Into the Woods

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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.

Hey, Paul.

Hi, Kate.

How are you?

I'm doing great.

You know, I want to talk about our backgrounds because I've definitely had some people message me and ask about different things in my background, but we've never talked about your background.

What's in your background?

Is there anything weird or significant?

Well, you know, behind me is my bookshelf, and it contains most of the books that I read throughout my career.

Some of them are academic texts.

Some of them are your true crime.

You know, a lot of the paperback stuff is the true crime, you know, stories on various cases.

And I've been somewhat.

changing it up.

I don't know if anybody's noticed it, but one of the things, you know, over to my left, I have another another little bookshelf and I had hidden away, you know, probably one of the most significant books to my career, which is this one here up to my left, Sexual Homicide Patterns and Motives.

And this is the academic text for the Netflix series Mindhunter.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

So when the FBI was going around interviewing the caught serial killers, they compiled all of that into this book.

And my parents actually gave me that book for my 25th birthday.

Could you imagine giving your son a book called Sexual Homicide?

You know, but one of the things I've been thinking about doing, because I decided I wanted to highlight that book because it was so significant to me.

And then we recorded a little while ago

and you had asked me about rapist typologies.

And, you know, one of the books that's, again, very significant to me was

Bob Keppel's book called Signature Killers, which is this book up here.

You can see Ted Bundy's face on it.

But Dr.

Keppel, who was an investigator with Kings County Sheriff's Office during the Ted Bundy investigation, he ended up becoming a profiler.

And he wrote this book where he took the gross rapist typologies and put that onto the categories of serial killers.

And so that I decided, well, I wanted to highlight that book.

And I thought, you know what, this may be something I change from time to time, just like little Easter eggs to see if you or the viewers are able to spot different changes.

And of course, I've got this little buried bones thing here, you know.

So,

you know, maybe

pay attention from time to time.

I might change things up on you.

Okay.

I go seasonal.

Okay.

When we first started taping, I had a nutcracker up in one of my top shelves.

Okay.

But now, what I do, I mean, nobody notices this stuff but me, but I, I,

I started putting like a different animal on.

So, if you look at my fireplace, I don't know if you can tell what's on there right now.

Is it a duck?

It's a duck.

It's so it's my, it's a sentimental duck.

It's my dad's duck.

It's a wooden duck that his back flips open and it has paper clips and little odds and ends for a desk.

And so I had that.

But for a while, I had a pig, which was a Victory Bank pig.

Oh, really?

That was my mom's growing up.

Okay.

If you look on the bottom of that poor pig, she had chipped it out when she was a kid because there's no opening to it.

You just put your coins in, and there's no way you're going to get it out without smashing this pig.

So she had tried to chip it open, and she stopped.

Her dad probably stopped her.

And then I tried to chip it open.

And then finally, Quinn got it open about three years ago.

And all of these coins from like the 1950s came out.

Oh, that's cool, though.

I like that.

That's very cool.

So I tried, I also had a mouse there for a while, a little brass mouse that my mom had.

That's very, very old.

That's a more difficult one to switch up because it has to fit perfectly.

It has to fit on this kind of like round vent that I have there.

But I definitely switch up books a lot.

Yeah, your books are, I would never be able to tell because they're so far in the background if you switch something out.

That's why I do the animals, the pigs.

I can switch up my Pendleton blankets that actually Karen in Georgia sent me for Christmas.

They're a wonderful quality wool blanket.

And so I have that one back there, but I bought a different kind that I might switch things up a little bit, you know.

Okay, I'll try to pay attention and call you out on something if I see it switched.

I hope that these stories aren't boring so that you are paying more attention to the animal that I have.

Never.

That would never happen.

No, not at all.

Never.

Never.

Okay.

We are going to be in Rhode Island today.

Love, love, love, Rhode Island.

My last book was set in Rhode Island, time period in the 1800s, and we're going to be back in Rhode Island in 1843.

You're going to learn even more history than you ever thought nor cared to learn about some things that were happening in this time period.

So let's go ahead and set the scene.

I try to think about these cases and think, what is the one-liner that I can say to listeners, viewers at the very beginning about what I think this case is.

And this is, I know we always kind of talk about this sometimes more than others, but for me, this is a case of what they could prove then and what we can prove now.

And just the tragedy of it, seeing all of the tools we have now, where we could have solved so many things, so many wrongful, you know, convictions and executions happened just because we didn't have the right tools.

And And so then it makes me hopeful for everything that's going to come in the future.

What more are we going to have at our disposal to solve crimes and keep people safe?

Well, and we're seeing that today, you know, ever since really the advent of modern DNA technology, you know, people who were convicted of

the 1970s, 1980s,

or even more recently, how DNA has exonerated individuals that put decades of

their lives in prison and they were absolutely innocent.

So just imagine what they were working with back in the 1800s.

And quite frankly, how many innocent people probably were incarcerated and or sentenced to death for something they didn't do.

Absolutely.

I talk about this with my second book, American Sherlock, about the forensic scientist.

And

I read in his notes where he said, somebody asked him in a letter, have have you ever had doubts about anything you've done?

This is somebody who worked on 2,000 cases in his lifetime.

And he said, no, I got them all right.

Got him all right.

That's wrong.

He obviously didn't, you know, and he was using some bad science, and that's worrisome.

I think you'll always have to.

Like the DAs, who it's very clear they prosecuted and incarcerated the wrong person who still refused to open up these cases for whatever reason.

That was alarming when I read that about Oscar Heinrich.

Well, I think, you know, that's where, like, I know from my career, everything I did, I felt that I abided by ethics.

I did everything.

I formed my opinions based off of what I felt was right.

But the biggest fear is, is, did I conclude something that ultimately put?

the wrong person in prison.

You know, that's, that really is a, a, a huge fear by anybody who really cares about what they're doing.

And so for Heinrich, you know, for him to say, well, I was always right, that's a lot of ego.

Oh, yeah.

I would have liked to hear him, I did everything to the best of my abilities

with the knowledge that I had, my expertise, you know, the facts that I had available to me.

But, you know, I think if, you know, if you've worked in this field for a long enough period of time, you know, there is going to be that, uh-oh, you know, I sure hope everything I concluded over 30 plus years of working in this field, that it was all right.

But it's, we're humans, right?

Yeah.

And like I said, you know, I had interviewed Daniel Westcott, who is the head of the Texas State Anthropology, Forensic Anthropology Lab, where they have the body farm.

I think it's the largest one in the United States.

And I said, what is your job?

And he said, it is almost always to exclude, never never to include.

He said, Everything that I have, it's basically saying this didn't happen.

I can't tell you 100% what did happen, but I can tell you what didn't happen based on what I have.

And so I thought that was important, you know.

