The Demon of the Belfry

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I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson.

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

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

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

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

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

Some are solved, and some are cold.

Very cold.

This is Buried Bones.

Hi, Kate.

How are you?

I'm well.

Everybody wants to know about the fish.

What's going on with your fish?

What's the very latest with the fish?

When I last checked in with you, something horrific happened and it wiped out some of the residents of your tank.

Is that still the case?

Well, obviously, yeah, I went through that whole tragic process, but the tank is stable.

Good.

You know, the fish that are remaining have stayed alive.

I think I've lost one fish since then, but I'm getting to a point where I think I may be trying to repopulate.

And I'll go slow.

You know, I just want to

pick and choose my fish very carefully, make sure they're compatible, and maybe put one in there

and see how it responds inside the tank and then just kind of slowly build it up from there.

Oh, that sounds like a good plan.

When we talk about marine life, I think about my time in San Francisco, which I just loved.

I lived there for two or three years.

And I used to go to the aquarium.

I mean, just

sit by the water.

And our next story is set in San Francisco.

So get ready because we're going to be in a big city.

Okay.

Well, you know, I have some familiarity with San Francisco.

A little bit.

Yeah, a little tiny bit.

Okay, let's set the scene.

Okay, Paul, we are in 1895.

And normally when I say that, I say New York, woohoo, Gilded Age.

but we are actually in 1895 San Francisco, which I don't know a ton about about that time period in San Francisco.

But it's gonna be interesting because I feel like we're in the countryside a lot and this is a big city.

And we have two people going missing with a lot of connections.

So when you're investigating something that happens in a big city versus a small town, are we talking about, I mean, it's gotta be apples to oranges here.

It has to be two totally different sets of complications between figuring out what happened to someone in a big city who has a lot of exposure, but then figuring out what happened to someone in a small town where there's rumors everywhere, where everybody feels like they know the answer.

It seems like two distinct problems.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: Well, you know, being in the large cities, there's a level of anonymity that really can complicate the investigation.

However, in a larger population, and I kind of dealt with this to an extent with Golden State Hiller because he had attacks in some of the larger cities like Sacramento and Stockton, as well as in some of the smaller cities.

And when I was working some leads in Stockton, it's just that every rock I turned over, there was a bad guy, right?

It's just that there's so many avenues to pursue.

So I decided to shift my gears and take a look at Davis, California, which is a much smaller town, especially back in the 1970s.

And I called it my smaller haystack.

I'm still looking for the needle in the haystack, but I figured I had fewer hay that I had to sort through in order to be able to find the guy I was looking for.

But I think in a big city, you have, you know, groups just because you like neighborhoods.

But even within a neighborhood, you can have social circles.

And potentially those social circles of people are like a small town.

They talk amongst themselves.

So as an investigator, if you can find the right social circle for the crime you're investigating, you might be able to get the right lead.

Well, you just hit the nail on the head with this story.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IQ bars are really convenient and they taste great.

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

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

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We are in a big city.

We're in San Francisco with lots and lots and lots of people, but we're going to tighten in on a social circle here that centers around one particular place.

So there's a little bit of setup that I have to do.

We are concerned about a 21-year-old woman named Blanche Lamont.

And this will be, for those of you who are big fans of historical true crime, and my goodness, I hope all of you are at this point.

But if you're not, we're hoping to suck you in.

This is actually a well-known story.

I'm not going to tell you the moniker that goes with this story because then I think some of you will recognize it, but this will become a kind of a well-known story.

There is a woman named Blanche Lamont, 21 years old.

She has only been in San Francisco for about six months.

She comes comes from Montana and she is really passionate about music and she wants to be a teacher.

So she enrolled in a local high school, Lowell High School, which offered advanced classes for somebody who's a little bit older.

So she wanted to take music classes.

She had a couple of different music teachers.

She was really active in a local Baptist church, Emmanuel Baptist Church.

She played the violin.

She was in the church orchestra.

For a young woman who's only been in San Francisco for about six months, she's built quite a life.

You know, people have found her to be outgoing and attractive.

She's living with an aunt.

She's got a pretty active social life.

So popular, knows a lot of people, particularly at the church.

She goes missing.

on Wednesday, April 3rd, 1895.

And let me just tell you the circumstances first and then I'll ask you several questions.

So the day she goes missing, she had gone to this high school for the advanced classes, and then she went to an academic lecture at a place called the Normal School, which is on Powell Street in San Francisco.

And after the lecture, about 3.15, she gets on a streetcar, like the old school streetcars that most people know.

And that's it.

She vanishes.

And nobody sees her again.

We will have witnesses later on who will talk about who she's seen with, who she's not seen seen with, but that is what police, when they are alerted to this, are left with.

A woman who knows a lot of people in a very big city gets on a streetcar with people she doesn't know packed in middle of the day, and she is gone.

And that has to be a family's worst nightmare because people didn't even know where she was heading to.

How do we even narrow that down?

You know, my first thought is: you think she's getting on to this crowded streetcar.

Now, she's not being attacked on the streetcar.

No.

You know, the streetcar is going to go from A to B.

If the offender is on the streetcar with her, he's likely going to be getting off the car at the stop she gets off at.

So now you've got sort of a secondary aspect.

So you've got the primary, the streetcar, which is the last where she's seen.

And then you have a group of individuals that are riding the car with her.

So those are witnesses.

So hopefully authorities would be able to track down which which streetcar and what stops it would go to, you know, so they can get a sense for her direction.

Was she likely heading home?

Did her aunt know, you know, oh, she had plans to go somewhere else?

You know, maybe she was going to go, let's say, just hypothetically to go see an orchestra that night, right?

Okay, so now what stop would she get off to go to that?

event that she was planning on going to.

So this is where, again, victimology is huge.

What was she planning on doing tonight?

What are her interests?

Who else is in her life that you can go interview?

Can you track down any of these witnesses on the streetcar?

Maybe these are commuters.

You won't be able to get everybody, but if you can go back to the stop she gets picked up at and talk to people who go, yeah, I rode this yesterday.

I rode it on Wednesday, April 3rd, and talk to them.

Did you see this girl who was wearing X, Y, and Z?

Did you see where she got off on?

You know, and then now you can start trying to retroactively piece together a timeline.

That's the only way, you know, in 1895, these investigators would be able to start digging into this case.

