The Murder of Pearl Bryan

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So this episode is
the last of our Halloween group this year. It's not

(00:22):
so much a fun Halloween romp as it is a
horror story. Yeah. I mean, it's not a horror story
in the fun Exorcist style. It's a horror story in
the real humans or monster sometimes style. It's very violent
and scary, and it's a story that I have been
thinking about for the show literally for years, I would

(00:43):
say the last three years at least. I've had this
on my list and then backed off of it and
been like, I don't know I want to talk about
this one yet because it's upsetting. The material is very dark,
and it's upsetting not only because it involves a murder.
It'll also involves people speaking and behaving in a very
cavalier manner about that murder. It also involves the fate

(01:07):
of a young woman and the aftermath of what happens.
There is also a pregnancy involved in this murder. So
if you are very sensitive, or if you typically listen
with younger history buffs. This is when I highly recommend
pre screening first. I mean, we're not going to linger
on any of the particularly gory elements, but just its

(01:29):
bare facts are pretty troubling. Maybe for the little ones,
go go dig up the old episode about Halloween candy. Yeah,
that'd be perfect. We all love a little Halloween candy. Yeah,
this is not the one, but it's one that, like
I said, I have been backing off of it for years,
but it keeps staying at top of mind, and it's

(01:51):
for reasons. We'll talk about it at the very end.
I just think it's a story worth telling, and I
have some other thoughts on why. I kind of enjoy
examining stories like this. Not trying to sound like a ghoul,
but I have a reason. We'll talk about it on Friday, okay,
But for now, we're going to tell you a very

(02:11):
troubling story. On February first, eighteen ninety six and Fort Thomas, Kentucky,
a young farm hand named James Hewling was walking along
the fence line of the orchards of James Locke's farm,
and he made a horrifying discovery. It was a body
of what appeared to be a young woman wearing a

(02:33):
light blue and white dress, and she had been decapitated.
Hewling ran to Locke's house for help, and James Locke,
his son, Wilbert Locke, in one of their hired hands
named Mike Noonan all came from the house and they
went out to the body with him. James Lock then
went to Fort Thomas and alerted both the police and

(02:55):
the commander of the fort. Soon police soldier from the fort,
as well as members of the general public were also
on the scene of this grisly discovery. In addition to
that blue and white dress, the woman had been wearing
tan gloves, black shoes which will become important, black and
blue stockings, a blue underskirt and a union suit. Her corset,

(03:19):
which appeared to have been torn off and had bloody
handprints on it, and a piece of her dress were
also found nearby. There was also half of a man's
torn shirt sleeve at the scene. Blood was pooled at
the neck, but it was also found all around the
surrounding area. It appeared that the woman had been killed
mere hours before the discovery. Some estimates put it in

(03:42):
five to seven, but that was just the initial guests.
The body was on a slope, the feet were higher
up the slope than the torso the dress was open
above the waist, and footprints suggested that a woman had
been walking alongside of a man, but at some point
had broken into a run by herself until that man

(04:04):
had caught up. It was believed that she had physically
struggled against him as he subdued her, and then it
seemed like her throat had likely been cut. She had
several knife marks on one hand, suggesting she had tried
to block the knife, so the assumption was that her
head had been severed from her body after the murder

(04:25):
to try to hide this woman's identity, And while the
body had not been touched by anyone before investigators arrived,
as word of the murder spread and crowds came, almost
all of the evidence that would have been found in
the area immediately surrounding the body was trampled. Additionally, people
took all kinds of souvenirs from the scene, specifically looking

(04:48):
for things like leaves that had blood on them or
stray hairs from the victim, even branches from the bushes,
which would have potentially offered evidence of how the murder
had played out were snapped off by people who wanted
to take them home. It rained the afternoon of the discovery,
and one report even stated that people gathered buckets of

(05:09):
bloody mud as keepsakes once the victim's body had been removed.
There were also people who went to the undertaker's office
where it had been brought to try to see it.
Some of these are people who had friends or family
who had gone missing. They were hoping to see if
this deceased woman was their missing person, but a lot
of people just wanted to see the body at once.