Yeah,

that's definitely the proper forensic philosophy.

No matter what forensic discipline that you're working in, is you're always looking for that exclusion.

You're always looking for, you know, something that benefits, whether it be a suspect or benefits the defendant, to exclude them from the crime.

But after

you get so far in and you can't exclude, then now, you know, it's like, well, how strong is the inclusion?

You know, and that's where you see with DNA, well, you can't exclude matches across the entire DNA profile.

Well, how strong is that inclusion?

And that's where you start getting the statistics.

So, you know, the tri or effect, whether it be the judge or the jurors, can.

put weight on the testimony that is being you know put in front of them that's pointing at the defendant.

I couldn't eliminate him.

And so that's where, as we've talked in the past, that's where some of the comparative sciences have gotten into trouble.

My perspective is there's no doubt that

fingerprint comparisons and ballistics,

firearms comparisons, these comparative sciences have value.

But it's like, okay, what is the strength of the

finding?

And that's where some of them are struggling to kind of give that objective statistic so the court can and the jury can go, okay, and now I understand, you know, what it is

from a factual standpoint, from a scientific standpoint.

Yeah.

What do you weigh more?

What should we really pay more attention to?

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, let's go back to 1843, where I would say forensics is

very weak,

and we're going to see that.

So this is sundown, 4:15 p.m.

on New Year's Eve.

We just did a story set in early January in New England, in Massachusetts, and cold, cold, cold.

So we're in the same situation here.

Very, very cold.

New Year's Eve, December 31st, 1843, 4.15 p.m.

And we're in a place called Spragueville.

Rhode Island.

And it's a village that's full of mill factories, boarding houses, schools.

And most of them are owned by a family called the Spragues.

So this is a very influential family around New England.

And I'll tell you a little bit more about them in a little bit, but this is, you know, this is kind of setting the scene here.

The family lives in a huge home, which has been called Sprague Mansion.

And they have a servant named Michael Costello.

He's heading home from the mansion.

He's west on Cranston Road, and he crosses this swampy area known as Hawkins Hole and he approaches a footbridge over a river.

I'm going to show you a photo of the footbridge, which is small, and the river, which is a really generous term for what this is.

It's almost a creek, essentially.

The water in the river, quote unquote, is not yet frozen.

So in the middle of the bridge, Michael notices blood and there's a trail.

So he follows the bloody trail 15 to 18 feet past the other side of the bridge and he kind of goes below the bridge.

But this is, like I said, it's a creek, nothing's very high up.

So he kind of crosses over this little creek and he goes down, and he finds the bludgeoned body of a middle-aged man.

So this is a man who's laying face down with his head on his hands.

His legs are extended, and there are blood pools around his head.

So Michael doesn't touch the body.

He races to alert a doctor named Israel Bowen, who lives really close by.

We've seen in other cases where somebody somebody races to go find the medical examiner and they show up three or four hours later.

Bowen comes immediately, apparently, but nobody's turned him over yet, this man.

By the time that they return to the crime scene, there is a small crowd that has gathered and they're searching the area, contaminated crime scene right there.

So, you know, you have these curious onlookers who are taking it upon themselves looking for whoever did this to this man.

There is a guy who notices scattered blood drops continuing in the snow 60 to 80 feet up the footpath.

And another guy finds a pistol underneath the northeast corner of this little footbridge a few yards from the body.

So you have pedestrians finding these two things.

Go ahead and look at the photos that I sent you.

Tell me when you got that page up.

So I'm looking at the

second photo in this document.

And so this appears to just be a photo of a of a trail,

just a

walking path through a forest.

This, I believe, is the footpath that the man found the 60 to 80 drops of blood, like the exit route, basically, for whoever did this is what they're thinking.

Sure.

So if that is truly the escape route

that the offender took, and you've got dripped blood for 60 to 80 feet, he's bleeding himself.

He's leaving his own blood behind.

Now, if it's just a dripped blood, that could be, you know, from his nose, that could be from a hand.

You know, in essence,

he's just walking or moving maybe more swiftly along this trail away.

Of course, today, this is a huge.

source of evidence that could ultimately be used to identify the offender.

In 1843, you know, now they're just going, okay, we have to, if we interview any any suspects pretty shortly after the crime, we have to look to see if that suspect has an injury that's fresh.

The reason I really wanted you to see the footpath is the isolation part of it.

It's just like if you read a book, a novel, and you're picturing the characters in your head, and then you see what the author used as inspiration.

You think, this looks nothing like who I was picturing in my head.

I don't know why I was thinking of a clearing or kind of in town.

This looks isolated to me, at least based on the footpath.

Well, along this particular stretch, you know, this is reasonably dense vegetation and forest.

The footpath kind of curves out of view.

So it's not like you can, you know, look right down the path and just see forever.

You know, it's you can only see roughly, you know, I don't know how long that would be, let's say 50 to 50 to 100 feet down this trail before it curves out of sight.

Now, if you look at page three and page four,

you see this footbridge.

And I think the fourth one will give give you kind of a perspective: this is not a large river at all.

This footpath is substantial, but you know, you tell me what you think.

I don't know where he is.

I think he's on the other, the side that says not the Cranston side, but the other one.

But regardless, this is not like pushing somebody off of a big incline or something.

No.

So, you know, looking at these two photos, you know, this appears to be really more of a primitive, it's hard to even call it a bridge, even though technically it's crossing a body of water, but it's it's small.

It's uh, the bridge has been composed of stacked rock in addition to what appears to be some wooden planks, um, maybe

is

three to four feet above the level of the water, the top of the bridge.

Um, this is just a creek, in my opinion.

I said that.

The river is generous.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it looks like maybe it's, I don't know, 10 feet across.

Yeah.

And I can see the bottom in this, this

one photo where this is not deep at all.

It's only,

you know, 12 inches, maybe two feet deep at most.

So, you know, it is, yeah, I'm not seeing snow on the ground, but I know it's, it's, this is a time of year in which it would be very cold for sure.

Also, these are photos that are not from then.

It was probably from later, maybe when they were demoing it or something.

But but yeah, you're right.

So what does it say?

I know we don't know anything about this case yet, but people use this footbridge.

Michael's using this footbridge in the afternoon.

So whoever killed this guy just sort of left him wherever whatever happened happened.

He's not trying to cover him up.

He's face down and that's it.

In an area literally next to a bridge where people will definitely cross at some point.

Whoever did this is not trying to cover this up or hide his body, which seems like could be easy in this area to do.

You just drag him somewhere.

Well, I think that's where, you know, first it's getting into,

you know, some of the crime scene aspects.

You've got this middle-aged male that's face down.

He's got a blood pool around his head.

You know, part of it is, you said he was bludgeoned, but then a pistol had been found nearby.

So this is where, okay, was he actually bludgeoned?

