, not let it roll down the hill or something.

Well, I think right now,

absent other behavioral indicators, identification of the body would often be done by taking a look, having people who know the victim, by taking a look at the victim.

And obviously, the face is the primary feature that people will use to identify who the victim is.

The decapitation may have been a way to just delay the identification of the body,

but I can't say that with confidence without really knowing more of what happened to her, because there may be some very sick reasons that the offender decapitated her.

The initial thought, you know, her clothes are torn.

Of course, they're bloody.

Her body is mutilated, and I can extrapolate in terms of the types of mutilation.

This is sounding like a type of offender that I've seen at work with other victims, both in real life as well in my own cases, as well as textbook examples.

The presence of this three-foot club that has a handle already whittled into it.

I think one of the questions that I have about that is

this an object that has some sort of purpose

for whatever could be happening in this particular area?

Or was this an object that the offender made in order to hurt somebody?

And if that's the case and the offender has that with him, that's showing pre-planning.

I can tell you this is not the kind of object that would have been produced in these two towns that are next to each other, Pembroke, where, you know, she goes to school, and then where she's from.

So

this appears to be custom-made.

Okay.

So

this sounds like the offender is in this location and is armed with a pre-manufactured weapon.

Could suggest that the offender was lying in wait for the right opportunity and Josie was the right opportunity.

Because I imagine that it's not just Josie, Lillia, and Waldo walking to school through this route.

There's probably

waves of children that are walking through.

And so here is a source, a victim pool.

And now you have a predator going to where the prey is at.

And it just happens that that particular day, Josie, because she was late, was the child that was isolated and the predator pounced.

Well, I was going to save this for later, but because you've been talking about it and you've gotten so good at mentioning things that I am going to tell you about, like literally, I'll say, oh, I need to tell Paul this, and then you'll say it.

It's like, we're right here, Paul.

You and me, right here.

I'm going to go ahead and tell you now.

So, yes, you're right.

This is a route that other kids would have used.

This is an interesting part.

Once the investigation really gets going into her murder, a classmate of Josie's said that on the day that she was murdered, that morning, he was walking to school on that same road.

And at the point right before there's a hill that you climb and you could see the school and then it's literally all downhill after that.

At the point right before the final hill, he heard a rustling in the bushes by the road.

Kids, they like to hide in these bushes and jump out at each other, which is

a good way to get punched in the face as far as I'm concerned.

They love to scare each other.

And that's what the classmate thought was happening when he heard the rustling.

He said, I know who did this, Tom or whoever, some kid.

And he said, You know, he didn't jump out at him.

So he just went on to school and said, Well, he's going to scare the crap out of somebody.

But then he got to school and that kid was already there.

So it wasn't Tom or whoever that kid was.

Okay.

So there's a witness who said he heard a rustling and it clearly wasn't a classmate.

And they had talked to everybody and said, no, it wasn't me.

And you said that this was at the top of the hill?

He said at the point right before the final hill.

So at the bottom of the hill.

And there were bushes.

Well, you saw the bushes.

I mean, yeah, so this is where, if this is the offender, and I think, you know, it's likely it could have been, you know, part of the evaluation of this location, and you put yourself in the offender's mind, is that the offender's not going to choose, let's say, a switchback location where you have no visibility down either stretch of the road.

You don't know who's coming, you know.

So you're going to position yourself where you can see victims approaching.

So so you can evaluate the circumstances, plus, you can determine further off in the distance: are there other people coming?

And then start plotting.

If you see somebody that's isolated, like Josie, and you look past Josie because

you've purposely chosen a location where you can see down the road, you see nobody is coming from that direction.

I now have my opportunity.

And the wrestling, this classmate who is a male classmate, you know, I'm wondering if the offender considered this classmate a victim and decided for one reason or another not to attack.

And it may have been because this was a male, and that's not this offender's preferred victim.

It may be that he saw other kids starting to approach and backed away.

Who knows?

But this location tends to suggest that, yes, you have an offender who knows these kids are flowing through this location and just lied and wait until the right opportunity presented itself.

And unfortunately, that was Josie.

This October, we're doing something very different.

We'll be recording Buried Bones live at sea.

That's right.

