September 11, 2024 • 54 mins
In this first part of a two-part episode, Kate and Paul head to 1903 Buffalo, NY where an affluent man is found dead in his home by his staff. After following the web of his complex social and romantic life, we set off on an investigation into who could have possibly killed him.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the
last twenty five years writing about true crime.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
compelling true crimes.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring
new insights to old mysteries.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
This is buried Bones.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Hi, Kate, how are you?
Speaker 1 (01:03):
I'm well, Paul? How about you?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
I am hanging in there. What's been going on?
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Well, I'm trying to stay organized, and I'm pretty good
at it, I think because I am the master or mistress.
I'm not sure which of making lists? Are you a
list kind of person? Do you do a lot of lists?
Or are you putting info in your calendar? How do
you stay organized?
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Oh? Geez, you know, for in my personal life. No,
I don't make any lists. You know. I've tried to
do the whole task list thing, and I just start
ignoring it. That's not me, you know. But when it
comes to like casework, yes, you're like, if I want
to go interview somebody, I will make a list of
you know, questions and details that I'm trying to get
or other things within the case. So within the professional realm, yes,
(01:47):
I do rely on lists.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
So Google Keep. Do you ever use Google Keep or
anything like that.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
I haven't. I I've heard of it, but I've never
used it.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
So I've gotten my kids on Google Keep. I had
one of them do online school at home, and she
was really trying to stay organized. It was like going
from a normal middle school to doing like doctoral work
on your own, and she really needed to stay organized.
And we used Google Keep, and you know, you can
put it on your computer, you can put it on
(02:16):
your phone, and that's been so helpful for her that
I decided to do it. But I've gotten a little
bit OCD about it because I color code everything now
and and I'll put stuff on the family calend I'll
put stuff on Google Keep and not on the family calendar.
And my kids are like, what do you mean We're
(02:36):
going out to dinner tonight that's not on the family calendar,
but it's on my Google keep, so I do. I'm
hyper organized with pretty much everything that I do. But
I just know that there are quite a few people
who just don't. I don't know how you can operate
without a list, even I have to do a chore list.
So I have a lot of respect for you if
you can keep all that stuff in your pretty little
(02:57):
head that you have to do.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
You know, it's the times, and I forget to do
something for sure, you know, and maybe a list would
would have reminded me. It's just for me, you know.
I'm all about you know. I guess efficiency and lists
on one hand, would be efficient, but then I could
spend more time generating lists than actually getting work done.
And that's my fear.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
That's a pretty big fear. Well, we're going to jump
right into this story, and I can guarantee you that
the investigators who had to dig into this story had many, many, many,
many many lists that they had to deal with, because
this is a big one. I'm not sure we've had
one with this much like relationship drama before, and we've
(03:41):
had some pretty intense relationship drama stories. This next level,
I know, next level and you know, when I think
about a relationship drama, I think sort of like it's
I don't know, present day relationship drama and the stuff
that plays out on social media and who's getting a
divorce and all of that. This is a story from
nineteen oh three that has incredible drama in it and
(04:05):
some pretty I think, bigger than life characters. And I
just have to keep reminding myself. I always think, you
know that time period, which is still Victorian America, that
is that time period. I can't believe that there's that
much drama. But people are people. It doesn't matter if
you're in the fifteen hundreds or you know, twenty twenty five.
(04:25):
It just doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
We just have not changed much over the centuries. But
just there's some of all things we have to take
into consideration for sure.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Yeah, and this will take some historical context on my
part to explain to you. This is a sex scandal
sallacious in nineteen oh three. This came from a listener
who I love it when our listeners reach out to
us and let us know about stories that they think
are really interesting, and this is a good one. And
I also want to kind of give a nod before
we jump into this to an author named Kimberly Tilley
(04:57):
who wrote a book called cold Heart, and that's what
calling this cold Heart, and you'll find out why here
pretty soon. So let's go ahead and set the scene. Okay,
nineteen oh three, one of our older ones, and this
involves a family called the Verdict Family. And I warned
you a little bit about this. This is there's a
(05:17):
lot going on here, and there's a lot of backstory,
but I've got lots and lots of yellow and this
is a big enough story that we needed to make
it a two parter, probably the biggest research document I've
ever had. So you better get yourself a coava and
sit back and let Aunt Kate tell you a story
by the fire.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
I'm going to saddle up and you know, get my
ears going here.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Okay, So the Verdict family lives in a beautiful three
story house on Ashland Avenue, which is in Buffalo, New York.
And this is very close to an area at that
time called Millionaire's Row, and Buffalo is a really bustling city.
It's an industrial hub because it's on Lake Erie, which
(06:00):
Lake Erie served as a gateway for where goods were
passing between the East Coast and the West coast. So
Buffalo had a lot of money, a lot of money,
a lot of powerful people. You know, couples in their
thirties and forties had a lot of money and socialized together.
When I said sex scandal, I was thinking, this is
that set of people, lots of money, very good looking.
(06:23):
Everybody's intermingling, and there is quite a lot of drama.
And we know throughout history that drama, particularly with romantic relationships,
can lead to murder. And that is the bread and
butter of what we talk about on this show.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Yeah, it's one of the fundamental motives of why people
kill each other. So I'm kind of curious to see
where this goes.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Okay, the main person here is a guy named Edwin Burdick.
We're going to call him ed self made, really wealthy man.
He was a stenographer in an envelope factory and he
rose through the ranks and he, along with another guy,
eventually bought the company. So he also owns a publishing company.
(07:06):
He's very outgoing as a social guy. He has been
known for being especially compassionate, and he has a wife
named Alice. He's forty, she's a few years older, and
they're members of a group in Buffalo that's known as
the Elmwood Avenue Set, which is about twenty couples who
(07:27):
belong to a golf club, the Red Jacket Golf Club,
and is the president, and they, you know, are also
a couple that love to go dancing, so they go
to a local dancing club often. This Elmwood Avenue Set,
which just sounds like a really interesting social club, has
a reputation for throwing really crazy, wild parties. They are
(07:48):
also kind of aloof and snotty and sort of looked down.
It sounds like on the rest of Buffalo society. Even
though it sounds like Ed's a great guy, he's in
an elite group and that you know, tends to tick
off the people who are not in that elite group.
And twenty couples is not that many people. There's a
lot of I think options for kind of like jealousy,
(08:09):
and you know, there's money there. So this is again
rife for a big scandal. This couple has three daughters.
There's a fifteen year old, a thirteen year old, and
a ten year old that live in the house and
Alice's mother in law, so Ed's mom lives with the Verdicts.
Her name is Maria Hull, and there are some domestic workers.
It's a pretty big household here. Now. Alice is not
(08:31):
living there currently, and I'll explain why in a little bit.
This is what we have to do. I have to
tell you about the death, and then we have to
go back for the backstory. Once we have all that context,
we'll go back to the investigation. Does that make sense?
I probably will have most answers to your questions, but
there's a lot of context that goes into this.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Okay, makes sense to me, So.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
If you get confused, let me know. But I might
have to do a little bit of searching in my
document to jump around. Okay, so this is the morning
of Friday, February twenty seventh, nineteen oh three. I will presume,
because we are in Buffalo, that it is freezing there.
They're freezing their little butts off. It's very cold. So
(09:12):
the cook's name is Maggie. She's the one who goes downstairs.
She says, oh, no, something bad has happened. It is
freezing downstairs. The front door is wide open, so the
winter wind is coming in, and she immediately freaks out
because she knows that Ed would have locked all the
(09:33):
doors every single night. She closes the door, she goes
into the kitchen. The window in the kitchen is wide open,
which makes it cold. Also, she immediately goes to thieves.
Because this is such a nice house in a great area.
She runs upstairs to find Ed. She runs into the
maid in the upstairs hall, whose name is Katie. So
(09:55):
now we have two domestic workers who are very stressed out.
And Maggie says to Katie, the door's open, something's happened.
Maggie knocks on Ed's bedroom door, no answer, So Maggie
pushes open the door. Empty bed. No Ed, and the
bed is actually still made, so it doesn't look like
he ever even came up for the night. Katie says
(10:17):
to Maggie, Yeah, I'm the one who made that bed,
and I did it yesterday, so he hasn't been up here.
Maggie had last seen Ed in the din when she
came home that night, so she goes downstairs to see
if he fell asleep. That happened often. When she gets
to the door of the den, Maggie has a case
of nerves and she is scared someone who also lives
(10:39):
in the house is Alice's mother and her name is
Maria Hull. Maggie gets to the door of the den,
she loses her nerve and she runs upstairs to wake
up Ed's mother in law, Alice's mom, who is Maria.
She's sixty four years old. Maggie knocks on her door, says,
the front door was open and the window was open.
(11:01):
Ed's not in the bedroom. I don't know what to do.
She goes down to the den. Maria says to Maggie
get going on breakfast. The family will come down at
eight thirty. Let me look around. It'll be okay. She
looks in Edd's room. She says he's not there, just
like the housekeepers had said. She goes down to the den.
(11:22):
She stops in front of the door and she says,
I don't want to go in either. She says to Maggie,
you open the door, and Maggie says no. So I'm
gonna pause here and say what is the right thing
to do at this point? So like my neighbor a
couple of years ago had her house broken into. Her
daughter was outside and the police said do not go
(11:44):
back inside, even though the door was wide open, you know,
and we almost didn't know what to do if we
were supposed to wait. We didn't know if her parents
were in there, what if somebody were hurt. What is
the right thing to do in this situation?
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Well, I think it differs from nineteen oh three till today.
And there's also the consideration of the temperature outside. You know,
if you are concerned that there's an intruder inside the house,
then yes, this is today. This is where you get
you know, law enforcement responding. And it may be where
(12:17):
either there's a secure location in your house but you
don't want to be trapped, or you get out of
the house, but it gets complicated. Do you have kids
inside the house? Do you need to help the kids?
In today's world, this is where you get on nine
to one one and you're on the phone with dispatch
and you're updating the dispatcher as to your location, where
(12:37):
you're in the house, what you know which you don't know,
and the dispatcher will let you know you know, how
far away law enforcement is is at that moment. In
nineteen oh three, they didn't have that option, and so
I could see, you know, you have a door wide open,
you have a window wide open. Do you don't know
if there's anybody in the house the trusted mail ed
(12:59):
You have no idea, you know, is he gone, is
he in the house? Is he hurt? I can see
where this would be a dilemma because if you do
escape out into the cold, I would suggest that they
would be going to a neighbor's house, knocking on the
door of the neighbors let us in, you know, there's
something wrong across the street or down the block, you know,
and at least get some separation from whatever threat may
(13:23):
be inside the house.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
And remember, we've done stories set in the country in
the eighteen hundreds where they go and ring a bell
and everybody knows what that means. It's an emergency report
to this house. There's an emergency happening. And we've seen
people not go in. They just know something is wrong
where they see one body and they don't know what happens,
and they ring the bell. So, yeah, this is an
older woman in her sixties and two young domestic workers
(13:48):
who are very scared, and they're both standing at the door. Finally,
missus Hull gets the nerve up and she opens the
door to the den where ed was last seen. The
room is dark, the curtains are closed, and she looks
at This is a little historical context here. She looks
at something called a divan. Have you ever heard of
that before? A divan? It's kind of couch.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Something as tickling the back of my brain, but I
can't say for sure I've heard of that.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
If you saw a photo of it, you would recognize it.
