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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 Holes, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most 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, Kate, how are you?

I'm great, Paul.

How are you?

I am doing good.

What's going on?

Have you done very much ancestry stuff?

And I don't mean golden state killer genealogy stuff.

I mean, you, Paul Holes, have you traced any ancestors using ancestry at all?

No, I definitely have.

Okay.

Did you find anything interesting?

Yeah, you know,

as you go back in time, the family spreads out, if that makes any sense.

My dad's side of the family, you know, the Holes surname, when you go back several centuries, we actually came from England and it wasn't Holes, it was Hole, as in singular, which was interesting to me because I worked with a DA by the name of Bob Hole, and we always just kind of chuckled because you never run across people with a hole surname or whole surname and good chance bob and i are probably related unfortunately he passed away quite a few years ago now but you know going back on on my dad's mom's side that's a a very germanic lineage you know so finding you know a town in germany where at least the you know the wolf side of the family uh originated out of you know so things like that it's pretty cool to get that kind of information about your your ancestors.

Have you ever uploaded your DNA or are you against that?

When I was trying to figure out how to do the genealogy with a Golden State Killer case, my parents had actually tested themselves at Ancestry.

And you can't upload a profile from some other place into Ancestry.

You have to send your DNA to Ancestry to have it go into Ancestry.

But they allow you to download those profiles.

So I downloaded both my parents' profiles and put it into a website called GEDMatch.

And JEDMatch is the one that you can upload profiles if you've been tested at 23andMe or Ancestry, et cetera.

And so I did that and of course got the, you know, the various distant relatives that share a percentage of their DNA with my parents.

And then ultimately I put my DNA up there because I want to be able to help cases, you know, and so I opted in so law enforcement can use my DNA in case, you know, somebody that's related to me is responsible for a crime.

Well, I'm relieved you're not a hypocrite, first of all.

Jetmatch is the one that law enforcement are able to use directly, right?

Do they have to get like subpoenas or anything like that?

So you have two websites that law enforcement can use, and that is GEDmatch.

And JEDMatch, the users have to explicitly opt in to allow law enforcement to search.

their profiles.

If they don't opt in, they can still utilize GEDMAS for genealogy purposes, and their profiles are not searchable for law enforcement.

The other database law enforcement uses is family tree DNA, and that's something that is now being managed by my employer, Authram.

The other websites like Ancestry and 23andMe do not permit law enforcement to search their databases.

Got it.

Well, this was all a big lead up to a funny story.

I think it's funny at least from a listener slash viewer.

Her name's Ellen, and she seems lovely.

She emailed me very early, or I received it very early a couple of weeks ago.

And it was like a I searched ancestry I'm trying to figure out what happened to my I think it was her great great grandfather he came from Sweden went to New Orleans and then sort of vanished and the family rumor and we know all about family rumors here the family rumor was that he was murdered and then tossed off a dock okay in New Orleans So I said, okay, let me dig around because a lot of people, you know, they'll look on ancestry and they'll do the general search, but I subscribe to newspapers.com.

Huge shout out to newspapers.com.

Love him.

Love him, love him.

I've been using it for, I think, probably about 10 years.

So I just hopped on and this guy's first name is Axel.

And then there was a middle name and then a last name that were way too complicated for me to even pronounce here.

So I looked nothing, nothing from this guy with the first end name Axel, middle, last name in newspapers.com, which was really unusual for me.

I usually can dig up something.

And then she said, this is when he was born.

and, you know, all of this.

And this is where, so what she knew from ancestry was where he was born in Sweden, the year and the approximate birthday.

And that was basically it.

She couldn't find immigration papers or anything like that.

So from my time writing American Sherlock, I was going crazy trying to figure out why my forensic scientist, Oscar Heinrich, couldn't stand his father.

He was so mad at his father.

And I couldn't figure out what was happening.

And about two weeks before my deadline to send American Sherlock to my editor, I was futzing around at three in the morning like I do sometimes, and I misspelled his father's name in newspapers.com and up pops all this information.

His father took his own life because of the family finances.

And that's why, I mean, all of this, just because they spelled his last name wrong.

So I misspelled this guy, Axel's middle name, and up pops.

a treasure trove of information.

Most importantly, the first thing I saw was a prison photo of this guy.

Oh, really?

I know you said you think that he came to America in 1917 or maybe before he was in prison in Sweden in 1914.

I don't know why, but it was a very menacing photo.

And I sent it to her.

And because of the last, it was literally one letter.

It was the letter R that I changed.

She was able to trace everything.

And she said, I don't think he was tossed off a dock.

I think he died at sea because he served in the, I think she said the Navy, maybe.

So all of it was one letter that changed all of this.

And sort of, I think she was able to put together some pieces about this part of the family.

And the family still talks about this.

And this happened in, you know, 1915, 1916.

