The Wolf Family Murder PT 2

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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 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.

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This is Buried Bones.

Hey, Paul.

Hey, Kate.

How are you?

I'm doing well.

That's it.

No more.

What?

We don't have time because, you know, we're talking about the murder of an entire family in North Dakota in 1920, and it's baffling so far.

I'm assuming you've been thinking about this story.

I have.

You know, in fact, I got my notes from last week.

You know, so at least, you know, what I'm seeing in my notes, we've got the Wolf family, a family of, you know, two adults, a mother, father, six daughters, plus a 13-year-old farmhand living in North Dakota in the 1920s, and all of them end up dead on this farm.

Except for the little girl, except for baby Emma.

Oh, that's right.

That's right.

You did a good job summarizing it.

I mean, you've got five daughters who have been murdered and the parents and the farmhand.

So you've got a total of eight caskets, I remember from that photo.

We had discussed what happened with Jacob and the nine-year-old Maria and the seven-year-old Edna.

So the two little girls shot at the back of the head with a shotgun, which I'm sure would have been just horrific to see.

And then we've got Jacob, who he was shot in the back from a far back range.

And then he was shot kind of in the back/slash side of the head at a close range.

So I know we don't know the gauge of the shotgun, but how far back can you be to get an accurate shot off someone?

Like, is this when they say in the far back,

how far are we talking?

I mean, this is, you know, this is not a rifle, so it's different.

Well, part of the advantages that a shotgun has and the reason for the existence of a shotgun you know is is oftentimes with the exception of select types of rounds like a slug it's shooting out multiple pellets and as these pellets travel down range they start to spread and so you don't have to be very accurate with this weapon in order to hit your target you know that is part of the reason why shotguns exist so you know for the father Jacob to be shot in the back at a distance, I would need to see the spread of the pellets, you know, because doing what we call a distance determination at varying distances using a shotgun, shoot at a target and measuring the spread of the pellets, we were able to determine roughly how far away the shooter was from Jacob for that shot in the back.

If it was something that was like bird shot or the double odd buck.

If it was just a slug, then no.

You know, then we would be looking, if it's a closer range shot, we'd need to have the evidence, such as the stippling, the singeing, et cetera, also associated with that wound in order to determine roughly how many feet that shotgun was away.

So I think it's just safe to say, you know, you take a look.

Jacob is the male, the adult male that's on the property.

He's shot in the back.

Makes sense that of the three that are in the barn, he is likely the first one shot at, and his back is turned.

Who knows if Jacob is even aware that the shooter is present or not, but that's to incapacitate him.

And then the shooter makes sure to finish Jacob off so this male is no longer a threat.

And of course, the two little girls are just executed with shots to the back of their head.

And whether they're standing up or laying down, who knows?

You know, I thought about what is the reason why you would kill all of these kids.

Now, it could be maybe they would recognize him.

Maybe this is a family member or a neighbor who they were very close with.

Who knows?

But I thought, well, maybe it's because, you know, they would all be screaming.

This is a very rural farm.

I don't know who would hear them necessarily.

I guess I'm always trying to figure out what the motive is to kill kids who are not your kids and your aim aim is a family annihilator, you know?

Right now, off the top of my head, I'm thinking of three very broad categories.

First one that you alluded to, witnesses, eliminating witnesses.

The second one is vindictiveness, not necessarily at the kids.

Basically, the offender is so upset with somebody in this family that he's just going to wipe everybody out.

And then the last one is psychosis.

Absolute random crime.

You now have a psychotic offender that is just going around killing everything in sight.

Okay.

Well, we do know who the offender is, we think, in this case.

So it'll be interesting to see which category this falls into, or maybe it's all three.

We don't know.

Okay.

I know that I left you hanging with the fatal wounds for the kids and the mother in the basement.

So let me tell you what happens there.

Okay.

When they examine everybody in the basement, the mother, who is Mrs.

Wolf Beata,

has been shot in the back at close range, and she has a massive hole in her body.

Bertha, 12, she's the eldest, besides the farmhand, had been shot in the face at close range.

This is all with a shotgun.

Lydia, who is five, had been shot behind her left ear and had a deep gash at the back of her skull.

They believe this was from a hatchet.

The hatchet was found, Paul, in the kitchen.

It was on the floor of the kitchen.

Now, I didn't see it in that photo, but it was on the floor of the kitchen and it had blood on the blade.

It's, you know, clear that that's what was used.

So the five-year-old had that deep gash at the base of her skull and she had been shot behind her left ear.

And then finally, Martha, who is the three-year-old, no shotgun blast.