Kate and I will both be part of the first ever True Crime Podcast Voyage, hosted by Virgin Voyages and iHeart Podcasts.

This is five nights of mystery, luxury, and Halloween fun, sailing to the Dominican Republic and Bimini Bahamas, adults only.

No kids, no stress.

Expect a live podcast recording of buried bones, crime-themed trivia, behind-the-scenes sessions with iHeart hosts, and yes, plenty of surprises.

And it's all wrapped in the full Virgin Voyages experience: 20-plus eateries, Michelin star chef-curated menus, lux staterooms, Wi-Fi, and entertainment included.

It's not just a cruise, it's a celebration of thoughtful true crime storytelling, and we want you to join us.

Book your cabin cabin now at virginvoyages.com/slash true crime.

That's virginvoyages.com/slash true crime.

We'll see you on board.

This episode is brought to you by IQ Bar, our exclusive snack and hydration sponsor.

IQ Bar is the better for you plant protein-based snack made with brain-boosting nutrients to refuel, nourish, and satisfy hunger without the sugar crash.

The Ultimate Sampler Pack is a great way to try all IQ Bar products and flavors.

You get nine IQ bars, eight IQ mix sticks, and four IQ Joe sticks.

All IQ bar products are entirely free from gluten, dairy, soy, GMOs, and artificial sweeteners.

With over 20,000 five-star reviews and counting, more people than ever are starting their days on the right foot with IQ bars, brain and body boosting bars, hydration mixes, and mushroom coffees.

I always feel like I have to have something to perk me up in the afternoon.

IQ bars are really convenient and they taste great.

And right now, IQ Bar is offering our special podcast listeners 20% off all IQ products, plus get free shipping.

To get your 20% off, just text bones to 64,000.

Text Bones to 64,000.

That's B-O-N-E-S to $64,000.

Message and data rates may apply.

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Let's keep going.

Something odd that I think will be important later on.

According to some reports, there are twigs that are found tied together on top of Josie's body.

They're kind of vague reports, but it will pop back up soon.

They don't know what they were used for, but they were twigs that were tied together in what's described as a Frenchman's knot.

Why?

I don't know.

Looking up this Frenchman's knot, it's basically a bolan knot with two loops.

I know how to tie a bolin knot.

It's something that can be used like camping.

It's a knot in which it's very functional,

it's very strong.

You know, if you were to tie it around

an object, you know, it's going to be very secure.

But it's also a knot that you can utilize the loop

in in order to be able to put more of the line through to make like a quick release type of scenario, like using a twig in this new loop that you put through the existing loop.

And so all you have to do in order to release whatever the rope is tied around is to remove the twig.

And now you can just, boom, you can get up and go real quick.

Now, the use of the two loops, you know, just with the real brief research I did watching a YouTube video, they indicated it's frequently used in search and rescue because you can get two loops around, let's say, a person's wrist.

And so you have sort of additional, an additional safety measure that that rope is going to hold on to the person while you're trying to, you know, bring them to safety.

So

that's my understanding of the French ones, but I am familiar with the fundamental bolan knot.

Okay.

Well, hopefully that'll help us a little bit.

Now, I told you that they found closer to the road, they found this club, and also

that they found Josie's schoolwork and an apple.

These were items that were found at the bottom of a hill.

So, I think this is the hill that the schoolmate was talking about, the last hill before you hit the school.

So, they're at the bottom of the hill.

The bushes are left or right.

We're not sure.

If she had climbed to the top of the hill, she could have seen the school and they could have seen her.

So, they find this stuff at the bottom of the hill right before she would climb the hill.

What they think is that the killer attacked Josie on that road before she reaches the hill through the club and you know all of this other stuff over, it says a stone wall, which I didn't see a stone wall anywhere, but then dragging her body into the woods.

I'll have an autopsy report right now where they found that she had been sexually assaulted.

And then one other point before we tell you, we comment or we talk about the autopsy, she had been wearing a plain gold ring that she always wore.

She had worn a gold enameled breastpin.

She had five cents on her and some other small items that were trinkets, and they're all missing.

Yeah, those are souvenirs.

You know, so that really is informative about this type of offender.

This is now a fantasy-motivated offender.

He's not taking these items because they have value.

