Hey there.

If you like true crime stories and you love being in the great outdoors, you have come to the right place.

Welcome to Crime Off the Grid.

Welcome to Crime Off the Grid.

I'm Tara and I'm Nancy.

Hey, Nancy gives, what's so special about today's episode?

What is special about today's episode?

This is the start of our third year.

Oh my gosh, three years.

Oh yeah, we've done two full years and at least one hundred and six episodes.

I think that we've thrown up there and guess what else?

What else?

Well, this month, as you know, is my favorite.

It is your favorite month's right.

And we're in twenty twenty five here, and it's so spooky season.

And every week, starting with this week, this episode, this month, we're sharing a true crimy and creepy episode from Off the Grid forest or national.

Parks, plus our live show on Halloween Night from Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park.

We're going to be sharing spooky stories that actually occurred in Yellowstone.

We plan to live stream that also.

Yeah, and we're gonna hopefully put that up on I don't know if we've figured it out yet, maybe on YouTube somehow.

We're also going to put it out there, so if you miss the live show, you'll get to see the video recording of it, so we'll see stay tuned.

That'll be awesome.

Lake Crescent, tuck deep within the moss draped forest of Olympic National Park in Washington, is a place that feels both enchanting and mysterious.

Surrounded by deep, rugged mountains and towering evergreens, the glacially carved lake is famous for its strikingly clear, deep blue waters.

Scientists say the clarity comes from the lack of nitrogen, which limits algae growth, but standing at its shorts, it feels almost otherworldly.

At six hundred and twenty four feet deep, it is one of the deepest lakes in Washington, and its stillness often mirrors the jagged peaks and drifting clouds above, giving it an almost storybook quality.

But like many beautiful wild places, Lake Crescent carries a darker side, stories that ripple beneath its shimmering waters.

Over the years, the lake has been the site of mysterious disappearances, tragic accidents, and haunting tales that have made their way into local legends.

Bum that's right.

All right.

In the nineteen thirties and nineteen forties, the Crescent Lake Lodge stood as a glamorous retreat in the heart of Olympic National Park.

Built in nineteen thirty seven, the rustic yet elegant lodge quickly became a social hub, drawing visitors from Seattle, Portland and beyond.

Guests arrived seeking fresh mountain air, fishing on the pristine waters, and evenings filled with music and dancing in the Grand Lodge hall.

The cedar shingled buildings, stone fireplaces, and wide porches made it the kind of place where luxury met wilderness, offering just enough refinement to feel like an escape without losing touch with the wild beauty surrounding it.

You know, that was the thing of the time.

If you look at all of these grand hotels in national parks where we go yssee any Yellowstone Olympic Grand Canyon, and they were built and that era it was a thing where only really wealthy people could go and get there and stay overnight.

And they made these hotels like so grand and luxurious.

I guess they were huge.

I mean you look at the old Faithful End for example, I mean it's just a huge structure that.

Yeah, probably the only wealthy people were able to afford to get there first of all, and then to spend the night.

Yeah.

And Lake Hotel is like a grand hotel.

Yeah, this beautiful almost ballroom and yeah, so it's interesting that they how they did that back then.

During this golden era, the lodge also became a backdrop for countless stories, both ordinary and shocking.

Couples would come there for their honeymoons, families gathered for summer vacations.

You know.

This was also during World War Two, so there were wartime visitors who went there just to get away from the uncertainty of the outside world.

And I wonder if, like, you know, a lot of men were able to go, or a lot of men being drafted.

I don't know what that looked like.

But alongside the laughter and clinking of glasses, whispers of darker tails also floated through the halls.

There were local rumors, strange disappearances, and tragedies that seemed to stain the lake's beauty with mystery.

And it was in this very setting, amid the backdrop of roaring fires and elegant dinners, that the chilling story of the Lady of the Lake began to take shape.

This is the story of a woman whose tragic fate was revealed years after her disappearance, when the lake itself gave up her secrets.

Yes, it did well.

In the summer of nineteen forty, a woman's body floated to the surface of Lake Crescent in All Life National Park.

The body was wrapped in blankets and hogtied with heavy rope.

The case was especially horrifying because the condition of the body.

The woman's face was unrecognizable, but her body had not decomposed.

However, the flesh had turned into a soap like substance that could be scooped away like putty.

That's kind of gross.

Yeah sounds six.

Yes, it was described as being like ivory soap.

The public's imagination went wild by the grisly discovery of the murdered woman, who became known as, as you said, the Lady of the Lake.

The title was given to her because it was said that Lake Crescent had a reputation for never giving up its dead.

The body was taken to Port Angelus, where a young medical student, Harlan McNutt, examined it.

