Cold Heart PT 1

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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.

Some are solved, and some are cold.

Very cold.

This is Buried Bones.

Hi, Kate.

How are you?

I'm well, Paul.

How about you?

I am hanging in there.

What's been going on?

Well, I'm trying to stay organized, and I'm pretty good at it, I think, because I am the master or mistress, I'm not sure which, of making lists.

Are you a list kind of person?

Do you do a lot of lists or are you putting info in your calendar?

How do you stay organized?

Oh, geez.

You know, in my personal life, no, I don't make any lists.

You know, I've tried to do the whole task list thing and I just start ignoring it.

That's not me.

You know, but when it comes to like casework, yes.

You know, like if I want to go interview somebody, I will make a list of, you know, questions and details that I'm trying to get or other things within the case.

So within the professional realm, yes, I do rely on lists.

So Google Keep, do you ever use Google Keep or anything like that?

I haven't.

I've heard of it, but I've never used it.

So I've gotten my kids on Google Keep.

I had one of them do online school at home, and she was really trying to stay organized.

It was like going from a normal middle school to doing like doctoral work on your own.

And she really needed to stay organized.

And we used Google Keep.

And, you know, you can put it on your computer, you can put it on your phone.

And that's been so helpful for her that I decided to do it.

But I've gotten a little bit OCD about it because I color code everything now.

And I

put things in capital letters.

It is.

It is.

And I'll put stuff on the family calendar.

I'll put stuff on Google Keep and not on the family calendar.

And my kids are like, what do you mean we're going out to dinner tonight?

That's not on the family calendar, but it's on my Google Keep.

So I do, I'm hyper-organized with pretty much everything that I do.

But I just know that there are quite a few people who just don't, I don't know how you can operate without a list.

Even I have to do a chore list.

So I have a lot of respect for you if you can keep all that that stuff in your pretty little head that you have to do.

You know,

there's times when I forget to do something for sure, you know, and maybe a list would have reminded me.

It's just for me, you know, I'm all about, you know, I guess efficiency.

And lists on one hand would be efficient, but then I could spend more time generating lists than actually getting work done.

And that's my fear.

That's a pretty big fear.

Well, we're going to jump right into this story.

And I can guarantee you that the investigators who had to dig into this story had many, many, many, many, many lists that they had to deal with because this is a big one.

I'm not sure we've had one with this much like relationship drama before.

And we've had some pretty intense relationship drama stories.

This is next level.

I know, next level.

And, you know, when I think about a relationship drama, I think sort of like it's, I don't know, present day relationship drama and the stuff that plays out on social media and who's getting a divorce and all of that.

This is a story from 1903 that has incredible drama in it and some pretty, I think, bigger-than-life characters.

And I just have to keep reminding myself, I always think, you know, that time period, which is still Victorian America, that is that time period.

I can't believe that there's that much drama, but people are people.

It doesn't matter if you're in the 1500s or, you know, 2025.

It just, it doesn't matter.

We just have not changed much over the centuries, but just there's some little things we have to take into consideration for sure.

Yeah, and this will take some historical context on my part to explain to you.

This is a sex scandal.

Oh, salacious.

In 1903.

This came from a listener who I love it when our listeners reach out to us and let us know about stories that they think are really interesting.

And this is a good one.

And I also want to kind of give a nod before we jump into this to an author named Kimberly Tilley who wrote a book called Cold Heart.

And that's what we're calling this cold heart.

And you'll find out why here pretty soon.

So let's go ahead and set the scene.

Okay, 1903, one of our older ones.

And this involves a family called the Burdick family.

And I warned you a little bit about this.

There's a lot going on here.

And there's a lot of backstory.

But I've got lots and lots of yellow.

And this is a big enough story that we needed to make it a two-parter.

Probably the biggest research document I've ever had.

So you better get yourself a kava and

sit back and let Aunt Kate tell you a story by the fire.

I'm going to saddle up and get my ears going here.

Okay.

So the Burdict family lives in a beautiful three-story house on Ashland Avenue, which is in Buffalo, New York.

And this is very close to an area at that time called Millionaire's Row.

And Buffalo is a really bustling city.

It's an industrial hub because it's on Lake Erie, which Lake Erie served as a gateway for where goods were passing between the East Coast and the West Coast.

So Buffalo had a lot of money, a lot of money, a lot of powerful people, you know, couples in their 30s and 40s had a lot of money and socialized together.

When I said sex scandal, I was thinking this is that set of people.

Lots of money, very good looking, everybody's intermingling, and there is is quite a lot of drama.

And we know throughout history that drama, particularly with romantic relationships, can lead to murder.

And that is the bread and butter of what we talk about on this show.

Yeah, it's one of the fundamental motives of why people kill each other.

So I'm kind of curious to see where this goes.

This October, we're doing something very different.

We'll be recording Buried Bones live at sea.

That's right.

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

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

No kids, no stress.

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

And it's all wrapped in the full Virgin Voyages experience.

20-plus eateries, Michelin star chef-curated menus, Lux staterooms, Wi-Fi, and entertainment included.

It's not just a cruise.

It's a celebration of thoughtful true crime storytelling.

And we want you to join us.

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

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IQ bars are really convenient and they taste great.

