The Peasenhall Murder

0:03 I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime.

0:09 And I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved them.

0:16 Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes.

0:21 And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.

0:26 Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st century lens.

0:34 Some are solved, and some are cold. Very cold.

0:38 This is Buried Bones. Buried Bones Hey, Paul.

1:02 Hey, Kate. I hear you have an audiobook coming out just in time for Halloween.

1:07 It's spooky, spooky. Yeah, I do. I have an audiobook. I love doing nonfiction audiobooks.

1:12 Wow.

1:13 It feels like a podcast. I'm really comfortable with them, and they're shorter. There's nothing wrong with a full-length book, but it takes me less time to do it.

1:21 Sure.

1:23 This is a book about the Ratcliffe Highway murders, which I have purposely withheld from you, which is really kind of cruel of me because these murders would really strike your fancy, I think.

1:35 For whatever reason, that's, you know, ringing a bell inside my head, but I'm just not placing them.

1:41 Probably I've talked to you about them before, I think. I've actually asked your input on it.

1:45 Oh, wow.

1:46 These murders take place in 1811 in London, in the worst part of London, which is sort of by the docks. on the East side, not far from where Jack the Ripper was in 1888. And there are two families who are murdered, slaughtered with knives and an ax. And it is a mystery that I think intrigued so many people because these were both good families. You know, one was a linen draper, his wife is a teenage, you know, apprentice.

2:15 And then, you know, the other was a publican. So he owned a pub and his wife and their housemaid. And so, You know, when these people end up dead and in such a brutal way and there's no robbery, nothing. It just looks like somebody's out there for bloodlust. It just really, it didn't happen in London, especially. And there was so much violence there. And so all of this mystery kicked off the imaginations of some of the most incredible writers in the world. And Edgar Allan Poe said that, you know, that story really pointed him towards the first detective story, which was Murders in the Rue Morgue.

2:51 Oh, wow.

2:52 The detective who doesn't want a paycheck necessarily, he just wants to solve a mystery. So the story to me was so compelling and the characters are really great and everything. And so I really dig into it. So it's fun, especially around Halloween. It's so much fun to do that story.

3:06 So do you have crime scene photos, autopsy photos I can look at and maybe give you some insight?

3:10 You're hilarious. No. You know, we've got some caricatures and I've got a trial transcript at least. I will tell you that somebody is caught, but no one is brought to justice in the story. But there are quite a few opinions about who did what. So it's interesting. I want you to listen to it because I know you've done a lot of audiobooks before about great mysteries. And so this for me, you know, man, 1811, London, everybody's suffering.

3:40 There are people coming in and out of the dock, sailors. And I mean, there's so much chaos. And then everything just goes almost silent when these two good families, end up murdered and nobody understands what happened. And it just, it's the worst, for me, it's the biggest fear. And for a lot of people, someone you don't know coming into your house and hurting you for no apparent reason, not robbery or vendetta or cheating or anything else, just no rhyme or reason. That psycho really started in 1811 with the Ratcliffe Highway.

4:12 You know, this very well could be a fantasy motivated offender. Serial killers were active, centuries ago. So that's what it sounds like to me.

4:21 Absolutely.

4:22 Yeah. Yep.

4:23 So it's out October 20th. So put that on your little day calendar and I hope everybody gets to check it out. I love it. Love it. Love it. So it's very exciting. So it's called Blood on the Page and it's for Penguin Random House.

4:36 Awesome.

4:36 So thank you for checking that out in advance. I know you will.

4:39 I will be answering to you at some point, so you know I'll do it.

4:47 Okay. So listen, you know, I did this pitch to you and we're staying in England. You're not going to get away from England because the story that I'm about to tell you for the show is based in England and it is also in a great time period, 1902. Are you ready?

5:01 I'm ready. Okay.

5:03 Let's go to England. Let's set the scene. So we always love to give credit to really great sources. And for this, Allison, our crack researcher, really liked the podcast was just as served. And, you know, I mean, she does so much other research and I add in research. But really, this podcast seemed to her to really pull together a lot of stuff and then tell it is a great narrative story. So hopefully this is a well-known case. Hopefully, you know, I can do it justice.

5:34 OK, we'll see if I've ever heard of it.

5:37 OK, probably not.

5:39 Yeah. Well-known case.

5:41 Probably not. Okay, here we go. So we are in Suffolk, England, and this is in one of those beautiful idyllic villages, and the village is called Peason Hall. So it's just like this gorgeous little place where nothing bad, blah, blah, is supposed to happen. Did you ever see Midsommar Murders? I think it still goes on, Midsommar Murders. It's a good series, but it's procedural, and it's just like inexplicably murder after murder in this tiny stream of villages.

6:08 Yes.

6:09 And they just keep solving them, and then you have to suspend reality a little bit. But this was truly a murder, you know, that was pretty, I think, shocking to people. So that's where we're at.

6:20 Okay, so I'm having to look at to see where Pisen Hall is. Okay. And it looks like it's a very small place isolated from any major urban area.

6:31 Mm-hmm.

6:32 Is that accurate?

6:34 Mm-hmm. Tiny village, idyllic, beautiful village. Nothing bad happens. the start of the most fantastic Midsommar murder episode I can tell you for fans of that show. It's June 11th, 1902, and at just past 8 o'clock, we have a journeyman. So he is a journeyman carter, which is a freight hauler. He's 63, and he has the same routine every day. Now, I'm going to warn you in advance. We have in this story several Williams, Several Georgianas and then I think several somebody else, but I can't remember who. So eventually we'll get down to the important William and the important Georgiana. But, you know, we do have some repetitive stuff. I think, what did we do? Was it in Maine? It was like the 1700s Maine and everybody was named William.

7:25 Yeah, there was that one town. It's like an incestuous town, right?

7:29 No, no, don't say that. But everybody was the same name, and that got very confusing.

7:35 So you said 8 o'clock, 8 a.m. or 8 p.m.? 8 a.m.

7:38 In the morning.

7:39 Okay.

7:40 Nice day, and it had been raining for two nights before, and so this pleases this 63-year-old journeyman Carter, and his name is William Harsant. And every Sunday he walks to this place called the Providence House. It's a private residence, but they just name it. And he is trying to bring some clean linens to his daughter, whose name is Rose.

8:07 So she is 23 and they have a close relationship. And, you know, he is, you know, somebody who visits her a lot. She is working in this house as a domestic servant. There's an elderly couple that owns a house. They live there. It's William and Georgiana Crisp. Great name. So she works for them, taking care of them, taking care of the house. It's a good job. Her room is located in the attic at the back of the house.

8:36 And there is a staircase that runs from her room, which would be called the servant's quarters, down into the kitchen. which makes clear what their main task is as a servant there. So she is, that's where he expects to see her. So he goes through the back gate and goes towards the kitchen, which has an entrance. He stops at the back of the kitchen once he gets inside, and he looks at the foot of the stairs, which he was going to climb to go see his daughter, and that's not what he finds. So he finds his daughter in a pool of blood at the bottom of the stairs. So Rose is flat on her back. with her feet stretched toward the back door. And there are spurts of blood staining the floor two feet from her feet.

9:23 He smells paraffin. Now, we talk about paraffin wax, and I assume you know that paraffin is a petroleum fuel for, you know, lamps and stuff, especially in the turn of the century.

9:35 I didn't know that, but.

9:36 Oh, sorry.

9:37 I can, you know, it's good detail right there, so.

9:41 Yeah. So so it's a fuel that's used. He smells it. It's very strong. And, you know, he's obviously horrified. And the elderly couple who lives there hadn't heard anything. And I'll explain that in a little bit. But she's at the bottom of the stairs and it's really clear that she's dead. So he looks at Rose, and he says her right cheek is bruised. Her throat looks to be slashed from ear to ear. And I know we're always debating what somebody means by slashed. There are two distinct cuts, the doctor will later say, that completely sever her windpipe.

10:20 So there are several deep stab wounds in her chest, under her left clavicle, and on the left side of her neck. And they were caused by an upward thrust of a sharp knife. This is, of course, the doctor. So maybe this isn't William's point of view. He sees it and he can't untangle what it is, but this is what it really is. And there are several more gashes that cut across her shoulders. The palms of her hands are marked by semicircular cuts. So they think that means Rose was trying to defend herself against a knife.