Because oftentimes people who are shot in the head and the amount of blood coming out of the head can mat the hair and obscure facial features.

And so, you know, it could be a gunshot victim at this point from my perspective.

I'd be looking to see if there is any indication of blood spatter from repeated blows to the victim's head.

This is where now victimology comes into play.

Is this

whoever this victim is, is this somebody that would routinely walk along this path for one reason or another?

Is this a victim of opportunity?

Was this a robbery gone bad?

You know, where you had somebody, an offender that confronted the victim at this location.

Things went sideways, and now

the offender kills the victim and gets hurt in the process and now escapes along the footpath that has the dripped blood?

Or was this a meeting point?

Was this a prearranged meeting point between

the victim and the offender?

And things went sideways.

And 1843, I doubt it was some drug deal going on.

So

this is where victimology becomes huge in terms of, okay,

what is going on here?

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When they turn the body over, Dr.

Bowen recognizes the victim.

So he's 45.

His name is Omasa Sprague, as in the town name.

He is the richest and most influential man in this town.

He was very politically connected, kind of all-powerful, anti-Catholic, you know, very much kind of of a nativist attitude.

He was a Whig, which is a political party in the 1800s.

He and his brother William had served on the Rhode Island legislature, and William was a U.S.

senator and a governor.

So very, very powerful, very, very wealthy.

So Michael Costello was apparently his servant at the Sprague Manor.

Okay, so here you have a very wealthy individual, and now it gets into, okay, does this look at the crime scene?

Does it look like a robbery?

Because he may have, you know, financial assets on his person that somebody would want to get access to and take those assets by force and in the process, you know, killing a Masa.

Is that how you say his name?

Mm-hmm.

Amasa.

You know, and that's where it would come.

Is a Masa routinely walking along this path and is targeted because of who he is, you know, or is there something more devious going on?

Maybe there's a business transaction, you know, and why would Amasa go go and purposely meet with a business partner or somebody out at this particular location?

The victimology of Amasa

is important for sure, but it's not necessarily that's not the reason he got killed.

You know, it's just, again, this could, he could just literally be a victim of opportunity.

You had a stranger out there just lying in wait or just happened to coincidentally run across Amasa and pulled a gun and a fight ensued and Amasa got the bad end of the deal.

And maybe his pockets are turned out.

And, you know, you've got coins or a wallet or whatever Amasa would be carrying back in 1843 that the guy took off.

And it's just, again, it started out as a robbery and ended up as a homicide.

Well, they find a silk handkerchief, an apple, loose change, and an envelope.

The envelope is marked $100, but it only has $60 inside,

which is $2,500 today.

And he is also wearing a gold watch, a very expensive gold watch.

Yeah, so the offender doesn't sound like he took anything away from Amasa.

It doesn't sound like it.

And he was discovered by Michael Costello at 4:15,

but multiple people said they saw Amasa in town up until about 3:35.

So there is, what, less than an hour to work with there if everybody's you have multiple people agreeing on the time.

Right.

So if he's last seen like 3:35 in town and his body's found at 4.15,

that's 25, that's 40 minutes.

Right.

And he wasn't killed just maybe a minute before his body's found.

He could have been killed 10, 15 minutes prior.

So it's a very narrow window.

So I don't know how long it would take Amasa to get from the town to this particular location.

That has to be factored in.

But it sounds like once a Masa is at this location, his death occurred pretty quick.

And, you know, know, we were talking about people who might have known his schedule.

Is this a normal thing?

I don't know that necessarily, but this is New Year's Eve.

And I wanted to know: was New Year's Eve a thing in the 1800s?

It was a big thing.

So, this is not a business day for him, most likely.

And, you know, this is this is, if he's going to have an unusual schedule, probably this would be one of those days.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: So, now, in terms of assessing the offender, this is where the autopsy could prove to be important.

You know, because right now, you know, I could throw out just the speculation, did Amasa meet up with some woman at this location and she killed him?

You know, I want to know a little bit more about what happened to Amasa.

Okay.

Well, let's get on to that.

We have a coroner.

So we've got the doctor who just happened to be there living nearby, but we have a coroner named Robert Watson.

He shows up, but it's starting to get dark at 6.15.

The town sergeant is there and they have impaneled a coroner's shuri.

They all show up and they use a lantern back to kind of the weird atmospheric part of the 1800s with no lights.

They're examining the wounds that were identified for Dr.

Bowen.

It's kind of complicated.

So here's what they find.

The coroner says that he believes that Amasa died by blunt force trauma, probably the edge of a musket guard to the head.

Now, I don't even know what a musket guard is.

Do you know what part of a gun that is?

Musket guard?

I know what a musket is.

A musket guard is called a flash guard, a safety device used on flintlock muskets to deflect the flash, and hot gas is produced when the weapon is fired.

They are typically small metal plates, often made of brass or iron, that attach to the musket lock, redirecting the flames upward or downward instead of outwards.

Yeah, you know, so this musket guard, if that is correct, it's right

on the rifle or the musket, right where, you know, the hammer basically is.

It's sort of in the middle of the

musket.

So that's where I'm a little bit...

I think for me to have confidence that they can conclude that, I need to see what kind of patterned wounds they were seeing to say, oh, yeah, I agree with that.

Because that seems like a it seems like a weird spot along the length of the musket that is being used to do the bludgeoning.

Not necessarily.

I think if you grab, if it's a musket and you're grabbing the barrel and using it almost like a bat,

probably that musket guard would catch the side of the person's head and it's kind of sticking out, right?

Possibly.

And I can visualize that.

That's speculating.

I don't really know.

But for the coroner to come to that conclusion, that tells me that they are looking at a patterned wound.

And if he's correct, that either Amasa or the offender brought a musket to this location.

Yep.

And they're saying that all of the wounds that they see are one inch, one to one and a half inch, which, you know, looking at the photos from what we saw, that looks about right.

They're about a one and a half inch and they're hard.

So, you know, they're of a metal.

So you're right.

I mean, you know, you say that all the time.

You're looking at the person in that time period.

And if they know what somebody looks like who have been hit by a train, then you kind of have to go with what they've seen a lot of.

That's what they think happened.

So

let me tell you about the injuries.

There's one blow to the left side of his head.

It fractured his skull and ruptured his brain membrane.

There is brain matter and blood sprayed out of the one and a half inch gash on his forehead.

Another blow to the right side of his head, which has fractured his skull.

And the coroner says each one of these would have killed him.

There are other gashes as well.

Two parallel cuts.

They think all of this, I believe, is from the musket.

Two parallel cuts, each measuring about an inch on the upper back of Amos's head.

A three-inch wound reaches from the first gash to about an inch above his ear.

There's a contusion that runs from his cheekbone to his temple on the right side.