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Okay, the main person here is a guy named Edwin Burdick.

We're going to call him Ed.

Self-made, really wealthy man.

He was a stenographer in an envelope factory, and he rose through the ranks, and he, along with another guy, eventually bought the company.

So he also owns a publishing company.

He's very outgoing.

Ed's a social guy.

He has been known for being especially compassionate.

And he has a wife named Alice.

He's 40.

She's a few years older.

And they're members of a group in Buffalo that's known as the Elmwood Avenue Set,

which is about 20 couples who belong to a golf club, the Red Jacket Golf Club.

Ed is the president, and they

are also a couple that love to go dancing, so they go to a local dancing club often.

This Elmwood Avenue set, which just sounds like a really interesting social club, has a reputation for throwing really crazy wild parties.

They are also kind of aloof and snotty and sort of look down, it sounds like on the rest of Buffalo society, even though it sounds like Ed's a great guy, he's in an elite group.

And that, you know, tends to tick off the people who are not in that elite group.

And 20 couples is not that many people.

There's a lot of, I think, options for kind of like jealousy and, you know, there's money there.

So this is, again, rife for a big scandal.

This couple has three daughters.

There's a 15-year-old, a 13-year-old, and a 10-year-old that live in the house.

And Alice's mother-in-law, so Ed's mom, lives with the Burdicks.

Her name is Maria Hull.

And there are some domestic workers.

It's a pretty big household here.

Now, Alice is not living there currently.

And I'll explain why in a little bit.

This is what we have to do.

I have to tell you about the death, and then we have to go back for the backstory.

Once we have all that context, we'll go back to the investigation.

Does that make sense?

I probably will have most answers to your questions, but there's a lot of context that goes into this.

Okay.

Makes sense to me.

So if you get confused, let me know, but I might have to do a little bit of searching in my document to jump around.

Okay, so this is the morning of Friday, February 27th, 1903.

I will presume because we are in Buffalo that it is freezing their,

they're freezing their little butts off.

It's very cold.

So the cook's name is Maggie.

She's the one who goes downstairs.

She says, oh no, something bad has happened.

It It is freezing downstairs.

The front door is wide open, so the winter wind is coming in, and she immediately freaks out because she knows that Ed would have locked all the doors every single night.

She closes the door.

She goes into the kitchen.

The window in the kitchen is wide open, which makes it cold also.

She immediately goes to thieves.

because this is such a nice house in a great area.

She runs upstairs to find Ed.

She runs into the maid in the upstairs hall whose name is Katie.

So now we have two domestic workers who are very stressed out.

And Maggie says to Katie, the door's open, something's happened.

Maggie knocks on Ed's bedroom door.

No answer.

So Maggie pushes open the door, empty bed.

No Ed.

And the bed is actually still made, so it doesn't look like he ever even came up for the night.

Katie says to Maggie, yeah, I'm the one who made that bed, and I did it yesterday.

So he hasn't been up here.

Maggie had last seen Ed in the den when she came home that night.

So she goes downstairs to see if he fell asleep.

That happened often.

When she gets to the door of the den, Maggie has a case of nerves and she is scared.

Someone who also lives in the house is Alice's mother, and her name is Maria Hull.

Maggie gets to the door of the den.

She loses her nerve and she runs upstairs to wake up Ed's mother-in-law, Alice's mom, who is Maria.

She's 64 years old.

Maggie knocks on her door, says the front door was open, the window was open, Ed's not in the bedroom.

I don't know what to do.

She goes down to the den.

Maria says to Maggie, get going on breakfast.

The family will come down at 8.30.

Let me look around.

It'll be okay.

She looks in Ed's room.

She says he's not there, just like the housekeepers had said.

She goes down to the den.

She stops in front of the door and she says, I don't want to go in either.

She says to Maggie, you open the door and Maggie says no.

So I'm going to pause here and say, what is the right thing to do?

at this point.

So like my neighbor a couple of years ago had her house broken into.

Her daughter was outside and the police said, do not go back inside, even though the door was wide open, you know, and we almost didn't know what to do.

If we were supposed to wait, we didn't know if her parents were in there, what if somebody were hurt.

What is the right thing to do in this situation?

Well, I think it differs from 1903 till today.

And there's also the consideration of the temperature outside.

You know, if you are concerned that there's an intruder inside the house, then yes, this is today, this is where you get, you know, law enforcement responding.

And it may be where either there's a secure location in your house, but you don't want to be trapped, or you get out of the house, but it gets complicated.

Do you have kids inside the house?

Do you need to help the kids?

In today's world, this is where you get on 911 and you're on the phone with dispatch and you're updating the dispatcher as to your location, where you're in the house, what you know, what you don't know, and the dispatcher will let you know, you know, how far away law enforcement is at that moment.

In 1903, they didn't have that option.

And so I could see, you know, you you have a door wide open, you have a window wide open.

You don't know if there's anybody in the house.

The trusted male, Ed, you have no idea.

You know, is he gone?

Is he in the house?

Is he hurt?

I can see where this would be a dilemma because if you do escape out into the cold, I would suggest that they would be going to a neighbor's house, knocking on the door of the neighbors, let us in.