10:54 So I guess her hand's moving and the knife is coming up and it's cutting kind of semicircular. So the lower half of her nightgown, which is what she's wearing, is scorched from the paraffin. And there's a fire in the fireplace. There's a lamp nearby. It could have been from several different things, but the paraffin seems to be the fuel. And nightgowns in 1902 would have been flammable to begin with. The flesh on her thighs and her buttocks, especially on the right side, is noticeably charred. So now, you know, I'm going to get your reaction to this.

11:24 You have a 23-year-old woman, a servant in a house. It's a fairly large house in the country who is, you know, cut up, apparently, and then burned or accidentally burned. Who knows?

11:36 Yeah, so, you know, the injuries to her hands, to her forearm sound like defensive wounds. This indicates that she's probably... aware she's being attacked by an offender that is armed with some type of sharp edged weapon. And I know, you know, we're in 1902, there's probably a variety of different types of weapons that aren't commonly used today, but I'm going to assume, you know, the, the offender is using a knife until told otherwise. Um, her, her throat is cut, uh, you know, stab wounds to the chest, upwards thrust, uh, You know, this could occur while Rose is upright and the offender is coming with kind of like a kind of an upwards type of stabbing motion versus kind of coming down over with an overhand type

12:25 of motion. But it also could indicate that the stabbing is occurring while Rose is laying on the floor. Yeah. And this is where blood patterns become important to try to interpret not only the sequence of the injuries, but also the position that Rose was in at the time she received those injuries and the blood started to flow.

12:47 You know, the throat is cut, intentional homicide. You know, there's two different cut wounds, which is not uncommon. You know, you didn't indicate anything about the jugular or carotid jugular veins of the carotid arteries being severed. The windpipe is severed, but it sounds like these are homicidal wounds. So I'm assuming that she bled out as a result of her throat being cut. The charring is interesting because it sounds like she's separate from the source of the fire. And it doesn't sound like she's actively burning at the time Her dad walks in and sees her, you know, so is this a failed attempt to light her on fire?

13:39 You know, maybe the paraffin, I'm assuming the paraffin source is this lantern. Is that correct?

13:46 No. And that is a big point of contention. I'll have to tell you about it in a minute.

13:51 Okay. Okay. So the paraffin is going to turn out to be maybe foreign to the scene. So the offender brought this fuel to the scene. Maybe, as a source of light to do whatever the motive that the offender had going into the house was. But yeah, the charring, if she's not actively burning, she's separate from the fire, I think that's interesting. That might indicate that you have a point of origin on Rose where the offender tried to start a fire maybe utilizing paraffin the offender brought to the scene, and for whatever reason, it did not catch or at least continue to burn afterwards.

14:35 Okay, so maybe he doesn't realize that there's an elderly couple sleeping in this house. It just seems pretty risky not only to stab and kill this woman, but also to try to set her on fire if that's what happened.

14:48 Yeah, well, I think this is where we get into the sequence of what is the victimology? What is the life pattern inside this house? Rose is somewhat isolated as a servant girl in this room up the stairs. The elderly couple, I'm assuming, have a room that's accessed properly. through different stairs, on a different floor, whatever it is.

15:13 But do the elderly couple typically go to bed before Rose and she kind of cleans up and gets ready for the next day? And so could the offender have come in while Rose is getting ready to turn in for the night? Or is this something where Rose comes down very early in the morning to get things prepared for the elderly couple that she's serving and and the offender comes in and now is confronting her before the elderly couple get up. So right now, I don't know enough to kind of sequence things, but those seem to be the two likely possibilities.

15:49 So I have information about the timeline based on some of the physical things going on with their body in a minute, but before I want to go back to what you were saying about where things happen, upward thrust and, you know, blood pools. The doctor who did her autopsy said that he thought that when she was stabbed in the chest, she was standing up. And he thought that when her throat was slit, she was on the ground.

16:15 So what I mean, I don't have any other information other than that. Is that based on like splashes that he sees on the walls or blood pools or what would your guess be?

16:24 Well, and she's fully clothed in her upper body, right?

16:28 She's in a nightgown, yeah.

16:30 Got it. So what the doctor is likely observing is with the stab wounds, when the blood starts coming out to the entry of the stab wound, it's now what direction is that blood flowing? So he's likely seeing flows that are going downwards. Blood flows towards gravity. So that would indicate that she is in some sort of upright position, standing. seated, et cetera. Um, the clothing is going to disrupt that to a point. Now it sounds if it's a nightgown, I'm assuming it's a lighter weight fabric and this is in June, right? So this, um, it's probably something she's not wearing, you know, really heavy fabric that's going to absorb a lot of blood. So I, I, I can see where there might be enough blood flows out of

17:16 the stab wounds for the doctor to kind of position her as being upright. Now, the throat being cut, he's likely not seeing massive blood flowing down the front of her chest. What he's seeing is the blood pooling behind her as she's laying on the floor. And I think you mentioned that there, what was the term, streaks of blood? Yeah.

17:39 You know, that possibly, unless it's smeared blood, you know, from either her moving or the offender moving, who's now moving in the victim's blood. This very possibly is what we would call an arterial spurt. So her heart is still beating. There's pressure inside her arteries. And when the neck is cut for a few heart pulses, you'll get a spray out of that carotid artery that can cause sort of a streaking aspect, maybe on the floor or up on the wall. And it's something that we look for, but we have to see that we have a breached artery in the wound that has access to the external environment.

18:26 And with a homicidal throat cut, that's likely in this case.

18:30 Well, I was actually going to ask you, When they're referring to streaks of blood, could it be the knife coming across her throat and the cast off from the knife? Or would that not result in enough blood for somebody to categorize it as streaks?

18:43 That is so hard to say because you're, you know, we have certain terms when we discuss blood patterns, when you're formally trained in blood pattern interpretation, we wouldn't use the term streak. You know, so... This is where I'm trying to envision, okay, the known injuries that you've explained to me, what would be a blood pattern that, let's say, a layperson would interpret as a streak? And that's where I'm thinking the arterial spurt. Cast off off of a knife is usually going to be a series of droplets.

19:22 And that's where it doesn't seem consistent with that term streak. Okay.

19:30 So I'm going to give you one more piece of evidence from her body, and then I don't really have anything else after that. The autopsy just confirmed the stabbing, and you know kind of about the depth where they say there were some deep cuts. So we have a constable and a doctor that arrive. They come about 40 minutes after Rose's dad, William. sounds the alarm. And the doctor says that her body is already cold, but rigor mortis hadn't quite set in in her lower extremities. So Dr. Lay, who is the doctor in our case, he says that he thinks she had been dead. If it's 840, he thinks she had been dead between four and six hours.

20:10 Which puts us, you know, somewhere in the 2 to 4 range. You know, I mean, it's just 2 a.m. to 4 a.m.

20:17 Range. Okay.

20:18 So, what do you think about that?

20:20 So, you know, rigor mortis starts in the smaller muscles in the extremities, such as in the hands, and then starts to progress, you know, through the larger muscles before it is considered fully set. So, this is where, you know... You didn't tell me any information on where the doctor is observing rigor, but I'm assuming he's observing rigor, let's say, in the upper extremities.

20:45 Probably her neck and all of that.

20:46 Yeah, so she's stiffening. Her fingers are probably hard to move, hands hard to open, et cetera, maybe arms hard to bend. If he's not observing any rigor in her lower body, I'm wondering if the fire that she was exposed to for some part of time could have impacted the formation of rigor for a period of time. Because her body appears to have been, you know, the upper half is under a different environmental condition over the course of since her death than the lower body. So that could potentially be why there's that difference. Now, if it's, if he's saying, you know, what, four to six hours from eight o'clock, I mean, again, this window, I wouldn't stick to that window.

21:35 It's informative that, okay, she wasn't killed yesterday afternoon. It doesn't give me enough confidence. Like the two patterns of life, she's preparing to go to bed or she's getting up early to get ready for the elderly couple. I think right now both could be in play. as to when the offender interacted with her. And of course, I'm very interested, well, she has a bedroom, even though she's downstairs, was there any indication that the offender confronted her while she's in her bedroom?

