I'm Kate Winkler Dawson.

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

And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve 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 twenty first century lens.

Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.

This is Buried Bones.

Hey, Paul, Hey Kate, how are you today?

I'm doing great.

Are you excited about our cruise?

No?

I am, in fact, you know, for our listeners, Buried Bones is going to be doing the Virgin Voyages true crime voyage in October, and we're actually going to be doing a live Buried Bones event.

Kate, what do you think it's going to be like recording live that seed?

I think that's going to be Alexis's problem.

Just kidding.

I think it's going to be really interesting.

I'm excited.

Listen.

This is virgin So it's the best of the best, and I think we're going to have a great place to present, and I think we're going to have a lot of really good photos to look at.

And I think it's going to be much easier than cramming myself into my little cottage.

If I could do a Buried Bones podcast on a Vergin voyage cruise every single week, I would do it.

And maybe we'll talk to Alexis and see if she could pull something like that off.

All right, come on, Alexis, get on it.

I cannot wait to give you his three lesson at sea Paul Holes.

It's going to be so much fun.

O Kate, you always give me a history lesson.

I no, I know, but this is this is extra, This is special for me.

So you remember I told you probably about a year ago, I was, you know, in my dad's farmhouse.

So my stepmother and my dad bought the farm from my grandfather, and my grandfather was the housing secretary for Eisenhower and he was, you know, big in politics, incredibly influential, and so there was all this political paraphernalia everywhere.

So I went looking through and finding all kinds of really cool eighteen hundred stuff and things that was you know, were personal to me, and I found what I sent you, So open up that document that I sent you, and I just wanted to show you this and we will put this on social media because I just think it's so cool.

So I don't know if you're going to be able to read it.

Hopefully I did an okay job.

Well, it looks it definitely looks old.

So this looks like a page paper bill with the number three on it, like a three dollar bill.

You got it.

The deductive reasoning skills never fail you.

But definitely doesn't look anything like something that the federal government put out there.

It has you know, Lumberman's Bank, yep.

And you know an image in the center top center of a ship, you know, sailing ship couples, you know, multiple sailing ships.

So what exactly is this?

So in the eighteen hundreds, we didn't really have a federalized banking system, so we didn't have the Federal Reserve or you know, anyone churning out money like the money we have today.

They were able to allow banks to go into what they called was the free banking system, which means wells fargo or in this case, Lumberman's Bank, which was owned by E.

L.

Fuller, could print their own currency, and so this was a three dollar bill from this guy's bank.

And it was really kind of regionally limited.

This is from Iowa.

There's some in Michigan and stuff, and so you know, it wasn't printed on the beautiful paper, the silken paper and the really expensive ink.

It was printed on sometimes like blap sacks and they could get there.

This is a nice one that I had, and so when I found this, I thought, oh my gosh, it's amazing.

So it's September first, eighteen fifty seven, and they're pretty rare, and it was just stuck in some random folder in my grandfather's attic, and I'm sure had been there for you know, decades and decades.

Well, you know, it's those old addicts.

It's like a treasure hunt.

You're going through them now.

So that's that's really cool.

That's how we'll solve Jack the Ripper and Lizzie Borden.

In every case that we've talked about, it's somebody's attic, you.

Know, no for sure.

And I will tell you there's plenty of homicide investigators that have original case files and original evidence, and there're boxes and garage.

That's just what happens.

Well, I love relics.

I call them relics, but you know, I love little antique things like this, just because when I find something like that, it forces me to look, you know, like I look at it now, and I'm looking at all the different images.

Do these what do these mean?

Like you mentioned this ship that clearly looks like it's from the seventeen hundreds, and so looking all this stuff up, this is not something I would auction, even though people are auctioning these three dollars bills, I just wouldn't sell it.

I just think it's so cool.

So I'm going to get it framed around the holidays, maybe in one of those okay dollar things, and put it up around here.

It's just so cool it is.

It's neat, you know.

And I have a I inherited, if you want to call it that, a coin collection through my dad, and was starting to get into it, just you know, the history of each coin, you know, and why each coin existed, and I you know, once I moved to Colorado, I really haven't done anything with it, but I've been tempted to try to you know, pull it out again and maybe start, you know, building get out.

And that part of my family lived in Iowa.

So that's what I was thinking when you were talking about the coins.

Was you know, where did my grandfather get this?

And sure was it his dad or whoever.

I think it's just a great way for you to explore also how that item came into your house.

And so I guess the older I get, the more interested I get in this kind of stuff.

But I had never heard of that before a three dollars bill.

No, I hadn't either.

Well, this is a very weak connection, but we do have a story set in the eighteen hundreds that involves a guy who works in you know, in lumber and logging and stuff.

So that is my transition to our cent that works.

Listen.

I'm always trying, even if I fail.

Okay, let's go ahead and set the scene.

Okay, First and foremost, you know, I always like to give credit for the journalists who work on this.

There's a writer named Beth Cruz who worked a lot on this, and we took some of her research and you know, put it in here along with other research.

And so thank you Beth Cruz for this one.

We are in Groton, Massachusetts, in a farmtown.

Good things and bad things happen in farmtowns.

Nothing bad ever happened in my farmtown than goodness.

But you know, I love the atmosphere.

If we could be out of the city, I don't want to be in Boston.

I want to be in a farm for every single episode, some farm.

And then you've got an axe murder lurking around every corner.

Yeah, with no sheriff around or police.

Yeah, just the armed citizens, which is never good news.

So this is eighteen eighty January seventeenth, after the Civil War.

So we're in Groton, Massachusetts.

This is definitely working class town.

It's had a massive soapstone quarry that it sounded like most of the town worked at, and it closed more than a decade earlier.

And you know, there had been a lot of workers who came in who were diverse of different ethnicis these and they stayed even though there wasn't work and created new work.

But by the turn of the century, at that point, there was a really strong feeling that was anti immigrant, anti black, anti Catholic prejudices, and it turned this town, Groughton, into what's called a sundowntown.

Have you heard that phrase before, sundowntown?

Not at all.