She had been hit in the head with the hatchet, the blunt end of the hatchet, they said.

The sheriff has a theory about sequencing that I'll run by you in a little bit, but just sort of at first blush here, what do you think about all of these, you know, all of these wounds that have, have taken place here?

It's awful with a shotgun in a small kitchen.

Yeah, you know, it's, well, it's hard to say, you know, because we have two different weapons.

You know, does that suggest that, you know, we have two different offenders?

We have a shotgun being used out in the barn and also inside the residence.

And then on two of the girls, we have one girl that is shot, but she also looks like she's been struck with a hatchet.

And then we have the one girl that's only been struck with a hatchet.

And that's the blunt end.

So they're making it, it's a distinction.

So Lydia was a deep wound, so the front of the hatchet.

And then Martha, they can tell, was from the blunt end.

You know, and it's hard to say if the offender is even aware that he's wielding the hatchet, hatchet, in what orientation he's wielding the hatchet, maybe in the dynamic situation of inflicting these blows.

So it's hard to say for sure that the offender has purposefully chosen to use the blunt end on Martha and then the cutting end on Lydia.

One of the possibilities for the reason for the two weapons.

And I think this is where it really does depend on the sequence.

I mean, it is possible that the offender had the shotgun, you know, shoots three bodies, three victims out there in the barn and is shooting the victims inside the house and runs out of ammo and now picks up the hatchet.

You know, so that's one progression that could occur.

It's also possible the offender starts with the hatchet and recognizes maybe the shotgun is the family shotgun and ends up taking that and kills the people inside the house and then goes outside and tracks down the dad and the two girls out there.

I'm sure there's other possible scenarios, you know, but right now I think it's those two are the primary ones that I think in terms of why two different weapons and the sequencing.

And it could go either direction with the information I have right now.

Do you want me to run by what the sheriff thinks the sequencing is so far, or what do you think?

Yeah, let's hear it.

So they do believe that the murders happened in different places, you know, some murders in the kitchen, some murders in the barn.

They think that Jacob, the father, Jacob Wolfe, tried to run from the kitchen and was shot outside between the house and the barn.

And they believe the killer shot him from a distance in the back while he was running.

And then, you know, when he went down, killed him at close range.

And they think the two little girls whose bodies were found in the barn had tried to hide there and were then shot at close range.

Now, but Jacob was found in the barn, right?

He was, yeah.

Okay.

So if he is actually receiving this gunshot, the shotgun blast to his head in between the house and the barn, that would be obvious in terms of the blood, brain matter, et cetera, on the ground, wherever he ended up laying.

And then he's drug into the barn.

And this is somewhat consistent with what the offender is doing inside the house.

He's trying to hide the body.

So he's not leaving Jacob out in plain view, laying between the barn and the house.

He's taking Jacob's body, which takes effort and time to go into the barn.

Again, we don't know, you know, it's if Jacob's running out of the house and shot in the back, I'm having what I'm struggling with is he is now leaving behind his wife, daughters, and the farmhand inside the house with the offender

and is going out towards the barn where the two girls are.

So there must be something,

if that's truly the scenario, there must be be some information in which Jacob thinks the two girls out in the barn are under a greater threat than the people that are inside the house.

That's the only, I think, logical thing.

I'm just putting myself in Jacob's position.

Right.

If I have only got one offender and the offender is in the house with me, the people in the house are the ones that are under the biggest threat.

Right.

I'm not going to all of a sudden worry about the two girls that are safe out in the barn.

Why would I abandon my family inside the house to go out towards the barn?

So I'm struggling with this scenario right now.

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So what I think the sheriff is thinking right now with his limited information.

Everybody was in the kitchen except for Jacob.

They think Jacob was in the barn first.

Okay.

And I don't know if this makes sense to you too.

So everybody's in.

They're preparing dinner.

They're sitting down.

She's probably going to call Jacob to dinner shortly.

The attacker comes in and the sheriff thinks that Jacob heard the screams of his wife and the kids and he came running.

It is

possible that the two little girls who were found in the barn passed him.

They took off and escaped and hid in the barn.

And when he got to the kitchen, you know, maybe that's when they left, or maybe, you know, who knows when this was happening.

The offender is not able to control all of these people.

So when Jacob arrives, he sees the offender, turns tail, and runs back to the barn.

And the little girls are already maybe in the barn.

And the offender then goes after Jacob.

So the sequence is very confusing to me because that's a lot of, I mean, so what is he doing?

He's killing boom, boom, boom.

