August 28, 2024 • 55 mins
In this week's episode, Kate and Paul head to 1935 Bangor, Pennsylvania where a body is found in a cistern, submerged in water. Will determining how long the victim was there help or hurt the investigation to find her killer?
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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 (01:02):
Hi, Kate, what is going on here? I can see
your eyes?
Speaker 1 (01:05):
What you can't?
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Are you impersonating? Kate? Who are you really?
Speaker 1 (01:12):
I don't know if you've ever seen my eyes without
classes because I always wear glasses and this is brand
new for me.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Maybe in London or no, you know, didn't you take
some photos in Denver with out your glasses? Yeah? Now, okay, but.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
That was it. But you were concentrating on you and
your poses, your model poses. I don't think he were
paying attention, no to.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
My mind, at all.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
He was really working it. I can tell you've done
it before.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Let's strike a pose, right, Yeah, So.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
I'm in the contacts still pretty weird. I will say,
if I get anything wrong, We're going to blame the contacts.
We're not gonna blame me because I'm getting used to
them still. But I do like them so and I
know you prefer them.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Well, you know, I prefer them just for convenience. But
I don't see as well because I've got that monovision
set up or one eye a sceptor sense in what
I set for kind of computer you know, like not
reading length, and when I'm looking at my computer screen,
even things are a little fuzzy. Now is your prescription
similar or are you for just like close up?
Speaker 1 (02:13):
So I have kind of a mix. It's a little
fuzzy looking at it right now. My eyes, I think,
are still adjusting to it. But it's been really cool
to actually wear sunglasses. We have all of these super
smart audience members and they email me with all kinds
of advice. People who work at Costco and you know who,
who have experience with fitting people with glasses, and so
(02:36):
everybody's been giving me different advice. So I'm adjusting, okay,
I'm wearing sunglasses, which is great. I never got prescription sunglasses.
I never got the like snap on things. I've just
been sort of dealing with it. So, yeah, this is new.
This has been good for me.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Now, are you okay with getting the contacts in and out?
Speaker 1 (02:54):
No? I am not. Ever since you told me that
you don't like to poke at corpses with eye issues,
I've had a slight nightmare about my eyes. So first
of all, I went to YouTube, and YouTube was sort
of helpful. There are a couple of folks on YouTube
who have giant eye models, so you can see kind
(03:17):
of like they have a giant lens that looks like
it's about two feet long, so you can see the
curve of the lens and then they have like a
giant eye and they'll kind of demonstrate how to do it.
I think I'm going with the tip in method where
I kind of go in the lower eyelid and then
sort of pull up my upper eyelid. I don't know.
I'm just happy I can get them in. That's it.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Getting them in for me now has become routine. Sometimes
I can struggle getting them out. Yeah, you know, and
it's I very I'll try to keep like a thumbnail,
a little bit logger, so I can kind of catch
an edge as I try to swipe them out. But
then I've also caused my eyes to bleed.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Oh gosh.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
So you know, just I need to be a little
more gentle with my eyeballs.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Yeah, you're worse. I've been looking YouTube. YouTube told me
to kind of get them out, you kind of pull
them down, and getting them out is getting better and better.
I know, I just need more practice. But in the summers,
when I'm not teaching, that's when I have time to
concentrate on like this kind of stuff where I just
need to get used to something or you know, landscaping
(04:21):
or anything that I need to get done. So this
is my summer project, is trying to get used to
no glasses. So we'll see, I can see, I can read.
I think it's going to be fine. Hopefully, you know,
I can keep up with everything, so we'll see how costs.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Well, you look great, so.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Think and that really that's what counts.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
You could be blind as a bat, but you look great.
You know. That's plenty priority there.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
That's it. That's it. Well, speaking about our listeners, I
get a lot of emails, which is nice from folks
with recommendations that I have one from someone named Hailey
and it's a story from her area, which is in
Pennsylvania that she thought was important. She said, a pretty
lengthy email with a lot of great details that we
(05:08):
used and she signed it Justice for Edith. So this
is a story that's almost one hundred years old, and
this is what I mean that when we have family
members and then just people from the community one hundred
years later who feel really passionately about these historic stories.
That's why we do the show is you know, you
(05:28):
get to know by reading the backgrounds of these people
who have been murdered, we get to know them and
we feel like we know them by the end of
these episodes. Hopefully that's my goal. And so she felt
like she really wanted to know more details about this story,
and stories are important, and so throughout this I'm going
to want to talk a little bit about why prosecutors
(05:50):
work hard to try to put together some kind of
a narrative for a jury to understand, because that's how
we kind of get through life is through these kind
of stories.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Right, well, you know for sure, you know, and when
it does come to, you know, prosecuting a case, the
jury needs to understand, of course what happened in the case,
as well as the veracity of the information they're hearing
during the trial process, but they also have to make
a decision of guilt or not, you know, So it's
(06:20):
you know, it's important that the DA the prosecutors are
able to convey things appropriately and then in our system,
of course, that the defense gets their adequate representation. So
you know, now the jury is having to balance, right
the information that is more geared towards incrimination and the
(06:41):
information that's more geared towards exculpatory.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
But what if you as a prosecutor or as an
investigator pitching to a prosecutor a case, what if you
don't have a good story. What if it's like, I
don't know why he or she did it. I can't
explain it. We have some good circumstantial efface, we can
run the DNA, but we cannot find no matter what
we do, and a fair money hidden anger anything. They
(07:08):
were the perfect couple. What if there's no story to
sell a jury and not as much evidence as you
would like.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Well, having motive is ideal, you know, and that really
helps as part of understanding why the crime occurred. But
it's not necessary to prove who did the crime. So
that's part of you know, moving forward is sometimes there
are our cases that get prosecuted. We have no idea why,
(07:37):
but the facts are there. You know, the beyond a
reasonable doubt is there. You know, the information that supports
that legal criteria is present. Don't have to answer the
question as to what was the motive.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Okay, well, we've talked about all of this. Let's go
ahead and get into the story. We are in nineteen
thirty five Pennsylvania, which I love, love, love Pennsylvania. Let's
go ahead and set the scene. We are going to
start with the discovery. A lot of times I want
to get into who the victim was first, or who
the killer was, or leave it all a mystery. But
(08:13):
what I want to do is get into how the
victim was found and then we'll proceed from there.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
If that works for you, that works for me.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Okay. Saturday, June fifteenth, nineteen thirty five. We're in Bangor, Pennsylvania.