This was terrible.

This was an awful fight for him.

I mean, that's what I'm getting.

His nose is shattered.

And then there are some gunshot wounds also I can tell you about.

Well, and right now, yes, you got blunt force trauma.

And this is, it sounds pretty typical when you see a significant weapon, like a musket being used as a blunt force weapon because it's hot.

And this is a lot of energy.

And so, yes, the skull fractures, you know, suggest that these are significant blows.

You know, my question would be, is he receiving these blows while he's upright, being confronted by the offender, or are these blows being delivered while he is down on the ground?

And in essence, the offender is finishing him off.

Well, listen to this scenario, and the coroner has a theory, and you give me your scenario first.

So this is what else they find.

So, you know, the theory was that he was on the bridge, and now all of a sudden he's face down off the bridge and dead.

He's got all of these contusions all over the place.

He also suffered one bullet wound.

A shot had entered Amasa's right forearm and traveled four inches, breaking the small bone of the arm.

And the bullet is still embedded in Omasa's wrist.

I guess it sounds like it wasn't a musket, it was a pistol.

And I don't think those are interchangeable.

I'm pretty sure those are not interchangeable.

No.

So you tell me what that sounds like.

And that, you know, that is not, of course, not what killed him, but somebody shot him.

Well, the shot into his arm sounds like Amasa possibly assumed a defensive posture,

you know, had recognized that there was a gun pointed at him, you know, put his arms.

We see this, you know, in shootings, and now hands or forearms are being shot.

Or sometimes you have, you know, sort of a covering, you know, and then the bullet ends up going through the arm.

So that's kind of how I'm envisioning what you told me about this.

shot to his forearm and the bullet ending up in his wrist.

Sounds like kind of a weird, he's maybe reflexively kind of covering himself up, and he gets shot, and that bullet lodges in his arm.

And they're saying that that's a pistol round that they recover.

And we have a pistol that is found at the scene.

Yep, a second weapon, right?

It's a second firearm.

Now, 1843, are people just normally walking around with muskets and pistols, you know, or is this unusual?

So, you know, so is this where, I mean, you think about it, you got two guys walking over this bridge in opposite directions and one gives the other a bad look.

And now you got words exchanged, and they pull their guns out, and Amasa is the loser.

You know, it could be as, you know, basic as that.

But his victimology, high-profile wealth, everything else, it seems like there's probably more to the story than just some random crime.

You're correct, sir.

There is a lot more to the story.

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The coroner thinks that Amasa was confronted on the bridge and Bludgeon from Behind knocked off the bridge and that the person on the bridge had an accomplice who had that pistol.

But then, what would that mean?

Because the pistol is not what killed him.

It's the blunt forced trauma.

So, what the guy jumped off the bridge and finished him off with this

muzzle thing?

That's what I'm envisioning, yes.

You know, so this confrontation, if the confrontation occurred up on the bridge, Amasa, it sounds like, put up enough of a fight to where at least if there's multiple offenders, one of the offenders got hurt to the point where now is leaving a 60 to 80 foot long, you know, trail of dripped blood.

You know, so this is where now, you know, taking a look at Amas's hands, you know, does this, do his hands suggest, does he have bruising?

Or, you know, like if you think about somebody hitting somebody in the mouth, the teeth will cut into the knuckles.

Or you get bruises as somebody is fighting, torn fingernails.

And so that's something I would be looking at to go, yes, you know, now you have, you know, basically a physical fight.

Amas is shot.

He could have been shot right away, but the shot to his arm is not going to incapacitate him.

He could still physically fight his offenders, but eventually maybe there's a significant blow to his head or he's pushed off the bridge and an offender or both offender

get down to where his body is.

And that's where you get all the blows being inflicted by the musket.

Well, and then let me tell you what happens with this pistol.

You know, he's got that one shot that's still in his wrist.

The jurors look at the pistol on the scene and they find signs that it had misfired.

The percussion, no, you're going to have to tell me about this.

The percussion lock had been snapped, but the gun is still loaded to the muzzle and the barrel is packed with snow and jammed with a wad of paper.

What is the percussion?

What does that mean?

Percussion lock had been snapped?

I don't know what the percussion lock is.

So there would be, with these black powder weapons, you've got the black powder that goes down into the barrel, then you've got the projectile that is then packed down on top of that black powder.

But then you have what I think is called a percussion cap.

And this is, in essence, what the hammer hits that causes,

there's a, that force of the hammer hitting the percussion cap is what causes the ignition because it contains material, sort of like modern firearms, the primer has when the hammer strikes the firing pin, the firing pin hits the primer, and that's what causes the gunpowder inside the cartridge case to burn, which, you know, the gases force the bullet out.

So, a percussion guard sounds like it's a mechanism, part of the firing mechanism that somehow protects the percussion cap until the trigger is pulled.

That's my guess.

But this is where, like, as I always say, I have a little bit of knowledge.

This is where I would be reaching out to a firearms expert and go, tell me what you know about this.

And how do I interpret this particular type of weapon within the circumstances and the evidence of this crime?

I guess really, in some ways, I'm not sure this really matters.

If a gun is jammed at a scene, it's fired once.

I guess that explains why he wasn't shot again.

Is that kind of the takeaway you have?

Well, it could be.

You know, and we run with modern weapons, we run into this all the time,

especially when somebody's got a pistol today and they get into a physical fight and they try to pull the trigger, but they're not supporting that gun.

And so the gun doesn't cycle the normal way.

And so now you can get jams and misfires, if you will, with these older weapons, with snow being packed up into the pistol.

You know, is this where Amasa and the offender are fighting over this gun?

That gun gets, you know, driven down into the snow on the ground.

I don't know enough to be able to say, well, that in and of itself, that packed snow would prevent that pistol from firing.

Probably could.

But you mentioned that there's this wad of paper that's stuffed up in there.

That might be something that is normally packed into these types of weapons.

So let me tell you about the rumors, because now they're trying to look at motive.

Who is this person?

There's no evidence of any of this, but they wonder, was Amasa having an affair?

Had his mistress's husband discovered it and killed him in revenge?

There was a disgruntled worker at the family mills, a guy named Big Peter Dolan at the mill who had just been fired for destroying a loom that had torn his nephew's fingers off.

So this all seems to be on the table.

And they're, you know, obviously going to look at the family.

The person who probably gains the most is his brother William, who's this powerful senator.

And, you know, he was a governor.

And so there's a lot going on with this man and their servants too yeah well right now this is wide open like in our one of our previous episodes that we just talked about i talked about how you can interpret offender behaviors at the crime scene to get a sense as to who the offender might be right now there is not enough information because there really isn't a lot of offender behavior being expressed at this crime scene this is where now the victimology you know starts to become so much more important okay well let's get into this um the villagers there are some villagers who think all of that is stupid.