So when I say it's important, the work we do is important to people, even though this is generations back.

The family's still talking about it.

Over Thanksgiving, they're talking about this guy

who's been dead for more than 100 years.

So please, to the listeners, I don't do this for many people.

I think I was just bored this morning when I did it.

I just thought, okay, whatever, what the hell, I'll put this in.

But it was so funny to just see this prison photo.

She wasn't phased by that, but you know, I mean, that little bit, and I know you probably know this from law enforcement too, just you know, people when they're using a different name, and man, you can be really stymied.

I was so frustrated, but then all of a sudden, I get all of this information with just one letter, which was crazy for me.

Well, and I've experienced that myself when I was, you know, doing the genealogy and would rely on newspapers.com in order to flush out family trees.

And what I have found is, you know, newspapers, you know, they scan those old papers and then they optical character recognition, OCR.

And some letters or some fonts, it doesn't do a good job.

So I have run into the same situation where now I'm trying different permutations of the spelling of the name and then we'll have success.

And I don't know if newspapers.com allows for wildcard searching where you can put like the asterisks in for it could be any letter at this location and the name.

If they don't do that, that is actually very helpful because of this OCR problem that I've run across.

Well, it was a huge deal to me with American Sherlock because, you know, it answered so many questions that were important to me in the book.

But I think for Ellen, she was pleased to receive all this information.

And I knew something was wrong because everybody, even in the 1800s, everybody showed up in the newspaper one way or the other.

And I think I found his subsequent children or grandchildren or something because that exact kind of name with a different middle name was popping up.

But anyway, I thought that was a funny story just about searching for family members.

And, you know, if you thought that people complain about the inaccuracy of newspapers now, you should try doing what I do and reading 1800s newspapers.

Man, I mean, just the wildest names ever.

Yep, nope, for sure.

You know, but it really just underscores, you know, how technology is giving access to data that before you would have to go into a library and flip through paper copies of newspapers if they even had, you know, the edition that you needed.

Yeah, microfiche.

I've done that many times too.

And yeah, so this was this was quite an experience.

It was another good reminder of just trying to stick with something, you know, sort of the perseverance.

It wasn't my family, but it was fun to do.

Very cool.

Well, talk about media.

We are getting ready to step into a media circus here with the story that we're going to do.

It's going to be a two-parter because it's a pretty big story and it was a really big deal when it happened.

Where we're heading is 1920s, almost mid-1920s, England,

which sounds very romantic to me.

It was not.

I think at this time period, certainly World War I.

This story, I think, really gets to the heart of relationships and trying to sort out what happened to our victim because it's a big question mark for me right now.

All right.

So England, that's one of your favorite places.

It is.

So get some tea and a crumpet.

If you've ever had a crumpet before, I love them.

Love them.

No, I don't think so.

I'll make you some sometime.

Okay, let's set the scene.

Okay, like I said, the case is in England and it's the early 1920s and we have two main players here and we have to sort out.

This is, I feel like the smallest cast of characters we might have worked with here, but we'll see what you think.

And then a very, very, very, very famous pathologist that you'll recognize immediately because we've talked about him before.

So, this is an intriguing case.

So, one of our main people is named Norman Thorne.

And in the 1920s, very early 1920s, he meets a young woman named Elsie Cameron, and she's a typist.

So, Norman and Elsie, and they meet at church.

They are now falling in love.

And Norman, just so we know about kind of ages and stuff, Norman's about 20 and Elsie is about two years older.

So at this point, if you want to go ahead and open up your photos, you can see a photo of the two of them.

I will say I am struck by,

I feel like they both look a little older than 20 and 22.

Okay, so I'm looking at, I'm assuming this is, this is Norman and Elsie.

Norman is seated.

Elsie is standing.

It's just like a typical family, you know, portrait with this couple.

Norm's got a three-piece suit on.

Elsie's, you know, just got a dress.

And yeah, I would not have expected that they were as young as they are by looking at their photos.

They do look more mature, but you know, that's what it seems.

Like if you ever look at, like, I look at my parents' yearbooks and everybody in there, even though they're high schoolers, look like they're in their 30s.

What do you think that was?

Like just a hard life or I don't know.

It seems consistent too, you know.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, when we do the stories from the 1800s, and it's always when they're on a farm, boy, they look rough.

And I know it's sun exposure and just hard work and stuff, but I sort of picked up on that.

They both look a little older than what they are.

But anyway, so we've got Norman and we've got Elsie, and they meet at church, they fall in love.

So in 1921, Norman is working.

He's either an engineer or kind of an electrician in training, one or the other, but he has a good job, it sounds like.

But he loses that job in 1921.

And no word on why, but it doesn't sound like anything controversial.

He loses this job.

So he has to get back on his feet.

So his parents want to help him out.