Jacob arrives at some point, boom, boom, boom, and he kills everybody else and then manages to get a shot off of Jacob, hitting him in the back.

All of this seems like a lot to have happened with one, if this is just one person, one person being able to do all this.

But what do you think?

I mean, I know you've always said it doesn't take very long to kill somebody.

No, you know, in terms of the amount of time, you know, to actually kill this entire family with a shotgun.

And then, of course, we've got one of them is killed with strictly just the hatchet.

You know, it's not necessarily a length of time.

I'm just trying to kind of envision if you truly have these two clusters of victims, if the offender is interacting with the group that is inside and then leaves that group and then takes off after Jacob and kills Jacob and the two girls,

what's going on with the group inside inside the house?

Now, are they just huddling in fear?

That's a possibility.

You'd almost think that they would disperse.

They would get the hell out of the house, but maybe not.

And then that allows the offender to come back and then kill them.

I will tell you, we took a look at the photograph of the bloodstaining in the kitchen.

By no shape or means is that bloodstaining consistent with any of these victims being shot in the head with a shotgun they're likely being killed or shot down in the basement after they're put down there unless there's other staining in the house that we that you haven't described to me right now at least with what the sheriff's theory is

i'm struggling to kind of rectify that you know considering a single offender.

Yeah.

Not saying it's impossible, but I am struggling a little bit with that.

So one thing I thought of is is maybe I'm not saying he got lucky here, but maybe the timing was such that he killed everybody in that kitchen that he needed to kill.

The two girls took off.

Jacob ran.

So everybody was dead.

So there was no huddling to be done because he had killed the five people right there.

The girls had left and snuck out.

And then Jacob shows up.

They're not being shot in the head with a shotgun in that kitchen.

You don't think so?

I can guarantee that, at least with the photo photo that you showed me, if there's other

blood staining, there'd be massive blood pools, massive, massive blood pools.

I'm not seeing that there.

There would be spatter.

Right now, my primary theory

is

that the sheriff must be seeing evidence that Jacob was killed outside the barn if he's forming that opinion.

Because there'd be a huge blood pool from this shotgun blast to his head, right?

And drag marks, you know, with dripping blood into the barn.

It almost makes sense that Jacob was in between these two, you know, the house and the barn.

He's gunned down.

He's drug out to the barn.

Whether the two girls were already in there or they come in, maybe they were told by mom, hey, go get your dad.

It's dinner time.

And then they're.

they're killed.

And then he goes in and now he's controlling the five that are at the dinner table.

And some of them are bleeding up in that kitchen, but they have not been shot with a shotgun up in that kitchen.

There would be a massive blood pool.

And so it's like,

no, they, in all likelihood, maybe...

the girl Martha who was killed with the hatchet is killed up there.

But I bet these other family members were possibly forced down the trapdoor.

And I would be expecting a fair amount of blood from the victims that were shot in the back of the head with a shotgun.

And one girl was shot in the face.

So, you know, I'm thinking the homicides with the shotgun inside the house are occurring down in the basement.

Maybe the one or two girls that received wounds from the hatchet are killed up or at least struck with the hatchet up in the kitchen area.

And

if that white material I saw on that fabric on the floor floor is brain matter, well, then that's from Martha, who's receiving the blunt end blow from the back of the hatchet.

That'd be a crushing injury that would possibly leave brain matter plus the bleeding.

If I had all the photos and everything else, I'd probably be able to tease out exactly sort of what's going on here.

But at least with the little bit that I'm discerning from the information you've given me and then what the sheriff is hypothesizing, I'm kind of blending all that together to something that makes sense to me, assuming one offender.

Okay, so the sheriff is very dedicated.

He's got neighbors coming over while they're trying to sort this out.

He's very concerned about securing the crime scene.

So he has a couple of neighbors spend the night with him.

Two other neighbors and the sheriff stay the night in the house.

They keep the bodies exactly where they are.

And one of the neighbors is,

it sounds like a relative of the farmhand who was a relative of Mrs.

Wolf.

So, how awful.

They've left all the bodies in place, which is smart.

But, you know, to sleep all night, even as law enforcement, to sleep all night with dead bodies and not knowing if somebody is going to come back or what the motive is or who did this must have been really frightening.

I would be frightened at least.

Yeah, it's not the way I'd recommend securing a crime scene.

It's better than leaving it and leaving the front door open, I guess.

Well, you know, in this day and age, we put up a yellow crime scene tape.

We put patrol officers, you know, around the perimeter.

Yes.

But, yeah, I could see where, you know, back then,

this was the mechanism that they chose.

Okay.

Okay.

