The Bookkeeper, The Bitter Ex, and the Aconite in Her Hands

The Bookkeeper, The Bitter Ex, and the Aconite in Her Hands

The first impossible detail was her hands: folded neatly in her lap on a freezing stairwell as snow drifted on her coat, a posture the coroner said didn't fit a death from cold. A shopkeeper remembered a woman asking precise questions about aconite concentration, and one name linked to the scene for decades - who quietly watched, waited, and may have arranged a death that read like a calm placement rather than a collapse?

In this episode, we lay out the known facts from the morning Julie Reed was found, the threads that led Detective Clifford Hall back to a shop on Larimer Street, and the suspect who kept showing up in records and memories - but can those facts explain why her hands were folded?

Person: Julie Reed
Date: December 4, 1923
Location: Rear stairwell, Larimer Street
Age: 27
Shopkeeper: James Soo

- Julie Reed was found at 7:00 AM on December 4, 1923, seated upright with hands folded in her lap.
- The temperature at the scene was 22 degrees Fahrenheit and snow had drifted onto her coat.
- Coroner ruled cause of death as cardiac failure secondary to cold exposure, closing the file.
- James Soo, proprietor of Sun On Water since 1912, recalled a woman asking about aconite concentration and volume months before the death.
- Frederick Ashby reported his former bookkeeper Lauren Baker, age 34, felt unjustly replaced two weeks before Reed's hiring and remained socially close to Reed for two years.

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