Well, it's a phrase, and I don't know if we use it very often now, but it's a phrase that means it's not safe for people of color, particularly black people, to be at night by themselves, especially after sundown.

Okay, okay, So this is very well known as a sundown town.

It's a cold night because it is January seventeenth, very cold in Massachusetts.

And we're at a place called Libby Farm.

There's a family that lives there.

There's a thirty five year old named Joseph Crewe and he has a twenty seven year old wife named Maria, and they're eating lunch in this day.

So Joseph is a team Tell me your understanding of what a teamster does?

Oh geez?

You know.

The only I think, the only thing that I really relate to the teamsters is having been involved as an employer of the county with my local union, labor union.

You know, there are times where I had to interact with reps from the union, and so when I hear the term teamster, I'm thinking, this is somebody that is a member of a union, or is somebody that is actively involved in managing the union's administrative tasks.

So I was curious too.

I had always thought of teamsters.

Yes, of course as the you know in the union term, but teamsters like their actual jobs.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is a large labor union in North America.

There are a lot of different workers.

It could be freight drivers, it could be truckers, is what my understanding had been, you know, warehouse worker.

There are a lot of different professions.

And the Teamsters have been around since nineteen oh three, but when it was nineteen oh three, they represented horse drawn carriage drivers.

So you know, it definitely is it definitely is involves transportation, and it doesn't our story too.

So Joseph they use the term teamster.

Joseph is a teamster, and in eighteen eighty it's somebody who carts goods and equipment and supplies between logging and other types of you know, camp sites.

So it could be from a logging site to a mill.

So he's carting stuff around.

So that's his job.

So that day he eats, he harnesses his horses, and he tells his wife Maria, I'm going to go haul logs to air junction which is several miles away, and he said, I'm not going to be home until late.

He says goodbye, he leaves, and then we don't quite know what happens after that, because Joseph comes home at about eight o'clock.

You've got to think maybe lunch was at eleven.

I think lunch could skew a little early in the eighteen hundreds.

So he was gone probably eight or nine hours.

He gets home at eight o'clock and he knows that something's wrong immediately.

There is no light in the house.

It could be gas lamps or oil lamps or candles, so the house is dark.

The door and the windows are locked, the curtains are drawn.

This is all unusual.

And to get into the house he has to go through the cellar.

And I think, you know, aside from people, especially on farms, not walking their doors even at night.

I told you my parents did that when we were, you know, on our farm, which today seems so surprising.

Maria wouldn't have done that because she knows that Joseph is coming home.

So he has to go through the cellar and he lights a lamp, comes up, and he looks kind of towards the bedroom and he sees a discolored line on the floor in front of the bedroom.

He goes into the room and he sees streaks of blood on the floor, and then he finds his wife dead on the floor.

So you know, again, like you have to think about this.

You have a crime scene at night, and you will have investigators showing up here in a little bit.

But sometimes I just sit back and I think, what would that have been, like, like when we talk about grid searches in the middle of the night when all they have are gas lamps or light you know, candles.

Think about this guy coming in his wife's dead on the floor and all he has is this little oil lamp and you can't probably tell the color of the streak.

I mean, you could see once she's there that it's probably blood, but everything must be discolored for him.

Sure, I mean, the visibility would be poor.

You know.

I've been inside dark houses with you know, modern flashlights, and even with those flashlights, you just can't see what you need to see, you know.

And this is where you know today, of course, if we can't, if there isn't enough lighting naturally within let's say the residents, and we bring in you know, basically the shoplights instead of shoplights, so we can actually see.

I mean to try to, let's say, process a crime scene at candlelight.

You're just going to miss stuff.

You know, that's not going to work at all.

We'll have the medical examiners show up at midnight that night, so that has to be even tougher.

And I'll tell you about that in a minute.

But I was just thinking atmospherically, you're you're coming home expecting your wife.

Everything's locked up.

It is pitch black inside outside I use this phrase sometimes nothing but starlight and moonlight.

There's no gas lamps around here.

And then he finds his wife.

So this is going to be a mix of what Joseph sees and kind of what the medical examiner concludes.

So Maria is lying on her back in the bedroom in what they considered a half pint pool of blood.

She had been covered by a mat like a floor mat, said her head was splashed with blood, and is resting on a chair cushion.

Okay, and I have a lot of details about wounds and stuff like that.

Do you want to talk about the bed cushion and the mat on top of her or do you want to wait to talk about that.

You know, I think I need to know more about her injuries.

But those two aspects are very significant.

Okay, we've talked about that before, sort of you know, covering up someone's face because you can't stand them looking at you and all of that.

So you will see if that comes up.

So she has been shot three times in the face in once in the left chest, according to this autopsy report.

And I'll introduce you to the medical examiner soon, who is an actual doctor.

So the autopsy report says there is a gunshot wound in each corner of the eye beside the nose.

The right wound extends into Maria's throat.

The left wound passes through her and I had to do the I mean, I feel so silly for having to make sure I have the right pronouncer says stand violisten medulla oblongata medulla.

Okay, yeah, yeah, So that's where the left wound, I'm not going to say it again, that's where the left wound passes through.

And there's a third wound present that is just above the right eye.

And they are certain it's a pistol based on bullets and the pistol was fired so close to Maria's face that her left eyelashes and the skin on one side of her face were singed by powder.

There is a thin quilt partially covering her lower extremities, and this might be the mat I'm not one hundred percent sure, but she's covered.

They said that the lower extremities of the legs are widely extended, her undergarments are torn open and stained, and two days later the newspapers report that she had been outraged, which suggests sexual assault.

It will be inconclusive, though I'll tell you that everything else that we will be talking about will be blood and where it is in the room.

So those are the basics.

Shot three times, Oh gosh.

They find one bullet.

They found it because they think it bounced off the whalebone of her corset and it landed near the body, so it never penetrated the body.

And they find a corresponding shell near her body on the floor.

Doctor Harwell, who is our medical examiner who reported that night, does the autopsy the next morning.

He finds two twenty two caliber bullets from her head.