There's no surveillance cameras to see her walking

down the downtown or wherever.

So this is a tough thing.

When I'm in a large city, everybody kind of just goes into their own bubble, right?

It's like, okay, especially on a crowded streetcar, it's sort of like, well, I've got all these people that are inside my personal space.

I'm not wanting to make eye contact.

I don't want to look like I'm staring at somebody.

I'm just kind of going to be in my space.

So it's very possible that you have few people that really paid much attention to Blanche.

Well, and that's a question.

You know, she's pretty nondescript, attractive young woman.

I mean, I'm sure there are tons of people like that in San Francisco.

Very petite, very, very petite, very thin.

And so maybe that might have clued in a few people, but I just wonder how reliable people on a street car would be because we do hear those stories like suspects are spotted here and there, and then we find out the suspect's been dead for seven days.

How do you know about the reliability of a witness when the witness is a stranger to the person they're trying to identify?

Aaron Powell, well, that becomes sort of the million-dollar question is, are the details that you're getting accurate?

And we've seen over and over again, you know, just like with all the cold cases that I've worked, I've got multiple cases in which women or girls initially go missing.

And then you get all these reports of them being seen in various locations.

But then when their body's found, you recognize, oh, they weren't seen.

You know, people are just calling in tips and they're wrong.

You know, so this is where the investigators have to assess the person they're talking to, have to assess the veracity of the details.

You know, and does this add up with what the investigators know about Blanche, her physical appearance?

And with Blanche's appearance,

you mentioned that she's a young, attractive woman.

There's likely going to be some men on the streetcar that would have at least paid attention to her and go, you know, she's attractive.

And so they would have made a mental note.

And then there may be some women that are, you know, looking at her going, I like the way she's dressed or something.

You know, so that's what you hope for is you have somebody who goes, oh, I remember her because she caught my eye, you know, versus, oh,

maybe I kind of remember a gal matching that description getting on, but I'm not real sure.

I think she got off, you know, at the mission stop or whatever.

Then you go, Okay, I'm not so sure that this person really is accurately recalling good detail that I need to follow up on.

Well, when she didn't return home that night, the aunt went to the police and they've been blowing her off.

The aunt says she would not have run away.

She's 21.

She's stable.

She's fine.

She's a student.

There's no man that she would would run off with.

And the police say they think that that's not the case, that she wanted to disappear.

So my question, I guess, is this is victimology.

Why would the police not listen to a family member when seemingly this is not someone who, you know, is in a so-called high-risk lifestyle?

Yeah.

You know, and again, this, you know, I can't speak to, you know, the 1890s and law enforcement's mentality when it comes to these missing people cases.

But I do know, you know, and this is something that just is somewhat endemic, is oftentimes, like in some of my older cases, family would say, my daughter's missing, and police just assume they're a runaway.

And, you know, there's a cynical aspect that law enforcement gains because most of these reported missing persons are because they are runaways.

And so when you get the true, let's say, abduction that occurs, you know, the law enforcement's perception, especially back like in the 1970s on the types of cases I worked,

they just assumed it's another runaway.

And we've seen at least some improvement where law enforcement will be more proactive earlier with missing, reported missing persons.

But, you know, 1895, Blanche is assuming she's abducted, you know, the streetcar angle, well, that's gone cold.

You know, it's not like the investigators had photos of Blanche, really, that they could go to witnesses and say, hey, do you remember a week ago seeing this young woman?

Now, what you have to hope for is that if there was truly an abduction and there was a witness to that abduction,

now that's going to be something that will stay in that witness's mind.

I saw this woman being drug around the corner.

Okay, it's big city.

Likely there's lots of crime going on, but that's potentially.

a starting point to see, okay, well, maybe Blanche is that woman that was being drug away.

So So you're looking now for that type of detail that is really going to persist after a week.

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Well, let's talk about the timeline of this investigation because we can juxtapose it to what this would have been like today.

So, you know, today somebody gets on a streetcar, she goes missing.

You've got, what, CCTV?

You've got the access to radio and television.

Putting out a plea from police.

If you were on this streetcar, if you've seen this woman, and then you would expect, I would guess, wouldn't you, a flood of responses fairly quickly when you spread it out on this media, whether they're good responses or not.

Do people respond pretty quickly to these sort of urgent pleas from the police when someone has been abducted?

Aaron Powell, Jr.: Well, to a point.

You know, in this day and age, yes.

But, you know, it's not everybody responds.

You know, part of, in my experience, like when law enforcement puts something out, let's say in social media, if you ever take a look at most of law enforcement's number of followers.

It's tiny.

Right?

It's not like they're getting notifications from their local PD and

people are going, oh, I better report something in.

And there's, you know, hundreds of thousands of people that are getting that notification.

You know, so that's, that's part of like when I've been involved, let's say, whether it be with TV shows or podcasts, as well as my own social media, because I have a number of followers, I can amplify what law enforcement's message is far more than what law enforcement typically can do, just because they don't have the number of followers.

In this day and age, yes, you're looking for those tips from witnesses, and you've got the technology with the surveillance cameras, but also you have the devices.

The devices are huge.

So, the phones, the tablets that people carry, even sometimes, you know, the laptops, you know, now that you have location services, you know, with these devices, you have Wi-Fi aspects, there's a variety of different avenues law enforcement can exploit to see, okay, where did, let's say, Blanche's phone go?

You know, and when did it stop, you know, pinging?

When did it get turned off?

But of course, 1895, they really don't have anything but gumshoe detective work in order to try to track down Blanche.

Or, and the likely possibility is when somebody reports her body being found.

Well, let's talk about how important it is to get information as soon as possible in a murder investigation.

You know, I said about a week after Blanche went missing, the aunt is continuing to pound on the door of the police, and they're saying, Ves, she's probably run away.

Finally, they take it seriously.

They canvass, they track down people, they put articles in newspapers, start writing about it.

Does anybody know where this woman is?

Has anybody seen, you know, what happened to her on the streetcar?

They start getting witnesses 10 days later.

We have multiple witnesses who say, yes, they saw Blanche outside of the school right before she caught the streetcar, and she was with a man.

And they got on the streetcar together.

Another one of Blanche's classmates, I mean, I can't believe they waited this long, but one of Blanche's classmates said, this is a guy that they've seen.