You know, there's something wrong across the street or down the block, you know, and at least get some separation from whatever threat may be inside the house.

And remember, we've done stories set in the country in the 1800s where they go and ring a bell, and everybody knows what that means.

It's an emergency, report to this house, there's an emergency happening.

And we've seen people not go in.

They just know something is wrong, or they see one body and they don't know what happens, and they ring the bell.

So, yeah, this is an older woman in her 60s and two young domestic workers who are very scared, and they're both standing at the door.

Finally, Mrs.

Hull gets the nerve up and she opens the door to the den where Ed was last seen.

The room is dark, the curtains are closed, and she looks at, this is a little historical context here.

She looks at something called a divan.

Have you ever heard of that before?

A divan?

It's a kind of couch.

Something is tickling the back of my brain, but I can't say for sure I've heard of that.

If you saw a photo of it, you would recognize it.

It's known as a fainting couch.

I haven't read a lot of research into why they called it a fainting couch, but from what I can gather, it's because women wore very tight corsets, which we know, and they sometimes lost consciousness.

And so this was a couch that didn't have a back.

It kind of had, you know, two curved fronts.

Some of them had two curved fronts, and they were usually pretty fancy, but people sprawled out on them and took a nap.

So she's looking to this fainting couch, and she sees the outline of what looks like a person on the couch totally covered by cushions.

She tells the housekeeper call the family doctor but to go to a nearby pharmacy and use their phone to do it because she doesn't want the kids to overhear what's going on.

She doesn't want them to be scared.

So there's a 15 year old, a 13 year old and a 10 year old asleep, we presume in the house because it's early in the morning.

And they're upstairs.

And remember, this is three stories.

This is a big house.

They're on the ground floor right now.

So what do you think so far?

You know, she's seeing a figure on the couch.

She tells the housekeeper, you need to go to a pharmacy and make the phone call.

They, I'm assuming, have a phone because they're fairly wealthy.

They don't make the phone call there, or maybe they don't have a phone and they have to leave the house.

Well, I'm going to assume that this body that's on this divan is a dead body.

And what's significant is the body is covered by cushions.

And so now this is where

assessing why the offender, if the offender is the one that did it, you know, covered the body with cushions, what is the psychological significance?

Now, this could be to delay, you know, kind of hide the body, delay, you know, the discovery of the body, but also in cases in which the victim's body is covered, usually indicates that there's some sort of connection between the offender and the victim.

And that's possible that the offender is demonstrating either remorse for what he or she has done or is not wanting to take a look at what he or she has done to the victim.

And so this covered body could be significant as to assessing who the offender might be related to the victim.

And this will become a lot more interesting when you find out the details of this cover-up, the literal cover-up of the victim.

This story is a lot about reputation.

People protecting their reputations, people being very scared about losing their good name and what that means in this society in 1903.

So Maggie runs out the door to go get the doctor.

Maria Hull, the mother-in-law, shuts the door.

She does not go look at who the figure is.

She does not know if it's Ed or someone else.

She shuts the door.

She waits for the doctor.

The kids come downstairs.

Hey, what's going on?

Good morning.

And she says, listen, your dad's sick.

He's in the den.

And she gets breakfast out and has them get ready for school.

So I don't really know what she was thinking.

She says, your dad's sick.

So we're assuming she must have thought it looked like a man and that it must have been Ed.

Who else could it have been?

Because Alice, her daughter, is not living in the house currently and it's early in the morning.

But she does not check on this person.

She is trying to tend to the kids and get them out the door and waiting for the doctor.

Is that an odd response, do you think?

So you have the two domestic workers who are, you know, prior to the discovery of this body, you know, they're demonstrating fear.

Even Maria is demonstrating a level of fear.

You know, this is not a normal occurrence, probably the first time, even though she's 64 years old, first time she is dealing with this scenario.

And she's probably shaking inside is my guess, but she's also trying to hold things together for the kids, knowing that help is coming.

I don't have any concerns at this point in time about how Maria is behaving.

This October, we're doing something very different.

We'll be recording Buried Bones live at sea.

That's right.

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

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

No kids, no stress.

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

And it's all wrapped in the full Virgin Voyages experience.

20-plus eateries, Michelin star chef-curated menus, lux staterooms, Wi-Fi, and entertainment included.

It's not just a cruise.

It's a celebration of thoughtful true crime crime storytelling, and we want you to join us.

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

That's virginvoyages.com/slash true crime.

We'll see you on board.

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So, the kids are off to school, they've had breakfast, and Dr.

William Marcy arrives, who's the family doctor.

He's close to the family and we'll get now more details on what he finds.

He opens the door of the den.

It's still dark.

He can't see anything.

He's kind of stumbling over different things as he's feeling his way to the windows.

He opens the Venetian blinds and they fall down and the whole room is flooded with light.

And now he sees what's going on.

So on this fainting couch is Ed.

And now here are the weird details.

He is naked except for an undershirt.

He is not moving.

He's partially covered with pillows and rugs.

And there's blood on the floor and on the walls.

His body is face down.

And the doctor can see that his head has been wrapped in a quilt.

He checks for a pulse, no pulse.

He unwinds the quilt and sees that somebody has beaten the shit out of this guy on his head with a blunt object.