(05:32):
Theories started to circulate about who this woman might have
been and what could have led to her horrific killing.
A popular theory that emerged right out of the gate
was that she may have been a sex worker who
had been involved with a soldier from the fort, and
this actually led to the fort's commander, Colonel Cochrane, to
quickly launch his own investigation within the troops because he

(05:53):
didn't want any kind of rumor like that circulating about
the men under his command. And this invests pretty quickly
shut those rumors down because Cochrane was rapid, but he
was thorough. He had accounted for all of the troops
whereabouts on the night of the murder in pretty short order.
The head was not found. A nearby reservoir was drained

(06:14):
in the hopes that it might be there, but it
was not, and as police went through lists of missing women,
they found over and over that they were not a
match for their victim. There were several incorrect claims about
who this was before the victim's true name was known.
One was the claim that the body was that of

(06:34):
Ella Markland. That claim was made by Ella Markland's mother
after she'd been allowed to examine the body herself, and
she was one hundred percent convinced that it was Ella.
The mother, who's identified in accounts only as missus Hart,
explained to police the specific characteristics of the body that
matched Ella's. She said she hadn't seen her daughter since

(06:56):
New Year's Eve, but this turned out to be a
case of a family with poor communication. Ella Markland was
really alive. She was working as a maid in a
house in Cincinnati. Another claim was that the murder victim
was Francisca Engelhart. She had recently married a man named
doctor Kentner in Cincinnati after the two had become pen

(07:17):
pals and Kentner had moved from South Dakota to be
with her. Francisca had vanished and so had Kentner. But
it turned out that that's because Kentner's other wife had
traveled to Cincinnati and discovered her husband's bigamy, and then
Ketner and his new wife had abruptly left for Kentucky.
But it took a while to untangle that whole story,

(07:40):
and there was a period of time where police were
operating on the idea that this body was Englehart, and
it was during that line of investigation that the initial
post martem was performed on the body, and this revealed
some troubling pieces of information. This woman was estimated to
be about twenty years old. They didn't think she had
been sexual assaulted, but she had been four to five

(08:02):
months pregnant when the murder was committed. A second post
mortem determined that she had not been decapitated after death
as had been thought. She had been decapitated while still alive.
But once the Englehart story was unraveled and that identification
was deemed invalid, investigators were once again at a loss

(08:23):
for who this person was. So all of that post
mortem information was attached to an unknown victim. The case
was finally cracked thanks in large part to a shoe
store owner. Louis Puk owned a shoe store in Newport, Kentucky,
and he was friends with James Locke's nephew. Locke, you

(08:44):
will recall, owned the orchard where the body was found,
and through that nephew, Poock heard about the discovery of
the body and the lack of evidence. Pook's shoe store
was close to the mortuary that the police had taken
the body to, so he, being curious, like many people,
locked up his store and strolled down there, And because
he was very well known in town and very respected,

(09:05):
police allowed him in to see the body. But even
though he was as fascinated by this crime as a
lot of other people, what really caught his eye was
the victim's shoes. Her shoes were the one article of
clothing that were of high quality, and they were uniquely small.
They were a size three, and Puck, being in the
shoe business, was curious. He looked at the manufacturer's code

(09:28):
on the shoes, which was twenty two eleven sixty two
four fifty eight. To most people, those numbers did not
mean anything, but Puck understood them immediately. The twenty two
referred to the size eleven was the number of the
last that was used to form the shoe, and then
the longer number, sixty two four fifty eight was a
factory stock number. So suddenly there was a lot more

(09:51):
to tail about these shoes, and Puke followed up on
that himself. He was able to trace the shoes to
a Greencastle, Indiana shoe store, so when detectives went there,
it was short work to learn that they had been
sold there in the Lewis and Hayes shoe store. But
though there was information on who had bought most of

(10:12):
that lot of shoes, two were sold without any customer information,
and one of those two pairs of shoes was the
one that was worn by the murdered woman. Incidentally, we
don't bring it up later, but her name was in
their register of purchase as buying a size three pair
of shoes, but they hadn't attached it to the make

(10:32):
of the shoes, so there was a little bit of
data mismatch going on there. And simultaneously, as this shoe
investigation was going on, the description of the woman's body
and clothing had already been printed in papers all over
the country, and then a woman named Susan Bryan, who
was married to Alexander Bryan and who lived in Greencastle,