22:15 Well, let's get to some of the physical evidence. We're still in the kitchen. So the constable notices that there's a bracket supporting a shelf behind the back door that has been smashed. I don't know if that's relevant or not. There is a wool shawl that hangs over the window pinned in place with a fork. I have to assume Rose or the crisps would not have done something like that.

22:40 That seems silly. There are pieces of an oil lamp that are scattered around Rose's body and under her neck and shoulders. There is a partially burned copy of the East Anglin Daily Times newspaper. It's not yet. East Anglin. Sorry, English folks, if I said that wrong. East Anglin Daily Times. So it's dated two days earlier, which is May 30th.

23:04 Under her body, there is a broken glass medical bottle, like a medicinal bottle. And the neck of the bottle had rolled close to the fireplace. And there is a prescription on the outside of the bottle. And it's written for the end of March, so a couple months earlier. And it partially reads two to three teaspoons, a sixth part to be taken every four hours, but the rest of the prescription is smeared in blood. They can't read it.

23:32 But I don't know if that matters because the inside of that bottle is lined with paraffin. And also the lamp's chimney, the oil lamp's chimney is lined with paraffin. So I'm not sure we know what the source is, but these are both broken you know, vessels that have had paraffin, which is very flammable in them.

23:56 Okay. I just wanted to clarify, you said like an apron was pinned to the wall with a fork. Is that what you said?

24:04 A wool shawl hangs over the window, pinned in place with a fork, like somebody's looking for privacy. And I think the assumption about the broken shelf behind the back door is somebody must have flung open the back door with some violence in it. hit the shelf and broke it, but I'm not a hundred percent sure. So I don't know if we know the source. We just know that there are two paraffin vessels that are broken nearby, but that medicine bottle does not belong there, but the oil lamp does.

24:35 Okay.

24:36 And I have a photo for you.

24:37 What? Sorry.

24:38 That's a lie. I have a drawing for you.

24:41 You got me excited.

24:45 So it's a drawing. I hope it's helpful. And, you know, there's, like, in the early 1900s, sometimes we don't have helpful stuff. This helped me some, though, I have to say.

24:55 So I'm looking at, it's the photo of, you know, a staircase. The staircase actually, it appears, has a wooden door that is open. And then the steps, just after two steps, immediately go at a right angle to the right and disappear behind. behind the wall. You know, so this isn't like a straight up staircase to the room.

25:23 Rose coming down this staircase at, you know, to get out the door has to turn to the left in order to exit or, you know, the opposite to go up.

25:33 And it's narrow, I'm assuming. It has to be narrow.

25:35 It looks, it does look like a narrow staircase. You know, outside of kind of the observation of the configuration of the staircase, you know, it doesn't really inform me much about You know, is there a possibility that the offender interacted with Rose upstairs? Yeah. You know, did he drag her downstairs? Did he blitz her? You know, as soon as she, you know, comes out of the staircase, there isn't enough information there. It does give at least an understanding of the configuration.

26:05 I mean, what would have been helpful was where is the fireplace?

26:08 Yeah.

26:09 Where were these bottles found? Where is the back door? So it's almost like the opposite of what we really need. I'm trying to figure out what's on the right-hand side. I mean, it looks like behind the door there's a table with a pitcher, so maybe that's where everybody eats. I don't think that's a door. Can you tell what that is behind it? It almost indicates that it's a door or a double-pane window or something.

26:31 Yeah, behind that table, and it's very, very faint— I wouldn't eliminate the possibility it's a window, but it has basically the same dimensions as the doorway for the staircase. So I'm thinking that it might be a doorway. And maybe, you know, we're seeing a cross member as part of the door and whether that door is closed. It's so hard to be able to truly figure out what's going on there.

26:59 So my apologies for not doing a case from 1971, weren't we? I'm sorry. But I think we get it, and they're going to give you some more information in a little bit.

27:10 But, you know, with the evidence that you said, you know, the bracket being smashed, part of what I'd be looking for was, you know, sometimes things happen during normal living, and was there cleanup of, you know, the paint that was chipped off the wall or broken items from the bracket, et cetera, or does it look like everything– was left and if it looks like everything was left with any, without any type of cleanup, then that sounds like it's contemporaneous with the crime itself. And this is, yeah, the door being flogged open and I'd be evaluating the door.

27:44 Does it look like we have a door kick? You know, do we have, you know, somebody who's, you know, just using force? Uh, and I would imagine that they would have made observations that the door jam was, was broken or there was, you know, other there's it's obvious when it's a door kick typically. The shawl hung over the window with a fork. It's clever. You know, this sounds like the, I have to say that this sounds like the offender is putting that shawl over the window to prevent anybody from the outside seeing inside. And possibly, you know, I'd be kind of curious, could somebody outside looking through that window see Rose's body? You know, so is the offender just trying to delay discovery from somebody who happens

28:26 to look into the window? Um, the newspaper, charred newspaper, it sounds like that, that could have been in, you know, the offender lit it in order to be able to, uh, you know, start a fire. I'm assuming possibly to, to Rose's, you know, lower body, um, the oil lamp smashed, you know, that's maybe part of a struggle or the offender trying to get access to more fuel. The You know, the medical bottle, that's, to me, that's significant. It's foreign to the scene. It has a source of paraffin in it.

29:00 It is the reason why the offender brought it. The prescription, you know, typically there's a name to who the prescription is for. Now, the blood is covering it. But at some point, you're going to, you know, look, kind of clean the blood off to see whose name is on this prescription bottle and is that informative of who the offender is. Yep. The fact that it's broken, you know, I'm kind of imagining one of these smaller brown, you know, medicine bottles. That's not easy to break. You know, that's such a sturdy little object. So I'm kind of curious.

29:36 Is it one of those types of medicine bottles or is it a larger? thinner glassed bottle that would be easier to break but the fact that it's it's found underneath rose's body that sequencing event that's telling me it was broken before rose came to lie in her final resting position Now, what does that mean at this point?

29:56 I don't know. It's a bit of sequence that helps me start to reconstruct the events at the crime scene.

30:03 So this will be fun. The constable and the doctor initially don't think this is murder. They are in total denial that this would ever happen. That's how small this town is at this village.

30:16 They're just inexperienced.

30:17 I think they just don't even think that it's possible that somebody would have come and killed this woman while there's A couple sleeping on the other side of the house. I think it was just inexplicable to people. They changed their opinion quickly, I promise, though. But initially, they.

30:32 Don't know what they're looking at. I mean, she's got her throat cut and you have the blood streaks, which I'm going to assume are arterial spurts. It's like, you know, I have seen suicide through somebody cutting their own throat. But that's not what's happening here.

30:48 Yeah. So what they're saying is either suicide or a freak accident. I promise. I promise. They get it together and pretty quickly decide that's not what happened. But it does give you a little bit of information. They think that she tripped on her nightgown while she was going down the stairs. So it's a glass bottle because they're saying she fell. She broke, you know, fell on top of the glass bottle. She broke it. She wounded herself.

31:10 I don't know. Ear to ear is possible with the glass medicine bottle. Maybe she hit her head. Maybe she was unconscious. Either way, what they believe, which actually sounds valid, is that there was an oil lamp that maybe she was carrying downstairs or maybe it was on that table that we were looking at with the pitcher. And they think that the paraffin might have leaked out from this prescription bottle and that it caught fire from this lamp somehow and then burned her nightgown and her body. I mean, they're just basically trying to do everything to say that this is not some psychopath who's roaming around Pisenhall ready to kill young women. But the I said they change their tune pretty quickly. When they go upstairs, they go

31:52 upstairs and find some stuff.

31:54 Okay, well, obviously they don't know what they're looking at. They have no experience. The proposed mechanisms for her throat being cut, that's not even in the ballpark of what this would look like if she had fallen down the stairs and the glass bottle had broken. They're not even addressing the multiple stab wounds or the defensive injuries. So this is where it's always important to understand who the person is that is describing what they've seen when they found the body. And if you're dealing with a layperson who has never seen a homicide before, you have to take their observations with a grain of salt. And here they, you know, I'm telling you with what you told me, they are wrong. And now, as I mentioned before, I

32:44 want to know what's going on up in Rose's room.