His skull is crushed.

And it looks like he's been hit by this doctor's estimate about 10 times.

He tries to wrap up the head the way he found it in the quilt, and he tells Mrs.

Hull and calls the coroner, this is not an illness, and this is not apparently a suicide.

So half naked, covered partially, head covered, really beaten to death, crushed skull.

I don't know why you're smiling, Paul.

This is a terrible crisis.

I'm sorry.

Right now, of course, I have so many questions.

Your description of the scene indicates that there was blood distributed in this room.

So he's received approximately 10 blows to his head.

I mean, significant blows to his head.

However, it doesn't appear that all those blows are occurring while he's on this sofa, you know, the divan.

It sounds like potentially he and the offender, you know, they are moving around the room while blows are being inflicted.

And of course, this is where I'd want to see the blood patterns.

You know, is there spatter patterns?

Are there blood pools in select areas or dripped patterns?

Are there smears?

You know, this would help me kind of reconstruct the activities,

you know, prior to Ed ending up on the divan.

You know, however, you know, his state of dress in the den is significant.

You know, he's not in his bedroom.

It's not like he got caught changing to go to bed, you know, to go get into his pajamas.

So why is he nude from the waist down in the den?

Was there potentially somebody he knew that he was going to have an encounter with, a physical encounter with, a sexual encounter with?

And is that person the offender or did somebody else come in, you know, and catch Ed and somebody else together?

Of course, I know nothing about Ed.

You know,

is he completely intoxicated?

Is he a robust male?

You know, this would help me assess, you know, who the offender or the offender's physical characteristics might be in order to be able to overpower Ed and then ultimately bludgeon him to death.

I have information on all of that.

Let's start with the weird reaction of Dr.

Marcy.

So Dr.

Marcy is the family physician.

He's known them for a very long time.

The coroner shows up, looks at the scene, and starts to, of course, write down murder because this looks like murder.

And Dr.

Marcy stops him and said, is there a way we can list this death as a suicide?

Oh, good God.

I know.

The coroner said,

you know, my famous saying, the coroner said, go kick rocks.

This is not happening.

This is not a suicide.

Dr.

Marcy says to the coroner, here's the problem.

There's been a lot of gossip about this couple.

They are about to get divorced.

And I am concerned that people are going to focus on, you know, something that they shouldn't be focusing on.

He seems legitimately, this is not going to turn into some big conspiracy necessarily involving the doctor, but he is the beginning of what I think is class privilege to a lot of people in this society.

They are well known, and he is right now trying to save the reputation of some of the people involved here by saying, is there a way we can make this a suicide?

And, you know, the coroner said, bug off, this is not going to happen.

So already, I'm not sure how he could have justified that, but already we're hearing that, you know, this is an important man, and there are going to be people in Buffalo who do not want the details of what happens in this family to be spilling out anywhere in the newspapers.

Well, and it also tells me that Dr.

Marcy, I mean,

he's not a forensic pathologist, you know, so he's probably not very well versed in terms of assessing the injuries at this scene, at the crime scene.

However, you know, I think it's very obvious based on your description that there is no way that Ed did this to himself.

10 blows, crushed skull.

You know,

everything about this is definitively homicide.

The fact that Dr.

Marcy is trying to, in essence, propose,

let's rule this as a suicide.

What does Dr.

Marcy know about the rumors of what Ed has been involved with and who is he trying to protect?

Yeah, and that will come out and who other people are trying to protect will come out because, boy, this gets so complicated.

This gets complicated.

So I do have a section about the investigation, but this will drive you crazy.

I'd like to get into what is a potential motive, to me, the most likely motive, which is a wacky love triangle that speaks very much to turn of the century America and what we valued then and what reputation means then.

So are you okay with that?

You know, not a lot more comes out of the autopsy other than somebody beat the living shit out of this guy in the head.

But I do have a murder weapon.

We could talk about that now or we could talk about that later.

Well, why don't, since you seem to be geared towards this salacious love triangle, let's go down that path first.

Okay, that's an interesting path.

Okay, remember I told you this is called the Elmwood Avenue set.

And these are, you know, 20-ish couples who hang out together, throw really raucous parties.

They could have the little drop-your-key in the basket parties, but I'm not 100% sure here.

There are three couples who Alice and Ed socialize with the most.

There's three, the Paynes, the Warrens, and the Pinnells.

And the Pinnells are who we're going to hear about the most.

Arthur Pinnell is a lawyer, and he and Ed are best friends.

And Arthur is a lot wealthier than the Burdicks.

That doesn't really come into play, except to say that there's class hierarchy within the higher class of the class hierarchy in Buffalo.

And Arthur is at the top.

So he's an attorney.

He's married to a woman named Carrie.

She has a lot of money also.

She is one of Buffalo's most popular socialites.

So you have, you know, these two couples that are intermingling.

And now we're getting into problems.

And the story becomes even more interesting.

Two years earlier, two years on New Year's Day, 1901, Carrie, Arthur's wife, comes to Ed, Alice's husband, and says, my husband, your wife are sleeping together.

And Ed says, you're nuts.

That did not happen.

My wife, Alice, is an honorable woman.

She wouldn't have done this.

And Carrie says, I am sure of it.