The shot that had entered from the corner of her left eyes, embedded in her brain, I talked about that the shot that had entered above her right eyes, embedded in her frontal bone.

He extracts one bullet from the muscles of her neck, which had entered from the shot to the corner of her right eye, and he said he thinks the shot to the brain killed her instantly.

And then let me see about the chest.

And maybe he doesn't say anything about the chest.

What does that make a difference.

Well, from my perspective, you know, I'm taking a look at these gunshot wounds to her eyes, in essence, very closely spaced.

In fact, the tight clustering would have suggested to me that these all three more likely very close range gunshots.

And then the singing and probably stippling that's present indicates that.

So in essence, the offender, you know, and I don't know if she's standing up or she's you know, laying down at the time these gunshots are inflicted.

That's where you know, observations of blood flows and stuff become important.

But the offender is executing her, and he's he's putting three twenty two caliber bullets into her eyes.

Essentially, he's purposely aiming for you know, center mass of the head.

And potentially he's purposely aiming at the eyes.

Considering you've got the way I'm interpreting, you've got two gunshot wounds in the corners of her eyes, and then there's one that's just above the brow.

The mention of a gunshot wound to the chest would suggest to me that that likely would have been the first shot if that actually happened.

You know, the fact that the pathologist is not detailing the chest wound gives me pause as to whether or not that's an accurate detail.

But if she does have a gunshot wound to the chest, that may be the initial shot that in essence incapacitates her.

And then the offender either comes up and shoots her three times in the face while she's upright, or she's now laying on her back, possibly after a sexual assault, and now she's executed with the three shots to the head to the face.

Well, they have a theory, and you tell me what you think.

So Maria was a sewer, and she is wearing a thimble on her right hand finger still, and remember the streak marks.

They believe those are drag marks.

So this is what they think happen based on blood.

The way they describe her body coming up.

I've been trying to kind of picture it.

Maybe you can paint a better picture than they do.

So they think she was shot in the sitting room, which is where she did her sewing, because there's blood on the curtain of a work table and on the right side of the seat, which was her work chair.

They think she was dragged on a mat, leaving blood streaks on the floor to the bedroom.

She in her left hand, she's holding a partially sown linen wrist cuff.

So this is mid job.

So here's the body positioning that I'm confused by.

Even though her body is found on the ground and her hands are folded over the front of her body, her arms are stiffened in a position that would only be natural if you're in a seated PASTU would that be like your hands on the table or what do you think that means?

Well?

I think you know this is Where's what I'm hearing is is that she's got rigor in her upper extremities.

And it sounds like the rigor the way that her arms have set in the rigger is not consistent with the position of her laying on the floor, So that would suggest she was in a different position for a long enough period of time for the rigger to start setting and then she was moved.

Now is it possible?

And again this is where the blood patterns become hugely significant in terms of reconstructing.

But what I'm hearing is it sounds like she potentially was shot while she was at her sewing station and maybe collapsed onto that sewing platform, if you will, for a period of time, maybe long enough for the rigger to set, and then the offender chose to move her.

And that would tell me the offender was inside this residence for a significant period of time.

And you know why would the offender move her?

Is it possible that she was more visible for you know, somebody looking in from the outside, and so he's trying to move her away from any windows, and that's why he's doing that.

And then of course, you know, covering her up maybe to you know, delay anybody from the outside possibly seeing a body lying motionless on the floor.

But there's a cushion underneath her head.

Okay, that's for comfort, that's this is this is where And I've got a case like this in nineteen sixty six case you know, a more modern case.

But it tells me something about the offender is even though she's dead, he's still wanting to comfort her and he's covering her up.

So this is where you know, behaviorally, in the offender's mind, he has some sort of emotional connection to Maria.

That's how I'm interpreting things now.

Her undergarments being torn, her legs left spread.

You know.

Right now, I don't know do we truly have sexual assault that occurred, or do we have an offender that is trying to stage the crime to make it look like maybe an intruder, a stranger came in, a sex devian came in and attacked her and sexually assaulted her and then killed her.

Right now, I can't form an opinion, but the covering of her and the cushion underneath her head suggests to me at this point in time, there's a strong emotional connection between the offender and Maria.

Let's talk about the sexual assault part, Okay, So our medical examiner is named Benjamin Hartwell, and he's got a constable and a bunch of other officers who came to the scene with him.

Like I said, min night, when she has discovered when he does his autop seat.

He examines her undergarments, so he doesn't do a swap.

He examines her undergarments with a four hundred power microscope and he sees traces of semen.

But he can't say whether this was recent or a year ago.

So all we know is there's semen on her undergarments.

Yeah, so what he's I mean with a microscope like that, what he is doing is he's taking either a cutting and putting it on a microscope slide and then probably putting like a saline solution or water or oil, and then looking at it under this high magnification.

And what happen would be visualizing sperm.

I've never done it that.

I've done a lot of microscopic examinations for sperm, I've never done it that way, So I'm not entirely sure how effective that type of microscopy would be.

Well, it is inconclusive whether she's sexually assaulted, according to doctor Hartwell, he just said, I just know it's there.

So let's talk about kind of the scene the police with the constable, and we're just going to go with investigators because there were really great competent constables in the eighteen hundreds the constables don't have a lot to go on.

They don't find a murder weapon, so they don't find that twenty two.

There doesn't appear to be according to Joseph, there doesn't appear to be anything missing from the crew house, and Maria's got a gold ring on and that's not missing either.

She's wearing the gold ring.

There's no struggle in the house, and during the search of the surrounding area they find shoe prints in the snow.

These will become important.

Maria doesn't have any enemies in town, to which I kept thinking, you know, okay, well what farm woman would, But they do, and so she seems like a very likable person, no controversy.

They suspect Joseph for a little bit.

He has an alibi.

He has a lot of people, you know, who know that he's logging and see him.

Eyes are on him, so he seems to have an alibi.

He's also only a couple miles away, though, so they start looking for I'm telling you, quote unquote tramp is the word they use, and of course that's a go to for police in the eighteen hundreds.