He waits for her often after she gets out of classes.

He was a medical student.

He had a dark mustache.

And that's about all they could say.

They said that there were people who were on the same streetcar say, yes, a man with a mustache was on the streetcar with this young woman.

But that's about it.

So they were able after 10 days to track down at least

part of what her timeline was that afternoon when she went missing.

But 10 days later, if they had just believed the aunt to begin with, this could have gone much faster, don't you think?

Yes.

You know, and this is where time is of the essence in these types of cases.

There's no question about it.

In part for the safety of the victim, but also so you can

have fresh memories to provide you accurate leads.

However, this sounds promising.

You have multiple witnesses.

saying Blanche was seen with this man.

It doesn't sound like these witnesses know the man's name, but they're giving a physical description saying he's a medical student and he's meeting Blanche after getting off school.

So now

they have a focus to see if they would be able to identify this man.

Where is he a medical student at?

You know, part of the investigative tactic would be just having an undercover plainclothes cop standing outside of the school looking nondescript, seeing if there's a man that meets that description who ends up walking by or ends up contacting another woman woman outside of the school.

But there's at least something where they can start digging in.

And it may be where now they have to go and talk to more people at the school and say, hey, do you know a man that fits this description?

Have you seen this man with Blanche?

What's his name?

Where does he go to medical school, etc.?

And hopefully be able to track this man down.

And right now, he's not a suspect as far as what I would consider, but he's a witness.

And if he's getting on the streetcar with Blanche and he knows her, he may be able to say if he's not the one responsible for her going missing, he may be able to say what stop she got off on and where she was headed to.

Well, as the police are trying to find Blanche, there is something else that happens.

The day that the newspapers report all this stuff about this mystery man and Blanche on the streetcar, and she's gone missing, another woman goes missing.

And here's where it gets really interesting for me.

The woman who goes missing is the same age.

She's 21.

And her name is Minnie Williams.

And here's the connection.

Both Minnie and Blanche were members of the same Baptist church and they were Sunday school classmates.

So now our big city gets narrowed down, just like you said, to a much, much, much smaller community.

Could be a coincidence, I guess.

Probably not.

You know, there's,

in my experiences, coincidences do happen.

So you have to consider that as a possibility.

However, it is something that, you know, with that type of victim linkage, now there's at least a focus on a potential lead.

You have similar victimologies in terms of association with the church, same age, they likely knew each other.

Of course,

initially, as I'm listening to this, it's like, okay, now do we have a serial predator, you know, and his victim pool is this Baptist church?

Does he attend the same church?

Or is he just waiting outside for whatever reason of that location, you know, to

shop for victims?

But obviously, I need to know more about how this case progresses to make that determination.

But this is where investigators need to at least put some resources on really drilling down on that church, who's at that church, and what did anybody see or know about

what's going on with Blanche and Minnie and anybody that they may be contacting with through the church itself.

Aaron Powell, and it gets complicated because we are approaching Easter services.

It gets a little more complicated because you have a lot of people coming in and out of the church, some new people who are coming in.

And so even though we have a smaller community than San Francisco that we're dealing with, if we're really focusing in on the church, there still are extra people around who could be involved.

You know, we don't know.

And so I can tell you a little bit more about Minnie and the circumstances of her disappearance before we really get into what ends up happening here.

Right.

And of course, it sounds like because of the Easter service that's coming up, your potential suspect pool of attendees with that church, it grows.

And of course, there's your devout attendees that always attend year-round, and they all probably know each other or at least familiar with who all's coming on a regular basis.

But when you go to, you know, I was born and raised Catholic and you go to Christmas Mass, now you have all the other people because of, you know, maybe family pressures.

Well, okay, now I'm attending this Mass service, and it's a lot of strangers that are inside there.

As you said earlier, that does complicate the assessment of potentially who Minnie and Blanche were possibly either interacting with or who

maybe they were followed.

But yeah, tell me more about Minnie's circumstances of how she goes missing.

Well, one other note, in some ways, I would also be very concerned about the vendors because you have to think that they're bringing in more flowers.

Maybe they're doing repairs.

Maybe they have people who aren't going to be sitting through a service necessarily as a predator.

They could kind of just be coming in and out.

Who knows, you know, what these people have done in their past.

So, yeah, like a much bigger pool of people.

Let me tell you about Minnie.

So I mentioned before, 21, the same age as Blanche.

She's no longer active on a weekly basis with the Baptist Church because she's now in Alameda.

A year earlier before her disappearance, several of Minnie's siblings died of diphtheria.

I'd like to go in a little route here.

What is diphtheria exactly?

I mean, I've read about it, but I just can't write, I get all of my deadly diseases of the 19th century confused sometimes.

What's What's diphtheria?

I'm having to look it up.

And

it's a very serious infection.

It's caused by a particular strain of bacteria.

And the bacteria makes a toxin.

I at least have heard of diphtheria in the past, and I know diphtheria was a serious disease way back in the day before antibiotics.

Well, and it looks like it kills young people because these are her siblings and she's 21.

Her parents divorce after this, and she moves moves around a little bit with her mother and her sister.

But when she vanished, her mother and her sister were in Canada, and Minnie decided to stay behind and live in Alameda.

But she was so fond of the Emmanuel Baptist Church that she wanted to go to the Easter services.

So that's why she was there.

Here are the circumstances.

So now I have to go back one day.

So on the afternoon of Friday, April 12th, this is Good Friday, she comes to town.

Minnie comes to town with her trunk at the home of a woman that she's staying with who is just a friend, Mrs.

Boyes.

And that evening, Friday, she gets into town and that evening she says she's going out to a meeting of the church's Young People's Christian Endeavor Group.

And they're having a party.

You know, it's Easter weekend and they're having a party.

And she says, I'm going to this party.

I'll be home.

She leaves at 7.30 that Friday night.

This is just so you know, nine days after Blanche has disappeared, and she's supposed to go to this party, and she doesn't show up to the party.

And then she is missing after that.

So another mystery, and the woman sounds the alarm, and now the police are very concerned, just because now you've got two women both connected to this church who are both missing in less than two weeks from each other.

Okay, so Minnie, she comes over from Alameda, and who is she staying with?

Just a friend, family friend who's married and, you know, is just supposed to stay until Sunday when services are done, and then she's going to go back home.