They think this was a political assassination.

So, this is a sign of the time.

So, get ready for a history lesson.

I've known this is a big one.

Okay.

And you've probably not heard of this man in particular, but he's very famous.

So, two months before Amasa was murdered, there is a well-known political reformer who's actually popped up in a couple of my books.

His name is Thomas Dorr, and he was arrested for treason.

So, the Spragues do play a part in all of this.

In 1841, Thomas Doerr wanted more Rhode Islanders to be allowed to vote.

So at that point, only native born, meaning born in the United States, property-owning white males had voting rights.

This is what the Spragues believed in, and this is what they campaigned on, both of these brothers.

So Thomas Doerr wanted to establish what was called universal white male suffrage.

After one year of residency, then you could vote.

So that meant, you know, that immigrants could vote.

That meant that Catholics could vote because many of the immigrants were Catholics.

And this is not what the majority of white men wanted in Rhode Island.

You know, and this was a time period where nobody trusted the Catholics.

Everybody thought Catholicism was very odd.

And, you know, Christ's blood and everything else, the mistrust was there very much.

And so nobody wanted this to happen.

So the Sprague's kind of kept kept getting in the way of Thomas Dorr in Rhode Island.

But now he is arrested for treason and he's imprisoned.

But it's the politicians like the Spragues in Rhode Island who did it.

So he himself was in prison, Thomas Dorr,

but there were an awful lot of supporters who hated the Spragues and the white male nativists just like them.

And there were a lot of Irish Catholics in Rhode Island.

So as I said, Dora is in state prison.

He will not stay there forever.

He'll be out within a few years.

But people do want to know if he hired somebody, like an Irish Catholic group, to murder Amasa Sprague.

So this sets the stage for the murder to be pinned on three Irish Catholic brothers, Nicholas John, and William Gordon.

So let me tell you about these guys.

Nicholas Gordon came first, and he's a little bit of the center of the story.

He arrived in Providence, Rhode Island in the mid-1830s, so just a decade earlier.

Unlike a lot of immigrants, he didn't work in the mill.

He opened a general store and sold groceries and candies.

Nicholas's general store was undercutting the prices of the mill shops that all of the Spragues owned.

And Nicholas made a huge profit.

Then he opened up a tavern and it was incredibly popular and all of the mill workers would go to the tavern.

The money that he made was enough to bring over the two brothers who I had mentioned, who were John and William and his mother from Ireland.

They came just a couple of months before the murder.

But the city council started to target Nicholas at the request of Amasa Sprague and his brother.

And they ended up revoking the tavern's liquor license.

And the excuse was, well, Nicholas Gordon is getting these guys drunk and sending them back to the mills where they're getting their hands ripped off and everything else.

If I were Nicholas, I'd be pissed.

And this sounds like a great motive to me.

He had his liquor license and it shut down the whole tavern.

Sounds like he has a direct motive versus being hired by Thomas Dore.

Yep.

It could be a bonus.

I hate that guy anyway.

I'm willing to do it and it would help Thomas Dore, but we'll see.

Okay.

So New Year's Day, the next day, there's a town meeting and there's a reward of $1,000 to anyone with information about the murder.

$1,000 was about $43,000 today.

Yeah, it's a significant amount of money.

Now, that, you know, the experience that we've seen in law enforcement with rewards, particularly if they're pretty big rewards, is you get a lot of false tips coming in because people are just rolling the dice, hoping they stumble across something in order to get that money.

So it can be very distracting to the investigation.

Well, you're right on the nose because a lot of villagers came forward to say that they had seen animosity between Amasa and Nicholas over the tavern, which doesn't sound like something that would be disputed, but you do have an awful lot of people who want that money.

And there is a lot of anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic tension in this town.

There is no piece of physical evidence.

linking Nicholas to this crime.

It's, you know, a motive of, well, he was really mad.

And plus he's, you know, an immigrant.

And so that would have been the motive.

So at six o'clock that night, the next day after this man is found, Nicholas and his brother John are arrested on suspicion of murder.

And for John, he just has a bruise on his chin.

And that's it.

But with the coroner, you know, saying there was two men, they focus in on these two brothers.

And, you know, the next day, the sheriff, who is a guy named High Sheriff Potter, I'll just say Sheriff Potter, searched the Gordons' shop and upstairs apartment.

And they find a tin box and a canister that contained powder, as in gunpowder, dirty clothes.

There is a wet blue coat, a wet pair of pants, wet boots.

The elbow of one shirt is stained with what appears to be blood.

In its pocket is a grocery bill.

In the pocket of a dark-stained vest, the party discovers caps and flint and six pistol balls and powder wrapped in brown paper and a few drops of blood are present on the undersheet of the bed near the head.

Now, let me say this about 1844.

They could tell whether this stuff was blood.

They could not tell if it was human blood or, you know, dog blood or anything, but they would have been able to identify blood.

20 years later, they will know how to identify the difference between human blood and animal blood.

They did not test any of this.

So we don't know if this stuff was blood.

or whose blood it was, but this is what they find.

They also in the attic find a bayonet and a sword.

Quite frankly, I mean, this is a laundry list of what pretty much any family in the 1840s probably would have had in their house.

And I know the insinuation is, you know, the clothes are wet and he must have gotten into the quote-unquote river.

But again, I mean, it's snow on the ground.

That's what they have.

Yeah, I think it's unimpressive in terms of trying to tie any of that evidence back to the crime scene.

I mean, that's ultimately what you have to do is you're trying to make associations to connect, you you know, these suspects to the crime scene, to the victim, et cetera.

And these items right now, this were the interviews of Nicholas and John.

You know, it's like, well, do they have an explanation for the blood?

The blood staining on the elbow of the clothing?

Is that a wound that they can see a fresh wound on either of the suspects?

Does that wound appear to be something that could bleed enough to leave a 60 to 80 foot long trail of dripped blood.

You know, so there's a lot more digging that needs to be done to figure out if anything that they found during the search has any relevance to the crime.

Well, let me ask you, let's just say there is an injury and it's an elbow injury, but that's the only injury one of these guys has, let's say Nicholas.

Is there enough blood in that area of your arm to actually drip 60 to 80 drops up a trail that's visible?

Well, it's not just 60 to 80 drop.

It's dripped blood that goes for 60 to 80 feet along the trail.

Oh, that's true.

So, you know, of course, you can have an injury to the elbow that can bleed significantly.

You know, now dripped blood, this is where we have no information in terms of really how much blood is present in this dripped trail.

You know, but generally when you see dripped blood, oftentimes you'll have blood.

Let's say there's an elbow injury and now it's as you're walking, that bleeding is flowing down your arms and dripping off of your hand.