He's taking these items because he has...

He wants to hold on to them.

They're a source of memory for him.

It's also a feeling of conquest.

When he looks at those items, he knows, you know, he'll remember basically conquering Josie.

So it's very informative about the mindset of this offender.

You know, the location of Josie's schoolwork in Apple, yes, that suggests that's likely where she is confronted by the offender.

Even though the club is there, I need to know more about Josie's injuries to determine what, you know, was she,

you know, was she hit?

like over the head with this club at this location.

It's also possible the offender just used his physical presence,

you know, threatened her with the club and then made her walk back into the woods, further into the woods before he attacked her and killed her.

Okay, get ready for this.

So if you all

do not want to listen to this, I don't blame you.

There's some pretty brutal details in here, so you can please feel free to skip ahead.

So Paul, do you want me to just

kind of go through this or I'll just stop at every paragraph and you can do your ahum and I'll know when to keep going or if if you want to pause.

Okay.

Okay.

Sure.

Three doctors conduct this post-mortem examination.

And by the way, in the meantime, they've hired a detective from Boston who's coming in and looking at a lot of stuff.

So that's good.

So now we have an actual detective.

I mean, I assume an actual detective who's coming in.

Three doctors work on this.

They examine her body.

Here's the first thing.

They find that her thumb and several small bones are broken on her right hand, and they believe that she caught the club when the killer was swinging it at her.

Yeah, defensive injuries.

It looks like she was struck twice, once on either side of her head.

And the doctors believe that the boot heel impression was from the killer jumping on her head.

Well, I don't know how they're concluding jumping or stomping or, you know, holding her down, you know, with the bottom of his foot.

Yeah, so I don't think you can draw that conclusion, but you can draw a conclusion that, you know, yeah, he put her foot on her head with force.

And they see this mark and said immediately it's a boot heel that's on her cheek.

Okay, remember that investigators said that after he had subdued Josie close to the road, he dragged her further into the woods.

They think she was still alive when this happened.

Once away from the main road, there are definite signs that she had been sexually assaulted.

Why do you think that they would think that she was still alive?

Would you see marks like that she was fighting as she's being dragged or what would give them that indication, do you think?

Well, it's possible, you know, in terms of her being still being alive, it may be because of the assessment of the injuries to her head from the club were not significant enough that the pathologist or these doctors felt would have caused death.

So that's one possibility.

There's also the possibility that there is a trail of blood that suggests that there's still active bleeding going on,

where, you know, if she has an open wound and there's significant bleeding that persists along the length of this trail, that her heart is still pumping.

So there may be several factors that they're looking at.

And then it's also, well,

what's going on at the sexual assault location?

And then ultimately, you told me previously you have body mutilation.

Was there, you know, a knife being used?

Does it look like she has defensive injuries as a result of the, you know, a knife or whatever is going on?

So

there'd be multiple things that they could be relying upon to say she's still alive at this location where her body is found.

Okay.

Here are the last bits that I think are the most difficult.

I want to preface this by saying that they aren't sure whether any of this stuff happened aside from the sexual assault

before she died or after she died.

But, I mean, what I think is good about these three doctors is they don't seem to be assuming too much.

There's a lot of, this is what we think, but we're not sure, and we need more evidence.

They said that the killer ripped and cut at her clothes.

So this was in the woods, that he gashed her body and mutilated her.

But the newspapers, I'm sure out of propriety, don't describe the injuries in great detail.

But what the doctors say is that her vulva had been mutilated and partially cut away.

The doctors say that the killer used a knife or some kind of sharp instrument to slit her cheek, her ear, and her lip.

They do not know what kind of knife.

I don't even think they want to try to guess.

They think that she was alive when her head was cut off using that same knife or a sharp instrument.

And one more line before you react to that.

Her head had been cut off at the shoulders.

They say this was done skillfully because of the way the first and second vertebrae were separated.

So this is a sexual sadist, and that's exactly what I thought was going on.

You know, he, in essence, this is the worst type of offender that any victim would ever want to be confronted by, because he gets sexual pleasure out of out of torture, out of inflicting fear and

doing these extreme violence while the victim is still alive.

You know, Josie's last moments were horrific.