And I imagine this family friend probably lives in generally the same area where Blanche and her aunt were living since they're still going to that same church.

Right.

Yep.

Neighborhood church.

And then at 7.30, she leaves to go to the youth group party.

Yep.

It's at a house.

It's not at the church.

It's at a house of a different parishioner, and she never shows up.

There are lots of people at the party.

She doesn't show up when she's supposed to.

Okay.

And she's likely just walking to this house or taking a streetcar.

It sounds like it, yes.

You know, several thoughts that are going through my head, you know, because I'm kind of comparing and contrasting the circumstances around Blanche's disappearance versus Minnie's.

Blanche sounds like she's in a very kind of a busier area of San Francisco when she gets on the streetcar.

And it's in the middle of the day.

It's at 3.15 p.m.

Right.

And then in a separate location, but in the same neighborhood, same community where Blanche and her aunt were living, then we have many who's leaving to go to a party at a house in that community, but it's probably in a kind of a more isolated, what do you want to say, subdivision within San Francisco itself.

You're right.

A quieter, in a quieter time of the day, certainly.

Yeah, so I'm trying to figure out if we're dealing with a singular offender,

a single offender responsible for both of these women going missing, how is he crossing paths with Minnie?

It's not like there's like some big announcement that Minnie is going to be staying at her friend's house and going to the Easter services at the church.

I can't imagine unless, you know, there is a small group within the church and they're saying, hey, Minnie is coming.

You know, remember Minnie from what she used to attend before she moved away?

Well, she's going to come back.

You know, so is this offender part of a group that would include Minnie and Blanche?

Or

is this, he just coincidentally happens to be in the same location as Minnie and she's isolated herself, probably walking alone or riding a streetcar to get to the party.

And he takes advantage of her being alone, just like he took advantage of Blanche.

Yeah.

And to you now, the way that you're hearing this, where we have two people with kind of unpredictable schedules, it sounds like, does this seem more likely that this is connected to the church since they're both connected to the church?

Or would this be like kind of crime of opportunities?

We don't even know what happens with the crime yet.

Well, I think with Blanche, Blanche sounds like she had a regular schedule.

And we've got at least this mystery man who is meeting her after school on a regular basis.

And so there could be pre-planning.

If he's responsible, there could be pre-planning.

Or if there's another offender that is seeing Blanche coming onto the same streetcar on a regular basis, because that's the one that she would take to, you know, go home or whatever, then you could see where that's pre-planned.

With Minnie, this sounds like more of a victim of opportunity because this is not a routine scheduled thing that she is doing.

Right.

And so the woman that she's staying with, the only thing she knows is Minnie says, I'm going to a party.

It's 7.30.

She walks out the door.

The woman has no idea if she met somebody and walked, you know, over to this parishioner's house or what happens.

That's all we know right now.

So now things get complicated and you're probably going to have to tell me what you want to hear about first.

And now we are going to center on this church.

Saturday.

This is the day where the police finally track down Blanche's witnesses who say, yes, we saw her on a streetcar with this guy.

Everybody kind of has the same description of this guy.

This same day, we have a group of young women who are going to the church and they want to set up to decorate for Easter services, which would be the next day.

So, Minnie has been missing now for, you know, maybe 12 hours.

And they go to the church library to get some supplies out of the closet.

And it sounds like the door of the closet in the library is open.

And laying partially in the closet, partially out of it, is the body of Minnie Williams, the second woman who went missing.

And she is dead.

And there's a lot to unpack about this scene, but she is in the church, and there are no signs of Blanche as of right now.

Obviously, there's

a connection to the church.

You have a crime scene at the church.

Now, does that mean the offender has a connection to the church?

Or could the offender just take advantage of that facility in order to be able to, you know, move Minnie to that location and kill her there.

Of course, this occurring inside the church likely is occurring at a time when nobody else is inside the church, right?

Part of what I would want to know was

how this building is typically secure if it's...

if it is secure.

You know, is this something that is just wide open for the public to come and go all the time?

Or is it limited access?

And then who has access?

You know, such as the pastor, as an example.

He's the one that has the keys to the church.

The janitor comes in who cleans the church.

You know, who are those individuals?

But now the use of the church is interesting because at least with Minnie, she's leaving her friend's house and she's going to a youth group party.

She's not indicating she's stopping by the church, right?

So how does she end up at the church?

Why does she end up at the church?

What does that inform us about who the offender might be?

So part of my next steps, of course, this is where I have to drill down on what was done to Minnie, what does the crime scene say, and then that could give me some insight as to sort of the suspect pools I would be looking at.

Well, a lot happens with Minnie, and a lot of the details are, you know, pretty gruesome.

Now, I just want you to remember with sequencing, I'm sure you will remember this, this is the second person.

So she is the second person to have gone missing.

The coroner says that her arm is stretched over her head, and you could see it from the entrance of the library.

Near the body is a broken kitchen knife, and it's clear that this is the weapon because she has been stabbed many, many times.

And I could tell you those details.

Do you need more, or do you want to stop and say something here?

Well, you know, the broken knife, that is something that is seen on a fairly routine basis when you're dealing with stabbings, especially with kind of cheaper knives.

When the offender is stabbing the victim, who, you know, let's say laying on the floor, and the knife goes all the way through the victim's body and then strikes the floor underneath.

You know, there are times when the blade itself will break, either the tip of the blade or at the handle.

There are times that during stabbings and the knife is inside the victim's body and he and she kind of turns and moves or bone is struck.

You could also see where the cheaper metal will break.

So she's stabbed multiple times.

That's all I need to know in terms of, you know, I'm not going to ask how many times was she stabbed, but let's just say the stabbing is likely going to be to her torso.

Is she stabbed in the face at all?

Is her throat cut?

Well, let me tell you what they said without being too graphic.

There are two thick puddles of blood on the floor and a spray of blood on one wall.

They said there is no evidence of a struggle.

So they thought this was a total surprise attack.

The one newspaper said she was lying on her back, covered with blood.

The clothing was disarranged.

She had been stabbed in several places.

I read more than a dozen times in another article.

Her right hand was almost cut off, and there was a horrible gash on her forehead.

Some of the clothing had been torn from her body.

And everything points to an outrage followed by murder.