It's known as a fainting couch. I haven't read a
lot of research into why they called it a fainting couch,
but from what I can gather, it's because women wore
very tight corsets, which we know, and they sometimes lost consciousness.
And so this was a couch that didn't have a back.
(14:38):
It kind of had, you know, two curved fronts. Some
of them had two curved fronts, and they were usually
pretty fancy, but people sprawled out on them and took
a nap. So she's looking to this fainting couch and
she sees the outline of what looks like a person
on the couch, totally covered by cushions. She tells the
housekeeper call the family doctor, but to go to a
(15:01):
nearby pharmacy and use their phone to do it because
she doesn't want the kids to overhear what's going on.
She doesn't want them to be scared. So there's a
fifteen year old, a thirteen year old and a ten
year old asleep, we presume in the house because it's
early in the morning, and they're upstairs. And remember this
is three stories, this is a big house. They're on
the ground floor right now. So what do you think
(15:22):
so far? You know, she's seeing a figure on the couch.
She tells the housekeeper, you need to go to a
pharmacy and make the phone call. They I'm assuming have
a phone because they're fairly wealthy, they don't make the
phone call there, or or maybe they don't have a
phone and they have to leave the house.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Well, I'm going to assume that this body that's on
this divan is a dead body. And what significant is
the body is covered by cushions. And so now this
is where assessing why the offender, if the offender is
the one that did it, you know, covered the body
with cushions, what is the psychological significance. Now this could
(16:03):
be to delay, you know, kind of hide the body,
delay you know, the discovery of the body. But Also,
in cases in which the victim's body is covered, usually
indicates that there's some sort of connection between the offender
and the victim. And that's possible that the offender is
(16:24):
demonstrating either remorse for what he or she has done
or is not wanting to take a look at what
he or she has done to the victim, you know,
And so this covered body could be significant as to
assessing who the offender might be related to the victim.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
And this will become a lot more interesting when you
find out the details of this cover up, the literal
cover up of the victim. This story is a lot
about reputation, people protecting their reputations, people being very scared
about losing their good name and what that means in
this society in nineteen oh three. So Maggie runs out
(17:05):
the door to go get the doctor. Maria Hull, the
mother in law, shuts the door. She does not go
look at who the figure is. She does not know
if it's Ed or someone else. She shuts the door.
She waits for the doctor. The kids come downstairs, Hey,
what's going on? Good morning? And she says, listen, your
dad's sick. He's in the den. And she gets breakfast
(17:25):
out and has them get ready for school. So I
don't really know what she was thinking. She says, your
dad's sick. So we're assuming she must have thought it
looked like a man and that it must have been Ed.
Who else could it have been because Alice, her daughter,
is not living in the house currently, and it's early
in the morning, but she does not check on this person.
(17:46):
She is trying to tend to the kids and get
them out the door and waiting for the doctor. Is
that an odd response, do you think?
Speaker 2 (17:54):
So you have the two domestic workers, who are you
prior to the discovery of this body. You know, they're
demonstrating fear. Even Maria is demonstrating a level of fear.
You know, this is not a normal occurrence, probably the
first time, even though she's sixty four years old, first
time she is dealing with this scenario, and she's probably
(18:15):
shaking inside, is my guess. But she's also trying to
hold things together for the kids, knowing that help is coming.
I don't have any concerns at this point in time
about you know, how Maria is behaving.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
So the kids are off to school, they've had breakfast,
and doctor William Marcy arrives. Who's the family doctor. He's
close to the family, and we'll get now more details
on what he finds. He opens the door of the den.
It's still dark. He can't see anything. He's kind of
stumbling over different things as he's feeling his way to
the windows. He opens the Venetian blinds and they fall down,
(18:55):
and the whole room is flooded with light, and now
he sees what's going on. So on, this fainting couch
is ed and now here are the weird details. He
is naked except for an undershirt. He is not moving.
He's partially covered with pillows and rugs, and there's blood
on the floor and on the walls. His body is
(19:16):
face down and the doctor can see that his head
has been wrapped in a quilt. He checks for a pulse,
No pulse. He unwinds the quilt and sees that somebody
has beaten the shit out of the sky on his
head with a blunt object. His skull is crushed and
it looks like he's been hit by this doctor's estimate
about ten times. He tries to wrap up the head
(19:40):
the way he found it in the quilt, and he
tells missus Hull and calls the corner. This is not
an illness, and this is not apparently a suicide. So
half naked covered, partially head covered, really beaten to death,
crushed skull. I don't know why you're smiling, Paul.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
This is a terrible crue right now. Of course I
have so many questions. Your description of the scene indicates
that there was blood distributed in this room. So he's
received approximately ten blows to his head, I mean significant
blows to his head. However, it doesn't appear that all
(20:19):
those blows are occurring. Well, he's on this the sofa,
you know, the divan. It sounds like potentially he and
the offender, you know, they are moving around the room
while blows are being inflicted. And of course this is
where i'd want to see the blood patterns. You know,
is there spatter patterns? Are there blood pools in select areas?
(20:39):
Or dripped patterns? Are there smears? You know, this would
help me kind of reconstruct the activities you know, prior
to ed ending up on the divan. You know, however,
you know, his state of dress in the den is significant.
You know, he's not in his bedroom. It's not like
he got hot, changing to go to bed, you know,
(21:03):
to go get it into his pajamas. So why is
he nude from the waist down in the den? Was
there potentially somebody he knew that he was going to
have an encounter with a physical encounter with a sexual
encounter with And is that person the offender or did
somebody else come in, you know, on catch Ed and
(21:24):
somebody else together? Of course I know nothing about Ed.
You know, is he is he completely intoxicated? Is he
a robust male? You know, this would help me assess,
you know, who the offender or the offender's physical characteristics
might be in order to be able to overpower Ed
and then ultimately bludgeon him to death.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
I have information on all of that. Let's start with
the weird reaction of doctor Marcy. So doctor Marcy is
the family physician. He's known them for a very long time.
The coroner shows up, looks at the scene and starts
to of course, right down murder because this looks like murderer.
And doctor Marcy stops him and said, is there a
way we can list this death as a suicide? I know,
(22:10):
the coroner said, you know, my famo is saying the
corner said, go kick Rocks. This is not happening. This
is not a suicide. Doctor Marcy says to the coroner.
Here's the problem. There's been a lot of gossip about
this couple. They are about to get divorced, and I
am concerned that people are going to focus on, you know,
(22:31):
something that they shouldn't be focusing on. He seems legitimately,
I don't This is not going to turn into some
big conspiracy necessarily involving the doctor. But he is the
beginning of what I think is class privileged to a
lot of people in this society. They are well known,
and he is right now trying to save the reputation
(22:54):
of some of the people involved here by saying, is
there a way we can make this a suicide? And
you know, the corner and said, bug off, this is
not going to happen. So already I'm not sure how
he could have justified that, But already we're hearing that.
You know, this is an important man, and there are
going to be people in Buffalo who do not want
the details of what happens in this family to be
(23:17):
spelling out anywhere in the newspapers.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Well, and it also tells me that Doctor Marcy. I mean,
he's he's not a forensic pathologist, you know, so he's
probably not very well versed in terms of assessing the
injuries at this scene. At the crime scene. However, you know,
I think it's very obvious based on your description that
there is no way that Ed did this to himself.
Ten blows, crushed skull. You know this, Everything about this
(23:42):
is definitively homicide. The fact that doctor Marcy is trying
to in essence propose let's let's rule this as a suicide.
What does doctor Marcy know about the rumors of what
Ed has been involved with and who is he trying
to protect?
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Yeah, and that will come out, and who other people
are trying to protect will come out, because boy, this
gets so complicated. This gets complicated. So I do have
a section about the investigation, but this will drive you crazy.
I'd like to get into what is a potential motive
to me, the most likely motive, which is a wacky
love triangle that speaks very much to Turn of this
(24:20):
century America and what we valued then and what reputation means. Then,
So are you okay with that? You know? Not a
lot more comes out of the autopsy other than somebody
beat the living shit out of this guy in the head.
But I do have a murder weapon. If we could
talk about that now, or we could talk about that later.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Well why don't Since you seem to be geared towards
this salacious love triangle, let's let's go down that path first.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Okay, that's an interesting path. Okay, remember I told you
this is called the Elmwood Avenue set, and these are
you know, twenty ish couples who hang out together throw
really raucous parties. They could have the drop your key
in the basket parties. But I'm not one hundred percent sure.
Here there are three couples who Alice and Ed socialized
(25:09):
with the most. There's so three, the Pains, the Warrens,
and the Panels. And the Panels are who we're going
to hear about the most. Arthur Panell is a lawyer,
and he and Ed are best friends. And Arthur is
a lot wealthier than the verdicts. That doesn't really come
into play except to say that there's class hierarchy within
(25:31):
the higher class of the class hierarchy in Buffalo, and
Arthur is at the top. So he's an attorney He's
married to a woman named Carrie. She has a lot
of money. Also, she is one of Buffalo's most popular socialites.
So you have, you know, these two couples that are intermingling,
and now we're getting into problems. And the story becomes
(25:52):
even more interesting. Two years earlier, two years on New
Year's Day nineteen oh one, Carrie, Arthur's wife, comes to Ed,
Alice's husband and says, my husband, your wife are sleeping together.
And Ed says, your nuts. That did not happen. My wife.
Alice is an honorable woman. She wouldn't have done this,
(26:15):
and Carrie says, I am sure of it. They were
together just the day before. So Ed feels sick to
his stomach. As you can imagine, He confronts Alice the
next day. He says, I've been thinking about this. Carrie
Panell came to me and said that you and Arthur
are having an affair. This guy's my best friend. And
did you do it or not? I think you did
(26:36):
the more I think about it. And Alice says, no,
I did not do this. I am totally faithful Ed,
which I think this is interesting. Ed tries to bluff her,
and he said, listen, I know that he's been writing
love letters to you because he knows that his wife, Alice,
is keeping a locked box he can't get into, and
(26:57):
it's relatively new in nineteen oh one. He says those
letters are in there, and she will later say that
he grabbed her by the throat and said, open the
damn box. I want to see these letters now. Of course,
as we know Ed's dead and there's no proof of that,
but she is making it sound like he was violent
(27:18):
with her. He has seen this box many times, he's
never questioned what's in it. But when it's opened, there
is a stack of love letters from Arthur to Alice.