You know, the mutilation.

you know, part of that is the sadism that's going on.

Part of that, you know, some of the sort of the behavioral experts, you know, they they talk about this defeminization.

And I'm not going to go into details, but this is where specific parts of the female anatomy are targeted by the offender and, let's just say, obliterated or removed from the victim's body.

And it is something that has, you know, I've seen it in person.

I've, I've, there's plenty of textbook examples of this type of

offender.

He's a serial predator.

There's no question about it.

Now, has he committed other attacks prior or other attacks afterwards you know i i can't say that but he is motivated by fantasy his fantasy is to inflict sadistic acts on his victim and have them writhe in pain and scream out in pain and be in fear before he kills them and then you know the decapitation you know there may be just what we would call an mo aspect to it is to delay identification of josie you know this

again

this is a, you know, it's 1875, and it just really underscores that

this type of predator existed before

we even knew what a serial killer was, or that term was, right?

That was really not until the 1970s that that term was even

applied or used.

I go back that you think about the lore of these various monsters, the werewolves, the vampires.

Well,

some of the victims of these monsters are probably victims of this type of predator.

And people didn't know what they were looking at when they came across them.

And they had to come up with an explanation.

Must have been a werewolf, must have been a vampire.

But the reality is, is that

these predators have existed since the dawn of time.

Yeah.

Well, this was so brutal.

Oh, what about the, did you talk about this the second and the first vertebrae they thought it was done skillfully must be somebody medically trained type of dismemberment right because they're they're noticing

right they're noticing right they're noticing oh this this person is cutting through the easy part of the neck in order to remove her head you know it's in between the vertebrae this may suggest that you have somebody that has

some training.

I wouldn't say necessarily medical, but it could be because they're a, you know, they've, they've butchered animals.

They're a hunter, you You know, they understand that.

But also understand this type of predator probably has killed animals prior and has dismembered these animals and then learns, well, the knife isn't going to go through the vertebrae, so I have to go in between the vertebrae to get this animal's head off.

They learn this just because this is what they're doing.

It's like a Jeffrey Dahmer, you know, who's butchering animals and putting their, you know, I think I remember a picture of a dog's head being put on a steak.

He's got experience with animal anatomy.

And so, of course, that translates into dismembering humans.

So it really, to me, it just, it just suggests that this offender has probably dismembered animal and or humans before.

Well, I can tell you in the 1800s, I would have a hard time finding a man who hadn't at some point had to break down the carcass of an animal.

You know, I guess if he were extremely wealthy, but not out here in the rural area.

So that wouldn't surprise me these days, yes, but not then.

Okay, well, I'm glad we made it through that autopsy.

As I had mentioned before, the townspeople hire a detective from Boston.

The news goes everywhere, of course, and there are several people of interest that are identified and arrested.

Of course, they shake down what they call tramps, which are the homeless or itinerant men.

The only black man in one of these small towns is arrested and comes to nothing.

None of this happens.

Everybody has alibis, the leads go nowhere until this story gets really, for me, disturbing and not in a violent way necessarily, but in a just a weird, creepy way.

So here we go.

We start to have a suspect pretty quickly, even though they've sort of looked through all of these different people who are more likely suspects.

They start to home in on this guy who worked for the friend Lelia.

Her dad would hire people to do farm work.

And there was an odd man who was there.

So I'll give you all this context.

So this is Josie's friend, Lelia.

She was the one who was supposed to go to school, but she caught a ride instead.

They're neighbors.

Lelia's father's name is True Worthy Fowler.

Great name.

So Fowler has hired several men to do farm work the day before Josie's murder.

And among this group of men is someone who Mr.

Fowler doesn't know his real name, but people call him the Frenchman.

While they're working, the Frenchman sees Lilia.

This is not Josie, it's Lilia, coming home on the road from school one afternoon.

He asks her brother, who was working with the men on this project, which route that his sister, Lelia, takes to get to school.

And then, of course, you know the story of the classmate saying that there was somebody in the bushes.

And now, of course, the detective and other authorities think that this guy, who nobody knows his real name, was waiting in the woods, the Frenchman, and he was actually targeting Lilia, not Josie.

But Lilia gets a ride to school on a passing carriage, and Josie comes instead.