And remember, I said outraged and ravaged are both 19th-century terms for sexual assault.

Yeah.

And there's more after that, but I figure that might be enough for right now.

You know, right now, with what you've told me, this looks like this is a sexually motivated homicide.

Her right hand almost being cut off.

That sounds like it's a defensive wound.

So she's at least cognizant that she is starting to be attacked, you know, and so she's trying to ward the knife off, possibly grabs the knife.

What we don't know at this point,

did the offender just pop up out of the shadows or did he and she, and of course I'm using the term he, you know, but right now we don't know if this is a male offender, but with the sexual assault, I would say likely it's a male.

Or did this offender and Minnie walk into the church together and then he twists off and starts attacking her now that he's got this woman isolated.

So this is also now assessing the crime scene in the facility.

You know, what is going on there in terms of the security?

Well, I will say with the wounds, what's interesting is that they seem to be confined a little bit to the torso, but mostly to her face.

There was a gash between her eyes.

Part of the knife was in her breast, the part that was broken.

So, yeah, this sounds awful, and it does sound like she was fighting back.

Here's the other thing: none of the police and any of the immediate parishioners who came in could identify who this woman was.

And because she hadn't been there for a year.

So, when a doctor shows up, he opens her mouth and he discovers that part of Minnie's undergarments have been stuffed down her throat.

Ah, okay.

Is that a gag?

Is that what that is?

Or is that something different?

Yeah, there's multiple purposes that offenders do this.

Yes, there is

the use of the victim's clothing inside the mouth is sometimes placed there to prevent the victim from crying out, from screaming.

It's in essence a gag.

It's also

used to asphyxiate.

You know, if the offender, just like I've brought up examples where, let's say, an offender manually strangles a victim and then ties a ligature around afterwards, that's to make sure the victim's dead.

So this insertion of the clothing, the victim's clothing into her mouth is also potentially used

to ensure that the victim can't breathe after the offender walks away.

These killers,

even though they're able to accomplish the homicide, they're oftentimes, especially early in the beginning, novice killers.

You know, it's like, did I do enough to actually kill the victim?

And so now they take extra steps.

So when they walk away, they have the confidence that the victim is not going to survive their attack.

But then there's also behavioral aspects of stuffing her undergarments into her mouth.

And this starts to speak.

towards now you may be dealing with a fantasy-motivated killer.

This stuffing of the garment in her mouth may be something that the killer has fantasized about, maybe has seen in some, I don't know, in the 1890s, you know, what kinds of materials that they would be looking at or reading, you know, that could feed their fantasy, going, this is what I want to do.

And it could be a signature.

You know, this would be something where you could have multiple victims and this would be something that the offender, it's not necessary to accomplish a crime, but the offender does it because the offender has a fantasy of of doing that.

It's a behavioral side.

So not sure what's going on, you know, just with the verbal descriptors in this particular case.

However, this is sounding, this is a predator and, you know, causes me great concerns about what's happened to Blanche and where is Blanche's body.

Police are concerned too, and the church points to someone who works there as the most likely suspect when police ask.

It is the librarian for the Sunday school.

And we know that Minnie and Blanche both went to Sunday school classes.

This is a man named Theodore Durant.

He's 25, and they make a big deal about the fact that he's 5'6.

Everybody in the story is small.

The women are small.

He's short.

He is also a dental student.

And we will learn that he is the man that people say they saw multiple times picking up Blanche after school, and is the man with the mustache who apparently got on the streetcar with Blanche.

And now police are very alarmed.

And he denies all of it, of course.

So, what do you think about that?

Well, how quickly do they get on to Durant?

Are they interviewing him like, you know, that day that Minnie's found?

Aaron Powell, it seems like it because

he had apparently been involved with both of these women romantically, and people knew it.

I think that people thought maybe he was a little sleazy, unpredictable.

And so when they thought, oh gosh, both of them, you know, both members of this church had gone missing, now one's dead in the church.

Who has access to the church?

It is the librarian, of course, for the Sunday school.

I will say, though, Paul, it's interesting.

I don't know how much access he had because they said that the lock on the door between the library and the sanctuary had been broken to a point where a piece of the door frame was also broken.

I don't know if he was trying to, if this is the person, if he was trying to do it to kind of, you know, cover up the fact that maybe he did have access.

But yeah, that's part of the evidence that they have when they start talking to Theodore.

Aaron Powell,

well, if he's breaking the, you know, the lock to this door himself, this is likely what we call staging.

He's trying to make it look like a stranger who did not have access is coming in.

But you also have to

pay attention to the possibility that maybe somebody who did not have access is the one responsible for this crime.

So everything right now, I mean, this Durant character is, he is now a significant individual in this case.

No question about it.

It's what's going on with the interview.

What's going on with the clothing he was wearing?

Because he's stabbing many, the offender stabbing many multiple times.

You've got multiple blood pools.

You have what they called a blood spray.

I'm wondering if that's either cast off from the knife.

I mean, you can, if her throat was cut, you possibly could have an arterial spurt while her heart is still beating.

But there's a chance that he's going to have at least some of her blood on his person, on his clothing.

Did they search for any evidence like that?

Does he have any fresh cuts to his hands himself?

Does he have any scratches?

If Minnie's really fighting him, so now this is really focusing in on, you know, Durant, you know, from a physical evidence standpoint, but then also an alibi standpoint.

What is he saying he did?

Where was was he at?

Do you have witnesses that could support that?

All efforts must be going in on trying to figure out, is Durant responsible for Minnie?

And then also, okay, where's Blanche?

Well, let's talk about first Minnie.

So we have witnesses who say that Theodore was with Minnie the night that she disappeared.

She left the house at 7.30.

There's a man named Charles Hills who lives near the church.

He said, now he does not know Theodore and Minnie, but he says 30 minutes later after she left around 8 o'clock that there was a man and a woman who matched Minnie and Theodore's descriptions that night having a heated conversation outside the church.

And then they went through the church through the side door.

And he said it looked like the woman, who was very small and Minnie was very small, was dragged inside by her arm.

Now, this is not somebody who knows either of them, matches their description.

Theodore goes to the party that Minnie is supposed to go to.

He gets there at 9.30, which is late for this party.

So he shows up.

He doesn't know anything about Minnie.

He's denying any of it, being involved with anybody.