And here becomes the very complicated life of Ed Verdict
and the way this man thinks. He is freaked out
not because his wife is sleeping with someone else, but
(27:38):
because this is not good for his reputation at all.
This is terrible for his reputation, and he's frightened. So
what do you think about all this so far?
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Well, I think, as you're talking about, there is a
hierarchy within this elite club, and Arthur is at the top,
you know, so I could see where this sort of
this hierarchy comes into play. With Ed. You know. So
now Ed's the underling, he's friends with Arthur. But also,
how is it going to if he confronts Arthur about this?
How is that going to impact him and his social
(28:10):
status in this club? And even though ultimately there's there's
proof with these love letters between Arthur and Alice, it's
the domino effect. He confronts Arthur, I've got the letters.
What is Arthur going to do? Arthur has greater financial resources.
There's all sorts of things that I can see where
Ed could choose. I'm not going to do anything about this,
(28:36):
you know. I am concerned, you know, with how Ed
treated Alice over this. You know, I have said before
a great predictor of future violence is what a man
puts his hands around a woman's throat, you know. So
that speaks to me a little bit about possibly the
relationship Ed and Alice had, and that there was probably
some level of abuse that was occurring prior to that incident.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
We believe Alice, and there is reason later on to say,
I don't know Alice. What motivates her to say certain things? Well,
let me tell you this is a long affair. So
here we go. There are these letters he reads the letters,
he is stressed out. Alice seems remorseful, and Ed hands
the letters over to Maria Hull, Alice's mom. We aren't
(29:23):
sure why. It could have been to keep him safe.
It could have been a heads up, this is what
your daughter's been doing with my best friend. I think
it was to keep him safe based on what is
going to happen, which is his just total extreme reaction
to having this salacious news come out that he's been
cheated on with his wife, with this top member of society,
(29:47):
his best friend. He owns several different companies, he has
a lot of money, there's a lot of people depending
on him, and so he's very scared. And this seems
so different from our time period. Now, you know, a
cheating I know different societies feel different ways about it,
but his reaction, I think is a pretty typical reaction
(30:09):
for turn of the century America on you've been cheated on,
and what do we do next to save our reputations?
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Sure, and I see handing the letters over to Maria
Alice's mom as maybe away Ed could see Maria as
somebody who has influence over Alice, and maybe Maria could
talk to her daughter and say, hey, you need to
knock it off. You know, this is not a good thing.
I think Maria would probably have that type of influence
(30:38):
over Alice, would be my guess.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Yeah, I think that's a good assumption. We find out
some more information about the affair. It started two years
before that, so it started in eighteen ninety eight, So
when he is killed, it is nineteen oh three. We're
talking about. This has been happening for five years. And
what happens is that Panels had invited the Verdicts to
(31:01):
visit Arthur's alma mater, which was Yale in Connecticut, but
Alice was the only one who could go, you know,
ed had to work. And it sounds like Carrie, who
is Arthur's wife, wasn't around very much. And this is
how Arthur and Alice bonded and started to get together.
But this is becoming a pretty long affair here by
(31:24):
the time he discovers it in nineteen oh one. I
think it is much easier, of course, in this time period,
to get away with just about anything. I think, you know,
there's no cell phones, there's no I saw this text,
there's no I saw this email. And so for me,
when I first read this, I thought, boy, this has
been going on two years. They're really that good to
cover up an affair for two years when they both
(31:46):
are in the same social circle, they're both in the
same city, they are intermingling as couples, and half of
the couples don't know that the other half are having
an affair with each other. But in this time period,
it would not have been to get away with it.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
No, and I can see that for sure. It's just that,
you know, in nineteen oh one, once Arthur's wife comes
forward and basically exposes this affair, now that's out in
the open. It's understood that it's happening at least within
these two families, these two couples. Now what's the relationship like,
(32:22):
not only between Arthur and Alice, but Arthur and Ed.
Over the course of the next two years, up until
Ed has found bludgeoned to death.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
Well after the discovery of these letters in nineteen oh one,
Ed says, I'm out of here for a few days.
I need some space. He goes to a hotel. Eventually
he forgives Alice and decides he wants to move back
into the family house. I think, knowing what I know
about Ed. That part of this, of course, was it
(32:52):
would have been really odd for people to see this
man staying in a hotel, you know, for an extended
peero of time and his wife at home, and he
was concerned about his reputation. The issue is going to
your question about what happens with Arthur and Alice. They
don't stop sleeping together, and Ed is furious. He says,
I think that you were doing this again. He comes
(33:14):
home early, secretly one day from work when she's not
expecting him, and he sees that she's not there. When
she gets back home, he says, were you with Arthur?
And she says yes, So this is the drama. He
goes back to the hotel. She says, come back. It
goes back and forth for quite a while. Ed is
suspicious all the time. He cannot trust her. He's checking
(33:38):
the mail religiously, but there are no letters from Arthur.
I don't know why he's not handwriting her letters and
you know, handing him to her. But I guess these
letters are coming through the post. He goes to the
post office and listen to this. Ed decides he's so
worked up about this, and after she keeps saying come back,
and then you know, the affair is discovered in and
(34:00):
he leaves and then she says come back, and he
comes back. He goes to the post office. Ed goes
to the post office and he says to a worker
who doesn't know him, that I am Alice's brother. She
gave me a key to the post office, but I
don't have it anymore. And the postal clerk believes him,
gives him the key, and it turns out he's right.
There's another stack of letters and he is completely, I
(34:25):
mean beyond angry. At this point. He doesn't confront Alice.
He waits. He is checking on more letters. He steams
the letters open, he's copying them, he's sealing them back up,
he's putting them back into the po box. So she
gets him and doesn't suspect anything. And these letters are
arranging meetings between Alice and Arthur, but they've coded the
(34:49):
times and places. I mean, this is I'm telling you,
this is nineteen oh three like Superspy, except not government
secrets but sex. I guess is what's happening here?
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Yeah, And do you have any information as to where
Arthur and Alice are actually meeting up? Is this like
a hotel?
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Is this it seems like various hotels, is the impression
I'm getting. It's not at their houses. And so I
think the idea that I'm getting is that it would
be improper for the two of them to meet without
their spouses. This is not you and I getting coffee somewhere,
you know, nineteen oh three would have been a little
bit different. And so it sounds like they're they're doing
this letter exchange to kind of come up with different locations.
(35:29):
But coded, I mean, she must know that he is checking,
that Ed is checking, and this just seems to be escalating.
And this is where I think a lot of people
would say, Okay, forget it, let's get a divorce. But
that does not seem to be happening with either Ed
or Alice, or frankly with Arthur and Carrie.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Yeah, And are these couples going to these social functions,
you know, during this time as Arthur and Carrier together
and Ed and Alice are together and they're out, you know,
at this Elmwood, you know, social club and just pretending
nothing's going on, or does the relationship between the Panels
and the Burkharts, does that just completely dissolve after this
(36:10):
affair is found.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Nope, okay. I mean Arthur the lawyer is freaked out too.
He does not want Ed and Alice to get a
divorce at all. He doesn't want to get a divorce.
He doesn't want to leave his wife. He has a
great business, lots of money. This will ruin him too.
He is willing to play ball. Ed is willing to
(36:33):
play ball and pretend like everything's okay even though things
are clearly not okay, and he seems to be his
mental health really seems to be devolving, and he's doing
all of this stuff. Arthur I don't think is okay,
but he is trying to pretend because these are two
men who value their reputations. Alice, it seems like could
give a fig about anybody's reputation because she actually switches
(36:56):
out her own wedding ring, the ring that she had
in her ceremony, to Ed with a ring that Arthur
bought her. I mean, what is she thinking? That's ballsy
for nineteen oh three. Not necessarily that somebody would recognize
it outside of the family necessarily, but certainly Ed is
(37:16):
maybe the fifteen year old in the thirteen year old,
so she is in it deep right now with Arthur.
So New Year's Day of nineteen oh one is when Carrie,
Arthur's wife goes to Ed and says they're sleeping together.
So this kind of going back and forth, steaming open
envelopes and coded locations and all of this is five
(37:36):
months long until May, and finally Ed says to Alice,
you're sleeping with him. She does not know that he
has been doing all this stuff with the letters, and
he says, I'm kicking you out. I've had enough of this.
I don't care how it looks. She goes to Atlantic City.
I don't know why, but it sounds like that's the
(37:57):
place where she wants to be. Her mom's stays with Ed,
presumably to take care of the kids. I don't think
it's a commentary on whether or not missus Hulb, you know,
is taking anybody's side. But she stays there. Maybe she
doesn't have anywhere else to go. She Alice is writing
Ed all kinds of letters in Atlantic City saying please
let me come back home. He says, I am divorcing you,
(38:20):
and he starts the divorce proceedings, but ultimately again totally
backs down totally caves and he says, come back home.
Do you promise not to cheat on me? And she
says yes, And we know that's not what's going to happen.
So this back and forth must be absolute torture for
these two couples. I don't know what anybody else thinks,
(38:40):
although a couple of more couples are going to get
drawn into this. I don't know what the kids. They
must be sensing all kinds of stuff that's happening with
their parents, but it is just several years of back
and forth until he ends up dead.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
Yeah, this just sounds miserable for everybody involved. Yeah, you know,
and to kind of feels stuck. You know, you could
see where it's like, you know, the emotions are running deep.
We know Ed ends up being killed, and so this
is where I'm very curious to see how these relationships
(39:14):
develop and who else gets pulled into it.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
I don't know if we've ever talked about relationships this much.
We usually spend a lot more time on forensics and
the investigation, but I think for this case, it's really
important to just see where everybody's head is at. So,
as we predicted, Alice does not stay away from Arthur
for very long. She is deeply in love with this man,
(39:38):
and Ed quietly seethes. For a year, all of nineteen
oh two, they are having an affair. He is reading
her letters. He calls a private investigator and he tails her.
It seems like to friends a couple of people who
know about this, that Ed is trying to gather evidence
in this divorce proceedings. He's brought her back home because
(40:00):
it sounds like it's easier to catch her doing things
if she is in Buffalo and not in Atlantic City,
or you know, he is hoping beyond hope that she's
going to have a change of heart. But he just
sounds like he's doing some pretty wacky things. So let
me just kind of go through a couple more things.
It's private detectives he now has hired. A couple of
(40:22):
them say that Alice is going to be with Arthur
and an apartment that Arthur the idiot has rented specifically
for sex. And Ed goes to this apartment. He knocks
on the door. There's scuffling, people getting dressed, I'm presuming,
and then Arthur answers the door. He says, Alice isn't here,
she jumps out the window and clumbs. I mean, this
(40:43):
is like a bad TV show. She jumps out the
window and climbs down the balcony. I mean, I don't
know how else this would end, except either in violence
or somebody giving up and you know, having a divorce.