(10:53):
started to think about the similarities in those descriptions to
her daughter Pearl. Pearl was at that time visiting friends
in Indianapolis, at least that is what she had told
her family. Pearl's brother Fred telegraphed her friends in Indianapolis
just to make sure she was okay, and they responded
that she was not visiting them. This news was seen

(11:16):
first by Western Union manager aw Early, who knew the
second he saw it that the message conveyed even more
than the identity of the deceased. Because of his own
social connections to Pearl's circle, he knew who Pearl's likely
killer or killers were. Coming up. We'll talk about who

(11:36):
Pearl Brian was, but first we'll take a quick sponsor break.
Pearl Brian was the twelfth and youngest child of farmer
Alexander S. Bryan and his wife Susan, who, as we said,

(11:56):
lived in Greencastle, Indiana. At least seven of those children
lived to adulthood, but specifics beyond that are a little
bit unclear, and part of that is due to the
Brian family being one of the largest in the area,
with many many people having that name. Pearl's father, Alexander,
was successful, and Pearl is often described as the family's favorite.

(12:17):
In addition to being the youngest, Pearl is described as
a young woman who everybody tended to adore. She was smart,
she graduated from high school with honors in eighteen ninety two,
and by all accounts, she was very beautiful. After she
finished school, Pearl had started teaching Sunday School in Greencastle,
and she's described as having an endless list of admirers,

(12:39):
but also as a young woman who wasn't especially interested
in romances with any of them. She wasn't easily impressed,
and most of the young men who expressed their interest
in her found themselves her friends, but nothing more. It's
worth noting, of course, that these descriptions of her are
from accounts that happened after her death, so the odds

(12:59):
of it anybody's saying anything really negative about her were
a little lower than they might have been. Otherwise she
may have been as beloved and virtuous as everyone said,
like the Bell of Putnam County, as she was called
in one rite up, but we don't really have a
way to verify that information, Like, we don't really know
how much of this is the eulogizing of a person

(13:22):
after they had died, Yeah, and how much is really
what people remember. In eighteen ninety five, so around the
time she was twenty one, Pearl met a young man
named Scott Jackson. Jackson had recently moved to Greencastle from
New Jersey with his mother. He had a sister that
was already living in the area, and in Greencastle, Jackson

(13:42):
became good friends with one of Pearl's close friends, a
young man and her second cousin named Will Wood. Scott
also enrolled in dental college in Indianapolis, and Will would
often visit him in the city, and the two were
known to carouse there and then in the spring of
eighteen nine, twenty five, Will brought Scott to the Brian
home to introduce him, and Pearl is said to have

(14:05):
instantly fallen for Jackson. Will later said of the two
of them, quote, Pearl was stuck on Jackson from the
first time they met. Jackson would come and get my
horse and buggy and drive over to Pearl's house. When
they would often go driving together, Pearl was pretty and ambitious,
but I never thought she would do wrong. Now I
can see she was perfectly infatuated with Jackson from the start,

(14:29):
so much that I am firmly convinced she was completely
in his power and he took advantage of his influence
over her. So going back to the telegraph manager aw
Early that we mentioned before the break, Early was friends
with Will Wood, and through Will he had learned that
Scott Jackson and Pearl Brian were having a sexual romantic relationship.

(14:52):
But though he was friends with Wood, Early told the
police everything he knew about Wood and Jackson and their
connection to Pearl, and specifically that he had seen a
letter that Jackson wrote to Wood about the fact that
Pearl was going to be a mother, and that the
two men had corresponded about ways the pregnancy might be terminated.
Allegedly some of those had been tried. There's some talk

(15:15):
of medicines being ordered and would giving them to Pearl,
but none of them worked. The next thing discussed in
the letters was an abortion, and that Pearl was going
to tell her family she was visiting friends in Indianapolis,
while in reality she would go to Cincinnati for that procedure.
With this information, the Greencastle police went to the Brian

(15:37):
home with additional information and clothing samples to confirm that
this dead woman was indeed Pearl. Then they sent word
to Cincinnati police, leading to the arrest of three men,
Scott Jackson, Alonzo Walling, who will talk about in a bit,
and William Wood. During early questioning, Jackson said that he

(15:59):
had last seen Pearl during the holidays, maybe January second,
and that he and Pearl were quote only friendly. There
was also the matter of a valise that Jackson had
left in a saloon and then was alleged to have
switched out for another, and how that valise was missing.
Jackson said that he had loaned this suitcase to somebody
and that it had not been returned. Jackson was strip