He's close with his parents, and they give him some land in an area called Crowbrow, which is in East Sussex.

And this is about a train ride away from London.

He is not particularly close physically to Elsie.

She's staying with her parents.

She's also, remember, quite young, but they're able to see each other.

So this guy who had gone from being an engineer or an electrician now starts his life over as a chicken farmer, which seems pretty different.

Yes.

So he is living in a tiny hut on the property.

It is 85 square feet.

Oh, wow.

My cottage is,

I think, about 175 square feet.

So, you know, he's living in half the space of where I am right now, which is very small.

I was going to ask you this.

You know, I lived in a very small space when I lived in New York.

I was in Greenwich Village.

I was, you know, literally right on where NYU is.

And my bathroom was so small.

It was literally in a closet.

My bathroom was so small that you could pee and brush your teeth at the same time because the sink was right there.

That's probably TMI.

And then our kitchen was also in a closet.

And you could have your foot on the bathtub, actually in the bathtub, all at the same time if you needed to.

So have you lived in a small space before?

You know, the smallest space was when I was living in, it's actually a relatively upscale town called Walnut Creek in the East Bay.

Oh, yeah.

I love Walnut Creek.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's an amazing town.

And I rented a small studio, which it did have a small kitchen.

It had just a single room that doubled as the bedroom and then a small bathroom.

Now, I couldn't pee and brush my teeth in this bathroom, nor would I want to try to do that.

I never tried, Paul.

I'm just saying that that's how small it was.

So that's probably, in terms of me individually, that's probably the smallest space that I've personally lived in.

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Norman's in a very small space, so 85 square feet.

And I've been calling it a cottage.

I I don't think it is.

They're calling it a hut.

Right.

He's not making very much money as a chicken farmer.

It doesn't sound like he had that much experience to begin with, but he's making a go of it because I don't think he feels like he has much of a choice.

Why don't I show you what the farm looks like?

So if you scroll down past that photo of Norman and Elsie, you'll see the farm on the second page and you'll see the hut.

I think that's the hut.

Tell me what you see.

Yeah, you know, so this is a photo.

It looks like it's taken from the perspective of a road and possibly just a dirt road.

And then there's a gate that, in essence, is in between the road and

where the structures are.

And behind this gate appears to be just a drive area that goes back to where now I see.

I mean, it looks like a log cabin, you know, from this photo.

It's not much more than that.

Yeah.

You know, surrounded by some land and some equipment.

Yeah.

I mean, it looks, and you see the chicken coops kind of around.

It looks like there might be one attached to the cabin thing.

What do you think?

I can see that.

Yeah, I think that's right.

Yeah, this is pretty small.

So, you know, this seems like a big difference, lifestyle difference for Norman.

But like I said, he's making a go of it.

He and Elsie are still together.

And actually, a year after they sort of, you know, separate, physically separate, they get engaged by 1922.

But it seems like this distance is sort of getting to Norman and he is starting to cool on the relationship by, you know, shortly after when they get engaged.

So I think Elsie is feeling like there's a growing disconnect between the two of them.

And it sounds like Elsie was really in love with him, but Norman was keeping his distance a little bit.

To keep the relationship alive, Elsie takes the train to visit Norman much more often than he goes to visit her.

So November of 1924, I mean, remember that this has been a year and a half that she's been trying to keep this relationship going because she really loves him.

And they're both, you know, part of a church.

It sounded like actually that they were both Sunday school teachers at one point.

So having a relationship with him and getting married is really important to her.

In November of 1924, Elsie writes to Norman.

that she's pregnant.

So the way this would have gone in quote unquote proper society in this time period is they would not have had sex.

Then, he asked her to marry him.

And then, quite possibly, she said, Okay, because you're committing to me.

So, that's how I think we get around the whole idea that, you know, she seemed devout, you know, maybe a devout Christian, but then this, of course, this is where we've talked about the heartbalm lawsuits that come out when a man says, Marry me, and then they have sex, and then he's tired of her, and then he leaves, and she's sort of quote unquote ruined.

So, she says that she's pregnant.

I mean, I I don't know how many times I can say this, that the number one reason pregnant women die is murder and postpartum also.

So, you know, already, even though I haven't told you who the victim is, we have somebody who is at risk.

He's distanced himself from her and now he believes she's pregnant.

So what do you think so far?

Well, do you know how far along she is in the pregnancy?

She does not tell him, but it doesn't sound like her parents know.

And I would assume that

she, you know, noticed that she wasn't getting her period anymore.

And that was the conclusion.

I don't hear anything about a doctor, her going to a doctor and, you know, confirming it that way.

So she's making some assumptions.

It doesn't sound like very far along, though.

I guess the, you know, some of the questions that I, that pop into my head, because I know this is going to end tragically for Elsie in all likelihood.