They were together just the day before.

So Ed feels sick to his stomach, as you can imagine.

He confronts Alice the next day.

He says, I've been thinking about this.

Carrie Pennell came to me and said that you and Arthur are having an affair.

This guy's my best friend.

And did you do it or not?

I think you did, the more I think about it.

And Alice says, no, I did not do this.

I am totally faithful.

Ed, which I think this is interesting, Ed tries to bluff her.

And he said, listen, I know that he's been writing love letters to you because

he knows that his wife Alice is keeping a locked box he can't get into.

And it's relatively new in 1901.

He says those letters are in there.

And she will later say that he grabbed her by the throat and said, open this damn box.

I want to see these letters.

Now, of course, as we know, Ed's dead and there's no proof of that.

But she is making it sound like he was violent with her.

He has seen this box many times.

He's never questioned what's in it.

But when it's opened, there is a stack of love letters from Arthur to Alice.

And here becomes the very complicated life of Ed Burdick and the way this man thinks he is freaked out, not because his wife is sleeping with someone else, but because this is not good for his reputation at all.

This is terrible for his reputation.

And he's frightened.

So what do you think about all this so far?

Well, I think as you're talking about, there is a hierarchy within this elite club, and Arthur is at the top.

So I could see where this sort of this hierarchy comes into play with Ed.

You know, so now Ed's the underling.

He's friends with Arthur, but also how is it going to, if he confronts Arthur about this, how is that going to impact him and his social status in this club?

And even though ultimately there's proof with these love letters between Arthur and Alice, it's the domino effect.

He confronts Arthur.

I've got the letters.

What is Arthur going to do?

Arthur has greater financial resources.

There's all sorts of things that I can see where Ed could choose, I'm not going to do anything about this.

You know, I am concerned with how Ed treated Alice over this.

You know, I have said before, a great predictor of future violence is when a man puts his hands around a woman's throat.

You know, so that speaks to me a little bit about possibly the relationship Ed and Alice had and that there was probably some level of abuse that was occurring prior to that incident.

If we believe Alice and there is reason later on to say, I don't know,

Alice, what motivates her to say certain things?

Well, let me tell you, this is a long affair.

So here we go.

There are these letters.

He reads the letters.

He is stressed out.

Alice seems remorseful.

And Ed hands the letters over to Maria Hull, Alice's mom.

We aren't sure why.

It could have been to keep him safe.

It could have been a heads up, this is what your daughter's been doing with my best friend.

I think it was to keep him safe based on what is going to happen, which is his just total extreme reaction to having this salacious news come out that he's been cheated on with

his wife, with this top member of society, his best friend.

He owns several different companies.

He has a lot of money.

There's a lot of people depending on him.

And so he's very scared.

And this seems so different from our time period now.

You know, with cheating, I know different societies feel different ways about it, but his reaction, I think, is a pretty typical reaction for Turn of the Century America on you've been cheated on and what do we do next to save our reputations.

Sure.

And I see handing the letters over to Maria, Alice's mom, as maybe a way Ed could see Maria as somebody who has influence over Alice.

And maybe Maria could talk to her daughter and say, hey, you need to knock it off.

You know, this is not a good thing.

I think Maria would probably have that type of influence over Alice, would be my guess.

Yeah, I think that's a good assumption.

We find out some more information about the affair.

It started two years before that.

So it started in 1898.

So when he is killed, it is 1903.

We're talking about this has been happening for five years.

And what happens is that Pinnells had invited the Burdicks to visit Arthur's alma mater, which was Yale in Connecticut.

But Alice was the only one who who could go.

You know, Ed had to work, and it sounds like Carrie, who was Arthur's wife, wasn't around very much.

And this is how Arthur and Alice bonded and started to get together.

But this is becoming a pretty long affair here.

By the time he discovers it in 1901, I think it is much easier, of course, in this time period to get away with just about anything.

I think, you know, there's no cell phones, there's no, I saw this text, there's no, I saw this email.

And so for me, when I first read this, I thought, boy, this has been going on two years.

They're really that good to cover up an affair for two years when they both are in the same social circle.

They're both in the same city.

They are intermingling as couples.

And half of the couples don't know that the other half are having an affair with each other.

But in this time period, it would not have been difficult to get away with it.

No, and I can see that for sure.

It's just that, you know, in 1901, once Arthur's wife comes forward and basically exposes this affair, now that's out in the open.

It's understood that it's happening, at least within these two families, these two couples.

Now what's the relationship like, not only between Arthur and Alice, but Arthur and Ed over the course of the next two years up until Ed is found bludgeoned to death?

Well, after the discovery of these letters in 1901, Ed says, I'm out of here for a few days.

I need some space.

He goes to a hotel.

Eventually, he forgives Alice and decides he wants to move back into the family house.

I think, knowing what I know about Ed, that part of this, of course, was it would have been really odd for people to see this man staying in a hotel, you know, for an extended period of time and his wife at home, and he was concerned about his reputation.

The issue is, going to your question about what happens with Arthur and Alice, they don't stop sleeping together.

And Ed is furious.

He says, I think that you are doing this again.

He comes home early, secretly one day from work when she's not expecting him, and he sees that she's not there.