(16:22):
searched and there were two significant scratches on one of
his arms, as well as some blood spatters on a sleeve.
To explain, he told police quote, I was bothered by
bugs the other night, and I scratched myself. He also
said that he would like to be guarded while in
the jail, and at one point asked, quote, hasn't Walling
been arrested yet? At that point they had not considered

(16:45):
Walling a suspect, but that resulted in Walling's arrest. While
in custody, Jackson was examined by Sergeant Kiffmeyer from the
Cincinnati Police Force. Kiffmeyer used a system of measurements known
as the Bertial system to assess Jackson's physicality. So this
system was kind of a precursor to fingerprinting and mugshots,

(17:08):
and that it created a database based on data collected
from an individual of criminal identities. This was like specific
measurements of parts of their body and that sort of
made a profile of their physicality. But kiff Meyer seems
to have applied this same kind of system to the

(17:28):
kind of analysis that we would more associate with phrenology.
So instead of just measurements built up to identify a person,
it was more like this person's head as a murderer's head.
And today phrenology is recognized as not being a real science.
At the same time, kiff Meyer's assessment of this suspect

(17:49):
was really damning. At the time, he said of Scott
Jackson quote, every man's head tells its own story. Jackson
is another H. H. Holmes. Jackson has the cunning to
plot and plan and to conceal. Jackson is a mind
far beyond the ordinary. He has a head such as
Napoleon would have. Jackson knew fully and realized what lay

(18:10):
before him in the murder of Pearl Brian. Jackson is
absolutely incapable of any expression of remorse. The only appeal
that can be made to Jackson is through his fear
of punishment. Jackson's skull is abnormal and unusually long in
proportion to its breadth. It is abnormally developed on the
right side in front and on the left side in

(18:31):
the rear of the head. Jackson is a natural monster
or monstrosity, whichever you will look at. His portrait is
that the face of a criminal. Jackson has other peculiarities.
His fingers are disproportionately long to his height. Jackson has
all the characteristics of a criminal by nature. So if
you have long fingers, hide them from the Kiff Meyers

(18:52):
of the world. Yeah, I'll also note the guy that
developed this system of measurements. We're gonna do an episode
on him. We are, yes, Okay, He's come up in
a past episode, although we did not name him specifically, Right,
should we tell listeners what that was he was the
person that did the handwriting analysis in the Dreyfus affair, Yes,

(19:15):
which will come up yeah in a very soon episode.
All Right, Knowing the horrific outcome of their relationship between
Scott Jackson and Pearl, it's easy to envision him as
like a mustache twirling villain, particularly after you hear this
description from this police analysis. And while he was undoubtedly

(19:37):
evil and apparently lacking in a conscience, his potential for
violence was not at all apparent to anyone close to
him or Pearl. Her parents are said to have really,
really loved him, and surely they and others thought that
the two might make a future together. There are a
lot of writings about how they were totally fine with
the two of them sitting in the parlor alone together

(19:57):
because they knew nothing would happen. But it's also likely
that because Pearl had not been involved with anyone else
romantically up to that point, she was easily manipulated by Jackson,
who seemed much more worldly than her. By all accounts,
Scott Jackson was charming, and he seemed to be a
fine and upstanding young man to everybody in Indiana. But

(20:18):
it turned out he had been in serious legal trouble
before he met Pearl Bryan. He'd concealed his past when
moving from New Jersey to Indiana. When he arrived in
Greencastle with his mother, it was after he had been
involved in an embezzlement scandal as an employee of the
Pennsylvania Railroad Company. His job there had included opening and

(20:40):
routing mail, and it turned out that he, along with
a partner named Alexander Letz, had been keeping checks that
came into the railroad and cashing them for themselves. By
the time this racket was discovered, they were estimated to
have stolen thirty two thousand dollars. They used the money
to live a life of dreams, thinking, betting on races

(21:01):
and sport, and generally just partying. When the railroad discovered
this missing money, it was apparently pretty obvious that Scott
Jackson was guilty. He cut a deal to turn state's
evidence and testified against his partner in the scheme, Alexander
lets Once the trial was over, Let's was in state
prison and Jackson was on his way out of Jersey City.