This is about forty miles north of Allentown, very close
to the edge of the Poconos. Have you been to
the Poconos. I have love it, love it, love it.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
I have not. Oh gosh, I know, I am sorry.
Road trip. You know, when I lived in Maryland and
I'm talking now like te second to the fourth grade,
I know if my parents we went up to Pennsylvania
and saw some of the sites up there, but I
don't think we ever even got up to Philadelphia. So
(08:58):
bangor Pennsylvania is I have no idea what that's about.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Well, we'll learn a little bit about it. Mostly we're
going to concentrate on the victim. So again, nineteen thirty
five American Sherlock was set nineteen twenty one to nineteen
thirty three, but I had to go kind of before
and after to cover my forensic scientist Oscar Heinrich's life.
So I feel pretty comfortable with the forensics that were
happening at this time period. You know, some blood stained
(09:25):
pattern analysis, not with this case necessarily, but that was around.
Fingerprinting was around, ballistics were around, a little bit of profiling,
blood typing. Not yet, I don't think so. Yeah, So
we're we're kind of in the nascent time of forensics here,
but there's some I think, some pretty good things that
we could pick up on here. Okay, there's an eighteen
(09:50):
year old woman who is not our victim. She is
going to be someone who makes the discovery. Her name
is Olga de Thomas. And she's watering her garden with
her mom and and this is June nineteen thirty five,
really dry a couple of weeks, it's the summer. So
she goes to the family's outdoor cistern. This is probably
the fourth time we've talked about a cistern. And yeah,
(10:12):
had you ever heard of it before you met me?
Had you been familiar with a cistern?
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yes, you know, just from the kind of the general concept.
I never had a case in which a body was
recovered in a cistern, but you know, on the West Coast,
you generally don't see those. Now, we had wells, you know,
out there in California. But in terms of this, this
concept of a cistern that was, you know, in all
(10:37):
these farming communities and everything else. Now, I mean, it's
that would be a new experience for me for sure.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Yeah, I mean, and cisterns kind of come in all
shapes and sizes and locations. I had a story set
in Austin on tenfold. That was a cistern in a basement,
which basements are kind of unusual. Here a cistern and
abasement where they would retrieve water. And it was lyne,
so you know, it's a container that can be underground
and it's lined in some way. We on my family
(11:06):
farm had a giant concrete cistern that was lined, but
it was above ground. So it's all over the place. Okay,
So we have Oga and she is pulling the cover
off of the family's outdoor cistern where she's going to
get some water. And this is a cistern that is
very deep, seventeen feet deep in her parents' backyard, and
(11:27):
there's not a lot of people who know it's actually
there because it's covered and not above ground, and it's
filled with eleven feet of water. So when she gets
the lid off, she sees something white floating in the water.
She doesn't think much of it. Animals would get into
the water sometimes, which just sounds disgusting, but I've seen
that pop up in a lot of stories, cats drowning.
(11:50):
The lid comes off like they would in a will.
So a few hours later she mentions it in passing
to her fiance is a guy named Joseph, and Joseph
goes and pulls it cover off the cistern and he
sees that the white thing is a body. He calls
the police. And this is a technical question for you.
The police struggle for hours to pull this weighted down body.
(12:11):
So if you're doing the math, there is seventeen feet
of cistern and it is filled with eleven feet of water,
so we're talking about six feet before she hits water.
It's a woman. The corner is trying to help get
her out. It's so difficult that he breaks one of
his ribs. How would you remove a body now from
(12:32):
this type of situation. Do you have any idea what
kind of mechanism they would use so that it doesn't
damage evidence.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
With the depth of this well, we are talking this
is a difficult body recovery generally speaking. This is where now,
if I'm responding out today, you know, I'm not equipped
to remove a body from this type of cistern, from
this type of depth. This is where I'd probably be
calling fire out, or i would be calling out different
(13:00):
aspects of let's say our public works department, you know.
And so they've got all sorts of equipment, So I'd
rely on these experts in terms of, Okay, what kind
of mechanism do you have that would allow us to
be able to get this body up and also assessed.
Do I even need to get a person, a sort
of a rescuer to go down there in order to
(13:20):
be able to maybe to get a some sort of
platform that this body could be moved on and strapped
on before the mechanism could haul the body up. The
big concern is you can't really do any type of
true forensic processing with the body down at this depth
inside the cistern. So all this removal needs to be
(13:41):
done in a way to protect the body and anything
that might be adhering to the body, the clothing, or
any other types of evidence within the water. I don't
want the body hitting against the walls of the cistern
coming up, so it needs to be it's not just
a yank the body up. It needs to be a
very controlled process. And then after the body is out
(14:03):
of the cistern and is documented and assessed on the surface,
of course, I want to see what is down in
the cistern, and my question would be can I drain
the cistern, right, you know, or is this something where
we might have to get the dive team out and
you get somebody down in there. Maybe there's a gun
(14:24):
at the bottom of the cistern or a knife, you know,
So that is important. And then of course the surface
around the cistern you have to pay attention to it
in terms of you know, there's activity with the discovery
of the body, and this is a form of contaminating
the crime scene because now there could be shoe impressions.