So that's a possibility to create that type of trail.

Does one of these suspects actually have

a recent wound?

Because they're being arrested within a day, two days.

they're going to have a fresh wound.

And then what is their explanation for the blood inside the residence?

and it could be, yeah, you know, I was working in the yard and I hit my elbow and I was bleeding.

You know, so right now it's this is just all very superficial.

There needs to be more.

Well, let's keep going.

There is a group of concerned citizens.

We've talked about these people.

They never do any good, almost ever.

They go to the crime scene and they're tromping around.

The snow is melting, but there's a guy named Walter Beattie.

He's the head of this vigilante, I don't know what to call them group.

They're able to see shoe tracks and paw prints like a dog.

They follow the tracks from the bridge across Dyer Pond through the swamp and to the Gordons apartment.

And the length of the tracks matches the sole of the boots that they find in the apartment, except the width of the tracks are about an eighth of an inch wider.

But still, they think this is proof positive that the Gordons are the ones who did this.

Can you really track things through a swamp?

I mean, melted snow, a swamp, across the bridge, through a pond?

Yeah, that seems a little convenient, I guess is the way to put it.

I mean, you can most certainly have, let's say at the crime scene, you have a shoe impression.

And you can see how as you follow the direction of that, you know, the trail of shoe impressions, there will be moments in time in which there are surfaces that that person was walking across that doesn't leave any impressions.

And then you can pick up that trail on the other side of it.

That's where, you know, looking at this, the swamp, you know, what were they really seeing in order to try to track something through that?

Is there a lot of just impressions in mud

without having any details of, let's say, the sole pattern of this particular boot?

And then, you know, from my guess is that, you know, today, of course, we have all sorts of different types of soul outsole designs, right?

All sorts.

Versus back in 1843, I bet most people probably had the same boots, you know, with the same types of sole patterns.

So that's where now the veracity of the tracking aspect, you know, gets questioned from my perspective.

What if Nicholas had walked there, you know, the day before or earlier?

You know, who knows?

Okay, this is what I need to remind you of.

So when we talked about that elbow bleeding it was a shirt that they saw was stained with what appeared to be blood while they're tromping through this citizens group and they're trying to follow these tracks they find two significant pieces of evidence in the thicket on the east side of the swamp they find a short well-worn blue coat.

There appears to be dried blood on the worn-out right elbow.

It's exposed lining, and on the breast of the coat.

So, if they're right, and no one's lying and trying to set up this Irish Catholic guy, then that is the jacket that matches the bloody elbowed shirt at Nicholas's house.

And then, let me tell you this: there is wax and black hair stuck to it.

On one of the coat pockets, there contains a box of powder, which has to be shooting powder.

Obviously, if you find bloody clothing along the escape route of the offender, I mean, that's significant.

The location of the bloodstaining on the blue coat being consistent with the

apparent bloodstaining on the shirt found within the Gordon's residence, I mean, maybe,

you know, the frustrating part for me, of course, is, well, this would be easy to answer.

You know, let's just do DNA on it.

Right.

You know, but back then, it's like, well, it's consistent.

But you still, even the blue coat, you can't say that that blue coat was worn by the killer or the killers of Amasa.

You still have to connect it back to the actual homicide.

And this is where I'd be going, okay, so I know that Amasa was bludgeoned multiple times in the head.

And based off of what you described

the doctor saying, you know, where you have blood and brain matter that is being exposed and you're probably probably having

blood and potentially brain matter being spattered.

Does this coat show that type of blood pattern, if you will, some spatter pattern, as this is the offender that is yielding, let's say, the musket while he's giving these blows to the offender?

So the blood on the blue coat, the blood on the shirt from the Gordon residence, it's something, but it's still not connecting back to the actual homicide, Not yet.

Well, here's another place where DNA would be supremely helpful.

Just a little bit further past the coat, they find a gun, which is the musket, broken off at the breach.

The barrel is bent and it's not loaded and the lock is gone and covered with blood.

Well, now you got the murder weapon.

So it's the close association with the murder weapon to the blue coat definitely raises the

association of the blue coat to the homicide.

So now it's a matter of whose coat is this?

Whose musket is this?

And how do they prove that in 1843?

Well, let's move along and let me tell you about what happens.

At the end of the day, William Gordon is arrested.

So he's the third brother.

So you have Nicholas and John arrested.

The third brother arrested.

The mother, Ellen, arrested and another brother named Robert arrested.

I'm going to try not to laugh at this.

The dog is arrested.

What?

And I looked this up.

It happened in the 1800s and the 1700s.

They put animals on trial, like actual trials.

The paw prints and snow by the bridge.

Yes.

Good God.

I mean, I know I pulled this whole thing up for you.

I'll be brief.

And actually, you know, it turns from to me, I thought was amusing at first, but you know, they would be executed for things they did.

It could have been, you know, hurting a sheep or something.

But in the early 1800s, you know, there was a different understanding of the law and animals.

They could be charged with murder, property damage, even being a nuisance.

And they actually had human witnesses.

They had human witnesses and they had attorneys and judges, you know, and they could face execution, like hanging or being burned alive or exiled.

So, you know, this went out the door eventually.

But in this case, the dog is put under arrest also.

that's just stupid it's come on so i mean it really underscores just how silly you know some of these laws were

so was the dog standing guard while a masa was killed and now the dog is an accessory to the murder i mean it's it's like i'd like to see you know the investigators affidavit supporting

probable cause to arrest this canine i know that's laughable laughable.

Silly to you, laughable to you, not to the dog.

No.

So they arrested one of Nicholas's friends.

Man, they just round up all of the Irish kids in this town.

And Ellen and Robert are let go later on.

And so is the friend.

And then my question was, what about the freaking dog?

Did the dog get out?

I'm assuming the dog's okay.

But they had arrested the dog.

So basically, they arrested an entire family.

And a friend and a dog.

Correct.

So this gets serious, especially because William Sprague III,

who is Amasa's brother, resigns from the Senate.

U.S.

Senate, he resigns to watch over the family business and over the investigation.

John and William are indicted for murder, and they're scheduled to be tried together in the Rhode Island Supreme Court.

Nicholas is considered the mastermind, and he's indicted as an accessory before the fact and scheduled to be tried after John and William.

So what is that?

That means they think John and William were the ones who did the killing, but that Nicholas is an accessory because he was the planner only?

Yeah, that's what it sounds like to me.

You know, if they're indicting John and William, I think they're putting John and William out there on the bridge with Amasa.

And obviously Nicholas had motive with, you know, this whole business.

conflict that he had with Amasa.

Yeah.

So that is what it sounds like to me.

Okay.

Well, you know, I guess they didn't do their research because William, one of the two so-called murderers, had an alibi, the best alibi ever.

He was in Mass when this all happened.