He noted that the upper part of her face, her upper lip and nose were gone because her hands were exposed, the tips of the fingers were gone.

There was no way to get fingerprints and no way to tell what the woman looked like.

It was determined that the woman had been strangled, and then there was an unusual state of the corpse.

The dead woman's ivory soap like flesh was a condition known as saponification.

The soap like condition resulted from minerals in the lake interacting with the fats in the woman's body, and the lake's near freezing temperatures had virtually refrigerated this corpse for years.

Okay, I when I read this, I was thinking of Okay, her fingers probably got knoed off by the liushies, But had her fingers been intact, could they do fingerprints?

Then that's a good question.

I meant to look that up.

Nineteen forty Could you get fingerprints?

I think you could, but you didn't have the ease of matching them to somebody, that's for sure.

I was just gonna say, you could maybe get fingerprints from her, but you had nothing to.

Compare it to.

Wait I do with that?

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Well, A visual inspection of the body and then an autopsy showed that the woman suffered a violent death.

She had bruising on her neck, she had been beaten and strangled.

There wasn't a lot to help make an identification because of, you know, maybe the fingerprint situation.

But the body had a distinctive upper dental plate.

Well this was kind of interesting.

Authorities then identified the woman as Hallie Ealingworth thanks to a South Dakota dentist who identified the dental plate as one he had made for her years before.

I wonder who the dentist was.

It doesn't say so you're dentist.

Could they be?

I don't think so, but you know, maybe I would know the name.

I don't know.

Yeah, maybe it's a family of dentists that you know, going down through the years, and you may end up going to one.

Of those dentists.

That'd be cool.

And you know what I thought it was also interesting is I just don't know how communications worked in nineteen thirty seven.

It couldn't have been fast.

So somehow did this South Dakota tennant.

How did this South Dakota dentist even see anything about this case?

I mean they did they scratch in a phone?

They didn't have a phone.

Oh my gosh, I can't.

I can't even deal with, you know, not being able to.

I don't know.

Was there surial number, you know, stamped in?

Who knows?

Yeah, So that was interesting how they did that.

I mean, they would have had a teletype out somehow a photo of this specific plate.

Anyway.

Yeah, I digress.

I just think that's fascinating that U forensics, even back then, what limited abilities they had, they did have some for sure.

Halle LAITHA Illingworth was a Port Angele's waitress who was married to Montgomery aka Monte j.

Illingworth.

Okay, when I read that name, I'm like, ooh, he sounds like one of these wealthy people who comes and stays at the at the crescol Lake Linton.

But it's a fancy name, kind of like Thurston Hall the third.

But he was a beer truck driver and a known ladies man, so he probably just showed up there with supplies and then hit on all the ladies in the saloon part of Lake Crescent.

Does be what I would be guessing, I agree.

Hallie had been missing since shortly before Christmas of nineteen thirty seven.

See, she had arrived on the Olympic Peninsula about three years earlier after two failed marriages.

Hallie was actually born January eighth of nineteen oh one to a farm couple in Greenville, Kentucky, and as a young adult twy repeatedly moved west searching for a better life.

I wonder with the two previous husbands if that is what kept taking her west or did she move westwardly on her own?

Yeah, I don't know.

She wound up working at the Lake Crescent Tavern which is now Lake Crescent Lodge, where she met Monty Illingsworth, who became her third husband on June sixteenth, nineteen thirty six.

Naycy, I think it was almost exactly two years ago that you and I and Dwayne and Dave were standing just inside Crescent Lake Lodge at Crescent Lake in Olympic National Park.

Was that two years ago?

No?

One year?

One year?

That one year ago?

Yeah, one year ago?

Oh my gosh.

Yeah, time lies.

Yeah, it's interesting because those feeds come up on your phone.

Yeat's say, you know where you were a year.

It's pretty crazy.

The two had a volatile marriage.

Five months into it, the couple got into a pre dawned fight that was so fierce the police were called to break it up.

Halle showed up for work at Port Angela's restaurant with bruises on her face and arms.

Sometimes she even had black eyes.

Then, as the holidays approached in nineteen thirty seven, Halle just disappeared.

After the night and morning of December twenty first and twenty second, no one saw Halle Illingworth again.

Monty told friends that his wife had run off with another man, but as months went.

Hold on, stop it right there.

How many times do we hear this has been an excuse for the ages?

She ran off with another man?

And I want to say, as I'm hollering at the dateline episode, police officer, in the dateline episode, when has that ever been the case?

These missing mothers, missing wives, and they're just it's just being said that they ran off with another man.

When is that really the case?