So it becomes important because the two neighbors decide to leave and they go to the Hofer farm to get breakfast for the sheriff and for themselves.

And they were going to bring it back.

So the sheriff's on his own at this house with five dead bodies and three people in the barn and somebody on the loose because he now, of course, realizes that this was not a murder or suicide.

When the sheriff is on his own, you know, he is kind of just making sure everything is secure.

At about 5.30 in the morning, he hears a car coming.

And I think that he is assuming that this is going to be, you know, the two neighbors who went to go get him breakfast.

The description is he hears a car coming across the prairie.

I love the idea of, I don't think I've said prairie in

one of our episodes before, but I love that image coming like a car.

And you know, these are 1920 cars.

So they're, you know, it's like bouncing across.

So he hears a car coming.

They were very loud.

So you can't really sneak up on somebody.

I mean, we're certainly not talking about a Prius or anything.

And he steps outside.

He can't identify the car at first.

So he, it sounds like, is very smart.

He steps steps back into the shadows and kind of hides to see what's going to happen.

He's under a lean to that's just like right outside the kitchen.

Car pulls up and a guy gets out.

The sheriff doesn't know who this man is.

He is looking into the farmhouse living room window and he starts walking towards the barn.

So he's looking through the window, walks towards the barn, and that's when the sheriff pops out and says, hello.

And the man freezes.

I'm not saying this is the offender.

I'm not saying a man is, this man is a suspect.

It's just the sheriff trying to get information about who's on this private property, which has been the subject of a murder scene.

Sheriff introduces himself, and the man says that he's the owner of a neighboring farm.

And, you know, everybody else has come out, so I don't think this is a surprise to the sheriff.

And this is the first time the man has shown up.

So there's been activity for the past 24 hours at this farm, but this is the first time that the sheriff is meeting someone he hadn't met earlier.

His name is Henry Layer.

He's 36

and he is originally from Russia.

Remember, this is very immigrant-centric, this area.

And, you know, Layer says, This is awful.

I can't even believe this.

These were really good neighbors.

I don't understand what happened.

They talk for a while, and this is where Henry Lehrer starts to get a little bit iffy.

So he is suspicious because he's got his hand inside a pocket.

And the sheriff kind of blows it off because he doesn't think it's the pocket's very small, so it's not going to have a weapon in it.

And then the other guys show up with breakfast.

And so, you know, Henry Lehre kind of stays.

And he says, the sheriff says to one of the neighbors, did you drive past this guy's house, Henry Lehre's house?

Because Henry Lehrer had said, I live over in this direction on your way to go get the breakfast.

And I didn't understand why this would be significant, but I guess it is.

So he says, Did you drive by this guy's house as you left the farm?

And the neighbor said, Yes.

And he said, So would Henry Layer have heard you leave the farm?

And the neighbor said, Yeah, and plus, we have loud cars.

So the significance is what?

That you know, Henry is able to hear who's coming and going, and that's what's signaling him to come to the farm?

Or what do you think?

Well, I think if it's the, you know, being suspicious about Henry, you know, of course, Henry knows there's activity going on at the Wolf farm and there's law enforcement being, you know, present there.

So when Henry hears the cars go past his house, he may be making the assumption, well, the Wolf house.

and property are abandoned.

Now is my time to go back and do whatever.

If Henry isn't involved in the crime.

So I think that that's what the sheriff is kind of keying in on is it just so happens that at the moment that only one person besides the dead bodies are present.

This is when Henry, who's supposedly a good neighbor of the Wolf family, that's when he decides to show up and he walks up onto the property and looks into the house and is starting to head out to the barn where three victims were killed, or or at least their bodies were found

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You know, the sheriff is suspicious of everybody at this point.

So, you know, Henry's in the mix, but I think he's trying to keep an open mind.

But that, I think, is what he's piecing together exactly what you said.

And it could be Henry just taking advantage of a tragedy and to steal some copper wire or something.

We don't know.

You know, being a thief doesn't certainly make you a murderer.

Or is he a Looky Lou?

Could be a Looky Lou.

He's just like, oh, you know, let's go check things out, right?

Yeah, get a souvenir if there's eBay in the 1920s and there's not.

I could hawk something.

You know, who knows?

But, you know, we're still trying to think about gathering evidence.

Henry, I don't know why the sheriff allows him to go all over the the house.

He's accompanying him, but maybe he thinks that he's going to say something that's incriminating.

I don't know.

Henry says, let's go out to the barn and check out the chickens to see if they've laid any eggs.

The bodies are still there of these two little girls and their dad.

And everybody thinks it's weird, but the sheriff says, sure, let's go.