And that is that, as far as Theodore is concerned, about Minnie at least.

And of course, Blanche is still missing.

And do we know how long prior to Minnie's homicide that Durant and her had a dating relationship?

Well, remember, she had been gone for a year.

Yeah.

So she was in Alameda.

And I don't get the impression that they were dating necessarily when she was in Alameda, but it does sound like there could have been some crossover, as in maybe Blanche and Minnie had dated him around about the same time.

I don't know if there was a little bit of a love triangle Minnie might have indicated before she went missing, like she was kind of had been competing for this guy's affections.

But the only thing we know is the last interaction, if this is them outside the church, was not a good interaction.

And she gets dragged inside.

Now, the man who's the witness, Charles Hills, I mean, he has no reason.

He's got no dog in the fight, no reason to make that up.

But what do you think about him as a witness if he doesn't actually, he's not a parishioner, he doesn't actually know these two people.

I don't doubt the statements that he's making.

You know, he's seeing what likely is Minnie and probably her killer standing outside, getting into an argument.

And then the killer is dragging her into the church.

Now, part of the circumstances of Minnie is there was nothing to indicate that she was planning on going to the church en route to the youth party.

Right.

You know, so that's, you know, why is she there?

And her killer is

there by the church and appears to utilize the church in order to be able to get her inside, in order to be able to assault and kill her.

Sounds like the killer knows, is familiar with the church.

has access to the church, knows that there isn't going to be anybody else inside this church and can isolate Minnie and accomplish a crime.

And of course, Durant is somebody that fits that profile of the killer.

Now, it doesn't sound like Charles Hill is able to identify Durant as the man.

This is not a solid case against Durant, just based off of what Charles Hill is saying, but it does raise suspicion that Durant is possibly Minnie's killer.

Just in this day and age, you know, in 1895, if Minnie is coming over to this church for Easter service, is there any communication between Durant and her ahead of time?

You know, that's where the relationship, what is the status of the relationship?

How would that communication occur in 1895 that investigators would be able to kind of go, oh, hold on.

Durant knew she was coming over to attend the service for Easter.

So that gives Durant some knowledge.

And then how would Durant and Minnie connect up

en route to the youth group?

Well, if Durant goes to the youth group at 9:30, he must have had knowledge about this youth group party going on.

That they happen to arrive outside of this party location.

And now Durant is steamed because he's seeing his former girlfriend.

And they get into a conversation and, you know, maybe walk back towards the church to isolate away from the other people attending the party.

And then Durant takes advantage of her being alone.

Yep, and we don't know yet.

The circumstances are very murky.

And of course, they wanted to talk to Theodore, and they eventually track him down.

His mom said that he is in the Signal Corps with the Army.

These are the folks who still are in charge of communication for the Army.

They left early that morning for Mount Diablo, and they track him down and, again, denies everything.

The mother defends him, of course.

And then we have to think about Blanche because now things get pretty weird.

The day that Minnie is found, which is that Saturday before Easter, a package arrives in the mail at Blanche's aunt's house where she is staying, where Blanche is staying.

And it's got three rings that Blanche had been wearing the night that she disappeared, which was 10 to 12 days ago.

They are wrapped in newspaper.

In the margin of the newspaper, there are two names written in pencil.

There are the names of two male music teachers.

And it sounds like this is handwriting that's not her niece's, according to the aunt.

So somebody has mailed these rings with the names of these men onto the aunt's house, which is very odd and mysterious.

And I have no idea.

That's all the information I know about that.

What would be the motivation?

Because we have to assume it's the killer doing this.

What's the motivation for that?

To frame up somebody, maybe?

Yeah, well, to include those men's names.

yeah, framing, you know, this is misdirection, but it's also so obvious.

You know, it's like, come on, anybody would kind of go, what's the likelihood the killer's sending his own name in?

You know, the sending of the rings, the offender is proving I have Blanche.

Doesn't sound like the offender is communicating in any way to indicate that Blanche is dead.

Now, is this a potential, I mean, you can see where this is like setting up a ransom situation.

I've got Blanche.

She's alive.

I want money, et cetera.

But the communication doesn't have anything like that in there.

It's just these two men's names, and they're music teachers.

So we know Blanche had an anchor point, you know, with her victimology.

She was a music student.

She's going to the high school for class.

Her other anchor point is the church.

So this could be classic misdirection by the offender by including these men's names to where investigators know, okay, Blanche has a connection there.

Of course, they're going to be putting their resources to now interview those men and see do they have any knowledge of where Blanche is at and what has happened to Blanche.

So I think that that's what's going on here.

I think this is sort of

a staging, a certain type of misdirection, as you use the term framing.

You know, that's what it sounds like to me.

So this is interesting.

The offender had Blanche's address.

Luckily, the police don't fall for this, and they're convinced that since Minnie was found at the church, that Blanche, if she's dead, and they're assuming that she is, is probably at the church somewhere too.

And they are under tremendous pressure because Easter is coming, and they need to figure out what happened before some parishioner walks in and finds Blanche, potentially.

And the church doesn't want to be shut down, but they want to find Blanche at the same time.

So they just search everywhere.

They make no progress finding Blanche on Saturday, very early on Sunday, Easter.

The police make their way up to the bell tower, which is called the Belfry.

And this is where the famous name comes from, where some people might have heard of this case I had.

It's called the Demon in the Belfry.

And the way that this goes, you'll see why.

They make their way up to the top and they already make discoveries before they even get up there.

They are climbing into the rafters of the steeple and they find all of Blanche's clothing except for her hat and her shoes.

The Colin Post, which is a great newspaper, says the corsets were tucked under the eaves of the steeple.

The dress skirt was whole except it was split from top to bottom.

The waist was torn as if it had been unbuttoned and then torn from the body through the impatience.

One sleeve was turned inside out.

The undervest was torn in three places as if it were wrenched from the body.

The drawers were torn in two and stained with blood.

The mate to the glove at the girl's feet was not discovered.

The door to the stairs up to the steeple is missing its knob and its lock plate.

And of course, up in the steeple area, there was dust usually, and it was swept clean as if something big had been dragged over it.

No Blanche yet, but they find all of her clothes and they're bloody and torn up.

Yeah, it's not looking good for Blanche.

So you mentioned part of her clothing.

What was the part of the clothing that was split open?