So that's what they think happened.

The issue, of course, is this guy is long gone.

So what do you think about that?

That's entirely plausible, but it's just, I think, one of many possibilities.

But of course,

he's a suspect because

why is he asking about the route that Lily is taking to school, back and forth to school?

That's showing an unusual level of interest in the details about this young girl, you know,

and her whereabouts.

So it's possible that,

yeah, he planned on making Lily a victim if the circumstances were right.

And then that morning, Lillia was not somebody that he would be able to victimize.

And while he's out there, Josie presented herself, if you will, in terms of walking to school, not far behind, you know, the other kids, but still isolated.

Okay, well, let's start putting this together.

And this is where I become impressed with some of the folks here in New Hampshire.

October 8th, we're going to go back a little bit.

This is three days after Josie's murder.

True worthy Fowler comes into play, Lilia's dad.

So remember, he knows this information.

I think his son had said, well, your weird guy who now is gone as of the day that Josie was murdered asked this question about Lilia.

He has this information in his head.

Fowler happens to be what's called a selectman of Suncook, where everybody's from, and it's like a mayor.

So three days later, while he's ruminating on all of this and this mystery Frenchman, he gets a letter from a judge in in the town of St.

Albans, Vermont, which is close to Canada, I'm sure you know.

The letter is from a judge who says, you need to hear about this.

There's a murder that happened in St.

Albans, and it sounds kind of like what happened in your town to Josie.

The judge says that about a year earlier, the evening of Friday, July 24th, 1874, there is a young school teacher named Marietta Ball.

She is at the school building where she works.

This is at night.

She locks up by herself and she sets off on a one-mile walk to a friend's house.

Part of the walk is through a wooded area.

The road is not heavily trafficked.

She never made it to the friend's house.

Her body was found about halfway between the school where she locked up and the friend's house.

She was found off the road in the woods.

It's, they say, 40 yards, I like it when they say rods.

It's 40 rods into the woods.

You know, that is now 16 and a half feet per rod, so it's, you know, 660 feet off the road and into the woods.

Evidence she had been raped.

Marietta is described as, I don't know what this means, uncommon muscular strength.

There are a lot of signs, according to the medical examiner or the coroner there, that Marietta fought very hard against the attacker.

But we don't have a lot of information about the autopsy.

There's a mask that's found near Marietta's body.

It's made out of carpet and has strings that have been tied in what's described as a Frenchman's knot, which is the way that the twigs were tied above Josie's body a year later.

There you go.

So, what do you think about all that?

Well, this Frenchman's knot, you know, the commonality between the two victims, you know, I think that's reasonably significant.

I don't know how much weight to put on that because I don't know

back then in terms of

how common was it this particular knot being used i would tell you today that would be hugely significant because you just never see that in all the cases in which i've had knots the reality is is that with the exception of one case which wasn't even my case uh

it's one out of coronado most of these knots are what i'd call cluster knots these are just the offender tying half hitches on top of half hitches i've got you know shoelace knots,

whether it be a granny knot or a square knot, which is basically the same thing, except just some slight differences in terms of how they're tied.

That's what you see.

And so the use of a specialized knot, like the Frenchman's knot,

right now I go, yeah, there's significance that in both victims, that this knot is present.

Both victims have a, the, where they're attacked in the woods is similar.

It's like a lying in wait, and the the offender is comfortable utilizing, let's say,

the brush or the trees in order to hide.

We've got sexual assault in both cases.

In Marietta's case, you're not talking about any of the mutilation or the kind of the sadistic aspects that we see in Josie's case, but it sounds like we don't have those types of details.

Because that, for me, would,

in essence, if there was similar mutilation occurring where I'm going, yeah, this is a sexual sadist at work, then I would say the same offender killed both of these women.

Right now, I would say it's likely these cases are related.

I'd want more of those types of behavioral details in order to say, yes, these are definitely related.

Okay, well, let me tell you what they think in Vermont about who did this to Marietta and why it's so alarming that they're contacting, you know, this mayor in New Hampshire.

The authorities in St.

Albans was certain it was a guy named Joseph Lepage that had killed Marietta.

There wasn't enough evidence to bring him to trial, according to this judge, but

circumstantially they thought it was him.