The cover has been moved, but is there anything that
(14:45):
the offender, whoever deposited this body there, has left behind,
you know. So that is all part of the crime
scene and it should be done in a very step
wise methodical way. You think about Oga being able to
see something white floating down in the cistern, well, you know,
before the top of the water, it's six feet down.
(15:06):
If this was a very narrow cistern, the light getting
down there for Oga to see anything probably wouldn't happen.
So I imagine that the opening of the cistern is
I'm gonna just speculate let's say three feet wide at
least something like that, which allows the water to get
down six feet into this hole and lights up what's
(15:29):
present within the water.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
So this is a cistern, and this is a detective
bending over and you see there's a big I mean,
I think you are about right. Maybe this is even
bigger than three feet.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
You know. Taking a look at this photo that you're
showing of the top of the cistern, what I'm seeing
is is that I'm surprised it's actually a square opening,
and that the cover appears to be a wood cover
that's possibly hinged and it's opened up. I'm estimating that
this square opening is roughly three feet by three feet,
(16:00):
which again I think would allow the light to get
down the six feet into this hole. So Olga could
have seen this body. Now that opening is completely flush
with the ground. So this is where now the offender
isn't having to lift the stone and the body up
over some sort of wall structure, literally could slide the
(16:24):
stone and eat its body into this this well.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
And look at the background. This looks rural to me.
There's brush, maybe it's even up against a hill. This
is supposed to be somebody's backyard, but this looks pretty
maybe isolated based on this photo.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
At least with ye. The backdrop behind the cistern, there's
a fair amount of dense vegetation, you know that would
be interesting is this Is this cistern completely surrounded, you
know by this type of vegetation and maybe there's a
trail that leads to it, because part of assess seeing, Okay,
how how well known is this cistern? Is this something
(17:04):
that somebody driving by, you know, in a neighborhood road
or on a let's say a trail would see, or
is this something where somebody had to have prior knowledge
that this sister existed in order to decide, yes, this
is where I'm going to take this body.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
I think investigators say, I don't think anybody except a
member of this family or a neighbor would have known
about this. And also, look, this is dirt. This is
your right flush against the ground. I think the lid
is would so it would have just melded right into
the dirt. It's the same color basically right now.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
In my experience, I've had cases that are kind of
what appear to be similarly isolated. So you think it's
only select individuals. What you don't know is people who
have kind of walked through here played in this location
as a kid. Creepers that are out there pushing through
the vegetation to peep into houses, you know, So you
(18:04):
can have somebody that has no connection to the family
or to the property that has knowledge that the cistern exists.
So that's just always going to be a factor, no
matter how isolated this location is.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
So things we know so far. It's a woman who's
found naked, and I'll give you some more details about
how she died, damage, all that kind of stuff, But
we do know that very few people knew the cistern
even existed. So we can look at Olga's family just initially.
We can look at Joseph and her mom, and as
of right now, those are the only people that we
(18:41):
know know anything about this cistern. It doesn't seem like
it would be obvious to anybody but someone in the
family or a neighbor. So when they are pulling her
out and they layer on the ground, they note several things. One,
she has no clothes on except for a single dark
(19:02):
glove on one hand, the reason the body was so
difficult to remove is that a large rock had been
tied with a quarter inch eleven strand clothesline wire. The
wire was wrapped around her neck and throat, under both armpits,
and over one thigh before wrapping around her back. Two
additional links were made into loops which were then tied
(19:24):
about the rock. And the rock was one twenty five,
So the combined weight was two seventy five. So she
weighed about one point fifty and the rock was about
one twenty five, is what they're saying. Now. I found
a photo of the wire, so thick metal wire, and
there's the rock. Look at that rock.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Wow. Okay, so I'm looking at I'm assuming this is
one of the investigators that is holding up this this wire,
and it truly is a metal wire. The wire itself,
I can see, has been you know, shaped. You know,
they obviously at this point have removed this wire from
around the victim's body, but it is still kinked and
(20:03):
the wire has some significant girth to it. Now, I
can't tell if there's a shadow that looks thinner, or
if there's a thinner wire that was utilized and then
they cut that off, Like if there's thinner wire that
have been used as binding, but the wire that appears
to I can't tell if it's still connected to the rock.
And I'll talk about the rock in a second. This
(20:25):
isn't going to be an easy wire to wrap around
a body or that rock for that matter. You know,
I think it's something that a man would be able
to bend and shape. But it's, in my opinion, it's
a poor choice. You know, it's basically the offender could
have chosen a better material. Now, this rock that is
(20:49):
a significant rock. This thing is I would say this
is a boulder. It's at the left foot of this detective.
This detective I'm just going to zoom, is you know,
average male size. But this rock is extending up to
almost his knee, almost his knee, and it's got a
(21:10):
base to it. Now, I don't know what kind of
rock this is, you know, obviously you know, depending on
the stone.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
It's limestone. Sorry to interrupt you, it's limestone.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Well, limestone is not as heavy as granite, as example,
so you know it's not going to be you know,
if it was granted, it'd be holy smokes, how did
this person move this? But at the same time, you know,
this is a massive object for the offender to have
to be able to move while this stone is connected
(21:43):
to a one hundred and fifty Poundish woman, you know.
So I see this and I start thinking, are there
multiple individuals involved in disposing of the victim's body? Yeah,
I start I start leaning that way. I wouldn't say
it's impossible for a single offender to accomplish this, but
(22:05):
that's a much bigger stone than I was envisioning.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
So to me, there seems to be several different possibilities.
And before you know anything even about the victim, because
you don't even know anything about her or anything about
the potential killers we have here. To me, there seem
to be a couple of different possibilities for premeditation. One
is it's not premeditated at all. She's either killed there,
(22:30):
or let's say she's killed there. There's an argument, and
there happens to be wire that is laying around, because
this does look pretty dense and rule to me and
this rock, and they panic and drag her over and
figure out how to dispose of the body. Two, somebody
carries this wire, which doesn't look very easy to do,
(22:51):
to the scene, but not the rock. And then three
they carry both to the scene with the intention of
disposing of a body. None of them sound good to me.