The dress skirt was whole, except it was split from top to bottom.

Okay, so this dress skirt that is split from top to bottom, that to me sounds like the offender has taken a knife and has cut this.

These sexually motivated offenders, they enjoy doing this with the knives.

You know, this inflicts terror on the woman.

If she's conscious, they're purposefully doing this.

They enjoy cutting the clothes off while the woman is in absolute fear.

And then, of course, this tearing of the clothing, almost this sexual frenzy that is occurring as the offender is getting closer to closer to be able to expose Blanche's body and then to be able to engage in sexual acts with the victim.

So Blanche is dead somewhere, obviously inside this church.

You know, now

we know, okay, this Baptist church is core to this case.

The offender is comfortable inside this church.

Somehow, sounds like lured many to get at least within proximity of the church where many could be drug in.

The question is, is now, how does the offender get Blanche to this location?

It's not like the offender is able to knock Blanche over the head, you know, in the middle of the day and then sling her over the shoulder and walk over to the church.

So the offender has likely had an interaction with Blanche.

Blanche is comfortable enough with the offender to go with the offender to get, like many, at least within proximity of the church where now the offender can pull Blanche in or have her walk in voluntarily into his lair, so to speak.

This is where, again, Durant, he's notching up.

Now, I'm not saying he's the guy yet.

Relationship with both women.

He most certainly could probably convince both women to go with him to within proximity of the church.

He has access to the church.

I don't know about to the tower, you know, but this is something where he most certainly is comfortable with.

So Durant is definitely, in my mind right now, he's a prime suspect, but I need more before I'm convinced he's the actual killer.

Well, they look through the belfry very closely, and

finally they find Blanche's body way up top.

She has been strangled, and police believe that the person who strangled her was left-handed.

And it turns out that Theodore, in case you're interested, is ambidextrous.

Does that matter in strangulation?

Is there a dominant hand?

I don't see how they could reliably come to that conclusion.

They're stretching there.

Yeah.

So they said that they believed that Blanche was killed in the same room that Minnie was killed in, which was several flights down because we're now in the top of the church.

But that she was dragged through the church and up several flights of stairs.

Later on, Durant's defense team will say, Well, he's tiny.

And of course, the prosecutors will say, Well, they're tiny too.

Everybody is small in this case.

Let me tell you kind of a little bit more here about the details of the murder.

This is what a police detective describes.

About 60 feet directly above where Minnie's body was discovered is where Blanche is.

The body was stark naked, Blanche.

There was not a stitch of clothing upon it or nearby.

The body was laid on its back as if for burial, and no undertaker could have done it better.

Very dramatic.

The arms were crossed upon the breast and limbs had been placed close together and perfectly straight, and bits of wood placed beneath them to keep them in position, and the head lay straight, but with the face turned slightly to one one side.

And I will just say, I normally, before I talked to you a month or so ago, I would say, oh, this is some religious something or other, but obviously this is for transportation purposes is what you've told me, right?

That's my initial thought, you know, in terms of how she's positioned.

You know, of course, there's, you know, there's this phenomena that some of these offenders do where they pose their victims after death, you know, and so this is where really assessing, you know, is the way her body is, you know, like if she, is she she bound and contained so she could be easily transported?

Or is she posed in a maybe a symbolic way to the offender where he likes to look at her after death in a certain way?

I don't know right now, but the fact that she's up 60 feet, you know, in this tower and it sounds like they're convinced that she was killed down below, the offender is going to need a transporter.

And, you know, bodies that are, you know,

there is such a thing as dead weight.

It does feel heavy even with a petite woman.

I've used this example before is you think of, let's say, a petite woman that weighs 100 pounds, small woman.

Try to pick up a hundred-pound bag of concrete.

Now imagine a floppy dead body that weighs the same.

Even though this is a petite human, it still takes strength to do.

And this is where offenders are going to package the bodies in order to aid them to be able to transport, especially carrying up, you know, 60 feet worth of stairs, you know, to get to this isolated location.

Now, the offender in this case takes the time to isolate Blanche's body.

Why not Minnie's body?

What happened in that case?

Did somebody enter the church and the offender had to run off?

It was like an interrupted scene.

There is no evidence of stabbing or cut marks.

There's a large carpenter's hatchet laying nearby, no bloodstains on it.

There's a tiny pool of blood stained below her mouth on the floor, but they don't find evidence that she's been hacked.

She has been strangled.

The belfry was a very cold place during this time, so you know, her body was well preserved, but decomposition was happening and she was starting to turn black.

He is arrested at the foot of Mount Diablo, where he was with the Signal Corps.

They also find in his pants at his house Minnie's wallet.

It's a purse, but but it's really like a wallet.

This is, you know, to me, the first really solid piece of evidence.

He was very vague.

He said, yes, I knew both women.

Yes, I had been kind of involved romantically, but not really with both women.

He was very squishy in the details about the timeline when he had last seen people.

And the issue with Theodore is that he's a church leader.

He's a medical student, dental student.

He has a lot of friends.

He comes from a quote-unquote good family.

Ordinary guy.

This comes out of nowhere for people in the church community, the Baptist community, as well as his family, of course.

He's not helpful with police.

He just said, I mean, I've kind of seen both of these women around.

I've kind of dated both of them around, but there is nothing that really locks him into both of these women.

And one more point before I ask you what you think so far is someone did see him on the day that Blanche was murdered coming out of the belfry, and he looked sick, is what the person said.

And he said that there was a gas leak up there, and he had been trying to fix it.

It made him look really nauseous.

But when he came down the stairs, the person who saw him said he looked like five shades of gray.

So he is charged at this point, which I don't know.

I mean, you've got some people, I'm trying to think about the evidence here.

You've got, yes, you've got Blanche's wallet.

You've got the romantic connection between them.

He doesn't really have a great alibi during this time period.

He matches a description of somebody getting on the streetcar with Blanche, matches a description of somebody arguing with Minnie in front of the church.

He comes to the party late.

So I don't know.

What do you think about this case so far?

You know, the totality of the circumstantial evidence.

You know, you have witnesses seeing him or identifying him as the man that has routinely been showing up when Blanche is getting out of the school.

And he's seen getting onto the streetcar with Blanche the day she goes missing.

So you have that connection.

The connection to Minnie, you know, he's dated both of them.