32:46 Yeah. I'm not sure whoever did this made it up to Rose's room. Here's why. Constable goes upstairs and there are several what he describes as romantic letters and obscene poems. I wish I had read some of those. I did not see what obscene poems are. I don't know if those are naughty limericks. But one of them was delivered the day before she was murdered. And it's in an envelope that was used commonly by one particular factory called the Smith Drill Works. And in this is a letter that says, Dear R, so he's not even putting Rose, I will try to see you tonight at 12 o'clock at your place, midnight. If you put a light in your window at 10 for about 10 minutes, then you can put it out again. Don't have a light in

33:40 your room at 12 as I will come round to the back. So this is 1902 texting, you know, tell me when it's safe and the old people have gone to bed. So she's clearly rendezvousing with somebody. We don't know who. And she's pregnant, Paul. Six months pregnant.

33:59 Six months, and you're just now telling me this.

34:01 Well, I mean, we barely got to the autopsy. They don't even know this yet. It's the constable's going, okay, wait, maybe something is happening here. But I'm going to skip to the six months pregnant, according to the doctor.

34:12 Obviously, she has a relationship with right now an unknown person. I'm going to assume the person is a male. And she's got a baby, maybe by the same male, if this is somebody that she's been seeing for at least six months.

34:27 Yeah.

34:29 And, you know, this is where this last letter is putting this male coming over after the elderly couple have gone to bed, supposedly. Where now it's safe for him to enter the house and him and Rose can, I'm assuming the intent was to have a consensual encounter. If this, you know, so this guy is now suspect number one.

34:53 He's there. In the time frame in which Rose could have been killed, was this, you know, some sort, something heated happened between these two when he came over? You know, Rose is confronting him about the pregnancy and he needs to, you know, marry her and be prepared to support her and the child or is something else going on?

35:16 We don't know. They have the coroner's inquest starts that day. Rose's mother said, I thought she was pregnant. But when I asked her, she said no. And she says, the mom says, that she believed Rose had been engaged for two years. We don't know anything about the guy. And it sounds like maybe they weren't even involved anymore because they never put him really on the suspect list. I don't know if he moved. But that was the belief.

35:43 But we also are going to find out she was involved with somebody different, as you might suspect.

35:47 Yeah. So the.

35:50 CRISPs now are under investigation. They want to know how two people can be in the house and not hear glass breaking and throat slitting. And, you know, you and I have talked ad nauseum, I think, about the fact that this stuff can really happen quietly. And so, you know, and this couple is being grilled by the police. They said, listen, we didn't actually notice anything weird coming up. There was nothing weird from the last couple of days. She wasn't being stalked that we know of. And there was no commotion that night. So William Crisp is in his 70s.

36:22 He cannot hear very well. But Georgiana, who was in her 60s, said she was startled awake by the sound of thunder, big claps of thunder. She heard a scream. She heard a thud. But she thought it was just kind of Rose being scared from the storm. And maybe she dropped something like an iron. You know, she stayed up late. She didn't investigate it at all. And she thinks that she heard the thunder and the scream between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. And so remember, the letter writer wanted to see her at about midnight.

36:55 Right.

36:56 Right.

36:58 You know, the ear witnesses, you know, this doesn't concern me. You know, most certainly this crime can occur without alerting the people that are inside the house. It sounds like Georgiana actually heard. an attack going on on Rhodes, but it misinterpreted it, you know, which is completely understandable. But it does give us maybe a better window of when this attack occurred relative to the doctor's observation of the rigor mortis.

37:26 And, you know, something to keep in mind too, especially in this village, there's no electricity, right? And 1902. So, you know, when I think about people's timekeeping and, In The Sinners All Bow, the book I wrote, there was earwitnesses to this murder of Sarah Maria Cornell, but it was based on the bells from the church. So people knew what time it was, you know, around dinner time.

37:48 And the church would tell the women to come back from the factory or go to the factory. And so you have all these earwitnesses saying it was 10 minutes after the 7 p.m.

37:55 Bell.

37:56 In this case, you know, people had wall clocks and people could see the clocks on the walls. but it was still dark. And if she just woken up from the clap of thunder, she's probably not turning on, you know, an oil lamp or anything to see. So I'm not quite sure about her timing of saying 1 a.m. to 2 a.m., but at this point, it's all we have anyway.

38:17 That's probably the best that we're going to get. Maybe it's closer to 1230, you know, or 1215. So there's that possibility.

38:28 Okay, we have a guy who's going to be coming under fire here real quick. Because this is a string of little villages. There's lots of rumors. And the year before, there were two men who overheard a conversation between Rose and this 35-year-old foreman at the drill works factory where we think that envelope came from. So he is named William Gardner. So I'll just call him. Now forget about the other two Williams we've talked about. We'll stick with William Gardner. And he was having a conversation with Rose.

39:03 So she's 23, he's 35. He's married to another Georgiana. They have six kids. And he lives very close to Providence House, 600 feet away. So the center point of this is this church chapel that they both belong to. And it is Methodist, and it's sort of evangelical, I would say, almost. She would sing in the choir. He was the choir director. And they it sounds like, if we believe these two men, were having kind of a naughty conversation and then disappeared into what's known as, it's a chapel, but it's known as Doctor's Chapel. Okay. And so, you know, I can give you the background in a minute on William and also on the conversation and these two guys who say we heard this and it was very uncomfortable. But it's starting a lot here around her murder.

39:56 Well, there's, as I said before, when you start evaluating suspects and you start seeing churn, there's churn here. Now you have some independent witnesses that say they're putting William Gardner and Rose together. William Gardner and Rose are going to the same church. He's director of choir. She's in the choir. So there's obviously interactions between William Gardner and Rose as a result. And then the two witnesses heard William Gardner and Rose having dirty conversations. Well, I think today we call that flirting.

40:36 I don't know. They referenced the Bible in this. I'll have to tell you what the Bible reference was. It sounds so hot and heavy to me.

40:45 Yeah, you know, so at least right now, I'm putting a fair amount of veracity on, you know, this interconnection because we do have that piece of physical evidence of the envelope that's coming from, I think it was Smith's Drill Works, which William Gardner is a foreman at. Yep. Okay, so there's churn. It's interesting. It's not saying he's her killer, but it sounds like there's a pretty good chance that William Gardner and Rose had a level of a physical relationship in the past. Yeah.

41:16 And these two guys work with him at drill work. So it's not like, oh, I saw somebody it could have been. They definitely knew. And they were close enough to have a conversation. So it's Alfonso and Bill. And they went to the church, the elders there, and said that they're having an affair. He's married. I told you, William, he's married. They have six kids together. They live very, very close to the Providence House. So William is the choir master. And this is the primitive Methodist congregation in a little village called Stibton. It's a four-minute walk from Peason Hall. I told you it's like a string of little cute villages. And this is, you know, when she was not working for the crisps, taking care of them,

41:57 she was at this church. And specifically, she would clean the congregation's chapel, which is the doctor's chapel. So again, this is the year before. So Alfonso and Bill said about 8.20 p.m. that night, they overhear Rose and William discussing Genesis 38 outside the chapel. So they're eavesdropping. And this is a biblical chapter about sexual relationships, society's impulse to burn immoral women to death, and God's forgiveness. So this was pretty sexually charged. And then they watched them go into the chapel. And shortly thereafter, Alfonso said he heard something indecent. Now, you know, Alfonso's 26. I'm sure he's heard lots of indecent stuff. But I will say also, Paul, especially in a a small village, this is also a

42:51 time when women were suing men for asking them to marry them and then having sex with them and then leaving them, leaving them disgraced. So this was very risky for Rose if this is what happened. But Alfonso says, listen, I heard them having sex, basically. And I don't think this matters, but there's a little bit of discrepancy about whether they had this Genesis 38 discussion before or after the indecent sounds. But that's where we are.

43:23 I didn't realize that this was something that was brought to the church a year before Rose was killed. A year before, yep. So it's not like you have these witnesses that are coming forward because they read the newspaper and what happened. So now this puts even a greater level of veracity on a relationship between William Gardner and Rose.

43:47 Absolutely.