But it just keeps moving forward and forward and forward.
And by the end of nineteen oh two, Alice is
back in Atlantic City and everybody, including Arthur, is begging
(41:04):
Ed to not divorce her, Please don't do it. And
I will say, Paul, definitely, in the seventeen hundreds and
probably in the eighteen hundreds, people did not often get divorces.
It was expensive. It was like an act of the
government to get a divorce. They would just leave separate lives.
They would lead separate lives. They would just get different households.
They wouldn't remarry, but you know, they would have common
(41:25):
law spouses. I don't know what happened here, but Ed
seems to be the unstable one at this point.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Yeah, he's you know in many ways. You know, there's
this perception that he's gathering evidence for future divorce proceeding.
And sure that may be what I would gather as
the sword of almost the side effect of his behaviors.
But in some ways there's a level of stocking that
as Ed is doing. You know, he's jealous, he's hurt,
(41:56):
you know, he's feeling dejected another man, his wife is
seeing another man as somebody that's more attractive and more
wanted than he is. And so that I see a
lot of what Ed is doing is more out of
the jealousy than anything else. And you know, at this
stage within this lover's triangle, if I were to predict something,
(42:21):
I would predict Arthur would end up dead with the
way Ed is behaving.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Yep or Alice, I guess, yeah, somebody, somebody other than Ed.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
So that's where you know, I'm kind of listening to
this going Okay, now, how how does Ed end up
dead and basically nude, indicating he's possibly hooking up with
somebody inside his own house? Who is that? So I'm
I'm all ears, Kate, keep beating me details.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
Well, let me read these two paragraphs. I don't usually
say two paragraphs, but let me read these two paragraphs,
because it's bananas to me. This is again turn of
the century, the way people are thinking. So end of nineteen.
You know two. This has been two years of hell
for Ed and not great for Alice either or Arthur
or Carrie. So she goes back to Atlantic City. Arthur
(43:09):
visits her, and Ed finally does it. He actually starts
to file for divorce. Carrie and Arthur, the couple. The
married couple visit Ed and they say, please don't do this,
Please take Alice back and just go back to normal.
They did not want the city to know their business.
(43:33):
And if a divorce goes to court, which is what
was going to happen, everybody would know what is happening
and it would humiliate everyone. And listen to this. Arthur says,
I will Ed kill you, and then I will kill myself.
If you divorce Alice, you will ruin me. And Ed says,
(43:54):
bug off, I'm doing this. I will share custody of
the children if you divorced your wife and marry my wife.
Everybody wants everything done properly. Two married people splitting, you know,
custody with the kids. So it is one hundred percent
about appearances.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
Yeah, you know, and right now we're hearing about Arthur,
Alice and Ed. But what is Carrie doing during this
entire time. Is she just sitting on the sidelines.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Yeah, pretending like everything's okay, because she has her own
reputation to deal with. She is the most popular social
lighte in Buffalo. She doesn't want any of this coming out.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
Okay, I'm just going to kind of table carry for
the time being, so you.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
Know, I this reminds me a tiny bit of the
story that we had talked about before. It was about
the social lighte in Boston who was murdered and her
body was dismembered and parts of it were found in
Boston Harbor. I think you probably remember that case. I
do so. With that case, the person who ultimately ends
(45:02):
up murdering her was a handyman who had attacked her.
It sounded like had tried to physically assault her. Grace
Asque was the victim's name, and maybe sexually assault her.
She got him off and locked the door. He ends
up killing her later on. She didn't report it to
police because she did not want the publicity. She did
(45:23):
not want the publicity of some handyman trying to assault her.
She just didn't want any bad publicity. And that is
the mindset of this time period. We don't want the publicity,
and Arthur's going as so far as saying, I will
kill you and I will kill myself if you go
through with this. This is the end of all of us.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
Yeah, and Carrie probably one of the primary sources of
her social status is Arthur. So she loses Arthur, then
she loses status.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
She does. It's embarrassing for her. She has and I
think a key for Carrie is that she is her
own family money, which to me, at first, I thought, well, okay,
she can live. If you know, he divorces her, everything
will be fine because she's got her own family money.
But with that money comes reputation, and who knows what
her family would do if she were a divorcee in
(46:13):
nineteen oh three, that would not have been a good situation.
So everybody is tense here. Alice, for her part, hires
her own private detective to tail ed. The detective comes
back to Alice and says, her husband's doing some weird stuff.
He's talking to one of your friends whose name is
Gertrude Paine. He has taken her to a local candy shop.
(46:34):
And what turns out to be it sounds like the
case is that the Pains are having a lot of
financial trouble, and Gertrude goes to Ed and says, you know,
I really need money, and he lends her the money
without telling the husband. This is more of a friend relationship.
Investigators will likely find out more than anything. But this
(46:54):
is another person to add to the list. The husband,
of course, is questioned by the worters and he said
they're not having an affair. It's no big deal. He's
a nice guy. And I wish she hadn't gone behind
my back to get money from him. I could have
done that. But again, reputations. And there's another couple called
the Warrens who are in the same group of friends.
(47:16):
They're starting divorce proceedings of their own. You know, there
are probably a lot of interminglings. We don't know what's what.
But Alice is now pissed when she finds out about
Gertrude Payne, who's a good friend of hers. Even though
it sounds innocent, she follows her own countersuit for divorce
and she says that Ed is having a bunch of affairs,
(47:37):
including one with you know, somebody that she knows really
well named Helen Warren. There are two other women that
she mentions but we don't have their names. It sounds
like Gertrude might be another one. There's not much evidence
for any of this, but people in their social circles
say that it seems like Ed and Helen were going
to get engaged after these divorces were fine. So if
(48:01):
this is true, if he is sleeping with Helen Warren,
who is going through a divorce, which again would have
been pretty unusual in nineteen oh three, I looked up
the stat pole, it was like less than one percent
of marriages ended in divorce in this time period, so
really unusual. Then this was new, and maybe this was
the impetus for him to finally say, forget everybody, I
(48:24):
am divorcing. This is what's happening, because this does seem
like he had finally made the decision to divorce. I
know that was a lot of information, but it sounds
like this thing with Helen Warren could have been legitimate,
just based on the timing of this planned divorce. But
there's no real evidence that he was sleeping with her
or planning to do anything. It was just sort of
(48:45):
gossip more than anything else.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
I want to point something out is it doesn't matter
if it's legitimate or not, it's perception. So if there
is a rumor going around, Let's say you know that
Ed and Helen we're getting together, and somebody close to Helen,
her husband or another family member gets outraged by hearing
that rumor and perceives it's true. That's motive. So that's
(49:10):
where Okay, Now, because of allegations are flying back and
forth during now a very contentious dissolution of a relationship,
this pulls in other people as potential suspects and Ed's
homicide even though Ed may not have been doing anything
(49:30):
directly with somebody, let's say a wife, this is now
stirring the pot so to speak. There's churn going on
within this social network that opens up the suspect pool
as to who could have.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
Killed Ed, and it feels like a lot of people.
Let's get to the investigation. So now you know everything,
and now you know why go through all of this
before we start talking about a man who's been found
half naked, covered with pillows and a head wrapped in
a quilt and somebody beat the shit out of his head.
There's a lot going on to this, Okay, So the
(50:06):
divorce is for sure moving forward in early nineteen oh three,
after Christmas. It's scheduled in court for early March. He
is killed. It seems like February twenty seventh, so we
are mire one to two weeks away from this going
to open court. So here's what happens based on what
(50:27):
the housekeeper says happened that night and what missus Hull,
the mother in law, says happened that night. So here, investigators,
Now we're back. We're present tense at this point. So
on the night of Thursday, the night before he's discovered,
he comes home from work. He has bought a bottle
of pre mixed cocktail, which is pretty unusual for him.
(50:47):
He's not a big drinker. And he has dinner with
his three kids, three girls, his mother in law, and
then everybody hangs out in the back parlor for a while.
He seems to be in pretty good space. It's everybody
except ed goes upstairs to bed around nine thirty. At
nine forty five, he passes by his mother in law's
(51:08):
room and through the door they say good night to
each other, and that is the last time she spoke
to him and the kids saw him. He is apparently
back downstairs in the den, so he says good night
at nine forty five to Maria Hull. About thirty minutes later,
ten eighteen, the cook Maggie comes home. She's been out
and about. She knows it's ten eighteen because the household
(51:31):
staff has a ten thirty curfew, and she looks at
the clock and is worried, but she makes it home
in time. She goes to the back door, she turns around,
locks it behind her. She runs into Ed at ten
eighteen to nineteen, very briefly in the hall. He's in
his underwear and he's kind of embarrassed. I'm assuming wearing
a shirt. I don't think he's walking around, you know,
(51:52):
in briefs or boxes or anything. But he's a little embarrassed,
and she goes upstairs. She knows that he goes back
into the den. She can hear him. She goes up
to her room, which she shares with the maid, and
between ten thirty and eleven she hears someone filling the
furnace with coal, which is in the den, in which
Ed usually does that time of night. She falls asleep,
(52:14):
and then of course he's dead the next day. So
something happens between when they discover him early in the
morning and about eleven o'clock at night. There is an
open window and an open door the next day, but
the cook said, I locked the back door behind me,
so I know at least that door was locked. And
that is that until our next episode where we really
(52:34):
get into it.
Speaker 2 (52:36):
You're going to leave me hanging.
Speaker 1 (52:38):
I am, I am. There's a lot more to this story,
you know, things that happen to the people in this
story that are in some ways really heartbreaking. So take
a break, go, get on your mountain bike, do something
to think about this case or not think about it.
Speaker 2 (52:54):
Oh I think, I think yeah. The next the episode
to hear the might be a bourbon episode for me.
The way the thing is going.
Speaker 1 (53:03):
Buddy, I think this is a double bourbon episode one
for you.
Speaker 2 (53:07):
Okay, I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 1 (53:09):
Okay, see you in a week.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
Okay. Bye.
Speaker 1 (53:15):
This has been an exactly right production for our.
Speaker 2 (53:18):
Sources and show notes go to exactly rightmedia dot com
slash Buried Bones sources.
Speaker 1 (53:23):
Our senior producer is Alexis Emrosi.
Speaker 2 (53:26):
Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin, and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 1 (53:30):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 2 (53:33):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1 (53:35):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 2 (53:38):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark and Daniel Kramer.
Speaker 1 (53:42):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
Barry Bones.