You know, circumstantially, this is adding up.

He has access to both crime scene locations.

He puts himself up in this very isolated location up in the tower, you know.

And then the physical evidence of Minnie's purse being found with him.

Everything about Durant is checking the box.

And I think, especially with Minnie's purse, because she hasn't been, you know, this is where I would need to know more about, you know, the relationship and when he's saying he last saw her and when, you know, her family or her friends are saying she last saw him, you know, but why does he have her purse?

I mean, that's not something she's just going to give him.

Right.

You know, that, to me, kind of pushes this over the edge where I think.

authorities have sufficient probable cause to arrest him.

They still need to build a case.

1895, they're not going to have the DNA evidence.

I guarantee there's DNA evidence in both of these cases, you know, but I think they could probably solidify this case before it goes to trial.

Now, you're probably going to give me some boomerang thing where you're going to make me second guess this.

But right now, I think they got the right guy, you know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And no, I think they got the right guy.

Theodore is inconsistent.

So he said, I haven't seen Minnie in weeks.

And then he says, well, I saw her a few days before she was murdered.

And then he says, I I saw her that day.

He doesn't have a good explanation for having her purse.

And here's another kicker: the police track down witnesses.

And the owner of a pawn shop who said he's the guy who came in and tried to pawn one of Blanche's rings.

He didn't buy the ring.

And that's, you know, one of the three rings that was shipped off to Blanche's aunt with the mysterious names of these music teachers of Blanche.

It sounds like he wants to try to set them up.

And so they charge him with first-degree murder in Blanche's case.

And I just want to put this in because I just think it's gross.

They go with Blanche's murder, not with Minnie's murder or both of them, because they think that Blanche will be sympathetic.

She came from a great family.

Minnie was the child of divorce, and she was a housekeeper, and they just didn't think that she was going to be a sympathetic victim.

So Theodore's defense makes what I consider to be a pretty bonehead move, which is putting him on the stand.

He was a terrible witness.

He had contradicting stories, just like when he was interviewed by the police.

He was contradicting himself about how serious he was with either woman, was there a love triangle, when he saw them, why he had Minnie's wallet and the rings and everything else.

It does a lot more harm for him than good.

And ultimately, this is not going to be a shocker.

Thank goodness, the jury takes 20 minutes and comes back with a guilty verdict.

And he is sentenced to death, and he is executed at the age of 27 in 1898.

And that is the end of the story of the demon in the belfry, which is a well-known story, unreal to me, that this is the epicenter, this church, for all of this.

It is interesting from just assessing Durant as an offender.

You know, these sexually motivated homicides, he's committing these homicides on women that he knows.

However, you know, there does appear to be a level of fantasy involved.

You know, he's predatory in some ways.

Him showing up outside of Blanche's high school music class multiple times is almost like a grooming, making her comfortable enough with him again to where he could possibly lure her back.

to the church,

as what he did with Minnie.

You know, there's a component that where he could be angry with these two women.

They broke up with him possibly, you know, and now he's getting back at them.

But this, this, uh, the use of the knife to split the skirt, the stuffing the undergarments into Minnie's mouth, kind of the way, you know, he's in a frenzy kind of tearing off these women's clothing in order to get access to their bodies.

It just speaks to me that he's had a he's got a fantasy aspect to him.

And likely that was something that he had prior.

You know, this just didn't happen.

He's been kind of fantasizing about this.

And he figured out, well, the victims that he can start with were women that he knew, that he knew he could lure to the location that he had access to where nobody else would be.

Something happened with Minnie's case where now he's doing the oh shit.

I better get to the youth group party.

And he's leaving Minnie, in essence, in plain view versus hiding her up in the tower like Blanche.

So something spooked him.

If that didn't happen, I would not be surprised if a third woman would have gone missing in short order.

Well, I'll tell you something that's interesting before we leave this story.

What I had been thinking about is all the witnesses say she got on this streetcar.

Blanche got on the streetcar at 3.15 p.m.

There's no way he would have done this at the church, let's say 20 minutes later, an hour later.

What happened between 3.15 p.m.

when both of them got onto the streetcar and everything seemed okay?

Someone even said they seemed to be kind of flirting.

What happened between 3.15 and whenever he felt like he had enough privacy in the library of this Baptist church?

It had to have been at night.

What happened in this time period?

Where did they go?

What did they do?

Well, you know, I'm not entirely sure.

It has to be at night.

It depends on, you know, who else would have access to the church, you know, in the afternoon.

But you think about it, if he's trying to rekindle a relationship with Blanche, or at least under the guise of doing that, and she's somewhat flirting back with him, maybe I should, you know, look at getting back together with my old boyfriend, whatever.

Maybe they just got off and ate at a restaurant and hung out and talked.

And then he says, hey, you know, I want to show you something cool back at the church, you know?

Whatever ruse he used.

But it sure sounds like,

yeah, and I'd be kind of curious to see what the source of the knife is.

You know,

is this something that he had ready access to just inside the church?

Or was this something that he would have had on his person, possibly showing a level of premeditation that he was going to use the knife on Blanche?

He's most certainly cutting the clothing, at least part of the clothing off of Blanche.

So I think there's a knife being used.

He strangles Blanche, but then he uses the knife on Minnie.

It's interesting, the change from strangulation to the stabbing could be due to circumstances.

Minnie fought more than Blanche, possibly.

Yeah.

Who knows?

But

maybe he didn't have the nerve to use the knife with Blanche, but for the second one, he does.

It's kind of an evolution in terms of his psychology as he's gaining experience as a predator.

Well, there you go.

What a story.

I'm glad that these two women got justice.

I'm so sorry about the way their lives ended.

And all of this, they're just going to church, you know, being there and feeling good about being there.

And both of them, and then they meet a predator.

You know, I hope to have a story next week that hopefully we will have the same type of justice here, but

I can't guarantee it, Paul.

You know,

I throw curveballs out of, you know, true crime.

It doesn't end happily often.

So hopefully we'll have another good story for you.

I know we will.

Okay.

Yeah.

This was this was a great story.

I appreciate you sharing it.

I had never heard of it before, so now I'm informed.

There you go.

Okay, I'll see you next week.

Sounds good.

Thank you.

This has been an Exactly Right Production.

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

Our senior producer is Alexis Emorosi.

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

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

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