(21:23):
And now we get to Alonzo Walling. Alonzo was from
Mount Carmel, Indiana to the east of Indianapolis. He had
worked in a glass factory as a child, and when
that factory had closed, his mother arranged for him to
attend Indianapolis Dental College. It's there where he met Scott Jackson.
You're wondering why he was working in a glass factory
as a kid, is because his father died when he

(21:45):
was very very young and the family needed the income.
So Scott Jackson and Alonzo Walling also roomed together in
Cincinnati later on, and Alonzo was aware not only of
Scott Jackson's relationship with Pearl, but also so that he
had gotten her pregnant and that he intended to kill her.
And Walling confessed to all of this when he was

(22:07):
brought in by police. In a statement to police, Walling
said that on Christmas Day of eighteen ninety five, so
a little more than a month before the murder quote,
Jackson took me into a corner of the room and
told me that he and Billy Wood had gotten Pearlbrian
into trouble and that he must get rid of her.
He suggested two ways in which it might be done.

(22:27):
One of the plans he suggested was to take her
to a room and kill her there and leave her.
Then he spoke up quickly and said, no, I have
a sudden thought, as something often tells me when I
am on the wrong idea, it would not do to
leave her there, so I will instead cut her to
pieces and drop the pieces in different vaults around town.

(22:48):
Walling was also examined by kiff Meyer, and kiff Meyern
analyzed his head measurements too. Of the second suspect, the
sergeant stated quote, Walling's head is that of a I'm
in place criminal. He's just the opposite of Scott Jackson.
At the same time, Walling is utterly void of any
ability or cunning to plot and plan and to conceal.

(23:10):
Jackson knew fully and realized what lay before him in
the murder of Pearl Brian. Walling had not realized the
enormity of the crime and is supremely indifferent to the
consequences and to the crime committed. No appeal, not even
the fear of punishment, will have any impression on Walling.
We kind of said this earlier, but I'm just going
to say, you can't know these things for measuring a

(23:32):
person's skull. No, are you sure Tracy, can we measure
our skulls and find out that I'm a monster? I
hope not. Probably. I don't need a skull measurement to
tell me that. Uh. Walling also said that Jackson asked
medical students about fast acting poisons, and that he told
Waling he had a combination of arsenic and cocaine in

(23:53):
a syringe which he intended to use to kill Pearl.
Walling also said to police, quote, I don't think it
killed her at once, and that she tried to fight
him off when he went to cut off her head.
Walling also mentioned that valise we brought up earlier, and
the particularly unsettling detail that quote, I think it was
after midnight. He came in with the valise and I

(24:14):
saw him open it and say you are a butte
you are? He thought I was asleep. He told authorities
that he thought that Jackson had buried the head, but
Jackson told his own version of the story and that
placed the blame on Wood and Walling. He said it
was Wood and not himself, who had gotten Pearl pregnant,

(24:36):
and that woold masterminded the murder. Jackson told police quote
Wood wrote to me telling me of the trouble and
asking me to assist him out of it. I showed
the letter to Walling and he volunteered to undertake the job.
It was then planned to bring the girl here. She
arrived on Tuesday of last week, and what I saw

(24:56):
and know of her after her arrival here I have told.
And of course William Wood told yet another version of
the story. Under questioning, He indicated that both Jackson and
Pearl had confided in him about their sexual relationship and
about the pregnancy. He confirmed that an abortion had been discussed,

(25:16):
and that he had been the one to tell Pearl
about that plan, and that a friend of Wallings was
to perform the procedure. It was later determined by police
at Walling was the one who intended to perform it.
Wood also said that he had intended to accompany Pearl
to that appointment, but that his father had requested him
at home that day. Wood was, according to accounts of

(25:38):
the day, registered by police, but not detained at that time.
He was eventually indicted with a betting an abortion, but
not murder, and then he kind of vanishes from the
historical record. The missing valise was brought to the police
by a saloon keeper named John Coogle, and that valize
was used in the questioning of Jackson. Jackson said it

(25:59):
had been filled with miss Brian's things that those were
now in the river. He also said that it and
another smaller valise that had been found sitting in a
barber shop that both Jackson and Walling often went to,
were both Pearls. The proprietor of a pub frequented by
Walling and Jackson was also questioned, as was a black