You know, if she's indicating to Norman that she's pregnant, does he have concern that the child is not his?

Which, from a victimology standpoint, doesn't sound like Elsie would necessarily be having sex with some other man, you know, so that's probably a little bit unlikely.

But does Norman feel that, you know, as he's growing more and more distance in the relationship, is Elsie using the pregnancy sort of to trap him?

You know, so if Elsie ultimately ends up murdered, then of course there's some concern about what Norman's motive may be based off of his stance in this relationship and how he's feeling about Elsie.

Absolutely.

And, you know, when you were saying if Norman's concerned about her sleeping with somebody else, I get the impression that he is ready to cut ties with Elsie.

He probably would have been happy if she had been with somebody else.

But I also don't know the egos of men in the 1920s.

But I think you're right, kind of based on her in general, like that photo that I showed you look almost like a church photo.

Like somebody took it posing outside of the church.

I'm not seeing Elsie sleeping around, but you're right.

Who knows?

So So she is freaking out when she finds out she's pregnant.

She says to Norman, I want to get married as soon as possible, which of course makes sense because this would not be a good thing socially for her.

And I'm assuming her parents would not approve of this.

And she lives with them.

But Norman is characteristically of Norman very wishy-washy with her.

And he says that, I've got some news for you.

Instead of saying this face to face, he sends her a letter, which to me is like a low-budget text.

He sends her a letter that says, I know you say you're pregnant, but I'm seeing another woman.

And her name is Elizabeth Caldicott.

He says, Elizabeth thinks I am to marry her and I have a strong feeling for her.

So now what's happening?

What do you think?

Well, now you see where Norman is

probably feeling even more.

I guess the term is trapped in terms of he's developed feelings for Elizabeth.

He's probably excited about that relationship.

And then Elsie pops up and is like, oh, I'm pregnant.

And he's seeing, you know, sort of the complication in his life.

So now, how does Norman respond?

You know, he is, I guess, in some ways, you know, even though it's an indirect method using the letter, but he's being upfront.

But it's also possibly Norman's way of just trying to push Elsie away, you know, hoping that, well, she'll just go away on herself, you know, by herself and he can, you know, continue to pursue the relationship with Elizabeth.

And in some ways, this made me think that Norman is as good a chance of being a victim as Elsie is, because this would have put her, that news would have put her in a pretty desperate situation.

You know, not only has she had premarital sex with this man who it sounds like is breaking off the engagement, but being pregnant, she could have terminated the pregnancy many times.

That was dangerous.

And this is probably not something Elsie would have done anyway.

And she's living with her parents.

And Norman is not near his parents.

He is on his own island as a chicken farmer.

And I think Elizabeth is close by, and you'll see why in a little bit.

So he has a woman right here versus Elsie who lives a long train ride away.

And now she's saying, I'm pregnant.

And at age somewhere between 20 and 22, even though men in that time period, many of them did take responsibility.

I mean, they understood this is, you know, now I'm going to get married and this is kind of what society expects of me.

Of course, an equal amount were deadbeat dads.

So I don't know where Norman stands right now, but Elsie seems to be really getting upset over all of this.

Yeah, you know, in some ways, I think I made an assumption that Elsie was going to be the victim.

You know, right now, with the details that you've told in the story, you could see where Elsie would be jealous of Elizabeth, you know, and Elsie could strike out either at, you know, Elizabeth or could strike out at Norman.

Yeah, I could see it going either direction.

And then you got Elizabeth.

Elizabeth, you know, Norman's telling Elizabeth, hey, Elsie is pregnant.

And Elizabeth is seeing that jeopardizing her relationship with Norman.

So could Elizabeth go and take Elsie out?

Yeah.

So, you know, right now we have classic triangle going on, lover's triangle.

And,

you know, each point of the triangle is the individuals.

And I can't tell you right now who ends up being the victim.

So this will be interesting.

Yeah.

And remember, this is Elsie is not nine months pregnant.

She is, you know, maybe a month or two pregnant.

I'm assuming she came up with this conclusion again because she missed a period or two.

So, you know, she's perfectly capable of doing anything physical.

And we know women can be just as murderous as men.

So we'll see.

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, Ambimini, 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 now at virginvoyages.com/slash true crime.

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We'll see you on board.

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We have an outside observer who I think is very interesting.

I could do a whole episode on this woman.

Her name was Helena Normanton and she was the very first female barrister in the United Kingdom.

And a barrister, I mean, well, do you know the difference between like a lawyer and a barrister and any other category?

Probably not.

I had to look it up.

No.

That would be a Wikipedia search for me.

So a barrister, my understanding, and certainly when I lived in London, I asked this question quite a lot too, because I was trying to make sure I understood.

A barrister doesn't have as much contact with clients necessarily.

They are a trial attorney litigator.

So very, very famous woman.