43:50 I'm thinking, okay, these two had a relationship, and the doctor at autopsy is finding that Rose is six months pregnant. Now, this is now digging into Rose and her life, as well as interviewing William. And what is going on in that relationship at the time that Rose was killed? Is there still a relationship going on? And then, of course...

44:16 I think at this point, especially with that envelope from Smith's Drill Works inside Rose's bedroom, it's like now you're doing a search of William Gardner's residence, his locker at work, or wherever he has access to see if you find evidence of the homicide.

44:36 So Alfonso and Bill make this accusation. William denies it. Rose denies it. The chapel's reverend has opened an inquiry into their relationship. Twenty members of the congregation, their most upstanding, I'm sure, gather. And this is like an inquisition that lasts for three hours. And they can't prove anything. Nobody has any evidence. There's no cameras, obviously. Nobody has evidence of anything except overhearing a conversation that William says was misinterpreted.

45:08 So William is so upset that he has to resign from all of his posts. He does several things for this chapel. And, you know, a lot of people, of course, now are thinking that William got her pregnant. Did he kill her to cover this up? And after this whole thing happens in May, William had written two more letters to Rose. So that's proof that the relationship didn't end, you know, in May to when she might have gotten pregnant in December. And these were kind of love letter type things.

45:40 Yeah. William's in play here. But I don't think we can draw a conclusion at this point that he's the actual killer. You know, this is where the investigation has to go in. Obviously, there would be forensic aspects that we could go after. Who is actually bio dad? You know, and that's important, you know, because at least six months ago, you know, there was a physical encounter with that male.

46:07 You know, so this is now, you know, is William continuing to strive to have a relationship with Rose? She is now spurting him, saying she's involved with another man. In fact, she's actually pregnant by this other man. Now you have the lover's triangle, the jealousy angle, and William flies off the handle that night.

46:29 Or the other guy.

46:30 Or the other guy. You know, right now you have to keep that... That has to be kept open at this stage in the investigation. But William's in play. No question about it.

46:41 Let's talk about what I consider to be lame evidence. Maybe you'll disagree. So the Crisps do not like this newspaper at all, the East Anglin Daily Times. And so they don't subscribe to it, but William does. So there's that, as well as I'm sure a lot of other people in the villages do.

46:58 That's the newspaper that was found partially charred by Rose's body.

47:01 From two days earlier, I believe, two days earlier. So the handwriting is similar, and I'm doing quotes here, to the handwriting from the love letters that were discovered in Rose's belonging, the anonymous love letters, compared to his normal handwriting. And he also carries a small hinged knife. Get in line.

47:22 There are probably men who carry much bigger knives. And also, that didn't sound like a small hinged knife to me. I mean, I guess it could have been, but this doesn't seem very hard, like hard evidence.

47:33 There's nothing that you told me about her incisive injuries that could give me any indication as to the size of the knife. A small pocket knife could possibly have committed these injuries. You know, the stab wounds to the chest probably would be the best. The dimensions of those stab wounds would probably be the best indicators as to the size of the knife.

47:55 Okay, so now we have to talk about alibis. So the constable and an inspector question Georgiana, his wife, and William. And Georgiana says, listen, you know, I was with him the whole time. He returned home from work from the factory around 9.30 p.m. And then from 11 p.m. until 1.30 in the morning, the two of them sat with a neighbor who was nervous about the storm. This was a big storm, huge storm. And after that, they went home and then they were together for the rest of the night. So it sounds like he's got, I mean, it's a wife alibi, but he has an alibi. But the neighbor comes in and confirms it. So when Georgiana at first is shown this letter from the murder night, right, the anonymous letter, she says, well, that looks like his handwriting,

48:43 but I don't think that's something he would have written. He doesn't cheat. We have six kids together. And William backs up everything that she says in her story. And then this neighbor, Mrs. Dickinson, comes in and she says, that's the same thing. So it sounds like it's like a locked alibi. He is still arrested. So they arrest him.

49:05 And for several months, they collect evidence against him. Okay.

49:09 I just want to make a comment is that it's his wife that is providing the alibi. Yep.

49:13 That wife alibi. Yeah. Spouse alibi.

49:16 Okay.

49:17 So now starts the investigation. We're two days out from where she was murdered. So the constable interviews a gamekeeper who's kind of in charge of the land. He says that he had seen a series of footmarks, which I would assume means shoe prints, leading back and forth between William's cottage and in the back of Providence House on June 1st, around five in the morning. He said they were made by rubber-soled shoes with bars across their treads. Now, the only reason I actually think there's some validity to this is, of course, number one, this is somebody whose job is to kind of patrol around and look at the land every day. And number two, it had been raining.

49:59 So you've got a lot of mud imprints. And in a small village, I don't know how many people are going between these two houses, specifically these two houses, if you believe it at all.

50:11 Well, didn't you say that, what was it, William lives like 600 feet away from the Providence house?

50:18 Yep, very close.

50:19 Let's think about 600 feet. That's twice the length of a football field, right?

50:24 Oh, okay, not that close. See, this is why I don't do stuff like this. The measurement thing doesn't work for me.

50:28 I have followed, you know, shoe impression tracks, you know, and... it's like, well, 600 feet, over the course of 600 feet, you're going to have grassy areas. You're going to have bushy areas. You know, you're going to be losing. It's not like a complete path from point A to point B. So what this, what did you call him, a game keeper?

50:51 Game keeper, mm-hmm.

50:52 You know, that's part of my questioning of him is, well, exactly where did you see these and how can you conclude? It went from this location here over to the victim's residence and back over the course of 600 feet. I would have some concerns about that testimony.

51:10 So his role as gamekeeper would mean, you know, he's taking care of the animals and the fowl in this little village and everything. And I mean, I think you're right.

51:18 Yeah.

51:19 And I think that's not something he's looking for. I don't know why he would pick up on that to begin with. And now he's being interviewed a month later. We have some other witnesses. I mean, this is the benefit of having a case in a small village. Everybody's nosy and they all know who you are. So we have a neighbor who says that William built a very large fire in his wash house on June 1st at 730 in the morning. OK, so this is taking place.

51:48 The neighbor is saying this happened 30 minutes before William, the father, discovered Rose. So this is very close. So while he is stumbling across Rose at the back of the house, William is supposedly building a fire. And maybe it's to cover up. I don't know if it's burning clothes or what they're saying. But this is a you know, this is something that is going into a conspiracy theory.

52:13 There's also another person who says the night before at 10.05, which is when the letter says, you know, I'm going to be watching for you to, you know, extinguish a light. He said William was standing one or two yards in front of his house, which is very close to the Providence house at 10.05, and he was gazing at a candle in the attic window. Now... We need to go back.

52:41 Do you remember what she was told to do?

52:43 She was told to extinguish the candle.

52:46 So the love letter says, I will try to see you tonight at 12 o'clock at your place. If you put a light in your window at 10 for about 10 minutes, then you can put it out again. So that is the acknowledgement that, yes, it's okay for you to come and see me. So that's what he's looking at. So they're saying William is answering the call that is in that letter and saying he's looking at the window.

53:10 And is it confirmed, I mean, truly confirmed that William Gardner is the writer of this particular letter?

53:19 No.

53:20 Okay.

53:21 I mean, he's denying it, and there's a handwriting expert who comes up later on, but we know somehow how that goes.

53:27 Yeah, okay. Well, yeah, that's just, obviously that letter is very significant in terms of somebody is communicating with Rose about wanting to come over Around the time frame that the offender is going to be coming over.

53:42 And that's why I told you I suspected nothing happened upstairs because you would think if the murderer is the letter writer, he would take that letter and burn it or, you know, take it with him or something because it implicates somebody.

53:55 Potentially.

53:56 So that's why I think she was coming downstairs and he was, you know, in the back. downstairs in the kitchen, maybe.

54:02 No, I mean, I think, you know, a burning question that I have is whose name was on the broken medicine bottle found underneath Rose's body?