(26:21):
employee of the pub named Alan Johnson. This sounds like
a strange scenario where the suspects were also present during
these witness interviews. Obviously, police work has changed a lot
since eighteen ninety six. Both men stated that Jackson, Walling,
and Pearl Brian had been in the saloon and that
Jackson had ordered a whiskey for himself and a sasprilla

(26:43):
for Pearl, and that they left in a carriage together
around seven pm. They also said Jackson was back the
next night by himself, in an odd mood and complaining
of a headache, with a valise. Yeah, there's the whole
secondary part of this, for that Selen may or may
not have also been a brothel, and that Alan Johnson

(27:04):
had also implicated another man as having been the carriage driver,
which turned out to not be true. It gets very complicated.
This is one of those stories where I'm trying to
pare down an awful lot of information for clarity. So
if you go looking and you're like, why didn't that
get mentioned, That's why. There was also a letter that
was intercepted within the postal service. This had been written

(27:25):
by Scott Jackson to Will Wood. It had actually been
written the day he was arrested, several hours prior to
being taken in. In this letter used a code that
the men had worked up, referring to Pearl as a
man named Bert. Jackson explained this code to police, and
this letter instructed will to write to the Brian family
as though the letter is from Pearl and say that

(27:47):
she has found work in Chicago or somewhere else and
will write more later. The letter has instructions to burn
it after it's been read, and concludes with quote stick
by your old chum, Bill, and I will help you
in the same way. Sometimes. There is also a PostScript
that reads quote be careful what you write to me.

(28:08):
When questioned about this letter, Jackson very casually confessed to
writing it, but then he said that Walling had made
him write it, and Walling, of course denied that. Basically,
both Jackson and Walling told the story repeatedly and with
ever changing details between the two of them, They gave
several different locations for the missing head, none of which

(28:30):
proved out when investigated. They both continued to blame the
other and will Wood for Pearl's murder. The papers ran
new confession after new confession as each man added to
the story. At one point, Walling had stated quote. For
several days before the murder, Jackson would sit about our
room and read a medical dictionary to try and learn

(28:52):
all about the effect of poisons. He finally selected cocaine
as the most suitable for his purpose. At last, you
to four grains of cocaine and put in sixteen drops
of water. He told me that he was going to
give the cocaine solution to Pearl and make her drink it,
and that it would kill the vocal powers. She would
be unable to scream or talk, and then he was

(29:14):
going to cut her head off. Jackson admitted to purchasing cocaine,
but said that he gave it to walling. Even when
put in a room with the corpse of Pearl Brian,
both men continued this just really bickery rhetoric, that the
other one was lying. But as the two men had
tried to lay blame on one another, they had both

(29:35):
implicated themselves so deeply in the murder that to most
people the fine points of who did what hardly mattered.
Articles ran in paper under headlines like both are guilty
from early on in the reporting of all their various statements. Yeah,
it kind of becomes like a matter of degrees of like, well,
I bought the cocaine and took her in the carriage,

(29:55):
but I didn't actually kill her, and the other guy
did and he said the exact opposite. It was clear
they were both involved. Nobody was really all that concerned
about like who did exactly what part of it. Coming up,
we are going to talk about the legal proceedings that
were held regarding the murder, but before we do, we
will take a break and hear from stuff you missed
in history classes, sponsors. So all of the things that

(30:27):
we have talked about up to this point happened in
the course of less than a week. Pearl had been
found on February first. Jackson had been arrested on February fifth,
and Walling had been taken into custody in the very
early hours of February sixth. Then there was this moment
of a very strange confession, not from any of them,

(30:47):
but from a woman named May Hollingsworth, and that happened
shortly after both men had been arrested. Initially, Hollingsworth made
a statement to police that she had met Pearl at
Union Station by chance, and that she had procured drugs
for Miss Brian, presumably to end the pregnancy, and then

(31:07):
promised to meet her again two days later, but May
said she stood Pearl up for that second meeting. The
next day, Hollingsworth said she had performed an operation presumably
an abortion on Pearl Brian on January thirty. First. She
said this operation had gone wrong and that Pearl had
died as a consequence, and that the body had been dumped.