Speaker 2 (53:46):
Pod Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a
Gilded Age story of murder and the race to decode
the criminal mind, is available now
Speaker 1 (53:54):
And Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life solving America's
Cold Cases is also available now
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the
last twenty five years writing about true crime.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
compelling true crimes.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring
new insights to old mysteries.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
This is buried Bones.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Hi, Kate, how are you?
Speaker 1 (01:03):
I'm well, Paul? How about you?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
I am hanging in there. What's been going on?
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Well, I'm trying to stay organized, and I'm pretty good
at it, I think because I am the master or mistress.
I'm not sure which of making lists? Are you a
list kind of person? Do you do a lot of lists?
Or are you putting info in your calendar? How do
you stay organized?
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Oh? Geez, you know, for in my personal life. No,
I don't make any lists. You know. I've tried to
do the whole task list thing, and I just start
ignoring it. That's not me, you know. But when it
comes to like casework, yes, you're like, if I want
to go interview somebody, I will make a list of
you know, questions and details that I'm trying to get
or other things within the case. So within the professional realm, yes,
(01:47):
I do rely on lists.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
So Google Keep. Do you ever use Google Keep or
anything like that.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
I haven't. I I've heard of it, but I've never
used it.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
So I've gotten my kids on Google Keep. I had
one of them do online school at home, and she
was really trying to stay organized. It was like going
from a normal middle school to doing like doctoral work
on your own, and she really needed to stay organized.
And we used Google Keep, and you know, you can
put it on your computer, you can put it on
(02:16):
your phone, and that's been so helpful for her that
I decided to do it. But I've gotten a little
bit OCD about it because I color code everything now
and and I'll put stuff on the family calend I'll
put stuff on Google Keep and not on the family calendar.
And my kids are like, what do you mean We're
(02:36):
going out to dinner tonight that's not on the family calendar,
but it's on my Google keep, so I do. I'm
hyper organized with pretty much everything that I do. But
I just know that there are quite a few people
who just don't. I don't know how you can operate
without a list, even I have to do a chore list.
So I have a lot of respect for you if
you can keep all that stuff in your pretty little
(02:57):
head that you have to do.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
You know, it's the times, and I forget to do
something for sure, you know, and maybe a list would
would have reminded me. It's just for me, you know.
I'm all about you know. I guess efficiency and lists
on one hand, would be efficient, but then I could
spend more time generating lists than actually getting work done.
And that's my fear.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
That's a pretty big fear. Well, we're going to jump
right into this story, and I can guarantee you that
the investigators who had to dig into this story had many, many, many,
many many lists that they had to deal with, because
this is a big one. I'm not sure we've had
one with this much like relationship drama before, and we've
(03:41):
had some pretty intense relationship drama stories. This next level,
I know, next level and you know, when I think
about a relationship drama, I think sort of like it's
I don't know, present day relationship drama and the stuff
that plays out on social media and who's getting a
divorce and all of that. This is a story from
nineteen oh three that has incredible drama in it and
(04:05):
some pretty I think, bigger than life characters. And I
just have to keep reminding myself. I always think, you
know that time period, which is still Victorian America, that
is that time period. I can't believe that there's that
much drama. But people are people. It doesn't matter if
you're in the fifteen hundreds or you know, twenty twenty five.
(04:25):
It just doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
We just have not changed much over the centuries. But
just there's some of all things we have to take
into consideration for sure.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Yeah, and this will take some historical context on my
part to explain to you. This is a sex scandal
sallacious in nineteen oh three. This came from a listener
who I love it when our listeners reach out to
us and let us know about stories that they think
are really interesting, and this is a good one. And
I also want to kind of give a nod before
we jump into this to an author named Kimberly Tilley
(04:57):
who wrote a book called cold Heart, and that's what
calling this cold Heart, and you'll find out why here
pretty soon. So let's go ahead and set the scene. Okay,
nineteen oh three, one of our older ones, and this
involves a family called the Verdict Family. And I warned
you a little bit about this. This is there's a
(05:17):
lot going on here, and there's a lot of backstory,
but I've got lots and lots of yellow and this
is a big enough story that we needed to make
it a two parter, probably the biggest research document I've
ever had. So you better get yourself a coava and
sit back and let Aunt Kate tell you a story
by the fire.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
I'm going to saddle up and you know, get my
ears going here.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Okay, So the Verdict family lives in a beautiful three
story house on Ashland Avenue, which is in Buffalo, New York.
And this is very close to an area at that
time called Millionaire's Row, and Buffalo is a really bustling city.
It's an industrial hub because it's on Lake Erie, which
(06:00):
Lake Erie served as a gateway for where goods were
passing between the East Coast and the West coast. So
Buffalo had a lot of money, a lot of money,
a lot of powerful people. You know, couples in their
thirties and forties had a lot of money and socialized together.
When I said sex scandal, I was thinking, this is
that set of people, lots of money, very good looking.
(06:23):
Everybody's intermingling, and there is quite a lot of drama.
And we know throughout history that drama, particularly with romantic relationships,
can lead to murder. And that is the bread and
butter of what we talk about on this show.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Yeah, it's one of the fundamental motives of why people
kill each other. So I'm kind of curious to see
where this goes.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Okay, the main person here is a guy named Edwin Burdick.
We're going to call him ed self made, really wealthy man.
He was a stenographer in an envelope factory and he
rose through the ranks and he, along with another guy,
eventually bought the company. So he also owns a publishing company.
(07:06):
He's very outgoing as a social guy. He has been
known for being especially compassionate, and he has a wife
named Alice. He's forty, she's a few years older, and
they're members of a group in Buffalo that's known as
the Elmwood Avenue Set, which is about twenty couples who
(07:27):
belong to a golf club, the Red Jacket Golf Club,
and is the president, and they, you know, are also
a couple that love to go dancing, so they go
to a local dancing club often. This Elmwood Avenue Set,
which just sounds like a really interesting social club, has
a reputation for throwing really crazy, wild parties. They are
(07:48):
also kind of aloof and snotty and sort of looked down.
It sounds like on the rest of Buffalo society. Even
though it sounds like Ed's a great guy, he's in
an elite group and that you know, tends to tick
off the people who are not in that elite group.
And twenty couples is not that many people. There's a
lot of I think options for kind of like jealousy,
(08:09):
and you know, there's money there. So this is again
rife for a big scandal. This couple has three daughters.
There's a fifteen year old, a thirteen year old, and
a ten year old that live in the house and
Alice's mother in law, so Ed's mom lives with the Verdicts.
Her name is Maria Hull, and there are some domestic workers.
It's a pretty big household here. Now. Alice is not
(08:31):
living there currently, and I'll explain why in a little bit.
This is what we have to do. I have to
tell you about the death, and then we have to
go back for the backstory. Once we have all that context,
we'll go back to the investigation. Does that make sense?
I probably will have most answers to your questions, but
there's a lot of context that goes into this.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Okay, makes sense to me, So.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
If you get confused, let me know. But I might
have to do a little bit of searching in my
document to jump around. Okay, so this is the morning
of Friday, February twenty seventh, nineteen oh three. I will presume,
because we are in Buffalo, that it is freezing there.
They're freezing their little butts off. It's very cold. So
(09:12):
the cook's name is Maggie. She's the one who goes downstairs.
She says, oh, no, something bad has happened. It is
freezing downstairs. The front door is wide open, so the
winter wind is coming in, and she immediately freaks out
because she knows that Ed would have locked all the
(09:33):
doors every single night. She closes the door, she goes
into the kitchen. The window in the kitchen is wide open,
which makes it cold. Also, she immediately goes to thieves.
Because this is such a nice house in a great area.
She runs upstairs to find Ed. She runs into the
maid in the upstairs hall, whose name is Katie. So
(09:55):
now we have two domestic workers who are very stressed out.
And Maggie says to Katie, the door's open, something's happened.
Maggie knocks on Ed's bedroom door, no answer, So Maggie
pushes open the door. Empty bed. No Ed, and the
bed is actually still made, so it doesn't look like
he ever even came up for the night. Katie says
(10:17):
to Maggie, Yeah, I'm the one who made that bed,
and I did it yesterday, so he hasn't been up here.
Maggie had last seen Ed in the din when she
came home that night, so she goes downstairs to see
if he fell asleep. That happened often. When she gets
to the door of the den, Maggie has a case
of nerves and she is scared someone who also lives
(10:39):
in the house is Alice's mother and her name is
Maria Hull. Maggie gets to the door of the den,
she loses her nerve and she runs upstairs to wake
up Ed's mother in law, Alice's mom, who is Maria.
She's sixty four years old. Maggie knocks on her door, says,
the front door was open and the window was open.
(11:01):
Ed's not in the bedroom. I don't know what to do.
She goes down to the den. Maria says to Maggie
get going on breakfast. The family will come down at
eight thirty. Let me look around. It'll be okay. She
looks in Edd's room. She says he's not there, just
like the housekeepers had said. She goes down to the den.
(11:22):
She stops in front of the door and she says,
I don't want to go in either. She says to Maggie,
you open the door, and Maggie says no. So I'm
gonna pause here and say what is the right thing
to do at this point? So like my neighbor a
couple of years ago had her house broken into. Her
daughter was outside and the police said do not go
(11:44):
back inside, even though the door was wide open, you know,
and we almost didn't know what to do if we
were supposed to wait. We didn't know if her parents
were in there, what if somebody were hurt. What is
the right thing to do in this situation?
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Well, I think it differs from nineteen oh three till today.
And there's also the consideration of the temperature outside. You know,
if you are concerned that there's an intruder inside the house,
then yes, this is today. This is where you get
you know, law enforcement responding. And it may be where
(12:17):
either there's a secure location in your house but you
don't want to be trapped, or you get out of
the house, but it gets complicated. Do you have kids
inside the house? Do you need to help the kids?
In today's world, this is where you get on nine
to one one and you're on the phone with dispatch
and you're updating the dispatcher as to your location, where
(12:37):
you're in the house, what you know which you don't know,
and the dispatcher will let you know you know, how
far away law enforcement is is at that moment. In
nineteen oh three, they didn't have that option, and so
I could see, you know, you have a door wide open,
you have a window wide open. Do you don't know
if there's anybody in the house the trusted mail ed
(12:59):
You have no idea, you know, is he gone, is
he in the house? Is he hurt? I can see
where this would be a dilemma because if you do
escape out into the cold, I would suggest that they
would be going to a neighbor's house, knocking on the
door of the neighbors let us in, you know, there's
something wrong across the street or down the block, you know,
and at least get some separation from whatever threat may
(13:23):
be inside the house.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
And remember, we've done stories set in the country in
the eighteen hundreds where they go and ring a bell
and everybody knows what that means. It's an emergency report
to this house. There's an emergency happening. And we've seen
people not go in. They just know something is wrong
where they see one body and they don't know what happens,
and they ring the bell. So, yeah, this is an
older woman in her sixties and two young domestic workers
(13:48):
who are very scared, and they're both standing at the door. Finally,
missus Hull gets the nerve up and she opens the
door to the den where ed was last seen. The
room is dark, the curtains are closed, and she looks
at This is a little historical context here. She looks
at something called a divan. Have you ever heard of
that before? A divan? It's kind of couch.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Something as tickling the back of my brain, but I
can't say for sure I've heard of that.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
If you saw a photo of it, you would recognize it.