When she gets back home, he says, were you with Arthur?

And she says, yes.

So this is the drama.

He goes back to the hotel.

She says, come back.

It goes back and forth for quite a while.

Ed is suspicious all the time.

He cannot trust her.

He's checking the mail religiously, but there are no letters from Arthur.

I don't know why he's not handwriting her letters and handing them to her, but I guess these letters are coming through the post.

He goes to the post office.

Listen to this.

Ed decides he's so worked up about this.

And after she keeps saying, come back, and then

the affair is discovered and then he leaves and then she says, come back and he comes back.

He goes to the post office.

Ed goes to the post office and he says to a worker who doesn't know him that I am Alice's brother.

She gave me a key to the post office, but I don't have it anymore.

And the postal clerk believes him, gives him the key, and it turns out he's right.

There's another stack of letters.

And he is completely, I mean, beyond angry at this point.

He doesn't confront Alice.

He waits.

He is checking on more letters.

He steams the letters open.

He's copying them.

He's sealing them back up.

He's putting them back into the P.O.

box so she gets them and doesn't suspect anything.

And these letters are arranging meetings between Alice and Arthur, but they've coded the times and places.

I mean, this is, I'm telling you, this is 1903, like super spy, except not government secrets, but sex, I guess, is what's happening here.

Yeah.

And do you have any information as to where Arthur and Alice are actually meeting up?

Is this like a hotel?

Is this a...

It seems like various hotels is the impression I'm getting.

It's not at their houses.

And so I think the idea that I'm getting is that it would be improper for the two of them to meet without their spouses.

This is not you and I getting coffee somewhere.

You know, 1903 would have been a little bit different.

And so it sounds like they're doing this letter exchange to kind of come up with different locations.

But CODID, I mean, she must know that he is checking, that Ed is checking.

And this just seems to be escalating.

And this is where I think a lot of people would say, okay, forget it, let's get a divorce, but that does not seem to be happening with either Ed or Alice or, frankly, with Arthur and Carrie.

Yeah.

And are these couples going to these social functions, you know, during this time as Arthur and Carrie are together and Ed and Alice are together and they're out, you know, at this Elmwood, you know, social club and just pretending nothing's going on?

Or does the relationship between the Pinnells and the Burkharts, does that just completely completely dissolve after this affair is found?

Nope.

Listen to this.

I mean, Arthur, the lawyer, is freaked out too.

He does not want Ed and Alice to get a divorce at all.

He doesn't want to get a divorce.

He doesn't want to leave his wife.

He has a great business, lots of money.

This will ruin him too.

He is willing to play ball.

Ed is willing to play ball and pretend like everything's okay, even though things are clearly not okay.

And he seems to be, his mental health really seems to be devolving, and he's doing all of this stuff.

Arthur, I don't think, is okay, but he is trying to pretend because these are two men who value their reputations.

Alice, it seems like, could give a fig about anybody's reputation because she actually switches out.

her own wedding ring, the ring that she had in her ceremony to Ed, with a ring that Arthur bought her.

I mean, what is she thinking?

That's ballsy for 1903.

Not necessarily that somebody would recognize it outside of the family necessarily, but certainly Ed is, maybe the 15-year-old and the 13-year-old.

So she is in it deep right now with Arthur.

So New Year's Day of 1901 is when Carrie, Arthur's wife, goes to Ed and says, they're sleeping together.

So this kind of going back and forth, steaming open envelopes and coded locations and all of this is five months long until May.

And finally, Ed says to Alice, you're sleeping with him.

She does not know that he has been doing all this stuff with the letters.

And he says, I'm kicking you out.

I've had enough of this.

I don't care how it looks.

She goes to Atlantic City.

I don't know why, but it sounds like that's the place where she wants to be.

Her mom stays with Ed, presumably to take care of the kids.

I don't think it's a commentary on whether or not Mrs.

Holbolt, you know, is taking anybody's side, but she stays there.

Maybe she doesn't have anywhere else to go.

She, Alice, is writing Ed all kinds of letters in Atlantic City saying, please let me come back home.

He says, I am divorcing you, and he starts the divorce proceedings, but ultimately, again, totally backs down, totally caves.

And he says, come back home.

Do you promise not to cheat on me?

And she says, yes.

And we know that's not what's going to happen.

So this back and forth must be absolute torture for these two couples.

I don't know what anybody else thinks, although a couple of more couples are going to get drawn into this.

I don't know what the kids, they must be sensing all kinds of stuff that's happening with their parents, but it is just several years of back and forth until he ends up dead.

Yeah, this just sounds miserable for everybody involved.

Oh, yeah.

You know, and to kind of feel stuck.

You know, you could see where it's like, you know, the emotions are running deep.

We know Ed ends up being killed.

And so this is where I'm very curious to see how these relationships develop and who else gets pulled into it.

I don't know if we've ever talked about relationships this much.

We usually spend a lot more time on forensics and the investigation.

But I think for this case, it's really important to just see where everybody's head is at.

So as we predicted, Alice does not stay away from Arthur for very long.

She is deeply in love with this man.

And Ed quietly seethes for a year, all of 1902.

They are having an affair.

He is reading her letters.

He calls a private investigator and he tells her.