So they go out to the barn and, you know, Henry points out there are a few eggs and seems like this is good.

It's great.

There are these eggs here.

But when everybody kind of turns and looks at the eggs, he announces that he has found a clue in the hay.

And in the hay, he says he has found some shotgun shells, which the sheriff had not found before.

So, I mean, Henry is not a rocket scientist, clearly.

I think the sheriff immediately thinks, oh, this guy doesn't have his hand in his pocket anymore.

Clearly, he's planting evidence.

I don't know if that's true, but that's what it seems like.

He is the only one one who has discovered in this hay some shotgun casings.

You know,

I'm thinking about it from a sort of a crime scene reconstruction standpoint.

You know, the location of these of these expended shotgun shells, is that consistent with how the shotgun would have ejected these shells?

considering the type of, you know, where the shooter would have been standing to kill these three victims.

You know, and since I don't have that information, I can't say that.

So I can, on one hand, say, okay, maybe this is consistent with the gun used and where the shooter would have been standing from an ejection pattern standpoint.

Are these shotgun shells just laying on top of the hay, you know, or were they found underneath like they had been hidden?

Now, could an offender, after killing the three victims, taken the time to grab up the expended shotgun shells and hide them?

Sure.

This is also where it's interesting in terms of, well, what what kind of shotgun are we talking about?

You know, is this a shotgun, like a pump action shotgun?

Is this a lever shotgun where you snap it down and have to manually take out these shells?

You know, some of this is where it's, you know, is shells even being present?

at the crime scene consistent with the gun used.

If Jacob is shot outside and then drug into the barn, you know, how many shells?

There should only be two shells expended because those are the two girls that are being killed inside.

Because Jacob, the shells for Jacob should be outside unless the offender pulls them out or ejects them inside the barn before shooting the girls.

So this is all what I'm kind of starting to, okay, there's a lot of variables that I don't have the information on.

But the sheriff is most certainly savvy, you know, to how shotguns operate and knows this crime scene.

And he immediately is going, okay, this isn't right.

You know, Henry threw out a distraction and now sounds like the sheriff is suspecting.

He pulls out these shells out of that little pocket and is planting them there.

Well, why is he doing that?

Well, he's probably planting shells from a different gun, you know, to throw off the investigation.

He is trying to literally stage this crime scene in front of the sheriff who's investigating the crime.

And luckily we have a smart sheriff here, so that's good.

I have been searching and I really can't find what kind of shotgun it is.

I'm sorry.

Sure.

It's, you know, but I think you're making some good assumptions.

They bring in hounds and of course they interview everybody around.

The hounds are useless because it's been raining so much.

There's no help there.

You know, the sheriff is suspicious of Henry, but there's not a lot of evidence that is, you know, kind of directly pointing at him, even though I know we're talking about it's clear that he's trying to plant evidence.

They have some rewards out, two $1,000 rewards, which is more than $15,000 today.

So that means you've got even more people out there trying to figure out what happened.

Later that morning, the other murder weapon, in addition to the hatchet, is located.

And I still don't have the exact gauge here, but there's a swampy area close by where someone notices the stalk of a shotgun sticking out.

It's slightly rusted, but it's consistent with having been in the water for two days, which is how long they think that this has been happening.

No one knows who bought it, and the manufacturer of the gun is contacted, and they have no idea.

I mean, you know, who knows?

But it sounds like they did find the murder weapon.

There's nothing they can really do about that.

In 1920, there's ballistics, but I don't know.

Well, shotguns are

different than

your handguns and your rifles.

So shotguns are smooth bored weapons.

So there's no rifling inside of most shotguns.

So when the projectiles travel down this smooth bore, they're not marked like projectiles out of a rifled handgun or a rifled rifle.

The marks that a shotgun would leave that could be intercompared would be on the shotgun shells, the firing pin impression,

the breech face stamp, whether or not it's a shotgun that had like an ejector extractor, which 1920s, you know,

I'm not a firearms expert that has the, you know, in-depth familiarity of what types of guns would have existed back in the 1920s.

But my guess is, is you're not having,

in all likelihood, this is not like a semi-auto shotgun.

You know, that's my guess.

So we have a funeral and Henry Lehrer comes to the funeral.

He's part of the community.

I mean, everybody came to this funeral, as you can tell from that photo.

He's being weird and the sheriff is watching.

He insists that each of the caskets be opened so he can look at each one, but he doesn't cry or have any emotion or anything.

This is Henry?

Yeah.

What is he doing?

So he's having each casket opened.

He looks at it.