And a lot of them, like you said, moms, they don't.

I mean, you're not going to just leave your kids and run off with another man.

It's You're right, it's crazy, and we do hear that.

So today it is sorry I completely interrupted you.

But as the months went by, Halle's close knit family had no word from her.

Monty moved to California with another woman he had met in Port Angelis, a woman who he reportedly was seen romantically before Hallie's disappearance.

There you go, there you go, same story, just.

Almost identical years later.

Yes, oh my gosh.

Yes, probably locals bought in the Monti story about Halle, and no one except Halle's family was ever questioning her disappearance.

So that means to me, not even law enforcement was questioning her disappearance, like they just took this guy's word for it, that she just ran another guy.

Yeah.

Until July sixth, nineteen forty, almost three years after Halle disappeared, two fishermen spotted the body of the Lady of the Lake.

Well, I can imagine it probably would take a little while for the investigation to finally close in on Monty Illingworth, who they found living in Long Beach, California.

That's probably what took so long, because I mean, he would have been the logical suspect, you know, once once her body was discovered, so you'd think he would be.

But you know, back then, I don't know how you would find somebody in where they're living, but somehow that happened, Well, you.

Would think that he's the last one to see her alive.

Oh yeah, I'm sure he was the prime suspect then, But how do you find him, like, unless he's communicating with I don't know how that worked back then.

On October twenty sixth, nineteen forty one, Moni was arrested and taken into custody by Los Angeles Cheff's deputies.

Not long after, he was charged with murder.

He was brought back to Port Angeles and put on trial for Hallie's murder in Clellham County Superior Court.

The trial began on February twenty fourth, nineteen forty two, and was so sensational that it competed with the news about the World War II stuff going on.

So this was this is probably like I wonder if it's like, what's a trial today that everybody O.

J.

Simpson trial of its era say that everybody knows about that.

It's like, oh yeah, everybody got together, watched the news about you know, Halle's murder, and yeah, very similar.

But I'm pretty sure there was not a white Bronco slow mo chase.

There you go in this one.

Spectators arrived early to court.

Homemakers, teenagers, curiosity seekers.

They all converged on the courtroom for the nine day trial.

Okay, guess what Money's defense was self defense.

I mean you were going to say that, Yeah, it started that one just yet.

But his defense was that this body, this deceased woman, was not Halle.

And he's like, hey, that's not that is not Halle.

So you can't arrest me for murder.

That's not Halle.

And he swore she was alive when he last saw her.

As they all say, but that dentist from South Dakota, Nancy, you're maybe somebody you know.

He was a credible witnessed, and he insisted the dinal plate found on the murdered woman belonged to Halle.

Also, Halle's friends identified clothes worn by the dead woman as belonging to Halle.

So in addition, the key evidence was the rope used to tie up Halle before she was dropped into Lake Crescent.

Many he's not the sharpest toiol in the shed.

He borrowed fifty feet of rope from a storekeeper at the lake, and then the store still had remnants from that rope like three years later in the fibers match, So obviously a lot of people aren't coming around borrowing rope.

I mean, that's they still had plenty of rope.

That's amazing.

Also that they matched the fibers, you know, so technology was enough for them to match the fibers of the rope around to the rope in the store.

Yeah, I mean that is pretty I mean I guess they had microscopes and they probably compared it enough, and they probably didn't have so many different.

Kinds of ropes yea, right, yeah, yeah, that's true.

I mean that almost could have been like if that's all the evidence they had today and only did it and matched it the way they matched it, then they probably that might not have been all that great.

But I think this is pretty good police work, you know, other than the fact that cops had come to her being beaten and abused before and did nothing, but sadly, once she's been deceased three years later, I think they did pretty some pretty good police.

Work they did.

But you weren't around to teach them how to be another part of the job.

So no, no, no, no, no, yeah, Well.

It took Durors four hours to reach avertict On March fifth, nineteen forty two, the jury found Monty Illingmoreth guilty of second degree murder.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla, Walla.

He served nine years in prison and was paroled in nineteen fifty one.

He died on November fifth, nineteen seventy four, in Los Alamitos, California.

Uh how many years did he serve?

I know, right, I saw years on a life sent.

Years on a life sentence.

How does that even possible?

I don't know it.

I saw that, and I was just disgusted going that poor woman probably went through hell and back, yeah, and was killed, murdered, strangled to death, and this yutzo gets nine years.

Don't like it.

I don't like it at all.

Well, so by the time he got out in fifty one, he died in seventy four, So that dude had like twenty three years left of Hey technology, I've been in prison for only nine years, but now things are boom, the war is.