It's known as a fainting couch. I haven't read a
lot of research into why they called it a fainting couch,
but from what I can gather, it's because women wore
very tight corsets, which we know, and they sometimes lost consciousness.
And so this was a couch that didn't have a back.
(14:38):
It kind of had, you know, two curved fronts. Some
of them had two curved fronts, and they were usually
pretty fancy, but people sprawled out on them and took
a nap. So she's looking to this fainting couch and
she sees the outline of what looks like a person
on the couch, totally covered by cushions. She tells the
housekeeper call the family doctor, but to go to a
(15:01):
nearby pharmacy and use their phone to do it because
she doesn't want the kids to overhear what's going on.
She doesn't want them to be scared. So there's a
fifteen year old, a thirteen year old and a ten
year old asleep, we presume in the house because it's
early in the morning, and they're upstairs. And remember this
is three stories, this is a big house. They're on
the ground floor right now. So what do you think
(15:22):
so far? You know, she's seeing a figure on the couch.
She tells the housekeeper, you need to go to a
pharmacy and make the phone call. They I'm assuming have
a phone because they're fairly wealthy, they don't make the
phone call there, or or maybe they don't have a
phone and they have to leave the house.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Well, I'm going to assume that this body that's on
this divan is a dead body. And what significant is
the body is covered by cushions. And so now this
is where assessing why the offender, if the offender is
the one that did it, you know, covered the body
with cushions, what is the psychological significance. Now this could
(16:03):
be to delay, you know, kind of hide the body,
delay you know, the discovery of the body. But Also,
in cases in which the victim's body is covered, usually
indicates that there's some sort of connection between the offender
and the victim. And that's possible that the offender is
(16:24):
demonstrating either remorse for what he or she has done
or is not wanting to take a look at what
he or she has done to the victim, you know,
And so this covered body could be significant as to
assessing who the offender might be related to the victim.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
And this will become a lot more interesting when you
find out the details of this cover up, the literal
cover up of the victim. This story is a lot
about reputation, people protecting their reputations, people being very scared
about losing their good name and what that means in
this society in nineteen oh three. So Maggie runs out
(17:05):
the door to go get the doctor. Maria Hull, the
mother in law, shuts the door. She does not go
look at who the figure is. She does not know
if it's Ed or someone else. She shuts the door.
She waits for the doctor. The kids come downstairs, Hey,
what's going on? Good morning? And she says, listen, your
dad's sick. He's in the den. And she gets breakfast
(17:25):
out and has them get ready for school. So I
don't really know what she was thinking. She says, your
dad's sick. So we're assuming she must have thought it
looked like a man and that it must have been Ed.
Who else could it have been because Alice, her daughter,
is not living in the house currently, and it's early
in the morning, but she does not check on this person.
(17:46):
She is trying to tend to the kids and get
them out the door and waiting for the doctor. Is
that an odd response, do you think?
Speaker 2 (17:54):
So you have the two domestic workers, who are you
prior to the discovery of this body. You know, they're
demonstrating fear. Even Maria is demonstrating a level of fear.
You know, this is not a normal occurrence, probably the
first time, even though she's sixty four years old, first
time she is dealing with this scenario, and she's probably
(18:15):
shaking inside, is my guess. But she's also trying to
hold things together for the kids, knowing that help is coming.
I don't have any concerns at this point in time
about you know, how Maria is behaving.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
So the kids are off to school, they've had breakfast,
and doctor William Marcy arrives. Who's the family doctor. He's
close to the family, and we'll get now more details
on what he finds. He opens the door of the den.
It's still dark. He can't see anything. He's kind of
stumbling over different things as he's feeling his way to
the windows. He opens the Venetian blinds and they fall down,
(18:55):
and the whole room is flooded with light, and now
he sees what's going on. So on, this fainting couch
is ed and now here are the weird details. He
is naked except for an undershirt. He is not moving.
He's partially covered with pillows and rugs, and there's blood
on the floor and on the walls. His body is
(19:16):
face down and the doctor can see that his head
has been wrapped in a quilt. He checks for a pulse,
No pulse. He unwinds the quilt and sees that somebody
has beaten the shit out of the sky on his
head with a blunt object. His skull is crushed and
it looks like he's been hit by this doctor's estimate
about ten times. He tries to wrap up the head
(19:40):
the way he found it in the quilt, and he
tells missus Hull and calls the corner. This is not
an illness, and this is not apparently a suicide. So
half naked covered, partially head covered, really beaten to death,
crushed skull. I don't know why you're smiling, Paul.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
This is a terrible crue right now. Of course I
have so many questions. Your description of the scene indicates
that there was blood distributed in this room. So he's
received approximately ten blows to his head, I mean significant
blows to his head. However, it doesn't appear that all
(20:19):
those blows are occurring. Well, he's on this the sofa,
you know, the divan. It sounds like potentially he and
the offender, you know, they are moving around the room
while blows are being inflicted. And of course this is
where i'd want to see the blood patterns. You know,
is there spatter patterns? Are there blood pools in select areas?
(20:39):
Or dripped patterns? Are there smears? You know, this would
help me kind of reconstruct the activities you know, prior
to ed ending up on the divan. You know, however,
you know, his state of dress in the den is significant.
You know, he's not in his bedroom. It's not like
he got hot, changing to go to bed, you know,
(21:03):
to go get it into his pajamas. So why is
he nude from the waist down in the den? Was
there potentially somebody he knew that he was going to
have an encounter with a physical encounter with a sexual
encounter with And is that person the offender or did
somebody else come in, you know, on catch Ed and
(21:24):
somebody else together? Of course I know nothing about Ed.
You know, is he is he completely intoxicated? Is he
a robust male? You know, this would help me assess,
you know, who the offender or the offender's physical characteristics
might be in order to be able to overpower Ed
and then ultimately bludgeon him to death.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
I have information on all of that. Let's start with
the weird reaction of doctor Marcy. So doctor Marcy is
the family physician. He's known them for a very long time.
The coroner shows up, looks at the scene and starts
to of course, right down murder because this looks like murderer.
And doctor Marcy stops him and said, is there a
way we can list this death as a suicide? I know,
(22:10):
the coroner said, you know, my famo is saying the
corner said, go kick Rocks. This is not happening. This
is not a suicide. Doctor Marcy says to the coroner.
Here's the problem. There's been a lot of gossip about
this couple. They are about to get divorced, and I
am concerned that people are going to focus on, you know,
(22:31):
something that they shouldn't be focusing on. He seems legitimately,
I don't This is not going to turn into some
big conspiracy necessarily involving the doctor. But he is the
beginning of what I think is class privileged to a
lot of people in this society. They are well known,
and he is right now trying to save the reputation
(22:54):
of some of the people involved here by saying, is
there a way we can make this a suicide? And
you know, the corner and said, bug off, this is
not going to happen. So already I'm not sure how
he could have justified that, But already we're hearing that.
You know, this is an important man, and there are
going to be people in Buffalo who do not want
the details of what happens in this family to be
(23:17):
spelling out anywhere in the newspapers.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Well, and it also tells me that Doctor Marcy. I mean,
he's he's not a forensic pathologist, you know, so he's
probably not very well versed in terms of assessing the
injuries at this scene. At the crime scene. However, you know,
I think it's very obvious based on your description that
there is no way that Ed did this to himself.
Ten blows, crushed skull. You know this, Everything about this
(23:42):
is definitively homicide. The fact that doctor Marcy is trying
to in essence propose let's let's rule this as a suicide.
What does doctor Marcy know about the rumors of what
Ed has been involved with and who is he trying
to protect?
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Yeah, and that will come out, and who other people
are trying to protect will come out, because boy, this
gets so complicated. This gets complicated. So I do have
a section about the investigation, but this will drive you crazy.
I'd like to get into what is a potential motive
to me, the most likely motive, which is a wacky
love triangle that speaks very much to Turn of this
(24:20):
century America and what we valued then and what reputation means. Then,
So are you okay with that? You know? Not a
lot more comes out of the autopsy other than somebody
beat the living shit out of this guy in the head.
But I do have a murder weapon. If we could
talk about that now, or we could talk about that later.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Well why don't Since you seem to be geared towards
this salacious love triangle, let's let's go down that path first.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Okay, that's an interesting path. Okay, remember I told you
this is called the Elmwood Avenue set, and these are
you know, twenty ish couples who hang out together throw
really raucous parties. They could have the drop your key
in the basket parties. But I'm not one hundred percent sure.
Here there are three couples who Alice and Ed socialized
(25:09):
with the most. There's so three, the Pains, the Warrens,
and the Panels. And the Panels are who we're going
to hear about the most. Arthur Panell is a lawyer,
and he and Ed are best friends. And Arthur is
a lot wealthier than the verdicts. That doesn't really come
into play except to say that there's class hierarchy within
(25:31):
the higher class of the class hierarchy in Buffalo, and
Arthur is at the top. So he's an attorney He's
married to a woman named Carrie. She has a lot
of money. Also, she is one of Buffalo's most popular socialites.
So you have, you know, these two couples that are intermingling,
and now we're getting into problems. And the story becomes
(25:52):
even more interesting. Two years earlier, two years on New
Year's Day nineteen oh one, Carrie, Arthur's wife, comes to Ed,
Alice's husband and says, my husband, your wife are sleeping together.
And Ed says, your nuts. That did not happen. My wife.
Alice is an honorable woman. She wouldn't have done this,
(26:15):
and Carrie says, I am sure of it. They were
together just the day before. So Ed feels sick to
his stomach. As you can imagine, He confronts Alice the
next day. He says, I've been thinking about this. Carrie
Panell came to me and said that you and Arthur
are having an affair. This guy's my best friend. And
did you do it or not? I think you did
(26:36):
the more I think about it. And Alice says, no,
I did not do this. I am totally faithful Ed,
which I think this is interesting. Ed tries to bluff her,
and he said, listen, I know that he's been writing
love letters to you because he knows that his wife, Alice,
is keeping a locked box he can't get into, and
(26:57):
it's relatively new in nineteen oh one. He says those
letters are in there, and she will later say that
he grabbed her by the throat and said, open the
damn box. I want to see these letters now. Of course,
as we know Ed's dead and there's no proof of that,
but she is making it sound like he was violent
(27:18):
with her. He has seen this box many times, he's
never questioned what's in it. But when it's opened, there
is a stack of love letters from Arthur to Alice.