Do you think that in some ways that's still a go to what happens when the police run out of options in the person's inner circle or even outer circle, what do they do next?

Are they kind of looking for the sex offenders in the neighborhood and all of that.

Absolutely, you know that that is just you know, part of investigating a case, especially when you suspect that there is a sexual assault.

You know, we would go in addition to looking at the social circle.

You know, in most investigations, you start with the victim and you start building out, you know, the closest circle around the victim to the next circle, et cetera, in terms of figuring out who potentially could have been involved with the case.

But there's also the ideas well, there's no connection between the victim and the offender, and this is where you go, Okay, who do we know that's in our area that has a propensity for committing these types of crimes?

And of course you know sex offender registered sex offenders in the area is one of the first go tos that in any investigation like this that we would do.

So these constables looking at tramps, which I guess that's sort of a like a I guess, a transient type.

Person kind of a wanderer, but I would say tramps, so transient I think back then didn't have the connotation that maybe it does have now.

I mean a transient then would have, you know, been somebody who just was hopping from job to job because there were so many short term jobs around.

They weren't on a railroad, or they would work in lumber or something.

It didn't necessarily mean someone who was, you know, homeless or a petty criminal.

But I would say tramp is closer to that.

So yeah, so more of you know has what we use the registered sex offender list today.

You're looking at people who you think have or they thought had the propensity to commit this type of crime.

M So let's talk about somebody who they focus on, and you tell me what you think.

The neighbors report seeing a strange man in the town on the day of the murder.

So this is how they describe them.

Forty years old ish, he's about five foot seven.

He's described as having a thin, yellowish face, a mustache, and a scruffy beard.

So the yellowish face is indicative of somebody who is of mixed race.

That's kind of the phrase they might use.

I mean, there is a slur that I'm not repeating on here, Okay for it, but this is what they're saying.

It's a man of mixed race.

Now, just that description forty five foot seven, somebody of mixed race, mustache, gruffy beard.

Is that enough for somebody to go on in a town that seems moderately diverse at the time.

No, that would be tough.

You know, you'd want to also have description of clothing, you know, and typically like when there is in this day and age, when a crime has recently been committed, now you have patrol broadcasting a description which may indicate these types of characteristics.

In addition, look for somebody who has these identifiers, if you will, looking forward to having the facial hair, yellowish face, but also what kind of clothes do they have on, because that's going to stick out more than some of these other aspects.

Five foot seven, that'd be really tough to pick somebody out like that.

We have some witnesses, so tell me what you think about the viability of these witnesses.

One is a guy named Henry Hewan.

He's twenty one.

He's a neighbor of the cruise.

He says around two thirty pm, so probably three hours after Joseph left, he had seen a man fitting the description of this guy at Maria's house.

Maria was in the dining room talking to him.

And what Henry says he was kind of picking up on is this is someone who was interested in buying a farm.

So maybe he was there kind of just doing some reconniscence, looking in the area.

What might be good, might not be good.

But I don't know much about Henry or his relationship with the cruise.

But this is what he says, Oh, yes, this is a guy that I saw with Maria.

Okay, And it sounds like Henry is close enough to overhear the conversation.

Yes, so he maybe it was in passing and then he saw her in the in the dining room through the window.

We don't know.

Sure, but that's three hours after Joseph left, and we have I'm going to say nine hours of a window in which Maria's killed.

So now this shortens the window if Henry's right and that Maria is alive and talking to a man, So now you have six hours left in which Maria was killed.

One of the concerns that I have is this rigor in her in her arms, yeah, you know, because that's going to take some time.

And so that's where it's like, oh, that window is starting to get almost too short considering how cold the temperatures are, because that's going to delay onset of rigor.

So this is where it's like, Okay, what's going on here?

I can't conclude anything, but I'm thinking there might be an inconsistency here with the physical evidence a state of Maria's body and what this witness is saying is going on.

I was going to ask you about the rigor because you know, she's gripping cloth in one hand, and she's got this you know, I mean, she's got her hands in a position which I can picture kind of being set up parallel, maybe like she's getting ready to sew.

And so I was wondering how long that would take if we take Joseph's statement, because Joseph I don't have his side of what her arms looked like and everything, you know, when he arrived.

I just know what doctor Hartwell said that she would stiffened.

And let's say that's eleven PM.

So is that a twelve hour thing for people?

And I know that the weather makes a difference in one more point, Paul, when he says pitch black, nobody indicates that there's a fire happening in the fireplace, which would have been their only heating source.

So there's no fire.

I mean, we are probably talking about, you know, below freezing temperatures that night.

So as far as the rigor that it's so so variable, that's one of the you know, it's something that is documented and observed.

But to be able to say it's going to take so many hours to see rigor in the various parts of the body is tough.

It's just an indicator of passage of time since death with Maria holding on you know, like the what is it the thimble in one hand and something else.

She had she had a fabric for a wrist okay covering in the other hand.

So rigord will generally start in the smaller muscles before it goes to the larger muscles of the arms.

And so you could see where, you know, she's collapsed for a period of time and had these objects in her hands.

Now you could see where her hands have riggered up and then she's moved and the hands are holding on to these items due to the you know, the rigor there is a phenomenon.

It's called cadaveric spasm where sometimes when somebody, let's say, is shot in the head, you know, they will end up gripping on to an object.

You know, we see that with suicide.

Sometimes when somebody shoots themselves in the head, they're shooting hand kind of grips and spasms around the gun and as they kind of hold on to it.

It really does seem that Maria is shot at her sewing station and is there in some sort of position that cause is maybe her hands to rigor up, to hold onto these items, her arms to rigor up, So she's there for a period of time.

And I'm just trying to rectify in my head what Henry is saying, Like, you know, six hours before Maria's found, she's alive, talking to a man that matches this description of a yellow faced guy sitting at the dining room table.

It seems like, well, that seems too short of a time for them out of rigor that is being observed with Maria.

Let's talk that through she's at her table, somebody comes in shoots her three times, and then he has to leave her there for a long time, right, and then he puts her on this mat that they're talking about.

She's bleeding still.