I actually honestly don't know why.

But it's a French name.

Well, he's from Quebec.

Okay.

And he was a woodcutter, if you remember the club.

Yeah, so, well, this is where, you know, you have this nebulous suspect, you know, this hired worker that they refer to as the Frenchman in Josie's case.

And now you have this Joseph Lepage as a suspect in a similar case, French name from Quebec.

You know, so there's some overlapping characteristics with suspects and the suspect characteristics within these two cases.

I think most crucially, he had since Marietta's murder, Joseph Lepage and his family had moved to Sun Cook, New Hampshire, where Josie was from.

So he's in the area.

So now we have geographic connections between the two cases, the suspect and the two cases.

Okay.

This is churn.

I always describe this, you know, because having worked massive cases like Golden State Killer, you're looking at different men all the time as suspects.

And some of these guys, it's like just static.

No matter how, what you look, where you look about this particular suspect, nothing seems to do anything.

It's just that there's nothing going on with this guy in terms of elevating him as a suspect.

But then you come across somebody and all of a sudden there's some connections being made.

And then this is where you have some churn.

And this is where what I'm saying with this Joseph Lepage is like, oh, there's churn here.

Now, is he the killer?

I can't say that right now, but you know what?

There's enough here where he's percolating to the top and is going to get my full attention.

Well, here we go.

October 13th, the authorities from New Hampshire Attorney General's office arrest Joseph at his house.

He has his wife with him and four of his five kids.

And they search the house.

They find a coat with bloodstains on it and a pair of boots.

And the heel of the boot matches the mark on Josie's cheek.

I mean, I'm sure you could throw a rock and hit somebody who had those kind of boots, but still he has boots, pointy boots, it sounds like.

So the local French community feels like Joseph is being unfairly scapegoated.

That doesn't surprise me.

One of the community leaders tells the police, wait a second, this guy was with me all day on the day of Josie's murder.

So you got to leave him alone.

The problem was that when Joseph was with the police, he said,

I was lost in the woods all day during that time.

I mean, it's the worst alibi.

But I have said I often have terrible alibis if something happened and I was accused of murder.

So I'm driving around in a circle in my neighborhood listening to Taylor Swift.

So,

you know, this is this is why alibi witnesses can be unreliable.

I just couldn't believe it.

So there you go.

And we've talked about this, communities coming together to get behind people, even though they're sure they're guilty.

And oftentimes it's based on ethnicity or some, you know, religion or some kind of common factor where they're on the defensive, right?

Right, right.

No, absolutely.

The police say, anyway, and they put him on trial, January of 1876.

So now we get even more background on Joseph.

He's got a sister-in-law.

So it's his wife's sister.

She travels from Quebec to testify against him.

So she says in 1871,

so this would be 1871 would be three years before Marietta, four years before Josie.

In 1871, a masked man in Quebec threatened her with a club in a cow pasture and raped her.

So he was wearing a mask that I had to look up, a buffalo robe mask, which is cured buffalo hide that still has the hair on it.

Must have been absolutely terrifying among everything else that was happening.

She rips off the mask and sees it's Joseph and nothing happens to him.

I I don't know if she doesn't, you know, because of her sister, she doesn't report it or what happens, but at least one person confirms his identity in a violent attack.

Yeah, and there's, I mean, obviously there's overlap.

Here you have a club being used, and we see the club being used in Josie's case.

You see a mask being used in Marietta's case.

You have the geographic connections of Joseph Lepage between those two cases.

And now you have a sister-in-law offering up details on her attacker that overlap with the Josie and Marietta cases.

He's attacking her out in a cow pasture.

He's comfortable outside.

He's not the golden state killer who's comfortable breaking into houses and attacking people inside the house.

He likes to work in the outdoors.

And these are sexually motivated crimes.

Now, you know, for me,

the interesting aspect is with the sister-in-law and Marietta,

we don't have information that is indicating the sadistic aspects.

And sadism can, you know, you can still, the sexual assault can be sadistic in and of itself in terms of, I mean, people will say, oh, of course, you know, any sexual assault is sadistic.