He doesn't really do anything.

And that's it.

And everybody thinks this is bananas.

Oh, yeah, it is.

What is that?

You know, I guess the only thought, well, I would need to know more about Henry, but right now I'm going to assume Henry is your average farm person,

not involved in homicidal violence on a periodic basis.

You know, it's not a hitman, not

mafia, you know,

doing these types of homicides.

And I'm almost wondering if there is a sense of guilt and making peace with each of the victims, if he's responsible.

Making the assumption, you know, he's responsible to look at each one of them.

I can't see how that would, unless he's having to, he's trying to acquire details for subsequent interviews.

You know, I think maybe it's a personal thing, something inside that he needs to do.

But that is bizarre.

I mean, that the sheriff is spot on.

That's a behavior that I have to pay attention to.

So we've got Henry acting weird, Henry probably planting evidence because it's under the hay, which we've already kind of said makes no sense, no sense.

I mean, you know, the shell is not going to dive its way into hay.

So I don't think he understood that when he was planting it.

Right.

So we have that.

information.

Just that, that bit of information and relying a little bit upon

the sheriff's own observations, and I'm putting some fair amount of weight on the veracity of the sheriff and his observational abilities in this case.

This really, if Henry truly is planting those shotgun shells, then he now becomes prime suspect.

Yeah.

And they go to his house and his daughters, they're not trying to protect their dad.

They said he wasn't home for a large part of Thursday, which is when they think this happened.

Okay.

They said he wasn't there, so he doesn't have a good alibi.

So the motive.

This is what's mysterious.

What do you think?

So this is a neighbor, but we don't know anything about, there is a motive, but we don't know anything about a motive.

What are the possibilities here?

The first thing that comes to my mind is that there is a dispute, kind of a neighbor dispute, possibly related to farming, land boundaries, you know, did they have cattle?

You know, any...

Yep.

Okay.

So, you know, I've watched Yellowstone.

Are you comparing this to Yellowstone?

I mean, you could see these cattles are the livelihood, and maybe there's a dispute between them over something that is a, you know, high-stakes financial, you know, financial situation for one or the other.

Yeah.

So that's probably right now my top theory without knowing.

I mean, it's possible that maybe Jacob was, you know, doing criminal work for Henry and didn't live up to his end of what he was supposed to do, you know.

But considering the little bit of victimology that you talked about Jacob at the beginning in the first episode, in terms of there doesn't, he's not abusive to his family and he seems to be a good guy and this and that,

I'm going to say, no, you know what?

I, I think Henry's a bad guy here, and somehow he feels that he's been stiffed by Jacob and this family.

And now you're getting into that vindictive category of

why the whole family.

Basically, you know, Henry is like, not only am I going to take out Jacob, I'm going to take out this entire family.

And maybe there's some sort of aspect in which Henry could end up taking over Jacob's property and expand his own farm.

So by Jacob no longer having any, you know, hairs to inherit the land,

Henry can now somehow swoop in and expand his business and financially profit.

So that's kind of the direction that I'm thinking right now.

What we find out is that neighbors start to say Jacob, the father, was having problems with a neighbor.

There was a disagreement that he was actually worried about this neighbor, but they never named, Jacob never named the neighbor.

So when the sheriff presses other neighbors who he hadn't spoken to yet about information about this mysterious neighbor.

We find out it's Henry Leir.

Tell me what you think about this as a motive.

Apparently, Henry Leir's livestock had trespassed onto the wolf land, as livestock is apt to do.

Wolf's dog had bitten Leir when he came on to try to retrieve the cattle.

There was then sort of this feud, and it sounds like both men were spreading rumors and gossip about each other.

Really?

This is a motive to kill an entire family.

I started watching this show called Fear Thy Neighbor, and I cannot believe the stupid reasons why people kill each other like over fence being too tall.

Like it's unreal.

So at first I thought this is stupid.

And then I thought, no, I could see this on Fear Thy Neighbor, the TV series.

No, absolutely.

I'm going to, I'm going to throw out it a different analogy.

Okay.

Road rage.

You know, you get pissed off at somebody because they cut you off or do something in traffic, right?

And now you got two people that are just, you know, they're not thinking.

They're just pissed off at each other.

And one runs the other off the road and pulls out a gun and kills him.

You know, it's just that, how dare you, you know?

And so this neighbor dispute, you know, originating with the dog bite, you know, it escalated.

And Henry has the psychology of how dare you, right?

And took out Jacob and his entire family.

That's my opinion right now.

I think it's crystal clear what happened here.