54:10 Okay, well, just simmer down, Pepper. I'll figure it out. I'll tell you in a second. Okay, so let me tell you about some of the physical evidence that they confiscate from William. A double-bladed clasp knife, a table knife, multiple items of clothing, a pair of rubber-soled shoes. And the Home Office, you know, which is the British government, sends over its senior official analyst to examine the items for traces of blood and paraffin. He looks at the clasp knife. Everything else is clean. He looks at this knife of William's, and it had been freshly cleaned and sharpened, but he finds mammalian blood on its hinges. So that's vague, mammalian blood, though. He also examines the medicine bottle. After

54:55 treating the label with some chemicals to dissolve the blood... He can read the rest of the prescription. It is for Mrs. Gardner's children. So William's wife. So that bottle came from William's place.

55:08 Okay. William's got some explaining to do.

55:10 He does. And he doesn't want to. It's understandable.

55:15 Yeah. Okay.

55:17 All right. So June 30th, Mrs. Dickinson seems to change her mind. She's the one who was scared of the storm. And Georgiana and William went over there. to spend time with her so she wouldn't be scared. I guess they left the children at the house or six kids. There's probably a couple of older ones, but she's revising her timeline.

55:37 So Georgiana said that she and William came from 11, you know, arrived about 11, 1130 or so and stayed till 130. But Mrs. Dickinson says, well, it was just Georgiana who came between 11 and 1130 that William didn't come until closer to midnight.

55:54 Right.

55:56 And, you know, this is the magistrate's court who was listening to this, thought this was enough to send him to trial. So she's revising her timeline. I don't know why after a month, if she was intimidated into it or if that's truly what happened.

56:09 I would say based off of the totality of what you've told me, there is probable cause for arrest of William Gardner for Rose's murder. I mean, it's really starting to add up. Now it's I think it's what the prosecutors are going to be very interested in is, well, what's the motive? Yeah. And, you know, and this is where it's this relationship, you know, it's just a romantic relationship.

56:38 William Gardner wanted to continue and Rose said no. And he flies off the handle. He comes over, he's the letter writer, comes over thinking, you know, things are good between us. We're going to have a fun time tonight. And then she tells him I'm six months pregnant by another man. And he flies off the handle. I mean, I can start to extrapolate multiple scenarios. But, you know, things are really adding up from just the physical evidence stand against William Gardner. Yeah.

57:07 But let's look at the evidence real quick. I'm going to be devil's advocate here. So no one's seen them even kiss or be involved in any way. They both denied it. The men overheard a biblical discussion. That sounded kind of naughty, and then they disappeared. And Alfonso, I don't know what his definition of indecent noises is, but there's that, right? The church finds there's not enough evidence to punish anybody. Of course, Rose denies it. There's no way at this point in 1902 they're ever going to prove the paternity of this baby. So I'm trying to figure out, other than kind of a weird alibi with an old woman named Mrs. Dickinson who's not sure what happens when, They can't prove this is his letter. Now,

57:50 there's going to be an analyst who says, oh, it definitely is. But there is another man who's going to pop up here in a second who said, well, I wrote some letters, too. So there's a lot of churn in the opposite direction as far as I'm concerned with William.

58:05 Well, the accusation, you know, these witnesses that overheard the conversation and possibly Rose and William Gardner having sex at the chapel, that is not related to the crime. Right. So that is really kind of a circumstance where you go, okay, it sounds like there was a relationship. What I listen to is, okay, what is related to the crime? And this is where you have the envelope from the place that William Gardner worked at. You have... the prescription bottle for one of William Garner's kids found underneath Rose's body.

58:44 You know, this is what I'm kind of keying in on. So unless somebody is setting William up, I'm thinking William is Rose's killer. That's what I'm focusing in on the evidence, the physical evidence that where there's a nexus to the crime. Now, do they actually have the murder weapon with this double bladed hinged knife because they found mammalian blood on it?

59:11 You can't draw that conclusion. You know, today we most certainly would be able to answer that question definitively one way or another. You know, but this is also, did the pathologist note that the stab wounds to Rose's chest were done with a double-edged knife? Because you can determine that from those stab wounds. But I'm seeing enough to where I'm going, okay, William Gardner is Rose's killer. I think there's sufficient probable cause. It's now, what is the motive?

59:40 What happened that night?

59:41 So let's get to the trial. So it starts November 7th, 1902. He pleads not guilty. And he says, I was sleeping with my wife the whole time. We're in the same bed. So that's my alibi. Georgiana backs him up and has a lot of answers.

59:58 Okay.

59:59 She's either very truthful or very, very smart. She says that William had killed a rabbit, which I believe, you know, and so that's why there's mammalian blood on this knife. And the fire did happen at 730 in the morning before William, the father, discovers Rose, the fire that was on the Gardner's property. She says that we started the fire together to boil some water, which is something, of course, everybody did. She says the medicine bottle came from her because Rose was sick and she gave her the medicine bottle.

1:00:30 And the neighbor also testified that she herself had been unwell the whole night and that if she had heard anybody leaving the Gardner residence, she would have heard it coming in and out at all. I don't know, somebody's sick. I'm not sure you're hearing everything. But Georgiana is saying, he was with me the whole time. This didn't happen.

1:00:52 And the Crown tries to present this as kind of a morality case. They said that William murdered Rose to cover up this affair. It would tarnish her reputation in the church. And, of course, they plant Rose as promiscuous because why not? And they introduce these raunchy letters into evidence that According to a local postman, he had delivered five or six other letters, like the May 31st letter in the envelope from the drill store, to Rhodes in the last year. And the handwriting analyst that the Crown puts on the stand says they were all written by William.

1:01:30 But then we have a surprise witness. So what do you think of the trial so far?

1:01:35 You know, it's really hard for me to accept Georgiana's... alibi for William, you know, just because of the spousal relationship, the shame that she's going to experience having her husband having an affair with Rose and everything else. I think she's going to lie in order to protect her family, her reputation. So it's hard to put any veracity on the details she's providing. Giving Rose, you know, this prescription bottle from one of her kids, you know, It's just coincidence that that is the broken medicine bottle underneath this deceased woman's body. No, you know, the fact that there was a fire attempted to be started on Rose, and it appears that paraffin was the fuel source in which this medicine bottle appears to have been a source of.

1:02:27 You know, this medicine bottle just has too much nexus to the actual homicide for me to buy... Georgiana's excuse for why her kid's prescription bottle is at the homicide scene. So that, you know, of course, I want to hear about the mystery witness and maybe another suspect, you know, but right now I just, I'm not buying it.

1:02:55 Okay, well, here's this witness who's very interesting. His name is Frederick James Davis. Frederick. He is a draper and an assistant grocer who frequently delivered stuff to the crisps. On the stand, he said, I actually wrote some of the worst of these poems, these raunchy poems. He said Rose actually asked him to write them down for her.

1:03:18 He said, I did not write that May 31st letter, and I'm not the guy who got her pregnant. So I don't know, you know, this is the defense putting him up. So I don't know if they're trying to negate this handwriting analysis or throw somebody else in the mix here to create some doubt. But the judge is blocking a lot of things. And it seems to be that he's biased against William. He rejects the defense's contention that Frederick might have had an affair with Rose, no matter what he says on the stand. And the judge also says that the 1901 incident was very serious, which is this conversation between the two men. He tells the jury, it's very serious and you should pay attention to it.

1:04:04 I don't know if it occurs to anyone that these two guys might have been in love with Rose and they made this whole thing up. I mean, I don't know. We're putting a lot on a couple of 20-year-old guys, but that's where we all are. We've got this guy who said, yeah, I wrote her some raunchy stuff, but I didn't get her pregnant. And the defense says, I don't know about that. Yeah.

1:04:21 Well, see, the problem that I'm having with Like the judge is really putting an emphasis on this, you know, what the witnesses overheard a year prior. That should never be admitted. You know, in this day and age, there's no way that would be admitted because that has nothing to do with the crime that the defendant is being charged with. You know, so that's biasing the jury. So I definitely have an issue with some of the things that maybe the prosecution or the judge is doing on how they're handling the case. Yep. You know, the handwriting, you know, for me, of all these romantic letters or dirty poems, the one that matters is the one where it's like, put the candle in the window and that's going to let me know that I can come over.

1:05:11 You know, that one is significant. You know, and it sounds like at the best that they could do in 1902 is like, well, the handwriting from William Gardner is consistent with the handwriting that's on that letter. And then that's now for the jury to kind of go, well, how much weight do we put on that testimony?