Seems so hard, But it would have concealed the body, well,
I guess, except somebody looked into the cistern.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Right, you know, And that's really you know, getting answers
to that question. Was this material present right there by
the cistern? And that's of course interviewing Oga, her family,
other people who interact with the cistern. Is that something
that they say, Oh, yeah, that rock used to be
over here, and that wire, you know, was over on
this side. And so the offender just utilized materials at hand.
(23:29):
If this stone and if this wire is foreign to
the scene, then where did it come from and how
did it get to this location? And this also would
suggest that possibly the victim had been killed at a
separate location and then brought to this location along with
the material to weigh her down in the cistern. That's indicating,
(23:51):
at least for body disposal, the offender or offenders developed
a plan and chose the cistern because they had prior
knowledge of that system.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Well, let's move along and get to who this is
and what her injuries are. So I mentioned that ultimately
the corner was the one who helped remove her, and
he broke a couple of his ribs, one of his
ribs trying to get her out. She's naked, she's got
this single dark glove on. It is alarming to everybody there.
(24:23):
There's a researcher who I'm going to refer to a
lot named Brian Carroll, who did tons of me pulled
all kinds of newspaper articles and really put some great
stuff together. And he said that a single dark glove
had been a hint during this time period of a
secret criminal society of extortionists known as the Black Hand organization.
(24:43):
And so immediately that's what everybody thought. But it was
always a black glove placed on a victim if they
were murdered, not a blue glove. And this was a
blue glove. So you know already. I think investigators are
trying to figure out how did this woman end up
at the bottom of a well strangled? It sounds like
(25:04):
with the same wire. Now, will you also talk to
me about that? Would that have been easy with this
wire that you're looking at to strangle somebody with it?
Is it malleable enough? You think?
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Well, I think if the if the wire is something
that the offender could manipulate and since around the victim's neck,
then it's it's entirely possible. Right now, you know, I
need to know more about you know, the you know,
if they have autopsy results, does she have any other injuries?
(25:36):
You know, was she completely bound prior to possibly being strangled?
Is it possible she has other injuries to indicate that
she had been had lost consciousness. So just don't know
right now. But the wire itself, I'm almost got the
sensation in my hands in terms of how hard this
wire would be. Is that once this wire is bent
(25:59):
and it's bent enough to wear, it's cutting off circulation
to the victim's brain at least, you know, closing off
the jugular veins. And then all you have to do
is just kind of you don't have to tie it
a knot. You just have to kind of bend it
and it's going to stay in place. This is a
stiff wire, you know, there's no way it's going to
be tied into a you know, a bow knot. You know,
(26:22):
it's it Literally all you have to do is just
kind of sense the two ends around each other and
leave it in place. So yes, I think it's I mean,
it is entirely possible the victim could have been killed
using this wire, but I definitely want to know more.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Okay, well, let me give you more. So the autopsy
finds that there's a wound to her head, which is
a large bruise above her eyebrow extending to the side
of her head. They think that she was hint with
a blunt object before she was strangled with the wire,
and that her right wrist is broken, and we don't
(26:59):
know if this is the same rist that the glove
was on. Is it possible, though, that all of these
injuries are the result of the haphazard way they were
forced to get her out of the cistern or would
this have been obvious? I think the strangulation would have
been obvious. But what about this kind of bruise that
they're talking about.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Well, the fact you know a bruise is you know,
hemorrhaging of blood, you know, through the lower layers of
the skin and of course into the muscles. That would
indicate to me that if a bruise had formed, that
her heart is still pumping. The assumption right now is
that she's dead when she goes into the cistern because
(27:39):
of the metal or wire around her neck. But did
they just put that on at the last minute while
she was still alive and then thrower down in the
cistern and of course now you have at least an impact.
Don't have an answer to that question, but you know,
a theory could be developed that she had received a
blow to her head prior to being strangled. That blow
(28:03):
could have dazed her, maybe render her unconscious, just depending
on you know, how hard that blow would have been.
And then there really is little resistance from her to
the strangulation. Now her right wrist is broken, you know,
so is that? You know, it's like, well, where is
that broken at? Is? Is it just dislocated through the
(28:24):
wrist bones or was her you know, the the forearm bones,
the radius, the you know ulna, were those broken down
towards the risk that indicates at least a level significant
amount of force, you know, And and did the offenders
do that or is that a transport injury? I often
see bodies that have been they're dead, but now they're
(28:45):
being put into vehicles, removed from vehicles, drug across uh
you know, surfaces like the ground. Those bodies will have
a lot of a brace of injuries and all sorts
of surfaces and oftentimes with weird directionalities, you know. So
I call those transport injuries because especially like with this
body again, one hundred and fifty pound woman, this body's
going to be hard to move around because of the
(29:09):
sheer weight, especially if it's just a single offender. And
now you have that she's nude, all this exposed skin
that's going to be drug across rough surfaces, and so
you see that, you know. So that's again part of
why I like to look at photographs so I can
start accurately kind of reconstructing, you know, the sequence of
events fatal injuries versus transport injuries, and start forming opinions
(29:32):
as to what I think happened.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Let's talk real quick about time of death. The coroner
looked at her and said, I think she's been in
a cistern between four and eight weeks. Oh, I will
tell you, Paul, we know that she went missing. Once
we find out who this is in January and we're
in June. How can you be that far off unless
(29:56):
she was held for however long. But I will tell
you that no obvious signs of sexual assault, and she
wasn't pregnant.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Determining time of death is a very approximate science, if
you will. There's a lot of factors at play in
this case. She's floating in water, I'm assuming, I mean,
she's underground. I'm assuming that this water is fairly stable
in terms of its temperature, but is going to be
cold relative to the surface temperatures. Being underwater, She's not
(30:28):
exposed during that time to insect activity in all likelihood,
nor is there any marine life in the cistern, you know,
So in essence, she's refrigerated, not frozen, unless this cistern
would freeze at the wintertime in northern Pennsylvania, you know,
and that would be part of assessing, you know, what's
going on. But all of you know, that aspect is
(30:50):
a huge variable that can really throw off, you know,
let's say how much decomposition and other factors that pathologists
could potentially use to estimate time of death. If she's
in the water for six months, she's not in good shape,
you know, So that's going to you know, complicate assessing
(31:13):
you know, some of the aspects to what, you know,
what kinds of injuries she may have. So I didn't
realize that she had been in the water that long.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
About five months January, mid January to mid to late June.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Yeah, so I do think that the big question. Obviously,
it's kind of gross to think that the family could
be drinking the water as this body is sort of
you know, decomposing in that cistern. Yeah, but she goes
missing back in January. This victim, it's when does she
go into the cistern? That's going to be the big question.