He drags her into the bedroom, covers her lower extremities up, I mean, is the idea, then he sexually assaults her.

If this even is a sexual assault at all, it.

Could go either way, you know, like I meant, I mean, this very well could be where you first.

Why would Maria just be shot at the sewing table if this was intended to be a sexual assault.

And it's not to say that you don't see victims killed right away and then offenders will sectually assault the dead victim.

That does happen.

But to shoot Maria and leave her there for a significant period of time and then drag her to another room to sexually assault, I mean, I guess it's possible, but it seems inconsistent with sort of the timing of everything.

Well, let's move on to another witness who corroborates Henry.

Her name is Jenny Carr.

She's sixteen, and she says that she had seen what she thinks is this same guy at Maria's house.

She went over there to borrow a couple of molasses.

Around three o'clock.

The guy answers the door.

He said to Jenny, Maria went into town to go pick up some stuff.

Jenny says, this is sketchy, and she also notices that the curtains of the front of the house have been drawn, which is unusual.

And before the strange man had answered the door, when she was knocking, she heard a noise like somebody being dragged, but she wasn't sure.

And of course, now that she knows what happens to Maria, she's putting those sounds together.

So that isn't that is those are kind of our only two witnesses other than people generally say, there's this guy of mixed race.

We don't know who he is.

He's a stranger in our town that day.

Okay, well this, you know, obviously, with this guy that does not live at the residence, if he's the one that's answering the door, this sounds like Maria is already dead at this point when Jenny comes to borrow the molasses.

So between two thirty and three o'clock, I mean, of Henry, if they're both right on these times, within a half an hour, this happens.

Right, and Maria's body is found by Joseph at nine o'clock.

So again we you know, basically the six hour window, but it's no longer.

I mean, this is really putting Maria dead at two thirty to three o'clock in the afternoon.

So now it could be pushing it out to well, maybe she was dead for seven hours.

But you have this the two witnesses who are one Henry is very familiar with Maria, and then Jenny obviously must be very familiar with Maria being a neighbor and going over to borrow molasses, and they see this man and the description is consistent.

So you know, yeah, I'm putting a fair amount of veracity on these two witnesses in terms of, Okay, this guy matching this description is going to be suspect number one.

Now who is he and what is this relationship with Maria?

Was he just a random that knocked on the door saying, hey, I see your farm is for sale.

Can we chat?

Or does he have some sort of prior maybe business relationship with Joseph and Maria or maybe you know, maybe Maria is having an EFEC and you know, Joseph is gone and she invites this man over.

I have one question for you.

So Jenny says that right before the guy opens the door or a minute before she hears dragging.

Now, she might have misinterpreted what that was, But didn't we say that in order for the rigor that the medical examiner described.

At three o'clock when she's knocking, should Maria still be sitting at the desk?

I mean, she also could have been wrong.

Who knows.

This is where it's kind of tough to say for sure.

You know what the sequence is if you know Henry, Henry sees Maria alive.

Jenny appears to arrive at the house shortly after Henry, and there's an ear witness in essence hearing movements inside the house that would suggests Maria is now dead.

And this is where that seems inconsistent with the state of Maria.

If if I'm interpreting how Maria's arms through, it's just a verbal description that her arms are riggered up and she's been moved from a her sewing station to this other room.

Something is inconsistent.

And that's just what gives me pause right now as to what exactly is going on.

And with this man, with Jenny hearing this man dragging Maria before opening the door, I'm wondering now is he doing an Oh shit, somebody is knocking at the door, and if I open the door, as it possible that they want to come in and see Maria dead at the sewing station.

And now he's scrambling to hide the body before he opens up the door to Jenny.

Well, and I have another question.

Let's say, before we get to a suspect, let's say that Maria maybe is having an affair with this guy.

Well, let's say first that he is a stranger, and she is at her sewing desk, and she's got her afric in one hand, and she's got her thimble in another hand.

Her front door's open, and clearly she's not in defensive mode at all.

She's literally sewing.

I don't even know if they surprised her, but you know, I think if they surprised somebody surprised her, she would have her hands in a different position.

I mean, they were very clear that it looked like she had her arms were like she had been sitting somewhere sneaking up on someone.

As a person who has lived in an eighteen hundreds house, sneaking up on someone in a house with authentic eighteen hundred floors that are wooden planks would be really difficult.

They are squeaky.

It's awful.

It's awful, you can breathe, and somebody might disagree with me.

But our farmhouse was straight out.

I mean, we had not changed out that would and you know there's no way you could get even fifty feet without making a squeak.

So I'm just saying the affair thing seems a little more kind of like somebody who was maybe invited in and she knew her husband was going to be gone for a long time, but I don't know.

So I think the covering of her body, the kosha underneath her head, would suggest that there's potentially a close relationship between the offender and Maria.

So the affair aspect I think is in play.

Also, just from a sequence standpoint, if we take Henry's account at face value, and he's seeing Maria talking to this man and that's at I think you said the dining room table, Maria then goes to her sewing station.

Has this man left and now Maria goes to do her sewing or is she comfortable enough with this person?

It's like, hey, I got some sewing I need to do, so let's continue our conversation that would suggest, well, this is more than a stranger that's just dropping in for a business transaction or a stranger entirely that's forced his way into the house because Maria is not going to be comfortable enough to go sow.

So that also suggests that no, there's potentially a something on the level of at least a friendship between Maria and this man, and maybe more.

Well, let's move on to the investigation.

The constable in charge takes these descriptions and he launches an investigation into a man who fits this description very well.

His name is Stearns Kendall Abbot.

Abbot is forty one.

He is a wood carver.

He is of mixed race, and he came to the town on January sixteenth, which is the day before Maria's murder.

Let me give you his background, and you tell me if there's anything that's alarming to you.

He's a petty criminal, is the way I would describe him.

Allison, who is our wonderful researcher, gave me a really great detailed description of everything that he's done, and I've sort of condensed it in that he had been arrested for breaking and entering starting from when he was a kid.

And he also once stole a United States Postal Service mail bag.