1:05:30 Yeah. And the circumstances of the letter writer says, put a candle in the window for 10 minutes from 10 until 1010. And then William Gardner standing there looking at this candle in the window, according to a witness who, I mean, who knows what's happening with these witnesses. These people were interviewed over a couple of months. They've known all about it, the gossip everywhere. So, you know, you might have had some witnesses who didn't like William Gardner.

1:05:53 I'm not saying he didn't do it. I'm saying... that this is a small town, people might not have liked him, and who knows what people are claiming. There is a lot on this one medicine bottle and witnesses who we don't know if they're telling the truth or not.

1:06:07 To be frank, that's always the case. That's why we have an adversarial system. Yeah, it's true. So get the witness on the stand. They say, this is what I saw or heard or whatever, and then they get to be cross-examined, and that's up to the jury to decide, do I believe this person or not?

1:06:21 So guilty or not guilty, because we're now at the deliberation period.

1:06:24 Right. Well, I would say, from my perspective, William Gardner is Rose's killer. Of course, I would like to see more, so I would have greater confidence. From this jury's perspective, I think the judge allowing witnesses to talk about their observation of the prior relationship between Rose or their observation of a relationship between Rose and William Gardner a year before, overhearing the Genesis 38 sexual discussion at some point, as well as overhearing, I forget the term, indecent sounds like when they're hearing William Gardner and Rose having sex, you know.

1:07:13 That probably biased the jury, plus other decisions the judge made. So I think the jury possibly... ruled guilty. And I think they're right, but I'm not sure the Crown actually presented the strongest case.

1:07:30 So they return a split verdict. Eleven thought he was guilty.

1:07:36 Okay.

1:07:37 One said no.

1:07:38 Hung jury.

1:07:39 So there's a mistrial. So there's another trial. Here we go. It's very similar. It's two months later. But the media starts to weigh in. So, and I don't know why they shift like this, but the Eastern Morning Gazette newspaper, the editor describes Rose as not having worn the white flower of a blameless life. So a little victim shaming.

1:08:03 And then the East Anglican Daily Times, which is playing a role in this story, actually pays for Georgiana during the trial. They give her financial support because William can't work, which is, completely unethical, as I think anybody could guess. There's a new judge who is not turning against William and emphasizing that past conversation. And now we have another split verdict. And 11 jurors believe that he was not guilty.

1:08:35 And there was one holdout for guilty.

1:08:37 So it flip-flopped.

1:08:38 Well, I think the implication is, you know, you've got the media and the judge Everybody is ignoring the evidence. It seems like nobody cares about the physical evidence in the medicine bottle because it's not coming up. It's more of like, you know, did this really happen, this illicit stuff?

1:08:53 I'm going to assume you have no information as to... another man getting Rose pregnant.

1:09:02 Well, some interesting things pop up, but it's the post-mortem of this. It's the aftermath. And it can't be confirmed, but there are other things that pop up. The story never ends where you think it's going.

1:09:16 To end, Paul.

1:09:16 You should learn that from me.

1:09:19 So I'm asking, who impregnated Rose?

1:09:23 Okay, hold on, hold on. So Williams released, and he and his wife moved to London to get out of all of this stuff. And, you know, he always maintains his innocence, of course, as so many do. So people start to think about Georgiana, which I thought about Georgiana also. And had she discovered this affair and decided to attack her in this way, I think that's a very real possibility.

1:09:48 I mean, she would have thought of probably the medicine bottle maybe before William. She certainly came to his defense a lot. So, you know, then there are people who think Frederick, the raunchy poem author, might have been more involved. People are really steering away from William as the years go on.

1:10:09 And then.

1:10:10 Later in the year that Rose was murdered, 1902, Frederick, the guy who takes the stand, is charged with assaulting a woman in Pisenhall. And according to the newspaper, he smacked her against the wall and seized her throat with his left hand. So he's charged with assault. They don't talk about the circumstances, but they're actually kind of more modern day researchers because people have really looked into the story who said, I mean, that sounds like it fits a little bit more than William, who nobody has reported has been violent or anything at all.

1:10:47 Yeah, but OK, so Frederick, he's assaulting a woman. It's a sexually motivated crime.

1:10:53 They aren't sure. But they said he backed her head against the wall and seized her throat with his left hand. Again, we don't know much about the relationship. And Frederick is not talking about it, obviously, but he was charged with it. I don't know if he ended up spending prison time. I think it's the point of just that level of violence.

1:11:11 Of course, a lot of people can experience that.

1:11:15 But at least there is nothing that you told me in Rose's homicide where it sounded like the offender, this was a sexually motivated crime. This really sounded more of an anger-motivated crime. I think an interesting aspect to this is Georgiana's. you know, is it possible for Georgiana to have gone over and killed Rose as, you know, you've been having sex with my husband, you're pregnant by my husband, you know, I would not eliminate that as a possibility. Um, however, I still go back to that letter, you know, if, if that letter was written by William Gardner and he's saying, Hey, I want to come over tonight, burn the candle, let me know. Um, You know, he's putting himself at the crime scene. And, you know, I don't put a lot

1:12:08 of weight on handwriting in terms of being definitive. But Georgiana copying her husband's handwriting to a point to where it mimics it, you know, to where the handwriting expert is fooled, I don't buy that. You know, so I still... You know, Frederick's other crime against a woman is showing a level of violence, but I have a feeling that that was a very different type of crime than what happened to Rose. And then, of course, it's, you know, it doesn't negate the physical evidence that seems to be pointing or does point towards William Gardner that was found at the actual crime scene.

1:12:48 So let me lay out what I think could have happened. I actually like Georgiana a lot more than William for this. So the way things went was that she and William, she goes over to Mrs. Dickinson's house and sits there from what they said was 11 until 1.30 in the morning. I do think the letter writer was William. And Paul, I don't have any secret information. Like, I don't know.

1:13:11 I'm just getting, this is what my feeling was. I think he was the letter writer. I think he did get her pregnant. I think he was standing out there staring up at the window and the candle flickering. I think he met with her at midnight. And then I don't know if they had a conversation or not. I think Georgiana found out because the coroner, and I know that we are not putting a whole lot on the rigor mortis, but remember the coroner said between 2 a.m.

1:13:38 and 4 a.m. William was already kind of like back at home with his wife at that point. I think Georgiana could have taken the bottle with the paraffin in it, gone over, confronted her. There's a lot of blood, a lot of cut marks on her. William's a big guy. And Rose is pretty thin and petite. I mean, unless she was really, really fighting back, this to me almost felt like this was a pretty epic struggle between two people who maybe were of a little bit similar size.

1:14:09 I think she goes home. She tells William, you asshole, you cheated on me. And now I killed her. And that's why the water starts and they wash out her clothes. And that's why he goes on trial to defend, you know, to take the rap because he's the one who caused all this to begin with. So to me, that is just as valid as, you know, any other explanation because she has, I mean, Georgiana has all the answers, man.

1:14:33 All the answers. And she's trying to protect her flipping family, you know? There's no way she hasn't heard these rumors, Paul. I mean, they know. They know. And I think she had enough, and that was that.

1:14:42 I think it's, you know, it's a very good assessment. This is where having, you know, good documentation where I can, you know, assess... The amount of extended combat between the offender and the victim, that would be primary source of information for me to kind of go, yes, I believe this is probably a less robust offender than William. Right now, I can't say that based off of the information that's been presented, but that's part of it. If you do have extended struggle between Rose and the offender, and William is a very large, robust male, he likely would be able to easily dominate her physically, and he's armed with a knife. If this was truly an extended struggle, and we would see that to a point in this type

1:15:40 of crime scene, if it was Georgiana, then I would be completely on board with your assessment of this case.

1:15:48 Well, let me tell you about a confession. It's not Georgiana. She's not dumb enough to do that. But there's a guy, I don't know how the validity of this, I think they start to shoot this down quickly, but it's interesting. There's a guy two years later who was imprisoned in East Cliff Dover, and he was imprisoned because he deserted the military. He writes a confession. So his name is another William, William Taylor. He says he murdered Rose between midnight and 1 a.m. on June 1st in a botched robbery.