It seems like to friends, the very couple of people who know about this, that Ed is trying to gather evidence in this divorce proceedings.

He's brought her back home because it sounds like it's easier to catch her doing things if she is in Buffalo and not in Atlantic City.

Or, you know, he is hoping beyond hope that she's gonna have a change of heart.

But he just sounds like he's doing some pretty wacky things.

So let me just kind of go through a couple more things.

Ed's private detectives, he now has hired a couple of them, say that Alice is going to be with Arthur at an apartment that Arthur, the idiot, has rented specifically for sex.

And Ed goes to this apartment, he knocks on the door, there's scuffling, people getting dressed, I'm presuming.

And then Arthur answers the door.

He says, Alice isn't here.

She jumps out the window and climbs.

I mean, this is like a bad TV show.

She jumps out the window and climbs down the balcony.

I mean, I don't know how else this would end, except either in violence or somebody giving up and, you know, having a divorce, but it just keeps moving forward and forward and forward.

And by the end of 1902, Alice is back in Atlantic City.

And everybody, including Arthur, is begging Ed to not divorce her.

Please don't do it.

And I will say, Paul, definitely in the 1700s and probably in the 1800s, people did not often get divorces.

It was expensive.

It was like an act of the government to get a divorce.

They would just leave separate lives.

They would lead separate lives.

They would just get different households.

They wouldn't remarry, but, you know, they would have common-law spouses.

I don't know what happened here, but Ed seems to be the unstable one at this point.

Yeah, he's, you know, in many ways, you know, there's this perception that he's gathering evidence for a future divorce proceeding.

And sure, that may be what I would gather as

sort of almost a side effect of his behaviors.

But in some ways, there's a level of stalking that Ed is doing.

You know, he's jealous.

He's hurt.

You know, he's feeling dejected.

Another man, his wife is seeing another man as somebody that's more attractive and more wanted than he is.

And so I see a lot of what Ed is doing is more out of the jealousy than anything else.

And, you know, at this stage within this lover's triangle, if I were to predict something,

I would predict Arthur would end up dead with the way Ed is behaving.

Yep.

Or Alice, I guess.

Yeah, somebody, somebody other than Ed.

So that's where, you know, I'm kind of listening to this, going, okay, now, how, how does Ed end up dead?

And basically nude, indicating he's possibly hooking up with somebody inside his own house?

Who is that?

So I'm all ears, Kate.

Keep feeding me details.

Well, let me read these two paragraphs.

I don't usually say two paragraphs, but let me read these two paragraphs because it's bananas to me.

This is, again, turn of the century, the way people are thinking.

So end of 1902.

This has been two years of hell for Ed and not great for Alice either or Arthur or Carrie.

So she goes back to Atlantic City.

Arthur visits her and Ed finally does it.

He actually starts to file for divorce.

Carrie and Arthur, the couple, the married couple, visit Ed and they say, please don't do this.

Please take Alice back and just go back to normal.

They did not want the city to know their business.

And if a divorce goes to court, which is what was going to happen, everybody would know what is happening, and it would humiliate everyone.

And listen to this.

Arthur says, I will, Ed, kill you, and then I will kill myself if you divorce Alice.

You will ruin me.

And Ed says, bug off.

I'm doing this.

I will share custody of the children if you divorce your wife and marry my wife.

Everybody wants everything done properly.

Two married people, splitting custody with the kids.

So it is 100% about appearances.

Yeah.

You know, and right now we're hearing about Arthur, Alice, and Ed.

But what is Carrie doing during this entire time?

Is she just sitting on the sidelines?

Yep, pretending like everything's okay because she has her own reputation to deal with.

She is the most popular socialite in Buffalo.

She doesn't want any of this coming out.

Okay.

I'm just going to kind of table Carrie for the time being.

You know, this reminds me a tiny bit of the story that we had talked about before.

It was about the socialite in Boston who was murdered and her body was dismembered and parts of it were found in Boston Harbor.

I think you probably remember that case.

I do.

So with that case, the person who ultimately ends up murdering her was a handyman who had attacked her.

It sounded like had tried to physically assault her.

Grace Asquith was the victim's name, and maybe sexually assault her.

She got him off and locked the door.

He ends up killing her later on.

She didn't report it to police because she did not want the publicity.

She did not want the publicity of some handyman trying to, you know, assault her.

She just didn't want any bad publicity.

And that is the mindset of this time period.

We don't want the publicity.

And Arthur's going as so far as saying, I will kill you and I will kill myself if you go through with this.

This is the end of all of us.

Yeah.

And Carrie, probably one of the primary sources of her social status is Arthur.

So if she loses Arthur, then she loses status.

She does.

It's embarrassing for her.

She has, and I think a key for Carrie is that she has her own family money, which to me, at first I thought, well, okay, she can live if

he divorces her.

Everything will be fine because she's got her own family money.

But with that money comes reputation, and who knows what her family would do if she were a divorcee in 1903?

That would not have been a good situation.

So everybody is tense here.

Alice, for her part, hires her own private detective to tail Ed.

The detective comes back to Alice and says, your husband's doing some weird stuff.

He's talking to one of your friends whose name is Gertrude Payne.

He has taken her to a local candy shop.