So she.

picked up on cases that she she wasn't involved when she didn't represent anybody in this case but she was really interested in it because of Elsie.

I think Helena said that it appeared from everything that she was reading and studying that Elsie really seemed to be struggling with mental health issues.

So, this is what she said, and you can tell me what you think because we are considering Elsie to be an offender, not necessarily a victim.

So, Helena said between January and June of 1923.

So, this is a year before

she says she's getting pregnant, right?

Because that was November of 1924.

She said the year before Elsie was under continuous medical treatment for, I'm going to butcher this, neurasthemia.

Have you heard of that before?

No, that's not ringing a bell at all.

A condition characterized by chronic fatigue, weakness, and other symptoms.

And this was a very 19th century term.

So, you know, irritability.

If she were pregnant, I'd say, well, welcome to my world.

I had a really hard pregnancy.

But they said that she had this sort of this listlessness, irritability, depression, loss of energy, lack of self-confidence, and failure in concentration.

Does any of that line up to you about either as victimology, as Elsie is a victim or as a potential offender in this case?

Well, at least with the symptoms that Elsie is being described as having, you know, it sounds like she's depressed.

There's definitely nothing that's really alarming me at this point.

Like there's a psychosis going on.

You know, is she starting to trend towards maybe a form of schizophrenia, you know, at her age, you know, she's 22, you know, she could be on the front of maybe some developing mental health issue, but I'm not sure with those particular symptoms that it's really.

diagnostic as to something that would contribute to her striking out, you know, and this is, it's kind of a, it's almost the opposite, you know, but yeah, let's, let's see how this develops.

Yeah.

And this is the time period, this January to June is a time period of when, you know, Norman is on the chicken farm at this point.

They're not together and she's traveling back and forth to see him and he's creating some distance.

So

if she had something already happening chemically, this would have made it worse.

You know, she's invested in this guy.

This is probably her first boyfriend, maybe her first relationship.

And, you know, now he's, you know, putting his arm out to her.

So she gets this news.

So remember, this is November of 1924 when she says I'm pregnant.

And he writes back

and he says, well, this is, you know, the issue I'm with Elizabeth and I'm really interested in her.

This is what Elsie says.

This is her reply.

She writes in a letter.

This is, quote, you have absolutely broken my heart.

I never thought you were capable of such deception.

Your duty is to marry me.

I have first claim on you.

I expect you to marry me as soon as possible.

My baby must have a name.

And another thing, I love you in spite of all.

That's a lot of demands, don't you think?

It is a lot of demands, but it's also, I think, from this timeframe, this is what would be expected.

You know, and Norm has got to know this.

You know, he's out there in his hut and he's, you know, got this relationship with Elizabeth.

As soon as he finds out that Elsie is pregnant, he knows, okay, there's, there's a level of expectation of commitment to Elsie and his child that's probably going to jeopardize the relationship with Elizabeth moving forward.

Yeah.

You know, I wonder, I'm assuming he's not telling Elizabeth any of this stuff.

I think in at least some cases now, the man might disclose this and say, did these days and say, this is what's happening.

We can't believe this woman.

It's probably not my child.

You know, but he, I'm assuming, kept his mouth shut to Elizabeth.

We don't end up hearing from Elizabeth regarding any of this stuff.

So well, this is definitely an oh shit moment for Norman.

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

Big time.

And she's not here, you know, for him to gauge.

So she sends this letter and it doesn't sound like he has time to respond because then she sends another letter in early December of 1924.

And she says to him, talk about an oh shit moment.

I'm coming December 6th.

We're going to hash this out in person.

Again, he has no time to respond or any way to get a hold of her really.

And I'm assuming he does not have a phone.

Otherwise, you know, she would have been calling him.

So this is all snail mail.

She says, I'll be there December 6th.

Here's the issue also with Norman.

She actually comes a day early.

So she packs up a suitcase, which includes infant-sized dresses.

and sets out for the chicken farm to find him in his hut and to basically say, we are doing this.

You have done this to me.

And now you have a responsibility to fulfill.

Well, it's interesting that she writes that she'll be out there December 6th and comes a day early.

You know, was that a planned thing on her part, possibly to have that arrival be unexpected to better assess or even catch Norman doing things that she would be upset about?

And I had wondered why, number one, she even gave him a warning.

And number two, if she was afraid that he was going to jet, you know, and his hut will be empty when she shows up.

And she's trying to catch him.

But I think that shows her level of desperation.

I don't think she's told her parents that she's pregnant.

They do know that she's going to visit him.

This has been a common thing for the past year and a half or however long it was.

So she says to her parents, I'm leaving.

I'm going to go visit him.

I don't think she's disclosed anything about Elizabeth to them.

She certainly has not said, I think he's calling off this engagement.