He stole a horse at one point, a horse and buggy.

There's some miner what I would consider embezzlement, nothing violent.

But Abbot has been in and out of jail for most of his life since he was a kid.

So then I can kind of we can go back to the scene and where Abbot was that day.

But you tell me, what do you think about kind of the petty criminal aspect of it.

Just because he has these minor offenses, doesn't it's not an indicator of the level of violence that's being exhibited in Maria's homicide.

Maria is targeted, you know, she is killed at her sewing station by what it sounds like, prior to being moved and prior to any maybe sexual assault that's occurring.

Now, this doesn't mean that Abbot could not Just because his previous you know, petty offenses don't add up to this level of violence, doesn't mean that he's not capable of that level of violence.

But it's not really anything that's popping out at me like, oh God, this guy is somebody that we really need to look at I also have concerns if he's just arriving in town the day before, that doesn't seem like from the And it's somewhat speculative, educated speculation about Maria potentially having a closer relationship to this offender than just being a stranger.

I mean, Abbot's going to be a stranger to Maria.

That's you know, if he's just arriving the day before into town, unless there is a previous connection and he's coming back in town.

And right now, you haven't said anything that they have a longer term relationship than just that single day, not.

That we know of, okay, And I would think that if they did that, these neighbors would have certainly noticed and probably alerted Joseph to some strange man, particularly a man of color showing up at his wife's house.

It's hard to sneak around, even in the countryside, you know.

So but let's continue on, because the constable is really, you know, focusing in on Abbot.

So the constable goes from door to door and he asks local residents to identify the guy who they saw wandering around.

Jenny and Henry.

Necessarily they do talk to those two, but just the people who said there's a stranger in town, and so he shows them six or seven pictures of noted rogues.

So noted, you know, like a gallery of rogues was very common, and actually the photography in the eighteen eighties, they would have committed photography even though it was expensive to rogues in that time period, just to be able to identify these people.

So they all say, this is Abbot, but he's nowhere to be found.

And we have the two witnesses, Jenny and Henry, the neighbors who saw him the most, and they say, this is the same guy.

We've got people saying this he was the stranger that we saw, but they're not implicating him in anything.

And then you've got Jenny and Henry who say, this is the guy who was with Maria.

All right, you know, so we have to track down Abbot.

There you go.

That's what the Constable does.

January twenty eighth.

January twenty eighth, so this whole thing starts on the seventeenth.

So I don't know why I'll do this to myself with all the mathing.

Eleven days eleven days later, the Constable gets a tip from a farmer in New Hampshire that he had been there.

So this is about forty miles north of Grouton, Massachusetts.

So Abbott has been spotted there, he's looking for work.

The constable tracks him down and he's arrested, and he returns to Massachusetts and he's arraigned in February.

So he says, I don't know what you're talking about.

I mean, he really is saying this is not He's got, you know, court appointed defense attorneys.

He pleads not guilty.

He says that this is impossible because he had boarded a train for Boston at Littleton station before the crime was committed that same day, but there's no one nobody knew him, so nobody there could identify him.

So he's saying, I have an alibi, and you know, moving forward through this trial, the prosecutor is going to say, not really, you really don't well.

And in many ways though, now it's Abbot's word versus Jenny and Henry.

Yeah, you know the witnesses that are placing him at Maria's house right around the time of her homicide.

It seems like they moved pretty fast to arrest Abbot.

So it's like, did they recover the gun?

Do they have, you know, any clothing from Abbots that has you know, blood staining on it, So that's you know, okay, what kind of case did they make against Abbot or are they just relying upon Jenny and Henry's statements.

Well, I'll tell you what the defense says first, and then we'll talk about the prosecutors.

So the defense says that the medical examiner could not conclude there was a sexual assault, So let's just say rape is out the window.

We don't know if that's true or not, but that's their point if they're talking about why would he even do this?

So they're saying, we don't know that he sexually assaulted her.

There's no proof and nothing was stolen, So what is the motive of this guy going in and murdering a perfect stranger?

And then you know, the judge tosses out a bunch of stuff from the defense.

There is evidence that shows that there was another man who had been at that house on the day of the murder, and you know, I don't know anything about it because it didn't end up in any of the court hearings, but they said that there was somebody else around there.

The judge says you can't have that ind so we're not going to let you have that in and then they aren't allowed to challenge Jenny the sixteen year old's testimony that she saw Abbott in the house by impeaching her character.

So what they want to say is she has a questionable reputation, the sixteen year old, and the defense wants to get her on the stand and dismantle her character, which, of course I said, great, I'm glad that that didn't happen.

You know, I don't really care what her reputation was.

Unless she's a professional liar, that shouldn't happen.

But the fence is kind of throwing up their hands and going, what are we supposed to do?

The only witnesses don't know who he is.

He doesn't have a ticket for a train, so that this is not looking really good.

And the prosecutor is saying he came in, he sexually assaulted her, he killed her, and that was that.

I don't think there was a nitty gritty about the rigor or the positions of the body or anything.

It was very simple, open and shutcase for them.

It really doesn't sound like a strong case at all, you know, I think it's there's suspicion on habit, but I you know, you still have to build the case out, and right now they've jumped the gun.

Now they just have witnesses that are fingering him, but they don't have any evidence against him.

Mm hmm.

Well, more evidence that they wanted to introduce that the judge said no to.

Is interesting.

They had evidence that Joseph had a history of domestic violence.

Okay, there was a story that he had confronted Maria and a may visitor and I had no idea what was happening with this male visitor six years earlier with an axe, and he chased the guy off.

I don't know anything else if there was physical violence, which wouldn't surprise me, but the judge said no to that also, But there is nothing connecting Abbot to the murder, and since the crew family hadn't been robbed, there's no motive and the sexual assault, so the prosecutor is building its case totally on like I said, circumstantial evidence.

They think that Abbot and Maria knew each other in the past and they revived some old quarrel an Abbot killed her in a fit of rage because I think the prosecutor has given up on the rape allegation.

Also, there's no proof of any of this, but they're just trying to think, how do we place this guy there when he hasn't sexual assaulted her and he hasn't sold anything.