(31:29):
After that, she claimed to have a letter that was
written by Scott Jackson explaining that Pearl had died in
his room and that a black man had cut off
her head to try to help hide her identity. Police
came to the conclusion that Hollingsworth was probably addicted to
opium and was an acquaintance of Jackson and Wallingen, that

(31:51):
what was going on here was she was trying to
save them whatever was happening. Her confession was thrown out.
The Indianapolis Journal article relaying this story says glibly quote anyway,
Miss Hollingsworth is a study. When the coroner's inquest was
held on February eleventh, the facts of the case were
laid out based on what had been confirmed through investigation.

(32:15):
The most damning for Jackson and walling was that while
they had been seen getting into a cab outside Wallingford's
saloon on the night of January thirty first, no one
could account for their whereabouts from seven pm that night
until the next morning. The coroner's jury announced their conclusions,
which were that the body was Pearl Brian, that she

(32:35):
had been given cocaine quote for reasons unknown, that she
had been decapitated while alive, and that she was last
seen with Jackson and walling The next step in the
justice system was the convening of the Grand jury of
Campbell County, Kentucky, and this quickly resulted in an indictment
against both of the suspects. At this point, both men

(32:57):
were being held in Cincinnati, Ohio, so there was a
little bit of legal lag as the paperwork was done
to get them transferred to Kentucky. The defendant's council wanted
them to stay in Ohio because they felt they would
be lynched in Kentucky before the trial could even take place.
The governor of Kentucky at the time, William O'Connell Bradley,

(33:17):
assigned the entire state militia to the Campbell County Sheriff,
Julius Plumber to try to keep the prisoners safe. The
defense council continued to find reasons to delay this transfer,
but finally, on March seventeenth, the two men were moved.
A crowd witnessed them departing Cincinnati, and another crowd witnessed
them arriving in Newport, Kentucky. Yeah there, Throughout all of this,

(33:43):
the police departments involved were constantly just glutted with people
who wanted to witness some of this. Jackson and Walling
were arraigned on Monday, March twenty third. Both men pled
not guilty four days after the arragnmant Pearl Brian was
at last laid to rest almost two months after her death.

(34:05):
Pearl's parents wanted to wait even longer. They were adamant
that she should not be buried without her head, but
Pearl's siblings begged their parents to just let her body
be interred until they finally acquiesced. The day of the
burial at Greencastle's Forest Hill Cemetery, a huge crowd gathered
to see Pearl interred, as requested by her parents, at

(34:27):
the highest point in the cemetery. Scott Jackson's trial was
set to start on April seventh, and wallings would start
as soon as Jackson's was concluded. Although hundreds of onlookers
had attended the arraignment, there had been a decision to
limit who could watch the trial, so the crowd inside
the courtroom was small. Even so, Jackson was kicked by

(34:50):
a woman who was seated in the courtroom as he
walked by. In the court of public opinion, he was guilty,
but the trial didn't start that day though Jackson's a turn. L. J.
Crawford had been given two weeks from the arraignment to
prepare for the case. He was insistent that he needed
more time. He wanted a month. He got two more weeks.

(35:10):
One of the concerns was the testimony of William Wood,
which Crawford said he had not had time to prepare for,
and that he had witnesses he could call that would
indicate that Wood was not trustworthy. He just needed more
time to arrange for that. Finally, on April twenty second,
the Jackson trial began. During the trial, the prosecution made

(35:31):
the case that Scott had charmed Pearl into a relationship
that resulted in pregnancy, that he had arranged for her
to travel to Cincinnati, that he was seen with her
in the two days leading up to her death, that
he had been in possession of pearl satchel after her death,
and that he had been seen showing off a dissecting
knife in the weeks leading up to the murder. One
surprising witness was included. That was George H. Jackson. He

(35:56):
was a black Surrey driver who said he had been
hired by Alonzo Walling the night of the murder to
take the trio of Walling, Jackson, and Brian from Cincinnati
to Kentucky. He had approached police after the coroner's inquest
with this information, but newspaper coverage at the time indicated
that his story had been deemed untrustworthy. According to George

(36:18):
Jackson quote, he heard a noise that sounded like a
woman suffering, and they moved around and shook the carriage,
and they broke a glass. And then I was scared,
and I put my left hand out and my right
hand on the lantern, and it kind of bent down,
and I started to jump off, and I said, there
is something wrong in the back part of that carriage,
and I don't care anything about this job. And I