So everybody's hiding stuff from different people, which doesn't surprise me now or in the 1920s, but it makes this case a little bit more complicated coming up.

So now, who are you thinking as far as offender victim knowing the situation here?

Because they're both in bad situations right now.

You know, right now, I think it could go either way, but Elizabeth is definitely taking a more aggressive approach to the relationship, but she also has the bigger burden.

You know, she's pregnant.

She has the future to think about.

And Norman is in many ways trying to move away from Elsie.

You know, so she's coming out.

Right now, all that does is it puts Norman and Elsie.

and Elizabeth at least within the same geography.

And so that's where I think it's going to be interesting to see what happens.

So we don't know yet when she arrives, how it went.

What we do know is that Elsie's parents expect that they are going to hear from her via a letter, snail mail letter.

But two days pass after she's supposed to be there and nothing.

Back home?

Yeah.

They're in London.

So they don't hear anything from her.

And they said, this is incredibly unusual.

They live together.

And of course, they're very close.

So they, God, this must have been awful, Paul.

It's all telegraphs and snail mail.

Sure.

I'm kind of curious as to why they didn't go out to where Norman was at just to see where's our daughter.

I had wondered, I don't think propriety is the right word, but they didn't want to panic anybody.

And I don't think they wanted to come to any conclusions.

Maybe there was a delay in the mail.

I don't know.

But also, I don't think they know about all of the problems between Elsie and Norman.

They are very aware, of course, of the emotional turmoil that she's been going through.

So they decide to send Norman a telegraph asking if Elsie is there.

This is his response, and I don't quite understand part of it.

He says, not here, open letters with a period at the end, open letters, can't understand.

So I don't know if she has sent him letters.

He is saying she sent me letters and I've opened them, but I, but it's all garble.

I don't know what he's saying there, but they seemed confused also.

What do you think?

Yeah, that's very cryptic.

And Norman, you know, based off of his, you know, mechanical or electrical engineering job, I mean, he's, I'm assuming, fairly well educated and can articulate and write well.

Yeah.

So why is he being so cryptic with that?

Yeah, I really don't have a guess right now.

Okay.

Well, let's go through the timeline just real quick.

So Elsie was supposed to go on the sixth.

According to her letter, she went on the fifth.

So three days after she was last seen by her parents in London getting on this train to go to the chicken farm, they get two letters that show up and they're from Norman and they're addressed to Elsie.

So she was supposed to be there on the sixth.

She left on the fifth.

They call him on the seventh, the eighth, these letters show up.

And he says in these letters to Elsie, where did you get to yesterday?

You did not turn up.

And they were written and sent after elsie was slated to arrive at norman's farm which is concern of course it's concerning i mean her parents are freaking out about this all right you know we we still don't know you haven't told me anything about where elsie is at or what has happened to elsie you know so it's it's entirely possible that she never even made it to norman's uh place right but assuming that she did make it to norman's place and he has caused Elsie some harm, these letters sound like he's staging.

He is trying to make it look like she's left, you know, the farm and she was supposed to meet up with him and she hasn't arrived.

And now Norman is sending these letters.

It's almost like, you know, grabbing the victim's phone or and sending a text to make it seem like they're still alive.

Yeah.

You know, it's just, it's a form of staging.

But again, don't know what has happened to Elsie.

So I'll just kind of tuck that away.

I can't believe how many people have been caught with the texting thing because they call a parent the wrong name or they misspell.

I mean, I just think, I don't want to give people hints, but why would you not go back and at least read the way all of these people were addressed, the way they spelled their names, like copy their style at least.

But I feel like I've read about five or six different cases where the offender just sort of winged it.

And it seems like a bad idea if you're trying to set up a murderer.

Yeah.

And of course, the people who are familiar with, let's say, the victim, they're going, that does not sound like our daughter or our son or whatever.

So Elsie's parents, of course, are incredibly suspicious and very nervous.

They report her missing to the police, but the police out there, not the London police, because they believe that she's out there.

I believe.

The police don't act with very much urgency at all.

I don't know why.

I think it's because when they talk to Norman, he says she was crazy.

She was mentally unstable, talked to her parents.

She's been having problems for a very long time.

He has no idea what happened to her.

She never showed up when she was supposed to.

And the police seem to generally accept this.

So, you know, what do you think about that?

I know the police have to make judgment calls all the time.

That's why I'm not a police officer.

That would scare me.

I mean, you are making judgment calls all the time that put people's lives at risk, save their lives, all of that.

And they have decided in this case to believe this man who said my fiancé was having a really hard time.

She was supposed to show up.

She never did.

I don't know where she is.

You can look around if you want.

And they believed him.

Yeah.

You know, I think with the facts up front, that law enforcement would have been assessing.

You are dealing with an adult with Elsie.

She has freedom of movement.

She doesn't have to show up at any particular location.