He was in a Catholic Mass in Providence.

A gazillion of witnesses, including priests, saw him.

Even though William does have an alibi, he's still going to go on trial.

Unfortunately, his brother John does not have a good alibi.

So John goes it alone and Nicholas will go it alone in his own trial.

Before we talk about the evidence, which there's some really good, interesting evidence here, let me just kind of set up the politics of this.

So, one more history lesson.

Probably not just one more, but one more.

So, we've got a defense team of two, and we've got prosecutors who are political opponents.

And they take this very personally because these prosecutors and these defense attorneys ran against each other for Attorney General, and only one of them won, one of the prosecutors.

So, the defense attorneys hate the prosecutors.

The prosecutors are Whigs, which is a political party who is fervently against Thomas Dorr, who, you know, wants immigrants to have rights too.

The immigrants who are fighting for voting rights and for the respect of the Catholics, the Whigs don't want any of this.

So Amasa's brother is calling the shots over these prosecutors to a point where he appoints essentially the prosecutors because he's a senator of Rhode Island.

The defense is led by by Thomas Doerr supporters.

And, you know, this is probably not good news, just in general, the political fight that happens between all these four men.

So the judge presiding over the case is Chief Justice Job Durfee.

Durfee shows up in my book,

and the Center's All Bow, because the Durfees were very famous in Tiverton, Rhode Island, which is now Fall River, Massachusetts.

And Durfee was anti-Doer, anti-immigrant.

He was a Whig.

And he said, listen to this, Paul.

He encourages the jury, which includes no Irish or Catholic men, to give greater credence to testimonies from the native-born witnesses than from the immigrants.

Judges did that.

There's no prejudice there.

Yeah.

In my book, that was set in 1953 about the Great Smog, when the serial killer I profiled went on trial.

Afterwards, you know, in closing statements, the judge essentially said, you need to believe the prosecutor, not the defense attorney, gave you a terrible case.

Go do the right thing.

So, of course, it was predictably a very short deliberation with this jury.

Yes.

Okay, murder trial starts April.

The brothers say they are not guilty.

They plead not guilty.

The prosecution argues that Nicholas pressured John and William to murder Amasa because of the liquor license.

So nobody at this point is acknowledging the possibility that Thomas Dorr sent these three brothers out to be hitmen to take out a political rival.

And, you know, a lot of this is based on dubious witness testimony, but I think the most damning argument here is that when the investigators go to the store, the brothers own the store, the general store, and then they live above it, the whole family.

When they go, they're searching for a gun.

And now both guns are present at the scene, it sounds like, but Nicholas says, I have a missing, my gun is missing.

And so they immediately say, if your gun is gone, then your gun is the one that we found found under the bridge or the musket, one of those.

What actually happened is one of the other brothers got scared and they hid Nicholas's gun under the floorboards.

And nobody would cop to it.

Nobody would say, oh, yeah, we hid his gun.

They were just scared is what that's what they say.

Okay.

The prosecutor produces witnesses that testify that they had seen John two days before the murder with this gun.

Now the gun is missing.

It must be missing, according to the prosecutors, because the Gordons couldn't admit that it had shattered.

I guess they're talking about the musket had shattered while they were bludgeoning Amasa.

And, you know, what's interesting, William doesn't disclose that, the brother.

He doesn't disclose that he had hidden the weapon or that the weapon was available.

I don't know why, but he doesn't.

My thought is, is that these guns probably are not, they're not registered.

There's no serial numbers associated with them.

So you almost have to rely upon other people saying, I recognize that gun.

That's Nicholas's gun or William's gun versus having some paperwork proving what gun they had.

So I'll tell you a funny story.

So just to get this out of the way, the serial numbers on guns were not mandatory until 1968.

And it was sporadic.

There were before that, there were, you know, Colt and Winchester would put serial numbers on guns, but it wasn't law.

So not everybody did it.

And that's why the defense said, you cannot prove that that gun belonged to any of the Gordons because you can't trace it to them.

There's no serial number on it.

In American Sherlock, Heinrich was investigating the case of

there was a train robbery, and he had a gun that had been recovered.

And the robbers had scratched off the serial number so you can identify it.

He knew, Heinrich knew that this Colt weapon in particular,

because it had been used in robberies in the past, Colt started printing another serial number on the inside of the barrel so he could look and identify and find the real serial number inside the barrel.

I've actually done serial number restorations

early on in my career, where you have stolen guns in which

the serial numbers have been defaced in a variety of different ways.

And there's a variety of chemicals, typically acids, that will preferentially react where the serial number had been stamped into the gun.

And so by utilizing a process of both polishing as well as this chemical etching, you can sometimes bring up the serial number, even though it's been completely defaced from the firearm.

It's a very, very common service that crime labs do across the nation.

Well, that's super interesting because, you know, I have heard that so many times, scraping off the serial number and how it works, it doesn't work.

And so, they are not able to definitively say that the Gordons own this gun.

William, for some reason, is not saying I hid the gun because I think they had a lot of guns.

You know, they found the bayonet.

There's all this stuff, but I guess this particular musket that they're focusing in on.

It sounds like the bloody coat does not, that was found in the woods, does not belong to the Gordons.

I call this an O.J.

Simpson moment.

The defense asked John to put on the coat, and it's too big for him.

It's way too big for him.

And I I think it sounded like the shirt belonged to John.

Nobody had bloody elbows from what I could tell, no scraped up elbows.

Okay.

You know, of course, they didn't analyze the blood.

So it's a very confusing scenario.

Well,

and that's what's

critical: you need to have evidence that matches with the actual homicide scene.

And you know, you have somebody on the escape route that is dripping blood.

You know, unless the dog is dripping blood, you know, it's these guys were arrested so quickly that you're going to see wounds that you could go, yeah, that could be the source of this type of blood trail at this crime scene.

And they don't have that.

Well, and I'll tell you what else that somebody brings up a great point.

Remember, nothing's tested, as I said.

There was the defense calls witnesses who take the stand, who work with John.

John works at a print factory, and they use something called Matter's Dye, which is a red dye used in printing calico cloth.

and it stains clothes.

And these witnesses said, we all have red stains all over our clothes because we use that dye.

And because they didn't test it to determine, which they could have, whether this was blood, there you go.

The defense says, you can't prove this.

Well, and that's where, I mean, I can, and I've talked about this before.

I've looked at so many.

pieces of evidence that had red stains on them.

And to my eye, I go, yeah, that looks like blood.

And then I test it with presumptive blood testing chemicals, and it's like it's not blood.

You can easily be fooled.

That's why you have to do the testing.

You can't just conclude based off of a visual appearance.

You need to do the testing because...

In this particular case, it sounds like it's very possible this bloody elbow on the shirt that was found in the Gordon residence is from the occupation that he's involved with.