1:16:18 So he says he decided to burglarize Providence House. I don't know what his connection is. He doesn't explain it. He says he approached the residence, Rose and a man, which he says was, you know, someone matching William's description, were talking in the kitchen. The man leaves and she goes upstairs. But he decided after William left, William Taylor breaks into the house because he thinks everybody's now asleep and the guy's gone. He says that Rose probably heard him.

1:16:47 She came downstairs. He attacked her. He held her from behind and told her not to shout. But then, you know, she was going to cry for help and he punched her. She went unconscious. He slit her throat with a large table knife he found in the kitchen. But there are a lot of problems with this. Of course, they did what you say police should do. They say, well, prove it. Basically, he cannot explain the layout of the kitchen. I don't think there was anything about her being punched. I don't remember that from the autopsy. And he couldn't explain the position of her body. And of course, he doesn't talk about stabbing her in the chest, which was the biggest thing, or burning the body like a fire being started.

1:17:27 She may have had some sort of contusion to her right cheek. Okay.

1:17:31 Well, this is what he says happened.

1:17:34 Yeah, the problem that I have with this scenario, this guy is claiming that he's, this is a financially motivated crime.

1:17:41 Yeah.

1:17:42 And so, He's going into the Providence house in the middle of the night after he sees William Gardner leave and presumably Rose has gone up to bed. This is where you are talking about a burglary of an occupied dwelling. By nature, this is your cat burglar. This is somebody who is trying to be as quiet as possible in order to get whatever they're looking for inside the house.

1:18:09 Because if they make noise... they're going to wake up people or they're going to assume that they could wake up the occupants inside the house and things get complicated at that point. Here we have this shelf behind the door that's been smashed. That's not a quiet act. And he's not accounting for that action. So that evidence is contrary to this particular type of That this guy is saying that he committed. So I'm not I'm not buying it.

1:18:41 I think he's he is just looking for attention. This is, you know, when you have a high profile case, it sounds like this turned into a high profile case. You get these nut jobs that come out of the woodworks and they confess to committing the crime. And as I've mentioned before, there's a reason why law enforcement doesn't release all the details on a case to the media, because we need to use those details to, you know, figure out who's a nut job and who's actually the real killer.

1:19:09 Yeah, I'm going to, man, I'm on this Georgiana track. I feel so strongly about this. I don't know why. And it's just been not when I looked at the packet, but just when we've been discussing it. So I don't think that fire was intentional. I think it happened during the struggle because the oil lamp has crashed out. It's broken everywhere. The medicine bottle is broken also with the paraffin.

1:19:32 That's not somebody I don't think who's intentionally trying to set her on fire. I think it was in the struggle. I also think that Georgiana could have been telling the truth and she did give Rose this bottle and maybe Rose was carrying it downstairs to fill in more of the paraffin in the oil lamp. And that's how all this happened. I mean, I could be wrong about that, but I just, why would you, I guess, I mean, Paul, you have to think of it. It's like you're bringing a knife and basically the equivalent of a gasoline can to confront your mistress who's pregnant and you're planning to kill her. I don't know if, I know criminals do stupid things, but it just doesn't, to me, it doesn't make any sense at all, you know?

1:20:15 Yeah, it most certainly is odd, you know? And I don't, I mean, I can't dispute your theory at all as to, is this a possibility? This is where just, you know, my frustration is, is there's the lack of documentation and information that might be able to kind of figure out, was it William? Was it Georgiana? Right. And I wouldn't rule out the possibility that the couple went over there.

1:20:46 They could have been acting in concert. It's stupid to bring a prescription bottle with your kid's name on it to commit a homicide. But that is a level of contradiction. Why bring that when you're going over there with the intention to kill Rose using a knife. It is, I think, a good point that you're making on that front. It's not Frederick. It's not this, you know, military prisoner, you know, it's either William or Georgiana. And, you know, William got off, you know, and It doesn't sound like Georgiana was ever tried for this.

1:21:31 No, and never suspected until later. And, you know, again, if I go back to that timeline, the timeline does add up for him going to her house around midnight because Mrs. Dickinson says his wife was here, but he wasn't until closer to midnight. But then they're both each other's alibi starting at 1.30 in the morning. And Dr.

1:21:52 Lee thought it was a 2 a.m., And I know we've talked about rigor mortis can vary and stuff like that, but I'm thinking about the other parts of this too. It's June. It's mild weather. It's probably pretty mild in the house with the exception of this fire. You know, I don't know what, if anything would have shifted. And I just feel like it lines up more of he goes there. I don't know what the conversation was like, but when he gets home, he's in big trouble with his wife and he covers up for her later on because we know that that he got there close to midnight to the neighbors. He was supposed to be there at midnight at Rose's house, but, I mean, maybe they met a little bit early, and then we don't know

1:22:34 what happens after 1.30.

1:22:35 You know, it does, you know, William is a defendant, and, you know, who knows what his relationship is like with Georgiana during trial. It seems like there's a possibility, not a certainty, but a possibility that William would have thrown Georgian under the bus out of self-preservation during the trial.

1:23:01 You know, and I think the accidental fire aspect, this is again, you know, it's like you can generally tell, was this intentional? Did somebody try to light Rose on fire? Which, you know, we do have killers do that in order to obscure evidence, right? Versus was this something that occurred accidentally?

1:23:23 And that's where, okay, why bring the medicine? I need to see this medicine bottle.

1:23:28 Well, it's glass. I mean, they're clear it's glass because the constable immediately thinks it's shattered.

1:23:35 Is it a thin glass? Is it one of these larger brown bottles that sometimes you see old liquid prescriptions put into? Or is it one of these thicker walled? prescription bottles that I'm I'm envisioning which you could probably you know spike it down onto a concrete slab and it likely isn't going to break you know so that's that that's all part of the you know okay kind of the the devil's in the details in terms of assessing the evidence in this case and is there is there evidence that can separate you know the who the actual offender is between this married couple William Gardner and his wife Do you.

1:24:17 Think, we have to stop this. I'm going to keep going over this again, and we have to end this episode. But what I was thinking was, if you look at her injuries, right cheek is bruised, throat is slashed from ear to ear, two cuts totally severing her windpipe, several deep stab wounds in her chest, under her left clavicle, on the right side of her neck. There is an upward thrust of a sharp knife, several more gashes across her shoulders. I'm wondering, if this is Georgiana... I'm wondering if Rose was getting the better of her, and that's how those injuries, the shoulder injuries on Rose happened, the upper thrust happened. Would that be the case if she was not, maybe not on top of Georgiana, but this

1:24:57 is a dogfight. And William just kills rabbits. I mean, he knows how to kill somebody efficiently, you know, unless he's so mad he wants to cause all these injuries.

1:25:06 Killing a rabbit and killing a person is a completely different case.

1:25:09 I'm just saying he's big and he's in the village. He's killing stuff. So I don't know.

1:25:14 Well, yeah. No, I, you know, this is again where there isn't enough details for me to really draw a conclusion as to the strength, the physical size difference, skills, et cetera. You know, what's the verbal description of what happened to Rose could have been done by somebody as physically robust as William. but it also could probably line up with somebody like Georgiana in which Rose is physically equal with. I just don't know.

1:25:44 All right, Paul. Well, this was a heck of a case. I don't usually get worked up about stuff like this, but I just find this so fascinating. It's another mystery, another mystery, and people are continuing to work on this story. So what a good case.

1:25:58 Interesting case. We'll probably never have a conclusive answer on it.

1:26:02 No, no. All right. Well, Another case for another week. See you then.

1:26:07 Sounds good. Thanks, Kate.

1:26:12 This has been an Exactly Right production.

1:26:15 For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com slash buried bones sources.

1:26:20 Our senior producer is Alexis Amorosi.

1:26:23 Research by Allison Trouble and Kate Winkler-Dawson.

1:26:26 Our mixing engineer is Ben Talladay.

1:26:29 Our theme song is by Tom Breifogle.

1:26:31 Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.

1:26:33 Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer.

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1:26:43 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.

1:26:50 And Paul's best-selling memoir, Unmasked, My Life Solving America's Cold Cases, is also available now.

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