And there's nothing about the circumstances that would suggest that she's endangered outside of her parents were expecting to be back home by a certain day and she doesn't arrive.

And maybe the only thing that might be of concern are the letters from Norman where he's writing to Elsie saying,

where are you?

Where were you?

You know, so now you have both the parents of Norman saying this, this Elsie has disappeared.

Yeah.

But again, she's 22 years old or older at this point.

She's in her mid-20s.

You know, she could have just decided to go somewhere and cool down after finding out that Norman is having a relationship with this Elizabeth.

Yeah, pulled herself together to figure out what she was going to do.

And if she actually doesn't show up, then his letters make sense.

He's saying, you were supposed to be here on the sixth.

I don't know where you are.

And the only place he can send them to is London, her parents' house.

So let's continue on.

The police know about this and they still don't act.

There are two gardeners who see an unfamiliar woman in Crowbrow, which is apparently a small village or a small town.

She is carrying a suitcase in the town, not on his farm, but in the town.

She's carrying a suitcase that her parents say matches the description of Elsie's own suitcase.

This is on December 5th when she's supposed to be there.

If this is Elsie, this puts her in the town, not at the farm yet, but in the town.

So that gives us a little bit more information.

Nobody killed her on the train, apparently.

Okay, because earlier you said that Elsie arrived a day earlier.

Is this why they know she was there on December 5th versus the 6th?

Her parents knew she was leaving on the 5th.

Okay, that's true.

Yeah.

So they were the last ones to see her.

So now we've got her in the town.

And, you know, you and I talk about this, the timeline and where people are.

And you often ask me, especially when we're dealing with trains and trolleys and, you know, passenger cars and stuff like that, did people see them on the train?

Where did we last see her?

Did she step off the train?

And did we have a witness that saw her at the train station?

So if we believe this, and this would have been, I would think, legitimate, if this is a small village or a small town, she probably would have stood out, especially if she's carrying a suitcase.

If this is Elsie, she's in the town now where Norman is.

I have no reason to doubt these witnesses.

Police still don't act on this.

Make me understand why they wouldn't act on this.

Is it yet again, you know, maybe she showed up, Norman wasn't home, changed her mind and, you know, went off on walkabout somewhere or what?

Yeah, I mean, there wasn't anything that these witnesses saw that's concerning.

Yeah.

She's in in town with a suitcase.

And so it doesn't change anything from law enforcement's perspective.

It's just that, okay, well, she arrived, you know, and where is she?

Well, she could have left the town.

She could have found

some other place to hole up in.

And I think reasonable doubt here will be sort of my mindset moving forward.

We're looking for reasonable doubt in this case.

So a few weeks later, her poor parents, they are not getting any information for weeks.

The police get a tip.

It's from one of Norman's neighbors, you know, on one side or the other of the chicken farm.

They say that they have seen a young woman with a suitcase walking onto his chicken farm on December 5th.

Who knows why the neighbor took so long?

I mean, you know, I don't think it was anything nefarious.

I think people don't want to get involved sometimes with this story.

Maybe they hadn't heard about it yet.

Who knows?

Yeah, you know, but that's it's several weeks later.

I mean, with a small town, you know, the rumor mill mill is going to be going rampant, you know?

So is this just somebody who's deciding, you know, they may just be trying to be helpful, but how accurate is this bit of information?

Are they just inserting themselves into the investigation?

Because we know those types of people exist.

So it's kind of hard to really

truly assess the veracity of the information just based off of the statements.

It's like, okay, where's the witness saying that they, what was their visual perspective of this woman on the suitcase?

You know, is this something that they're able to describe aspects about this woman, her dress, the details about the suitcase that really kind of enhances the likelihood that these witnesses actually saw Elsie and is placing Elsie on Norman's property?

And nobody's saying she's in distress or anything like that.

So it seems very matter of fact.

The police are finally alarmed.

I think her parents are staying on top of them about this and saying this is unusual.

He told us she never showed up.

Now you have a witness who says she's on this farm.

They go to Norman and they say, let's clear this all up.

Let us search the farm, the chicken farm.

He says, okay.

When they're looking, they find, and they don't tell me if it's buried or not, but they find a tin with Elsie's jewelry and watch inside.

Okay.

And that's bad news.

Her parents later confirm that she was wearing these pieces of jewelry and this watch when she left London to go to the chicken farm so that's bad news already it's on the property yeah and and this tin is this something that elsie took with her that she would naturally put her jewelry in like when she's going to you know go to bed or is this norman's tin and you know now for whatever reason elsie has been relieved of her jewelry um and of course It'd be very interesting to know exactly where this tin was located at.

Was it secreted away?

Because that would be a harbinger of really bad news.

Yeah, I don't know that.

I think the tin is his, but I don't know where it was.