It's not blood.

Well, the defense is doing the best it can.

Of course, they are discounting the shoe prints, the track marks, the poor dog, paw prints, and saying, you know, there's just no way you can't say that considering how many people use that footbridge, that these guys,

first of all, that the tracks even go to their apartment, but that these were made that day.

And the defense had said that there were witnesses that said there were two men who had been in the vicinity of the murder scene 15 minutes before the gunshots were heard.

They were carrying a gun.

They claimed to be hunting.

And one man was shorter, not wearing a coat, even though it was cold.

Now, do they ever identify these guys?

No, but people said they saw them and they didn't know who they were.

And they would have known Nicholas and the Gordon brothers.

Well, if it's not the Gordon brothers, then who is it?

Who killed Amasa?

I know.

And that's what I think is what's the most confounding thing about this case.

Let me tell you kind of where we go.

So after a nine-day trial, which is long for this time period, the jury announces its verdict.

William is acquitted.

He was the one en masse with the great alibi.

Okay.

John's found guilty.

After a series of denied petitions for a retrial, he is sentenced to hang.

And he does hang for this.

And Nicholas?

Nicholas goes on trial in October of 1844 and then again in April of 45.

So John is hanged in between these two trials.

They were both hung juries.

You know, John didn't recant his innocence, even when he took his last rites, which would have been a big deal.

And Nicholas dies on October 22nd.

He never went to prison.

There were two hung juries.

He never goes to prison.

So he dies.

I don't know of what.

I don't know if this was, you know, taking his own life or natural causes or whatever.

But here's just another, I mean, this family.

Nicholas had debt.

And in the 1700s and the 1800s, if you had debt and you died, your nearest family member was responsible for that debt.

And that is how a lot of people got into trouble.

I think Thomas Jefferson had to pay off his father-in-law's debt and it was terrible.

So if you're a family member, you have to repay that debt.

And William was the one tapped to repay Nicholas's debt, and he couldn't do it.

So he went to prison, and he dies in an asylum after he was battling alcoholism.

And so then they transferred to an asylum and then he died in the asylum.

Now, did they ever establish a connection with the Gordon family to Thomas Dorr?

Nope.

So fundamentally, it's Nicholas was done wrong by Amasa over the business conflict and the whole family conspired to kill Amasa to get back at him.

That's where we're at.

Yes.

Let me tell you kind of a further down conclusion.

So in 1852, seven years after that happened, the state abolished capital punishment and there is less anti-Irish sentiment.

And the people in the town and in the state start to acknowledge there was a miscarriage of justice in the trial.

And then there is a trial, 150 years later, there's a play called The Murder Trial of John Gordon.

And there's a state representative of Newport who in 2011 sponsors a resolution to exonerate John posthumously, of course.

Oh, wow.

And it's successful.

So he's officially pardoned.

The one brother who,

I don't know, I just feel like he was screwed over by various people.

I have no idea why William didn't say that he had hidden the brother's gun.

I actually don't think that would have made a difference.

I think they would have, you know, figured it out.

Either way, as you said, if the brothers didn't do it, who did kill him?

I can't say whether the Gordons were involved or not.

I definitely don't think that they had a case against the Gordons.

Maybe because of the motive that Nicholas was that business conflict with Amasa.

Yeah.

I mean, you could say motive, but there's plenty of people, particularly with Amasa's pedigree.

There's probably plenty of people in his past that could have motive.

You have to prove a case.

And I just don't think they've...

They've proven the case.

And with your history lesson, if you will,

with Thomas Dorr and this

immigrants having voting rights and Amasa being on the opposite side,

was this a hit?

And did the assassins get away with it?

I mean, I think that's just as reasonable a possibility as the Gordons at this point.

Right.

And my thought was, you know, Nicholas Gordon, he was not Sprague wealthy.

He had money from his two businesses, but if you're 50% of your business has just closed down because of these asshole sprags, wouldn't you take that money?

You know, the watch, you probably wouldn't be able to sell, but for, you know, thousands of dollars, a couple thousand dollars, wouldn't you just take the money?

It would help making it look a little bit more like a robbery.

And I'll tell you, Paul, it's been floated that Amas's brother might have done it too, because he was the one who had the most to gain because he inherited everything after that.

No,

we see plenty of homicides occur between family members because of that very thing.

Yeah.

This would be a very easy case to solve today.

Yeah.

You know, with the evidence left behind.

That's why I started this episode like that.

This is an example of what we couldn't do in the 1840s and what we can do now.

Well, it's interesting that as recently as

2011, you know, now you're getting John

kind of exonerated, if you will.

Yeah.

So obviously, this is a case that kind of resonated within that community.

Yes, absolutely.

And I think I told you in the case in Rhode Island, also from the 1600s about a son who was accused of murdering his mother to get all of the property that was left to her.

And she died in a fire, you know, and a lot of people, including me, believed he actually didn't do it, that she most likely had a heart attack and kind of, you know, died with the fire around her.

The family contacted me.

This is from the 1630s.

And they emailed me and said, we heard the podcast.

We have written two or three letters to King Charles in England and said, we believe that he was innocent.

Please posthumously exonerate him.

And it hasn't happened yet.

But that was a lesson for me.

And when I talk to people about why this matters, for a family for 500 years ago almost,

to reach out like that and continue to want that, it's a stain stain on their family and they want it removed.

And so people care about their families.

It says something about who you are and what you've become.

I didn't realize that that had happened.

That's amazing, actually.

Yeah, it's amazing.

I mean, I hope they get it because I do believe it was Thomas Cornell's story, and I do believe that he was innocent.

He got railroaded.

This is the one.

I don't know if you remember the story, but you and I didn't go through it, but his wife saw a dog, you know, a black dog leap towards the woman, and it wasn't a real dog.

And that was like the sign of

a poltergeist and witches.

And it was a very like fearful time.

And it was also where I learned that they would, in that time period, have the murder suspect put their hands on the murder victim.

And if the victim bled, that was the victim indicating who their murderer was.

So that's where, that's what I was dealing with in that case.

Oh, good God.

Yes.

I know.

I'm going to make you do one of those cases just to see what you say.

Murderous black dogs is a bad omen and all kinds of stuff.

But I hope that everybody turned out okay, especially the dog.

The dog literally did nothing wrong.

And I'm shocked that they would arrest animals, but there you go.

Different times.

All right.

Well, once again, you know, this was a fascinating case and some interesting, quirky things going on in it.

That's the goal.

Murder mayhem, an interesting conclusion and quirky things.

That's it.

Okay, I'll see you next week with more of the same, I'm pretty sure.

All right, sounds good, Kate.

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 Allison Trouble 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.

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

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

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

Listen to Buried Bones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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