From a theory standpoint, I like the theory that there potentially was a prior relationship between Abbot and Maria and some quarrel happened when Abbot is inside that house and he pulls out a gun and shoots Maria, and then he leaves her at the sewing table for a period of time and then ends up moving her, maybe because of the knock on the door by Jenny, and that would account for the covering of Maria's body, the cushion underneath her head, because of you know, he's now got that emotional connection to Maria and is now recognizing he's done something horrible.

So I'm on board with that.

It's just that, well, you've got to have a case against Abbot, and right now they don't have anything.

Well, the jury disagrees, of course, they deliberate.

Of course, they deliberate for two hours and it's a guilty verdict.

There is appeal that is denied and he is sentenced to be hanged that following year.

Justice was swift back in the eighteen eighties.

Yes, and the color of his skin was not helpful, you know.

Or so here are some updates, So hang on to your hat, Paul Holes.

This taught me a lesson about witnesses.

And I know it's already a lesson kind of both of you definitely know, but I need to be reminded.

So because he has given the death penalty.

It hasn't happened yet, but the rumor mill turns that Jenny lied because word on the street that is soon proven to be true is that Jenny had a baby with Joseph.

Okay, yeah, you know, we don't know that until we hear from the locals after the trial.

Thinks a lot locals.

Yeah, you know.

Now the circles back to Joseph.

You know, really how strong is his alibi?

Does Maria confront Joseph?

Does she find out about Jenny?

And does she confront Joseph or is Joseph just going well, I got to get rid of my wife because I have a future with this sixteen year old girl who's now pregnant with my child.

She ad that baby.

At the time.

So the baby was born by the time.

Of I believe.

So, so is Jenny actually putting herself you know, she's pointing the finger at Abbot, maybe trying to protect Joseph.

But is she also putting herself at the crime scene at some point during this this homicide and she has to come up with an excuse.

And her excuse is why I went over to borrow molasses And here's this unknown man answering the door.

Something's going on.

So now has Abbot been hung?

No?

Okay, so how does this rectify?

Okay, okay, you're being impatient, Yes I am.

Now you mentioned a long time ago to alibi.

So Joseph had been hauling logs all day, except he was not seen for about an hour.

Okay, So he's unaccounted for for an hour in the afternoon.

It could be even earlier.

And he's only one or two miles away from the house.

All right, So here's the theory.

He goes from hauling logs, you know, because he's purposely setting up an alibi.

Don't know why he's he's killing Maria just yet, but he he goes, he shoots Maria while she's at the sewing table, he goes back to work, and then he of course is the one that finds Maria.

So he potentially at this point is moving Maria from the sewing table into the back bedroom.

And you know, this is where the rigger has already set in, so that's consistent.

And then he does have an emotional connection to Maria even though he's killed her, but that emotional connection is exhibited through this behavior of covering her as well as putting the chair cushion underneath her head.

So the moral of the story is Joseph doesn't understand the way rigamortis works, obviously, because he would have moved her immediately right Instead, she's sort of sitting at a desk permanently.

Well, yeah, you know, it's unless you've got a lot of experience with dead bodies, and you see, you know how the lividity you know, settles, how it sets how rigor you know, sets in.

You know, he probably isn't even thinking about, oh, if I let her just stay in that position for a period of time and then move her, well, it's going to be obvious she's been moved, you know, So it's and it's going to be obvious that there's been a significant amount of time from the time she died to the time she was moved, and who has access to Maria over that period of time.

Well, and what I was wondering, I was thinking two things.

One, he shoots her in the chest.

She's I'm sure screaming, and he shoots her trying to get to the head, and that's how the two eyes get hit.

Do you think, Well, he's putting the gun right up, you know, within you know, we'd have to do a distance determination.

But if she's got singing, she's probably got what we call stippling, the gunpowder being you know, embedded into the skin around these gunshot wounds.

He is coming up close and is purposefully shooting her, So it would suggest, you know, as I mentioned before, the shot to the chest is likely the first shot.

And then you know whether she kind of collapses in the sewing thing at that point or she's now going what And he comes up and then very close range, shoots her three times in the face in the eye area, and now she in essence assumes whatever position she assumes and dies in that position at the sewing station.

He leaves and then comes back hours later, and then now moves her body, and that all just adds up from the sequence information, you know, in terms of how this shooting would have occurred.

The physical characteristics of Maria's body when found, the blood stained patterns, the streaks on the floor, of her being moved, the offender's personal connection to Maria, the covering up of the body, the cushion underneath the head.

That all just makes sense.

Now.

The question is, is okay, what caused the homicide to occur?

Sounds like the relationship with Jenny is critical to that.

But was this where Maria's telling him I'm done, you know you're having an affair a relationship with the sixteen year old neighbor, or was there something else going on here?

Was this where Jenny's pressing Joseph, going, hey, I've got your baby.

You need to take care of me.

You need to end your relationship to Maria.

I mean, there's there's many different, I guess permutations of what would cause Joseph to feel that he has to go and kill his wife.

I have one more rigor question.

So we've talked about the arms, how it looked like her arms were.

She had to have been seated to have her arms in this position kind of I guess, hanging in the air her legs.

So they said that the extremities lower extrevities were widened.

So if she's at a machine, she's probably got her legs spread right and on feet on the ground.

Would the rigor have taken effect by then?

My question would be, is that a natural position so that it looks like maybe she has and sexually assaulted and when he dragged her everything is stiffened at that point, or because the leg muscles are bigger.

Was there some play in there where he could do he could put her in whatever position her legs at least that he wanted.

Right, you know, So yes, you know, the legs being much larger muscles than the arms.

Maybe the complete rigger that they would eventually assume has not completely set in like maybe the arms have.

But you can break rigor, you know.

So that's where you know, we'll get to where like if when we have the deceased person at the morgue, we have to take viger prints, you know, and their hands are all crumpled up and their forearms are stiff, their arms are stiff.

You have to sit there and manipulate and you can eventually work that through.