And so that's where now assessing the body. If the
pathologist is saying, what was it four to eight weeks?
(31:51):
Yeah for a time of death, well maybe he's looking
at the you know, the condition of the body isn't
as bad is what you had expected if had had
been floating in the cistern since January. Is it possible
that she had been held alive for a period of
time and then place killed and then place in the cistern.
(32:11):
Don't know at this point in time, but maybe the
difference of what the pathologist is saying and why he's
so far off is because she had been held alive,
so more information in terms of the circumstances. You know,
who the victim is when she goes missing. All of
that has to be kind of assessed within that context
and within that possibility.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Well, the victim is complicated, first of all, just to
get this out of the way, you know, they couldn't
identify her. There's nothing else in the well. It's just
her with one glove on, nothing else. They drain the cistern,
so they bring in some local dentists and they used
in mental records to discover that it is a woman
named Edith Ford. She is thirty seven years old and
(32:52):
she has been missing since January twelfth, so five months earlier.
She was last seen leaving her mom's house. She had
dinner there. Her mom is a widow and she was
very elderly. Edith was one of fourteen kids, but you know,
five of them had died. Her family was in poverty.
She was never reported missing. She would work at Atlantic
(33:16):
City as a waitress. There were rumors, unfounded rumors that
she was a sex worker when she would go to
Atlantic City. She also worked at a silk mill in Reading, Pennsylvania.
And you know, Bangor is about seventy miles from Reading,
in about one hundred and fifty miles from Atlantic City.
She was going very long periods of time away from
(33:37):
her family and I guess they just didn't hear from her.
So this is why this has taken so long, just
to discover her, but also you know, for her family
to essentially say, well, this is the last time we
saw her. Once they identify her.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
Okay, and where did she live relative to where her
body was found.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Edith lived in Bangor, in the town of Bangor, and
so everything is pretty centralized here, so I don't think
very far all.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Right, So that's that gives me some optimism.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
You know.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
Part of this investigation. Edith has been missing since January.
Now it's a matter of basically doing a canvas of
the town, and that could be done through flyers. Of course,
that's going out and contacting people. It's utilizing the newspaper
to try to determine if anybody saw Edith in town.
(34:27):
You know, after the family is saying, well she left,
you know, and she would be gone for long periods
of time. Are we able to narrow down, you know,
this window from the time that Edith was last seen
alive to the time that you know her body was found.
Do you have any information along those lines?
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Do so? Once the police find out who Edith is,
they talk to the mom, they find out that Edith
had been to her mother's house, her sister had made dinner,
and they point her towards where Edith lives. They go
and they find love letters from a local man in
his fifties who is married, and a lot of people
(35:08):
know that he has been secretly dating I guess not
so secretly Edith. He is an Italian immigrant. His name
is Giuseppe Chimo, married, he has a stepchild, and in
June seventeenth he's brought in for questioning. So he's part
of her tight circle and they're looking first at him.
(35:29):
So he is a cheesemaker, and as I said, people
know that this is a horribly kept secret. Sounds like
he has a pretty good business. He's described as having
a substantial dairy operation, and Edith worked for him at
some point. That's how they know each other. He's described
as wealthy. Italian immigrants were in Pennsylvania at this time
(35:51):
and accepted it. Sounds like, so this is a prominent
member of the community. His best friend lives next door
to the Thomas family where the cistern is, and he
lived there at one point.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
Also, Yeah, so he has at least a geographic connection
roughly a geographic connection to where Edith's body is found.
During the interview, does he indicate when he last saw Edith?
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Yep. So she has dinner that her sister made at
her mother's house on the night of January twelfth. She
met him at a tavern that night and they talked
for a while. He says, we had some drinks. He said,
I've got to go check on some cheese, which I
don't know why. I think that's funny, but he did.
He was a cheesemaker. He leaves. When he comes back
(36:39):
to see if Edith is still there. She has left
to the movies with another man, and that is it.
That's his story. She left. I have no idea what
happened after that.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
But she's at a tavern. Do the other patrons at
the tavern? Are they able to track them down and say, yeah,
they saw Edith with this other man.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
We don't have witnesses who say she left with another man.
So the problem for the investigators is, you know, Giuseppe
has some inconsistencies with his story. There are apparently no
witnesses who see her leave with either Giuseppe or a
mystery man, so there is sort of nobody is paying
attention to Edith. She just at some point vanishes. We
(37:19):
don't know with who, And he just says, I have
no idea what happened.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
And Giuseppe's best friend also has the geographic connection to
Olga's family and where the sister is found. Was this
best friend interviewed?
Speaker 1 (37:35):
He was, and he was the guy who owned the
tavern where they were. He was eventually arrested on a
gambling charge a few weeks after Edith's body was found,
but they never had enough evidence against him, and he
had not, you know, been somebody who she had been
kind of consistently involved with. There was another man that
(37:57):
she had dated, but he was in jail. Great ala,
Why so that was it for suspects. These three guys,
they kind of dismissed the tavern owner and really focused
in on Giuseppe. Because, let me tell you this little story.