And here becomes the very complicated life of Ed Verdict
and the way this man thinks. He is freaked out
not because his wife is sleeping with someone else, but
(27:38):
because this is not good for his reputation at all.
This is terrible for his reputation, and he's frightened. So
what do you think about all this so far?
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Well, I think, as you're talking about, there is a
hierarchy within this elite club, and Arthur is at the top,
you know, so I could see where this sort of
this hierarchy comes into play. With Ed. You know. So
now Ed's the underling, he's friends with Arthur. But also,
how is it going to if he confronts Arthur about this?
How is that going to impact him and his social
(28:10):
status in this club? And even though ultimately there's there's
proof with these love letters between Arthur and Alice, it's
the domino effect. He confronts Arthur, I've got the letters.
What is Arthur going to do? Arthur has greater financial resources.
There's all sorts of things that I can see where
Ed could choose. I'm not going to do anything about this,
(28:36):
you know. I am concerned, you know, with how Ed
treated Alice over this. You know, I have said before
a great predictor of future violence is what a man
puts his hands around a woman's throat, you know. So
that speaks to me a little bit about possibly the
relationship Ed and Alice had, and that there was probably
some level of abuse that was occurring prior to that incident.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
We believe Alice, and there is reason later on to say,
I don't know Alice. What motivates her to say certain things? Well,
let me tell you this is a long affair. So
here we go. There are these letters he reads the letters,
he is stressed out. Alice seems remorseful, and Ed hands
the letters over to Maria Hull, Alice's mom. We aren't
(29:23):
sure why. It could have been to keep him safe.
It could have been a heads up, this is what
your daughter's been doing with my best friend. I think
it was to keep him safe based on what is
going to happen, which is his just total extreme reaction
to having this salacious news come out that he's been
cheated on with his wife, with this top member of society,
(29:47):
his best friend. He owns several different companies, he has
a lot of money, there's a lot of people depending
on him, and so he's very scared. And this seems
so different from our time period. Now, you know, a
cheating I know different societies feel different ways about it,
but his reaction, I think is a pretty typical reaction
(30:09):
for turn of the century America on you've been cheated on,
and what do we do next to save our reputations?
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Sure, and I see handing the letters over to Maria
Alice's mom as maybe away Ed could see Maria as
somebody who has influence over Alice, and maybe Maria could
talk to her daughter and say, hey, you need to
knock it off. You know, this is not a good thing.
I think Maria would probably have that type of influence
(30:38):
over Alice, would be my guess.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Yeah, I think that's a good assumption. We find out
some more information about the affair. It started two years
before that, so it started in eighteen ninety eight, So
when he is killed, it is nineteen oh three. We're
talking about. This has been happening for five years. And
what happens is that Panels had invited the Verdicts to
(31:01):
visit Arthur's alma mater, which was Yale in Connecticut, but
Alice was the only one who could go, you know,
ed had to work. And it sounds like Carrie, who
is Arthur's wife, wasn't around very much. And this is
how Arthur and Alice bonded and started to get together.
But this is becoming a pretty long affair here by
(31:24):
the time he discovers it in nineteen oh one. I
think it is much easier, of course, in this time period,
to get away with just about anything. I think, you know,
there's no cell phones, there's no I saw this text,
there's no I saw this email. And so for me,
when I first read this, I thought, boy, this has
been going on two years. They're really that good to
cover up an affair for two years when they both
(31:46):
are in the same social circle, they're both in the
same city, they are intermingling as couples, and half of
the couples don't know that the other half are having
an affair with each other. But in this time period,
it would not have been to get away with it.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
No, and I can see that for sure. It's just that,
you know, in nineteen oh one, once Arthur's wife comes
forward and basically exposes this affair, now that's out in
the open. It's understood that it's happening at least within
these two families, these two couples. Now what's the relationship like,
(32:22):
not only between Arthur and Alice, but Arthur and Ed.
Over the course of the next two years, up until
Ed has found bludgeoned to death.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
Well after the discovery of these letters in nineteen oh one,
Ed says, I'm out of here for a few days.
I need some space. He goes to a hotel. Eventually
he forgives Alice and decides he wants to move back
into the family house. I think, knowing what I know
about Ed. That part of this, of course, was it
(32:52):
would have been really odd for people to see this
man staying in a hotel, you know, for an extended
peero of time and his wife at home, and he
was concerned about his reputation. The issue is going to
your question about what happens with Arthur and Alice. They
don't stop sleeping together, and Ed is furious. He says,
I think that you were doing this again. He comes
(33:14):
home early, secretly one day from work when she's not
expecting him, and he sees that she's not there. When
she gets back home, he says, were you with Arthur?
And she says yes, So this is the drama. He
goes back to the hotel. She says, come back. It
goes back and forth for quite a while. Ed is
suspicious all the time. He cannot trust her. He's checking
(33:38):
the mail religiously, but there are no letters from Arthur.
I don't know why he's not handwriting her letters and
you know, handing him to her. But I guess these
letters are coming through the post. He goes to the
post office and listen to this. Ed decides he's so
worked up about this, and after she keeps saying come back,
and then you know, the affair is discovered in and
(34:00):
he leaves and then she says come back, and he
comes back. He goes to the post office. Ed goes
to the post office and he says to a worker
who doesn't know him, that I am Alice's brother. She
gave me a key to the post office, but I
don't have it anymore. And the postal clerk believes him,
gives him the key, and it turns out he's right.
There's another stack of letters and he is completely, I
(34:25):
mean beyond angry. At this point. He doesn't confront Alice.
He waits. He is checking on more letters. He steams
the letters open, he's copying them, he's sealing them back up,
he's putting them back into the po box. So she
gets him and doesn't suspect anything. And these letters are
arranging meetings between Alice and Arthur, but they've coded the
(34:49):
times and places. I mean, this is I'm telling you,
this is nineteen oh three like Superspy, except not government
secrets but sex. I guess is what's happening here?
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Yeah, And do you have any information as to where
Arthur and Alice are actually meeting up? Is this like
a hotel?
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Is this it seems like various hotels, is the impression
I'm getting. It's not at their houses. And so I
think the idea that I'm getting is that it would
be improper for the two of them to meet without
their spouses. This is not you and I getting coffee somewhere,
you know, nineteen oh three would have been a little
bit different. And so it sounds like they're they're doing
this letter exchange to kind of come up with different locations.
(35:29):
But coded, I mean, she must know that he is checking,
that Ed is checking, and this just seems to be escalating.
And this is where I think a lot of people
would say, Okay, forget it, let's get a divorce. But
that does not seem to be happening with either Ed
or Alice, or frankly with Arthur and Carrie.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Yeah, And are these couples going to these social functions,
you know, during this time as Arthur and Carrier together
and Ed and Alice are together and they're out, you know,
at this Elmwood, you know, social club and just pretending
nothing's going on, or does the relationship between the Panels
and the Burkharts, does that just completely dissolve after this
(36:10):
affair is found.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Nope, okay. I mean Arthur the lawyer is freaked out too.
He does not want Ed and Alice to get a
divorce at all. He doesn't want to get a divorce.
He doesn't want to leave his wife. He has a
great business, lots of money. This will ruin him too.
He is willing to play ball. Ed is willing to
(36:33):
play ball and pretend like everything's okay even though things
are clearly not okay, and he seems to be his
mental health really seems to be devolving, and he's doing
all of this stuff. Arthur I don't think is okay,
but he is trying to pretend because these are two
men who value their reputations. Alice, it seems like could
give a fig about anybody's reputation because she actually switches
(36:56):
out her own wedding ring, the ring that she had
in her ceremony, to Ed with a ring that Arthur
bought her. I mean, what is she thinking? That's ballsy
for nineteen oh three. Not necessarily that somebody would recognize
it outside of the family necessarily, but certainly Ed is
(37:16):
maybe the fifteen year old in the thirteen year old,
so she is in it deep right now with Arthur.
So New Year's Day of nineteen oh one is when Carrie,
Arthur's wife goes to Ed and says they're sleeping together.
So this kind of going back and forth, steaming open
envelopes and coded locations and all of this is five
(37:36):
months long until May, and finally Ed says to Alice,
you're sleeping with him. She does not know that he
has been doing all this stuff with the letters, and
he says, I'm kicking you out. I've had enough of this.
I don't care how it looks. She goes to Atlantic City.
I don't know why, but it sounds like that's the
(37:57):
place where she wants to be. Her mom's stays with Ed,
presumably to take care of the kids. I don't think
it's a commentary on whether or not missus Hulb, you know,
is taking anybody's side. But she stays there. Maybe she
doesn't have anywhere else to go. She Alice is writing
Ed all kinds of letters in Atlantic City saying please
let me come back home. He says, I am divorcing you,
(38:20):
and he starts the divorce proceedings, but ultimately again totally
backs down totally caves and he says, come back home.
Do you promise not to cheat on me? And she
says yes, And we know that's not what's going to happen.
So this back and forth must be absolute torture for
these two couples. I don't know what anybody else thinks,
(38:40):
although a couple of more couples are going to get
drawn into this. I don't know what the kids. They
must be sensing all kinds of stuff that's happening with
their parents, but it is just several years of back
and forth until he ends up dead.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
Yeah, this just sounds miserable for everybody involved. Yeah, you know,
and to kind of feels stuck. You know, you could
see where it's like, you know, the emotions are running deep.
We know Ed ends up being killed, and so this
is where I'm very curious to see how these relationships
(39:14):
develop and who else gets pulled into it.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
I don't know if we've ever talked about relationships this much.
We usually spend a lot more time on forensics and
the investigation, but I think for this case, it's really
important to just see where everybody's head is at. So,
as we predicted, Alice does not stay away from Arthur
for very long. She is deeply in love with this man,
(39:38):
and Ed quietly seethes. For a year, all of nineteen
oh two, they are having an affair. He is reading
her letters. He calls a private investigator and he tails her.
It seems like to friends a couple of people who
know about this, that Ed is trying to gather evidence
in this divorce proceedings. He's brought her back home because
(40:00):
it sounds like it's easier to catch her doing things
if she is in Buffalo and not in Atlantic City,
or you know, he is hoping beyond hope that she's
going to have a change of heart. But he just
sounds like he's doing some pretty wacky things. So let
me just kind of go through a couple more things.
It's private detectives he now has hired. A couple of
(40:22):
them say that Alice is going to be with Arthur
and an apartment that Arthur the idiot has rented specifically
for sex. And Ed goes to this apartment. He knocks
on the door. There's scuffling, people getting dressed, I'm presuming,
and then Arthur answers the door. He says, Alice isn't here,
she jumps out the window and clumbs. I mean, this
(40:43):
is like a bad TV show. She jumps out the
window and climbs down the balcony. I mean, I don't
know how else this would end, except either in violence
or somebody giving up and you know, having a divorce.