Well, let's find out because the sheriff is aware, it's been three weeks now, he's aware that there's a lot of public pressure on him and the investigators to make an arrest.

Now everybody thinks it's Henry, and Henry has not confessed and he's denying all of this.

And there's not a ton of concrete evidence.

It's kind of circumstantially, except, of course, we know we do think he planted evidence.

So the sheriff tries to do,

the sheriff tries to do a couple of things.

He's very creative, I have to say, especially for 1920.

So on the way to taking Henry, they arrest him.

And on the way to taking him to the jailhouse, there's a man that darts across the street.

And the sheriff's deputies run out of the car that Henry's in and chase him down.

They put him next to Henry.

This is a plant.

And they stick them both in jail.

And Laird doesn't ever confess.

Henry doesn't ever confess to this.

So they really are trying to get that shit out of him.

Yeah,

this day and age, there's definitely restrictions on how you do that type of scenario.

But, you know, that is a tactic

that is employed from time to time.

Okay.

Again, there's a lot of legalities that restrict what law enforcement can do, particularly under this set of circumstances.

Okay.

So the reason I say that is because it's very clear that the sheriff wants a confession, that he doesn't think he has a strong case against Henry if he doesn't get a confession.

So the sheriff, and this is why I said, remember what happened at the funeral with Henry looking at the bodies in the caskets and making a big deal out of that.

So the sheriff gets him back to the jail and interrogates him.

They are not getting anywhere with him until they they show, the sheriff says, they show crime scene photos of the bodies.

And the sheriff says that when they show a photo of Emma in her crib, you know, the one I showed you, they, I think, made that photo up and, you know, showed it to him to show that she's alive

and that all of these people are dead.

He breaks down in tears and confesses.

He will later, Paul, he will later say, I was beaten into a confession.

I certainly think that Henry was guilty.

I don't know how you feel about this, but why would photos of the people he killed have a bigger reaction that forces a confession out of him than actually being in front of their caskets and looking at their dead body?

It doesn't make any sense to me.

Why would you have a reaction in one way and not the other?

That's why I'm wondering if Henry really did get beaten to get this confession.

But also, I think it's also within the context of when he is looking at

the caskets versus when he's looking at the photos.

You know, when he's looking at the photos, he's under suspicion.

He's recognizing, you know, he's under jeopardy in terms of his freedom and potentially his life if this is a death-eligible case.

So time has passed, reflection, emotions,

you know, maybe he's now recognizing that, you know, you said he had some kids.

He's not going to be around for his kids.

You know, who knows the differences?

I don't think the difference between him, you know, looking at the bodies in the casket versus now he's breaking down looking at the photos, that that is somehow indicative that he was mistreated during the interview.

It would not be surprising to me if there was, let's say, a level of corporal involvement in terms of, you know, he's, you know, getting whacked a bit, you know, as he's being interviewed, you know, 1920s, you know, it's,

it wouldn't surprise me at all.

However, I, in terms of utilizing the difference in his response from the caskets to the photos, I don't put any weight on that at all.

Okay.

Well, I told you he confessed.

So I'm going to just tell you what he says.

from start to finish happened.

And you tell me if it makes sense based on what you know now.

Okay, you ready?

Because there's some differences from what you and I said.

So he confesses, whether it was, you know, a real heart and soul confession or beaten out of him, he says that he was pissed off about the dog

and that he went over to the wolf's house and they got into an argument.

He and Jacob got into an argument and Jacob grabbed his own shotgun.

We don't know whether the shotgun in the swampy area was Jacob's, but Henry says I wasn't armed.

He had the shotgun.

The two men fought over the gun and Henry got it.

He says that when they were fighting, the gun went off accidentally two times.

One shot that killed the wife in the kitchen and the other one that killed Jacob Hofer, the farmhand.

He said that everybody else is there and Jacob was in the kitchen at the time.

Jacob freaks out and runs into the field.

And Henry gets more ammunition out of a drawer.

How he knew there would be ammunition in this particular drawer, I have no idea.

This is what he says.

He shot Jacob once in the back as he was running and then of course in the head at close range.

He said two of the little girls ran into the barn when he was chasing after their dad.

He shot both of them there.

He said that the wife and the farmhand were dead in the house.

Three little girls were still alive.

He said he killed two of them with the shotgun, one with the hatchet.

And he said, I have no idea.

that the baby was there.

Otherwise, he probably would have killed her too, Emma.

He just didn't know.

He said that after that, it was all done.

He dragged Jacob's body to the barn and covered him and the little girls up with the hay.

And then he pushed the bodies of the rest of the family through the trapdoor into the cellar.