There's a local newspaper who reported on a fight between
two women that everybody knows was Edith and Giuseppe's wife,
(38:21):
whose name was Esther. They don't name the women, but
everybody knows who it was. In the newspaper. I don't
know why they just didn't print their names, but they
weren't arrested. There was a physical fight between these two people,
and they called it between a man, a fight between
a man's wife and his mistress. The wronged wife hit
the other woman with a milk bottle and threatened quote
(38:43):
additional harm. So we don't know much more about that
information except that we are connecting it to these two women.
So now you have a scorned wife to throw into
the mix, hauling one hundred and fifty pound woman and
one hundred pound stone and tossing it into a cistern.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
First, you know, when did this fight occur relative to
Edith going missing? And second, what did Eser say during
her interview?
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Okay, it looks like this fight happened the year before
her murder. But there were a lot of rumors that
the wife, Esther and her son, who was Giuseppe's step son,
had confessed to the murder. This is newspapers reporting it
and people around town because of this fight that was reported,
(39:30):
and the police interviewed Esther and the step son and
nothing came of it. They just said, we don't think
that they were involved at all. The only thing I
could say is that the police didn't take it seriously.
They dismissed. It doesn't mean it didn't happen. It just
means they didn't see any kind of evidence and they
focused on the husband.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
So this is, as we discussed at the top of
this episode, one of the primary motives of why people
get killed is this lover's triangle. Just because Esther and
Edith got into a physical fight prior to Edith going missing,
that does not necessarily mean that Esser would be the
one that would have physically harmed Edith. But the dynamics
(40:14):
of this relationship between Edith and Giuseppe and Esser after
that physical fight probably changed significantly. Giuseppe's you know, his
marriage is probably not good, and there may have been
a deterioration in the relationship between Giuseppe and Edith, where
(40:36):
now he's thinking I've got to end of this relationship.
He places himself with Edith. He's the last one to
see her alive before she goes missing. He has general
knowledge of the location where Edith's body was found. He
also has a friend who is at the tavern owns
(40:58):
the tavern where Edith was per him last scene alive.
Of course, you've got this mystery man that he's saying
that Edith went to the movies with. However, there's several
factors that seem to be pointing at Giuseppe. And this
is where start taking a look at Edith and the
stone and the wire and how she's being disposed. Are
(41:21):
we dealing with more than one offender? I think from
an investigative aspect, is taking a look at the best friend.
Is he an accomplice? He gets arrested two weeks after
Edith's body is found. Now, it's an unrelated charge, but
that's something that investigators can leverage in order to get information.
(41:44):
You put jeopardy on somebody like that, we're going to
charge you with the maximum for this criminal charge. Plus,
if we find out that you helped either in the
homicide of Edith and or the disposal of the body,
we're going to charge you with this. Unless you cooperate
with us. You make him nervous, you make him go.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
Now, even though Giuseppe's my friend, I don't want to
go to prison. It doesn't sound like the investigators did
that in this case.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
Yeah, I think they really dropped the ball here. It
doesn't sound like the tavern owner whose name was al
Shook was ever interrogated about this. Let me give you
a little bit more information about Giuseppe's night, what he
says happened. He said that, you know, he went to
go check on his cheese, and when he came back,
(42:33):
she was gone to the movies, is what he had
been told. He said that when the movie was over,
he went over to the movie house. It was probably
the only one, and he said that he watched her
come out with another man, and they got into a
car with new jersey plates and they took off. Giuseppe
went back to the tavern and he stayed until about midnight,
(42:55):
and that was about it. He said that they went,
you know, and drank some beer somewhere else. But I
will say this, this is an interesting little note. You
and I talked about whether or not she had been
held because this time of death was so different, five
months versus four to six weeks. This is where the
nice thing about stomach contents comes in. The police said
(43:17):
to her sister, hey, what did you cook for her
that night? And she said that she had made pickles
and some liver and some potatoes, and that's what they
found in her stomach. So all that time she had
been dead. So it sounds like that's when she died.
Was that night that she went missing?
Speaker 2 (43:36):
Yeah, that last meal is pretty gross. Don't be judging
pickles and liver.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
Although let me give you a better idea of that.
I love learning about food. Liver, sausage, fried potatoes, pickles,
bread and butter. And that's what shows up in her
stomach contents. So that's how we know she wasn't held.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
Okay, but you know this is this is an interesting
addition to Ja Seppy's story. You know, so he comes
back to the tavern, Edith and other man have left
and gone to the movies. He tracks down, you know
where they went to the movies and sees Edith leave
with another man. Per his statement, Now here's another factor
(44:15):
in terms of motive. You think that there would be jealousy.
He's been having an affair with Edith. He went out
to the tavern to have drinks with Edith. Maybe he
thought that that night was going to go differently. And
when he bails to go check on his cheese, Edith
gets bored and she finds another man to spend the
evening with. So you know, now again this is where
(44:40):
aspects of him just keeps adding up. I'm kind of curious.
As a cheesemaker. You know this cheese factory. Was this
metal wire that was found around Edith's body? Was there
a source of it at his cheese factory?
Speaker 1 (44:53):
It doesn't sound like investigators found. That doesn't mean there wasn't,
because now I kind of mistrust investigators here. That is it.
They are at a dead end. They cannot figure out
anything else. I know, this is very frustrating. I'm not
sure we've encountered investigators who have ever done less than this.
I mean, this is not seem like a lot. Giseppe,
(45:13):
he is brought in for questioning and he says, listen,
I'm a cheater, but I'm not a murderer. And that's it.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
Yeah, you know, and I most certainly can't pin EDI's
homicide on Giuseppe with the information we have, right, but
he's in play as a suspect. This man that Giuseppe
claims he saw with Edith and get into the car
after the movie theater would be in play if they
would have been able to identify the man. You know.