Over, and he just lived his life hang out, Yeah, living his life is a freeman for the next twenty three years, sold years, which again, it just baffles me how sometimes this happens.

And I even saw a plea agreement.

It was just life in prison.

Yes, yeah, for a second, that sounds like something you would do if you had a plea agreement, which would be disgusting too.

But you are sentenced to life in prison.

Oh, nine years, nine years is good?

Yeah.

How many more women did he abuse?

Exactly?

Since he got out after he had had some you know, even more pent up anger.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was believed that her murder was most likely not premeditated, that Halle and Monty probably had a fight in their apartment in Port Angelis that December night in nineteen thirty seven.

The fight took a violent turn, and Mani brutally beat and strangled Halle to death.

Hollis Fultz, a criminologist with the Washington Attorney General's Office who helped investigate the murder, maintained that Mani tried to conceal the crime by placing his wife's lifeless body in the trunk of his car and driving to Lake Crescent.

Moni then stopped in the vicinity of the present day Lodge Cabin resort, where he wrapped his wife's body in blankets and tied the bundle with a rope.

The rope he borrowed from the storekeeper at the lake MANI put Hallie's body in a rowboat, attached weights to the bundle, and rowed into the deep water.

He then dropped the bundle into the dark water.

So I don't know, I don't know how we get to where we're at with that, because all of that he thought of, you know, to do, take the body there, wrap it up, put the rope around it, you know, put weights on it.

Yeah, I mean he could have definitely been also in addition charged.

Besides, maybe they didn't have this law back then.

But acessory or you know, improper or something of a corpse or whatever.

What is it, you know, when people go do something with a body after they've murdered them, then they go bury your body, they get other charges whatever.

I have no idea, but I just feel like even though it was murder, people probably felt like, you know, spousal abuse on from a husband to a wife was kind of okay, not that big of a deal.

Of course, I don't I'm sure they didn't condone murder.

But I tried to look up some history of domestic violence, and this is fun facts, Nancy.

I've known this a little bit, but and I don't know what you're changed.

But have you ever heard of the rule of thumb?

Yes?

Do you know what the rule of thumb?

Where it came about?

I have heard it before when I'm spacing adult.

It's stemmed from back in the say I don't know what century, sixteen hundreds or something, where men were allowed to discipline their wives for whatever behavior they thought was improper.

And so they were allowed us sanctioned by laws through up until you got to the eighteen hundreds, allowed to discipline their wives.

And they could hit her with something that was no thicker than the man's thumb.

So you know, and I guess I don't really technically know if it's a thickness, which away is at the roundness of thickness, I don't know, But it had to do with the real of thumb.

And that's where you get the term rule of thumb.

So I don't say that anymore because now it bugs me.

Right.

Witnesses have said they hurt her clattering up and down the stairs of chris At Lodge in the wee hours of just the night before.

Other staff spoke of lights, flickering, doors banging shut in music suddenly getting louder, in the lounge.

She had a reputation for heart drinking, so that kind of makes sense that maybe that's, you know, in the after life.

Yeah, if she's going to be haunting something that kind of makes sense of her.

She might be.

I don't know how those things work, but others had seen her or knew someone who had seen her, like drifting along the shore, you know, over the water, glowing in the darkness, pale, translucent and a little bit sudsy.

That's what That's the information that I found on haunted places about this area.

So I've never heard anybody be sudsy before.

No, I'm getting the drift on that one and what that was seen.

Some people look like they're kind of sudsy out the mouth.

But no, I this is a true story about the murder of Hallie.

It's a horrible story.

It's a story that's probably really kind of familiar actually, So that's really sad and I'm very very glad that she somehow.

It's kind of interesting.

It must have been that subpontification process where she was kind of sudsy or whatever.

Maybe that helped her float.

But whatever he used to try to tie her down, they probably didn't don't know if they had cinderblocks back then that, but the ropes or whatever eroded enough that she broke free and floated to the top.

So I'm grateful for her family that they got closure on that.

It's a true murder, but it's also mysterious because now she sounds like she kind of floats around in the hotel lodge and she's over the water or near the shore.

Yeah, and kind of glows in the darkness.

So yeah, it's it's now she's kind of there, you know, hanging out.

Well.

Yeah, according to multiple stories that I saw on various publications, those including things like Reddit, people send those things into the redit forms and stuff.

So we can't Nancy and I have only we had known this last year, we might have been able to confirm this.

Yes, had we known this story, this would have been a good one.

And then we might have had very straight up gray hair after we would if we had confirmed it.

That's true, all right.

Okay, I guess that's it for our very first spooky season stories.

Stay safe in wall places, and watch out for the company

You keep, and if you see something, say something.