Of course, he says his memory is hazy, as killers will say.

But he said this all started with an accident, two shots, and that was it.

And he was defending himself.

And then everything else just sort of fell apart.

And the sheriff basically feels like, well, there's inconsistencies, which look like, you know, the killer really, this was an attack, attack, a full offense, not defense.

So then the rest is just kind of what happens to Henry, which is not very much.

What do you think about his version of events?

You know, the problem with Henry's confession has to do with how much access Henry had at the crime scene to visualize everything, to be able to see everything,

to see what the victims look like in the casket, you know, because he's giving some specific information that's adding up to, you know, what actually happened in terms of the types of injuries, you know, and who he had, you know, the hatchet was used on.

So this is where it gets hard to truly assess, you know, is this bona fide information that he knew because he's a killer or is this something he could discern because he had so much access to the crime scene, the victims' bodies?

Was this a coerced confession?

And now details are being fed to him, you know, by the interviewers, by law enforcement.

So it adds up with what they think happened.

You know, it is interesting that he's saying that this was, you know, Jacob initiating.

So he's minimizing that and that the two shots to the mom and to the farmhand were accidental over the struggle of the shotgun.

There is a, that's a level of minimizing in my opinion.

So I, I'm not sure, you know,

what to

really make, but it's close enough to the evidence, though I still have problems with the number of people that were shot in the head inside the house and the lack of

the blood pools

that would show where they were laying.

Henry's confession is close enough, at least on face value, that, yeah,

this could be

indicative that he's truly the killer.

There's those issues that I'm having about his knowledge of the crime scene and whether or not he was fed details during the interview.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I wouldn't put it past the sheriff to really just try to nail this down.

So he pleads guilty.

The judge even says, are you sure you want to do that?

He says, yes.

He's given life in prison with hard labor.

I'm surprised, you know, that this was even an option, that they were even going to have him plead guilty, but I don't know.

I don't know why that happened.

I was expecting him to hang for sure.

So later on he says I'm recanting and it's too late.

He says really you think I could have killed all those people and you know, there's ample evidence that he likely did.

And he dies five years into his life sentence.

I mean, he's 36.

So he died at 41.

Ironic.

So did Jacob Wolfe died at 41.

But I don't know.

Something's something might be amiss there in the prison system.

I don't know.

Well, hard labor.

Yeah.

that might take a toll on you.

Yeah, North Dakota in the winter.

Oh, for sure.

Emma Wolf is adopted by her mom's sister, and she lives the rest of her life near Turtle Lake, and she dies at 84 in 2003.

Oh, wow.

So, this story is something else.

And I think we don't do a lot, but we do talk about families who have all been murdered and the impact of that.

And we've had stories where you have a survivor, and thankfully, oftentimes they go on and live a good life.

And it sounds like that's what happened here.

But what is nauseating to me is when he essentially makes the statement that, well, I didn't even know she was there, which indicates that he would have killed her,

an eight-month-old baby.

That is what you're saying.

It's rage.

It's road rage.

It's rage over cattle and a dog.

And that's it.

You know, you and I talk about that all the time.

Every time I hear someone say, he would have never killed somebody over an affair from 55 years ago or or whatever I mean you and I I know both always think you don't have any idea what in their head what they're saying to themselves you know that and that's the scary part right yeah it's just that you don't know who you're dealing with sometimes from a my own family talking to the kids who are now driving it's like don't get into some sort of beef with somebody on the road, you know,

because you don't know who they are, what they're capable of doing.

And this is the reality is, is, you know, Jacob sounds like he talked to some neighbors that he was having problems with Henry.

You know, he recognized that Henry was kind of a jerk, but he probably had no idea that Henry would be somebody that would come over and kill his entire family.

Yeah.

I mean, he did say he was a little scared of him, but nothing.

He didn't alert any authorities about it.

Yeah.

Who knows?

What a mess.

So hopefully next week, we won't have something that involves eight victims,

particularly children.

I always say it's hard for me to do the stories about children, but there's sometimes they're so significant and we learn so much that

I will visit those types of stories.

I think they can be important.

And I think you and I tell those stories compassionately through the lens of the victim, hopefully.

So that's the goal.

All victims and especially children need to be remembered.

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

Well, next week we'll have a different story.

I promise I will move heaven and earth to get us something not involving kids and in North Dakota in the wild,

in the prairie, even though I love saying prairie.

Have a good week, and I'll see you next week.

All right, Kate.

Thanks again.

Thanks.

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 Emerosi.

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

Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.

Our theme song is by Tom Breifogel.

Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.

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

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