Part of assessing this case is the condition of Edith's body.
(45:42):
She's found completely nude. I'm assuming they never found her clothes,
and the place placement of this glove on one of
her hands, even though they say there's no signs of
sexual assault, and we've discussed this before, doesn't mean that
sexual assault did not occur. So, you know, any time
a woman's body is found nude, that generally is going
(46:06):
to suggest that maybe there had been some sort of
sexual motive to the crime. Secondly, the placement of the
glove on the hand, that's very unusual. I'm assuming this
is not Edith's glove. This is not something that she
wore that the offender just never took off. You brought
up this research that this other was it an author
had done on this case?
Speaker 1 (46:27):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (46:27):
Yeah, about this culture of you know, victims who were
killed by this black glove society or whatever you called them,
they would put a single glove on the killer's hand.
I'm assuming that this was something that was known to
the general public at some level and not just within
law enforcement. So there's two interpretations I have about the
(46:50):
glove on Edith's hands. One, let's say this is a
predatory crime and that the placement of the glove on
the hand was maybe like a taunt or it was
something that was significant to the fantasy of the predator.
But this very unusual black glove society that's operating in
the area suggests to me the more likely scenario is
(47:11):
that whoever killed Edith knew about this group and was
trying to stage Edith's death to make it look like
this group had killed her. If this is the case,
and you have that type of staging, that's because the
offender knows that the investigation is going to look at him,
(47:34):
and now he's misdirecting the investigation by utilizing this glove
and trying to throw it over onto this black glove society.
He just happens to use a blue glove. He doesn't
have access to a black glover or whatever it is.
You know that staging aspect is behaviorally hugely significant, and
(47:55):
you take a look at who likely would be focused
in on the investigation, it's somebody close to Edith, and
Giuseppe checks that box too. So the totality of the
circumstances right now, I think Giuseppe is what I would
consider a prime suspect. Sounds like the original investigators thought
that as well. They just didn't from an investigator standpoint.
(48:19):
From witnesses from forensics just did not have enough to
generate a level of probable cause where now there is
confidence that he was truly the killer. I don't have confidence.
I just go I'm I balling Giuseppe in Edith's homicide.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
Well, one really weird note that I just read about
was that there were a couple of letters that went
out before her body was discovered, but after she was murdered,
and they were purported to be from Edith. One went
to her brother that I went to Florida. I'll see
you later. Everything is fine. That's why nobody thought anything
(48:56):
of this, because she was kind of a roamer. So
it turns out that Giuseppe admitted that he asked a
woman to write this in her best woman handwriting as
if she's Edith, addressed to Giuseppe, her boyfriend who's married.
Dear sweetheart, I'm very sorry for what I have done
and can't write so well, I'm going away to Florida
(49:18):
and we'll stay there. And then she says, I signed
the name Edith. This woman. I don't know what she
was thinking by doing this, and then finding out later
this woman went missing, and the police of course said
what the hell, and he said, Well, the guys at
the tavern were gonna rib me for Edith taking off
and leaving. So I had this woman write these letters
(49:38):
when I was drunk to try to explain that she
wasn't dumping me for the guy at the movies. Instead,
she you know, was going off to start a new life.
It still wasn't enough for the police. So yeah, jist,
I mean, come on, this guy, but he gets away
scot free.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
I'm interpreting. I can't write so well. Well, her handwriting
is different to the Edith, and so there's that built
in excuse that her handwriting. Probably if mom were to
take a look at these letters, it should go that
doesn't look like Edith's handwriting. Yeah, as I said Jiusseppe,
who knows exactly why was this jealousy because he truly
(50:17):
saw Edith with this other man? Or was he trying
to preserve his marriage or trying to preserve his reputation?
It was Edith going to you know, threaten. Is this
a time in which she could have sued him over
the what did you call it? You've talked about that
in the past.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
Oh, the heartbalm, Yes, I think so.
Speaker 2 (50:37):
Yeah, you know, so there's I think there's several different
motives that Giuseppe had, and then everything else is adding up.
It's just too bad that they couldn't make a case
on him at that time. I bet there would have
been a prosecutor that would have filed this case and prosecuted.
I think there's enough potentially there. It all is dependent
(50:59):
upon on that time frame and what you know, prosecutors
felt comfortable with that they whether or not they could
prove the case to you know, a twelve member jury.
But right now, you know, just with what I know,
if I'm sitting on the jury, I'd go it's him.
Speaker 1 (51:15):
So really, the conclusion of this is nothing happens with Giuseppe.
His wife dies in nineteen forty one, this is six
years after the murder of Edith, he remarries, and then
he ends up living until nineteen sixty eight. Oh wow,
for a very long time. Nothing is reportedly happening with
(51:36):
him that we know of. So there you go. I
think somebody you and I are both pretty certain was
responsible for her murder has gotten away with it and
probably has gone on and lived a just a fine life.
I mean, unreal. So this is one of the frustrating
things about the time period. We have investigators in the
eighteen hundreds that nail the right people, and regardless of
(51:58):
what you think about their punishments, are punished. The right
people are punished. And then there are times in nineteen
thirty five where I think, while this probably could have
advanced differently with just a different investigator or something, I'm
disappointed in this case because I think that there were
some things that were missing. But there you go. I mean,
he was not that smart, but he did do some
(52:21):
stuff that it sounds like got him out of this.
Speaker 2 (52:24):
You know, part of the aspect of law enforcement here
in the United States is, you know, there's I believe
it's over fourteen thousand different law enforcement agencies, and there's
so many that's such a spread of experience and expertise.