But when I use that term sadistic, I am talking about a very, very narrowly defined set of behavioral criteria, characteristics that indicates that this person is getting sexual gratification through the, you know, literally the physical and psychological violence that they are doing versus the sexual act in and of itself.

But Josie is sexually mutilated and

she's mutilated before she's killed.

You know, so this is those sadistic acts.

So do we have an offender that is actually escalating?

in his fantasy and is really starting to display the sexual sadism that we see in Josie at that point in and didn't display it fully in the prior cases.

Yeah, I mean, it seems definitely like escalation to me.

Gosh, he is keeping his trap shut this whole time through this trial.

So he is initially found guilty of first-degree murder.

His lawyer appeals on the grounds that some of the testimony and the trial should have been inadmissible.

It doesn't matter because when he wins the appeal, but then

there's another trial and he's convicted.

He's sentenced to death.

So then the question is, what happens?

Do we learn anything else from Joseph?

And we do thanks to a priest.

You know, the French community is in denial.

I don't know if his wife is or his kids are, but the day before he's supposed to be executed, which is March of 1878.

So this kind of surprises me.

He's alive for another two years.

So maybe this was a

jump in appeals or something, but usually this would have been quick.

Maybe New Hampshire was more progressive.

I don't know.

So he's alive for two more years on death row.

The priest comes in and he's set to be executed by hanging and he confesses.

And the priest, of course, would not be able to reveal information that Joseph said, but he convinces Joseph to confess to the police.

He confesses to the murders of Josie and Marietta.

And you were right about this, Paul.

Sometimes when I think people take things, oh, they're just going to go hawk them.

Maybe they aren't, you know, trinkets or memorabilia or trophies or any of that.

But he tells them where to find in the woods Josie's possessions, like the ring and the breastpin and stuff.

He had hidden them.

And he told them exactly where to look.

So he is executed.

And there's a little bit of a postscript here.

He's executed and then he becomes a suspect in two 1867 unsolved murders that happened in Quebec.

So these predate by four years the attack on the sister-in-law.

He had been in the town when they happened, at the time when they happened.

And so he's dead at this point.

There's no information.

Obviously, they were able to get some information out of him before.

So, it's a shame in this only to me in this circumstance that he was executed.

Because if they really thought he was a suspect, I mean, maybe they could have gotten more information and closure from families, but too late now.

You know, and I would guess he has others up and beyond those, you know and imagine I mean this is you know obviously they don't have DNA to link these cases together they

really have a poor understanding of this type of sexual predator so they're not necessarily recognizing that this is a behavioral characteristic that would be predictive that you are dealing with somebody who is a serial killer, serial rapist, serial killer.

And so you probably have other communities that this guy, whether he had a connection or he flowed through and has committed similar crimes, and nobody's put two and two together that this is, this is their killer.

So, you know, I think they did a remarkable job in terms of figuring out who Josie and Marietta's killer was, to be frank, you know, for this day and age and for the limitations that they had.

But I think, you know, like the message that I want to underscore, and maybe some of our listeners, this is the first time they've ever heard about, you know, the brutality that some of these offenders do to their victims.

And this is where I, you know, we always want to tell our kids, there's no such thing as monsters.

But the reality is there are monsters and these guys are the monsters.

And to see what they do firsthand to their victims,

it's absolutely horrific.

And I wish there was a way to find them all and get them all off the street and prevent these guys from being out there.

But there just isn't.

And you just have to be, you have to be aware and keep yourself safe.

I mean,

what a story.

And I'm always looking for heroes.

And clearly the judge put it together.

I mean, the judge in Vermont read this story and was thinking,

this sounds familiar.

This obviously happened.

I don't know if the news from what happened with Marietta Ball didn't make it down to New Hampshire and this detective didn't put it together.

This seems similar, but, you know, being able to get information from him, from Joseph, right before his execution and with the priest, and then, you know, turning this information over, getting him, convincing Joseph to confess to the police.

I mean, some of this stuff does go above and beyond.

They wouldn't have caught him if it weren't for the judge, obviously.

And

for the almost victim's father to be in a position in the community where he would have been the one to receive this information from the judge.

So, you know, we talk about jurisdiction issues today and there's just it, you know, we've got two communities reaching out to each other and getting information in 1875, which to me is pretty amazing.

That's impressive.