But in a second, it's not going to matter.

Sorry to tell you that.

They keep searching.

They're most excited about an area on the potato patch that appears to have been freshly dug up.

And they dig up.

Elsie's suitcase.

So now we have confirmation, the jewelry and the suitcase.

And before you ask about the suitcase, look at the photos.

Look at those two photos that I sent you.

It just shows an overwhelming amount of material that they had to dig through.

This is not a small farm.

So the next photo

after the photo from the road is: I'm seeing a photo where there's three men, you know, and they're dressed in very heavy-looking trench coats.

It looks foggy to me.

Yeah, it's foggy and it's cool.

It looks like it's probably very, very cool temperatures it looks like the the land where these men are at i can't quite tell in the photo if it's been dug up or overturned but i'm assuming this is probably the uh maybe the potato patch area um there's also brushes and trees in the backdrop you know but this is you know Anytime you're doing a search outdoors, even if you have, let's say, a small yard surrounded by a fence, it's a lot of work unless there's something really obvious.

And of course, the larger the property gets, you know, you hope for something like freshly turned over dirt or disturbances in the botanical material.

So you go, okay, there's a spot that I want to key in on.

But because of these outdoor type scenes, this is why we've tried to utilize different technologies to focus our efforts, like ground-penetrating radar or having the dogs get out there and have them alert on whatever they're trained to alert on, such as decomp dogs.

Because it is.

I've been involved in multiple searches, most notably

Phil Garrito's property, who was the abductor of JC Dugard.

And he had two acres of basically a junkyard.

And we were trying to find evidence of other victims or evidence associated with the crimes against JC.

And it took, I was out there for several weeks with multiple different agencies.

Well, the first book that I wrote, which was about the London smog of 1952, and a serial killer, John John Reginald Christie, to me illustrated that.

He had a very small backyard and he had a place in London.

He buried two women there, and it was totally junked out.

He had garden and stuff, but there were tools everywhere.

The weeds were really high.

And the police were not searching for buried women.

They were searching for a mother and her baby.

And they went straight to kind of an outdoor lavatory.

And so, you know, they did not know that there were women buried under the ground.

They were looking looking specifically in this laboratory, which is where they found the mother and the child dead.

What they did not see, which I think people thought at the time was just inexplicable, was Christie's dog had dug up a femur bone of one of the women a couple of years earlier.

His fence was falling down.

He strapped the femur bone to the fence to hold up the fence.

And they walked right past it.

And people criticized for him.

You know, I call it Keystone Cops sometimes.

But then when you look at photos, it is so trashed.

I totally understand how they missed a bone, you know, that is holding up part of the fence.

I mean, forget about the psychology behind Christie doing something like that to begin with, but I think people think it, it must be easy to do a search from a small backyard, but it depending on the circumstances and what you're looking for, it can be a big challenge.

Yeah, and it's, it's what your eyes can see.

I have photos of whole bodies that are on the surface, and most people would never be able to pick the bodies because of the other debris, you know, the branches and the vegetation.

You know, and in this case, like with Christie with this femur,

I mean, how many people I've run across like in law enforcement that do not know human anatomy?

You know, they may not even recognize that they're dealing with a bone, let alone, you know, a significant bone out of

a person's leg.

So it is, it's always a challenge.

And that's where, again, you know, here law enforcement is, they've got a suitcase.

They've got a tin full of Elsie's jewelry.

Now it's, where is Elsie?

Yep.

So the suitcase is buried, nothing inside.

The tin has the jewelry in it.

Not long after, in a totally different part of the farm, these cops, boy, this was a lot of work.

They discover a human torso.

There's a lot of decomposition happening because remember, this has been two or three weeks since she went missing.

They waited a long time with the neighbor's tip and everything.

And now they just gives up.

They say to Norman, you've got a human torso buried.

We believe it's Elsie.

And he says,

okay, I'll tell you where her other parts are.

So he takes her to other spots on the property.

They find her severed arms and legs, as well as her head.

This is where Norman's story becomes very interesting.

He readily admits that that he dismembered her and buried her and covered all this stuff up.

But he says, I'm not the one who did it.

And now I'm going to have to leave you hanging for part two of this.

I told you this chicken farm.

This chicken farm and this poor woman, this poor young woman, you know, and now we will, in the second part, talk a lot about medical stuff because now we have to determine exactly what happened to Elsie.

And depending on the state of her body, it can be very difficult.

Yep.

Okay.

I will see you next week.

Sounds good.

This has been an exactly right production.

For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com/slash buried bones sources.

Our senior producer is Alexis Emorosi.

Research by Marin McClashin, Allie Elkin, and Kate Winkler-Dawson.

Our mixing engineer is Ben Toliday.

Our theme song is by Tom Breifogel.

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 Decode the Criminal Mind, is available now.

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

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