But it just keeps moving forward and forward and forward.
And by the end of nineteen oh two, Alice is
back in Atlantic City and everybody, including Arthur, is begging
(41:04):
Ed to not divorce her, Please don't do it. And
I will say, Paul, definitely, in the seventeen hundreds and
probably in the eighteen hundreds, people did not often get divorces.
It was expensive. It was like an act of the
government to get a divorce. They would just leave separate lives.
They would lead separate lives. They would just get different households.
They wouldn't remarry, but you know, they would have common
(41:25):
law spouses. I don't know what happened here, but Ed
seems to be the unstable one at this point.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Yeah, he's you know in many ways. You know, there's
this perception that he's gathering evidence for future divorce proceeding.
And sure that may be what I would gather as
the sword of almost the side effect of his behaviors.
But in some ways there's a level of stocking that
as Ed is doing. You know, he's jealous, he's hurt,
(41:56):
you know, he's feeling dejected another man, his wife is
seeing another man as somebody that's more attractive and more
wanted than he is. And so that I see a
lot of what Ed is doing is more out of
the jealousy than anything else. And you know, at this
stage within this lover's triangle, if I were to predict something,
(42:21):
I would predict Arthur would end up dead with the
way Ed is behaving.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Yep or Alice, I guess, yeah, somebody, somebody other than Ed.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
So that's where you know, I'm kind of listening to
this going Okay, now, how how does Ed end up
dead and basically nude, indicating he's possibly hooking up with
somebody inside his own house? Who is that? So I'm
I'm all ears, Kate, keep beating me details.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
Well, let me read these two paragraphs. I don't usually
say two paragraphs, but let me read these two paragraphs,
because it's bananas to me. This is again turn of
the century, the way people are thinking. So end of nineteen.
You know two. This has been two years of hell
for Ed and not great for Alice either or Arthur
or Carrie. So she goes back to Atlantic City. Arthur
(43:09):
visits her, and Ed finally does it. He actually starts
to file for divorce. Carrie and Arthur, the couple. The
married couple visit Ed and they say, please don't do this,
Please take Alice back and just go back to normal.
They did not want the city to know their business.
(43:33):
And if a divorce goes to court, which is what
was going to happen, everybody would know what is happening
and it would humiliate everyone. And listen to this. Arthur says,
I will Ed kill you, and then I will kill myself.
If you divorce Alice, you will ruin me. And Ed says,
(43:54):
bug off, I'm doing this. I will share custody of
the children if you divorced your wife and marry my wife.
Everybody wants everything done properly. Two married people splitting, you know,
custody with the kids. So it is one hundred percent
about appearances.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
Yeah, you know, and right now we're hearing about Arthur,
Alice and Ed. But what is Carrie doing during this
entire time. Is she just sitting on the sidelines.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Yeah, pretending like everything's okay, because she has her own
reputation to deal with. She is the most popular social
lighte in Buffalo. She doesn't want any of this coming out.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
Okay, I'm just going to kind of table carry for
the time being, so you.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
Know, I this reminds me a tiny bit of the
story that we had talked about before. It was about
the social lighte in Boston who was murdered and her
body was dismembered and parts of it were found in
Boston Harbor. I think you probably remember that case. I
do so. With that case, the person who ultimately ends
(45:02):
up murdering her was a handyman who had attacked her.
It sounded like had tried to physically assault her. Grace
Asque was the victim's name, and maybe sexually assault her.
She got him off and locked the door. He ends
up killing her later on. She didn't report it to
police because she did not want the publicity. She did
(45:23):
not want the publicity of some handyman trying to assault her.
She just didn't want any bad publicity. And that is
the mindset of this time period. We don't want the publicity,
and Arthur's going as so far as saying, I will
kill you and I will kill myself if you go
through with this. This is the end of all of us.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
Yeah, and Carrie probably one of the primary sources of
her social status is Arthur. So she loses Arthur, then
she loses status.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
She does. It's embarrassing for her. She has and I
think a key for Carrie is that she is her
own family money, which to me, at first, I thought, well, okay,
she can live. If you know, he divorces her, everything
will be fine because she's got her own family money.
But with that money comes reputation, and who knows what
her family would do if she were a divorcee in
(46:13):
nineteen oh three, that would not have been a good situation.
So everybody is tense here. Alice, for her part, hires
her own private detective to tail ed. The detective comes
back to Alice and says, her husband's doing some weird stuff.
He's talking to one of your friends whose name is
Gertrude Paine. He has taken her to a local candy shop.
(46:34):
And what turns out to be it sounds like the
case is that the Pains are having a lot of
financial trouble, and Gertrude goes to Ed and says, you know,
I really need money, and he lends her the money
without telling the husband. This is more of a friend relationship.
Investigators will likely find out more than anything. But this
(46:54):
is another person to add to the list. The husband,
of course, is questioned by the worters and he said
they're not having an affair. It's no big deal. He's
a nice guy. And I wish she hadn't gone behind
my back to get money from him. I could have
done that. But again, reputations. And there's another couple called
the Warrens who are in the same group of friends.
(47:16):
They're starting divorce proceedings of their own. You know, there
are probably a lot of interminglings. We don't know what's what.
But Alice is now pissed when she finds out about
Gertrude Payne, who's a good friend of hers. Even though
it sounds innocent, she follows her own countersuit for divorce
and she says that Ed is having a bunch of affairs,
(47:37):
including one with you know, somebody that she knows really
well named Helen Warren. There are two other women that
she mentions but we don't have their names. It sounds
like Gertrude might be another one. There's not much evidence
for any of this, but people in their social circles
say that it seems like Ed and Helen were going
to get engaged after these divorces were fine. So if
(48:01):
this is true, if he is sleeping with Helen Warren,
who is going through a divorce, which again would have
been pretty unusual in nineteen oh three, I looked up
the stat pole, it was like less than one percent
of marriages ended in divorce in this time period, so
really unusual. Then this was new, and maybe this was
the impetus for him to finally say, forget everybody, I
(48:24):
am divorcing. This is what's happening, because this does seem
like he had finally made the decision to divorce. I
know that was a lot of information, but it sounds
like this thing with Helen Warren could have been legitimate,
just based on the timing of this planned divorce. But
there's no real evidence that he was sleeping with her
or planning to do anything. It was just sort of
(48:45):
gossip more than anything else.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
I want to point something out is it doesn't matter
if it's legitimate or not, it's perception. So if there
is a rumor going around, Let's say you know that
Ed and Helen we're getting together, and somebody close to Helen,
her husband or another family member gets outraged by hearing
that rumor and perceives it's true. That's motive. So that's
(49:10):
where Okay, Now, because of allegations are flying back and
forth during now a very contentious dissolution of a relationship,
this pulls in other people as potential suspects and Ed's
homicide even though Ed may not have been doing anything
(49:30):
directly with somebody, let's say a wife, this is now
stirring the pot so to speak. There's churn going on
within this social network that opens up the suspect pool
as to who could have.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
Killed Ed, and it feels like a lot of people.
Let's get to the investigation. So now you know everything,
and now you know why go through all of this
before we start talking about a man who's been found
half naked, covered with pillows and a head wrapped in
a quilt and somebody beat the shit out of his head.
There's a lot going on to this, Okay, So the
(50:06):
divorce is for sure moving forward in early nineteen oh three,
after Christmas. It's scheduled in court for early March. He
is killed. It seems like February twenty seventh, so we
are mire one to two weeks away from this going
to open court. So here's what happens based on what
(50:27):
the housekeeper says happened that night and what missus Hull,
the mother in law, says happened that night. So here, investigators,
Now we're back. We're present tense at this point. So
on the night of Thursday, the night before he's discovered,
he comes home from work. He has bought a bottle
of pre mixed cocktail, which is pretty unusual for him.
(50:47):
He's not a big drinker. And he has dinner with
his three kids, three girls, his mother in law, and
then everybody hangs out in the back parlor for a while.
He seems to be in pretty good space. It's everybody
except ed goes upstairs to bed around nine thirty. At
nine forty five, he passes by his mother in law's
(51:08):
room and through the door they say good night to
each other, and that is the last time she spoke
to him and the kids saw him. He is apparently
back downstairs in the den, so he says good night
at nine forty five to Maria Hull. About thirty minutes later,
ten eighteen, the cook Maggie comes home. She's been out
and about. She knows it's ten eighteen because the household
(51:31):
staff has a ten thirty curfew, and she looks at
the clock and is worried, but she makes it home
in time. She goes to the back door, she turns around,
locks it behind her. She runs into Ed at ten
eighteen to nineteen, very briefly in the hall. He's in
his underwear and he's kind of embarrassed. I'm assuming wearing
a shirt. I don't think he's walking around, you know,
(51:52):
in briefs or boxes or anything. But he's a little embarrassed,
and she goes upstairs. She knows that he goes back
into the den. She can hear him. She goes up
to her room, which she shares with the maid, and
between ten thirty and eleven she hears someone filling the
furnace with coal, which is in the den, in which
Ed usually does that time of night. She falls asleep,
(52:14):
and then of course he's dead the next day. So
something happens between when they discover him early in the
morning and about eleven o'clock at night. There is an
open window and an open door the next day, but
the cook said, I locked the back door behind me,
so I know at least that door was locked. And
that is that until our next episode where we really
(52:34):
get into it.
Speaker 2 (52:36):
You're going to leave me hanging.
Speaker 1 (52:38):
I am, I am. There's a lot more to this story,
you know, things that happen to the people in this
story that are in some ways really heartbreaking. So take
a break, go, get on your mountain bike, do something
to think about this case or not think about it.
Speaker 2 (52:54):
Oh I think, I think yeah. The next the episode
to hear the might be a bourbon episode for me.
The way the thing is going.
Speaker 1 (53:03):
Buddy, I think this is a double bourbon episode one
for you.
Speaker 2 (53:07):
Okay, I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 1 (53:09):
Okay, see you in a week.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
Okay. Bye.
Speaker 1 (53:15):
This has been an exactly right production for our.
Speaker 2 (53:18):
Sources and show notes go to exactly rightmedia dot com
slash Buried Bones sources.
Speaker 1 (53:23):
Our senior producer is Alexis Emrosi.
Speaker 2 (53:26):
Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin, and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 1 (53:30):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 2 (53:33):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1 (53:35):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 2 (53:38):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark and Daniel Kramer.
Speaker 1 (53:42):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
Barry Bones.
Speaker 2 (53:46):
Pod Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a
Gilded Age story of murder and the race to decode
the criminal mind, is available now
Speaker 1 (53:54):
And Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life solving America's
Cold Cases is also available now
Hosts And Creators
Kate Winkler Dawson
Paul Holes
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