So this is where looking at well, what really is the position of her legs did the offender did Joseph purposely spread her legs to make it look like a sexual assault.

Her undergarments were torn, right, So that sounds like okay, this sounds like staging.

Okay.

So he's now coming back to the house after she's been dead at the sewing station, he moves her and now he's trying to make it look like something it's not.

He's trying to misdirect the investigators to a tramp.

And you know, if we go back to witnesses, So Jenny, obviously everything she said is out the window.

I don't read anything about Henry and if he had a reason to lie, so it is possible he did see somebody.

He could have seen Abbot a petty criminal there.

I have no idea.

Not killing, not the result of a murder.

But I don't know how Henry fits into this.

But I have not read anything about him, you know, be impeached or anything like his testimony, his testimony being inaccurate.

Right, an Abbot has completely denied being at Maria's house.

He's just going I was not there.

Yes, okay, but we also know about cross racial misidentification.

Sure, and I don't know how far away him was, so you know, it could have been a lot of different things, but Jenny lied for sure.

So here's what happens.

We've got two new developments.

Number one is that when this comes to light, when all these rumors turn around.

Initially, Jenny says, we don't have a romantic relationship.

I mean, she's sixteen and he's I think it's thirty seven.

I don't have a romantic relationship with him.

There is a well known social reformer in the area named Wendell Phillips, and he campaigns on Abbot's behalf.

They delay the execution, and there's a council appointed to reinvestigate this whole case.

They bring Jenny's doctor and have him testify, and he said, this is Joseph's kid, and Jenny breaks down and admits it.

She doesn't say anything else, but the governor commutes Abbot's sentence to life in prison and they close the case.

Oh good god.

So now this poor guy knows that one of the main, probably the most important witness against him wide and was having an affair with the guy who probably killed his own wife.

And he's still sitting in prison, you know.

So this was probably about eighteen eighty two or so.

In eighteen eighty five, Joseph is on his deathbed.

Now I have no idea why he would be.

He would only be in his forties.

I don't know what happened.

But he's on his deathbed and he allegedly confesses to murdering Maria to his doctor.

The issue is is that reporters are trying to confirm this, and nobody knows which doctor that he talked about when he died.

So, you know, they go to Maria's to the normal doctor for the crew family and he says, I don't know you know what you're talking about.

So that is the rumor.

I don't know if that's true.

But with all this talk of this mysterious doctor receiving a confession from Joseph on his deathbed, Abbot's defense team comes forward and says, well, we actually got a letter shortly after Abbot was arrested, and it was a confession from someone, and we tossed it out because we thought it was from a crank and it would just be distracting.

We don't know if that's real or not.

I'm sure that happened all the time in these kinds of cases, but it's interesting when you pair that with Joseph's supposed confession.

We don't know, we have a doctor who who might not be real, and we have a confession letter who you know, might be from a crank.

So that's what makes this case mysterious.

Sure, you know, and it's too bad that they got rid of that letter because I would be interested, well, what details did the writer of that letter put in about how the crime was committed?

And were those details accurate and not known to the general public at that point in time the letter was written.

You know, that's frustrating because that potentially right there.

Could I'm not even sure what's happened to Abbot at this point.

He's life in prison is last you told me.

But yeah, you know, could that letter have been used to free Abboit let me.

Tell you the end of this.

So Abbot is in prison again from eighteen eighty five until finally in nineteen eleven, So twenty six years after this letter, after the supposed confession, all of this stuff, he's still there for twenty six years.

The governor of Massachusetts pardons him Abbot is seventy one at this point.

He went in at forty one, and he spends his final years in Vermont with relatives.

And this is an unsolved case.

It is, but it isn't.

It isn't.

Yeah, there was some sort of justice, I guess for Joseph dying younger in his forties.

I have no idea what happened, but sure, oh what an awful case.

You know, you well, I think you know.

What I just want to emphasize is how evaluating what the offender is doing at the crime scene to the victim can be very very insightful as to who the offender is.

Yeah, and that's where you know, Abbott just never made sense to me based on what you told me what happened at the crime scene and happened to Maria and how she was riggered up.

But it also just shows you once kind of the the train is put in motion against a suspect, you can see how it's very hard to get that train to stop.

Yeah.

Absolutely, And the alibis.

And every time we hear of a spouse, a man or a woman who has an alibi, I always think they could have hired somebody or you know, there's a myriad of things they could have paid off people we don't know.

And now you see logging all day long does sometimes it doesn't mean logging all day long.

So that this one, I think you really lit up with this case, which you don't always with eighteen hundred cases.

And you didn't even require photos, which I think is great.

Well, the photos would have been helpful, but no, you did a job describing what's going on.

So it gave me enough to go on.

And it comes down to, you know, the primary reasons people kill, And what we see in this case is you know, this this whole lovers if you want to call it a lover's triangle, you know, with Jenny the sixteen year old.

Yeah, so I have no doubt what happened.

Joseph was Maria's keller, and you know it was just again, it was a fascinating case with a little twist there at the end that you you put on me.

Well, if I didn't think that I could auction off this three dollars lumber bill for a million dollars, I would send it to you as a prize for all that rigor stuff.

I mean, I think I'm going to use that in a book someday.

I really like that.

I like learning about that stuff.

I don't know if I've talked about Riggor as much as we did on that case, so right.

I love the eighteen hundred so much that I predict we're going to be back in the eighteen hundreds very very very soon with a very different case.

I'm sure.

Sounds good.

I'm looking forward to it.

Go back to your is it your dad's coin collection?

That's what your assignment is over the next week.

I you know what, I have it right down to the left of me.

I need to bring it out and kind of remember what I've got.

Okay, we will see you next week.

Sounds good, Thanks Kate.

This has been an exactly right production for our sources and show notes go to Exactlyrightmedia dot com slash Buried Bones sources.

Our senior producer is Alexis Emirosi.

Research by Alison Truble and Kate Winkler Dawson.

Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.

Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.

Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.

Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark and Daniel 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 decode the criminal mind, is available now, and.

Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life solving America's cold cases, is also available now.

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