And, you know, and I actually put a lot of

stock into the

strength the sister-in-law.

had.

Yeah, absolutely.

Because, Amy, she's going against, you know, her own sister to go testify against her sister's husband and is putting it out there that she was a rape victim of this guy.

You know, so there's a lot of barriers she had to overcome to have the strength and the courage to get on the stand to testify against, you know, her brother-in-law.

Absolutely.

And picking up on things like the classmate who said, yeah, I thought that was weird that somebody was in the bushes.

I mean, you have all of these people who are able, the neighbors who are noticing Josie, you know, I mean, these are small communities where generally now, but especially in the 1800s, people are looking out for each other very closely.

So you can see everything happening, what happens to her, even though she's alone at the time when she unfortunately encounters this guy.

You know, we've got enough people who have an eye out and are putting pieces together pretty quickly.

I was surprised.

This is a very upsetting story, but also in a lot of ways inspirational that you have all of these people thinking, okay, what do we need?

The priest, we've got to get a confession out of this guy, you know, and I'm frustrated that they executed him and now we don't know what's going on with these other cases.

Sure.

You know, and I think from an investigative side, early on, when you're talking about the route that the kids would take and they're walking through a neighborhood and then going through the woods, you know, for me, I immediately was binning two different suspect pools.

And one of the common suspect pools is somebody who lives along the route and is watching these kids day in and day out.

And they just happen to be somebody that's willing to victimize.

And then the other route, and this is what this Joseph LePage, this other suspect pool, this Joseph LePage fell into, is that, well, what is the transient population in the area?

You know, and you have to think about.

that very early on in the investigation so you can now start capitalizing on information that witnesses may have as to who has flowed in and out of your community.

Nowadays, sometimes we get that off of surveillance cameras and stuff.

Back then, it's, well, who's been here?

And it turns out, you know, Lillia's dad was hiring this, you know, pool of transients, if you will, and brought Joseph LePage into contact with his daughter.

I still don't understand about the Frenchman's knot on the twigs.

I mean, maybe that was some kind of rumor, but I don't think so.

I'm not sure what that, what he was thinking with that.

You know, the bolan knot is, is a very, very versatile knot.

And it's a, I, you know, of course, I'd like to see how it was used to tie these twigs up, but, you know, it just, it just tells me this is a knot he is familiar with, with being able to tie.

I can tie a bolan knot.

And now that I've seen how a Frenchman's knot is tied, I can tie a Frenchman's knot.

You know, so it's, I don't think it's anything that's behaviorally significant what he's doing.

It's just a knot he's familiar with, and it's a knot he knows will be suitable for this particular application.

Well, when I first thought about this story, I was not thinking this was going to be a serial killer story.

And then I started reading it and thought, oh my gosh, a serial killer from 1875.

You know, it's incredible.

Well, and this is the same type of offender as Jack the Ripper.

Yeah.

And the same ones that we're getting every, you know, in 2025, too.

And that's the point.

Yeah.

These guys have, just like exactly what you said, these guys have been around since the beginning of time.

Well, Paul, hopefully, no serial killers next week, but I guess we're going to see.

I like the serial killer story every once in a while, but I

sometimes I need a little bit of a break, and that was a hard one.

But you did a great job giving me some insight.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Well, you can always throw a serial killer case at me anytime, Kate.

Okay, good to know.

Okay, I will see you next week.

All right.

Sounds good.

Take care.

Bye.

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Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.

Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer.

You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at Buried Bones Pod.

Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked: A Gilded Age Story of Murder and the Race to Deco the Criminal Mind, is available now.

And Paul's best-selling memoir, Unmasked: My Life Solving America's Cold Cases, is also available now.

Old cases, new waters.

We're taking buried bones on a cruise.

This October, we're setting sail with Virgin Voyages on the first ever True Crime podcast cruise, and we want you to join us.

We've got five nights of events, meetups, and mystery on board, plus a live taping of buried bones that you won't want to miss.

This is an all-inclusive experience.

No kids, no stress.

Join the true crime experience to the Dominican Republic and Biomini, Bahamas.

Book now at virginvoyages.com/slash slash true crime.

That's virginvoyages.com slash true crime.

We'll see you on the ship.

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