(36:39):
went to hand the lines to him. And when I
went to look at him, I was looking at a gun.
He said, if you don't drive this horse, I will
blow you to hell. Of course I understood and began
to drive the horse. George said that after he saw
the two men disembark with a woman in between them,
he fled the scene in a panic, although he had
been instructed to wait on the road and listened for

(37:01):
them to whistle for a pickup when they were ready. Yeah,
that person he's referring to when he said he tried
to hand the reins to him was Alonzo Walling, who
had sat up on the seat with him to direct
him where to go. So it seemed surprising to me that,
after his testimony had initially been talked about in the
papers as though it was worthless, he was kind of

(37:22):
an important witness in the actual trial. The rest of
the trial relayed the various accounts given by people connected
to Jackson, including Wood and the investigators who had questioned
both men. We've gone over a lot of those details already,
and on May fourteenth, Scott Jackson was found guilty of
murder in the first degree. Walling's trial took place the

(37:42):
following month. It included a lot of the same information,
and on June eighteenth, he too was found guilty of
murder in the first degree. Both men were sentenced to death.
Scott Jackson and Alonzo Walling were hanged on March twenty second,
eighteen ninety seven. Even up to the last minute, Scott
Jackson was changing his story. He briefly claimed before heading

(38:05):
to the gallows that Walling was innocent. He said this
with so much conviction that the governor was contacted. The
governor indicated that if Jackson stated on the gallows that
Walling was innocent, that the execution of Jackson could continue,
but that Walling's would be stayed, but after counting down
the clock, Jackson said he could not say that Walling

(38:27):
was innocent, No, and they were both hanged. One of
the things that's jarring about this entire case, if you
start looking at it, is the way that Pearl is
kind of sidelined in almost all of the writing about
it from the time. Whether that's due to the unsavory
idea that a woman that everyone perceived as innocent had
become pregnant, or because the gruesome nature of her death

(38:50):
was just too much to handle. People talked a lot
about the logistics of the murder and the suspects, while
not really talking about Pearl Brian much at all. The
odd nature of Pearl's death and the trial was summed
up in the opening of a Chicago Chronicle multi page
analysis of the story that appeared on May tenth, eighteen

(39:11):
ninety six, so as those trials were wrapping up, and
it read quote, Pearl Brian's murder will always be a strange,
empathetic story in the annals of crime by reason of
all that sprung up in connection with it, almost daily,
running into the very last days of the trial of
one of the accused, Scott Jackson, some of which fell
to pieces as rapidly as they had been constructed. The

(39:33):
chains of circumstances which often seemed complete, only to be
broken in a moment. The previous life of the girl
in Greencastle, Indiana, where she grew up without a whisper
of suspicion against her reputation until her headless body was identified,
the story is without parallel. There was something in connection
with the butchery of the victims of Holmes that was

(39:55):
so revolting that the public nearly forgot to bestow that
sympathy which usually follows such cases. I'm sorry this is
not a fun Halloween episode. I promise I tried for
fun ones, and this one has just been lurking and
lingering there. It really has, and we can talk more
about it in behind the scenes. But I do have

(40:16):
a very brief and fun and very Halloween e listener mail,
which unfortunately is really a description of a picture. This
is from our listener Brandy, who sent us the cutest
Halloween card of her puppies, Merle and Luca. One I'm
not sure which is which. One is a little fluffy
beebe who is black, and one is a much larger

(40:38):
dog who is black and white, and they're both dressed
as males, and it just is a big trigger treat card.
It's the cutest thing. Brandy, Thank you. This was like
a delight and I actually opened it after I had
finished writing this episode outline and I was like, oh,
that was exactly what I needed. So hopefully that's exactly
what listeners need to contemplate adorable dog stressed as snails

(41:01):
and looking pretty relaxed about it. I must say. So.
There's a Halloween stinger on the end of this not
very fun episode. If you would like to write to us,
send us all of your pet Halloween costume pictures I beg.
If you would like to write to us, you can
do that at History podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You

(41:21):
can also find us on social media as Missed in History,
and if you have not subscribed, you can do that
on the iHeartRadio app or wherever else you listen to
your favorite shows. Stuffy Missed in History Class is a
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the

(41:42):
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.

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