And what turns out to be, it sounds like the case is that the Payne's are having a lot of financial trouble.

And Gertrude goes to Ed and says, you know, I really need money.

And he lends her the money without telling the husband.

This is more of a friend relationship.

Investigators will likely find out more than anything, but this is another person to add to the list.

The husband, of course, is questioned by the reporters.

And he said, they're not having an affair.

It's no big deal.

He's a nice guy.

And I wish she hadn't gone behind my back to get money from him.

I could have done that.

But again, reputations.

And there's another couple called the Warrens who are in the same group of friends.

They're starting divorce proceedings of their own.

You know, there are probably

a lot of interminglings.

We don't know what's what, but Alice is now pissed.

when she finds out about Gertrude Payne, who's a good friend of hers, even though it sounds innocent, she files her own countersuit for divorce.

And she says that Ed is having a bunch of affairs, including one with, you know, somebody that she knows really well named Helen Warren.

There are two other women that she mentions, but we don't have their names.

It sounds like Gertrude might be another one.

There's not much evidence for any of this, but people in their social circles say that it seems like Ed and Helen were going to get engaged after these divorces were final.

So if this is true, if he is sleeping with Helen Warren, who is going through a divorce, which again would have been pretty unusual in 1903.

I looked up the stat poll.

It was like less than 1% of marriages ended in divorce in this time period.

So really unusual.

Then this was new.

And maybe this was the impetus for him to finally say, forget everybody.

I am divorcing.

This is what's happening.

Because this does seem like he had finally made the decision to divorce.

I know that was a lot of information, but it sounds like this thing with Helen Warren could have been legitimate just based on the timing of this planned divorce.

But there's no real evidence that he was sleeping with her or planning to do anything.

It was just sort of gossip more than anything else.

I want to point something out is it doesn't matter if it's legitimate or not.

It's perception.

So if there is a rumor going around, let's say, you know, that Ed and Helen were getting together and somebody close to Helen, her husband, or another family member, gets outraged by hearing that rumor and perceives it's true, that's motive.

So that's where, okay, now

because of allegations are flying back and forth during now a very contentious,

you know, dissolution of a relationship, this pulls in other people as potential suspects in Ed's homicide, even though Ed may not have been doing anything directly with somebody, let's say a wife.

This is now stirring the pot, so to speak.

There's churn going on within this social network that opens up the suspect pool as to who could have killed Ed.

And it feels like a lot of people.

Let's get to the investigation.

So now you know everything, and now you know why.

Go through all of this before we start talking about a man who's been found half naked, covered with pillows, and a head wrapped in a quilt, and somebody beat the shit out of his head.

There's a lot going on to this.

Okay.

So the divorce is for sure moving forward in early 1903 after Christmas.

It's scheduled in court for early March.

He is killed.

It seems like February 27th.

So we are mere one to two weeks away from this going to open court.

So here's what happens based on what the housekeeper says happened that night and what Mrs.

Hull, the mother-in-law, says happened that night.

So here are investigators.

Now we're back.

We're present tense at this point.

So on the night of Thursday, the night before he's discovered, he comes home from work.

He has bought a bottle of pre-mixed cocktail, which is pretty unusual for him.

He's not a big drinker.

And he has dinner with his three kids, three girls, his mother-in-law.

And then everybody hangs out in the back parlor for a while.

He seems to be in pretty good spirits.

Everybody except Ed goes upstairs to bed around 9.30.

At 9.45, he passes by his mother-in-law's room and through the door, they say goodnight to each other.

And that is the last time she spoke to him.

And the kids saw him.

He is apparently back downstairs in the den.

So he says goodnight at 9.45 to Maria Hull.

About 30 minutes later, 10.18, the cook Maggie comes home.

She's been out and about.

She knows it's 10.18 because the household staff has a 10.30 curfew and she looks at the clock and is worried, but she makes it home in time.

She goes through the back door.

She turns around, locks it behind her.

She runs into Ed at 10.18, 10.19, very briefly in the hall.

He's in his underwear, and he's kind of embarrassed.

I'm assuming wearing a shirt.

I don't think he's walking around, you know, in briefs or boxes or anything, but he's a little embarrassed.

And she goes upstairs.

She knows that he goes back into the den.

She could hear him.

She goes up to her room with she shares with the maid.

And between 10.30 and 11, she hears someone filling the furnace with coal, which is in the den, and which Ed usually does that time of night.

She falls asleep, and then, of course, he's dead the next day.

So something happens between when they discover him early in the morning and about 11 o'clock at night.

There is an open window and an open door the next day, but the cook said I locked the back door behind me, so I know at least that door was locked.

And that is that.

until our next episode where we really get into it.

You're going to leave me hanging.

I am.

I am.

There's a lot more to this story.

You know, things that happen to the people in this story that are in some ways really heartbreaking.

So,

take a break.

Go get on your mountain bike.

Do something to think about this case or not think about it.

Oh, I think, I think, yeah, the next

episode to hear the finality might be a bourbon episode for me, the way this thing is going.

Buddy, I think this is a double bourbon episode.

This one for you.

Okay, I'm I'm looking forward to it.

Okay, see you in a week.

Okay, bye.

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 Maren 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.

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