You know, Banger is a town today that has a
population base of you know, it looks like over roughly
(52:48):
fifty two hundred people. What was the experience and the
expertise of the investigators that looked into this case. I
bet there was probably a chance that they had never
looked worked a homicide case before. Yeah, you know, so
this if this case had occurred in nineteen thirty five
in maybe a larger jurisdiction that had experienced investigators, knew
(53:09):
how to interview, knew how to do the follow up
on at the time, the type of physical evidence they
needed to look for, like going to the Geese factory
and looking for the metal wire source metal wire there.
I think that a case would have been made against
Giuseppe and probably relatively easily.
Speaker 1 (53:27):
Well, my eyes need to rest now, they're tired. They're
tired from all of us reading through. This was an interesting,
very frustrating case. But there are some things that we
covered that I'm always interested in recovering bodies from water
time of death. I'm always fascinated about how weather accelerates
decomposition or slows it down. How do we figure this out?
(53:48):
How did they figure things out in the nineteen thirties.
So this was a good case for you. I enjoyed it.
Speaker 2 (53:55):
There was actually a lot to work with in terms
of okay, because of the circumstance. Angel evidence, coupled with
some of the aspects with how Edith's body was disposed of,
gives great insight into how the investigation can be conducted
and proceed And then information that you ultimately told me
(54:15):
about Giuseppe. You know that that was It was just
kind of great to be able to put two and
two together, and at least I feel confident in my
conclusion in this particular case. There's been other cases I
haven't but this one, even though they didn't make an
arrest and get a conviction, I'm I am confident that
(54:36):
as we discuss this that we came to the right conclusion.
Speaker 1 (54:39):
I agree, and we will have another probably more ambiguous,
less conclusively drawn. I don't even know what the right
phrase is. I don't know if we're going to have
a case closed next week, but we'll try so. I
will see you.
Speaker 2 (54:53):
Very soon, all right, I'm looking forward to it. Thank you, Paul,
Thank you Kate.
Speaker 1 (55:02):
This has been an exactly right production for our sources
and show notes go to exactlyrightmedia dot com, slash Buried
Bones sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Emosi.
Speaker 2 (55:13):
Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin, and Kate Winkler Dawson.
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Speaker 2 (55:20):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
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Speaker 2 (55:24):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark, and Daniel Kramer.
Speaker 1 (55:29):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
ary Bones.
Speaker 2 (55:33):
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 (55:41):
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 (01:02):
Hi, Kate, what is going on here? I can see
your eyes?
Speaker 1 (01:05):
What you can't?
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Are you impersonating? Kate? Who are you really?
Speaker 1 (01:12):
I don't know if you've ever seen my eyes without
classes because I always wear glasses and this is brand
new for me.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Maybe in London or no, you know, didn't you take
some photos in Denver with out your glasses? Yeah? Now, okay, but.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
That was it. But you were concentrating on you and
your poses, your model poses. I don't think he were
paying attention, no to.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
My mind, at all.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
He was really working it. I can tell you've done
it before.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Let's strike a pose, right, Yeah, So.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
I'm in the contacts still pretty weird. I will say,
if I get anything wrong, We're going to blame the contacts.
We're not gonna blame me because I'm getting used to
them still. But I do like them so and I
know you prefer them.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Well, you know, I prefer them just for convenience. But
I don't see as well because I've got that monovision
set up or one eye a sceptor sense in what
I set for kind of computer you know, like not
reading length, and when I'm looking at my computer screen,
even things are a little fuzzy. Now is your prescription
similar or are you for just like close up?
Speaker 1 (02:13):
So I have kind of a mix. It's a little
fuzzy looking at it right now. My eyes, I think,
are still adjusting to it. But it's been really cool
to actually wear sunglasses. We have all of these super
smart audience members and they email me with all kinds
of advice. People who work at Costco and you know who,
who have experience with fitting people with glasses, and so
(02:36):
everybody's been giving me different advice. So I'm adjusting, okay,
I'm wearing sunglasses, which is great. I never got prescription sunglasses.
I never got the like snap on things. I've just
been sort of dealing with it. So, yeah, this is new.
This has been good for me.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Now, are you okay with getting the contacts in and out?
Speaker 1 (02:54):
No? I am not. Ever since you told me that
you don't like to poke at corpses with eye issues,
I've had a slight nightmare about my eyes. So first
of all, I went to YouTube, and YouTube was sort
of helpful. There are a couple of folks on YouTube
who have giant eye models, so you can see kind
(03:17):
of like they have a giant lens that looks like
it's about two feet long, so you can see the
curve of the lens and then they have like a
giant eye and they'll kind of demonstrate how to do it.
I think I'm going with the tip in method where
I kind of go in the lower eyelid and then
sort of pull up my upper eyelid. I don't know.
I'm just happy I can get them in. That's it.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Getting them in for me now has become routine. Sometimes
I can struggle getting them out. Yeah, you know, and
it's I very I'll try to keep like a thumbnail,
a little bit logger, so I can kind of catch
an edge as I try to swipe them out. But
then I've also caused my eyes to bleed.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Oh gosh.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
So you know, just I need to be a little
more gentle with my eyeballs.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Yeah, you're worse. I've been looking YouTube. YouTube told me
to kind of get them out, you kind of pull
them down, and getting them out is getting better and better.
I know, I just need more practice. But in the summers,
when I'm not teaching, that's when I have time to
concentrate on like this kind of stuff where I just
need to get used to something or you know, landscaping
(04:21):
or anything that I need to get done. So this
is my summer project, is trying to get used to
no glasses. So we'll see, I can see, I can read.
I think it's going to be fine. Hopefully, you know,
I can keep up with everything, so we'll see how costs.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Well, you look great, so.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Think and that really that's what counts.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
You could be blind as a bat, but you look great.
You know. That's plenty priority there.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
That's it. That's it. Well, speaking about our listeners, I
get a lot of emails, which is nice from folks
with recommendations that I have one from someone named Hailey
and it's a story from her area, which is in
Pennsylvania that she thought was important. She said, a pretty
lengthy email with a lot of great details that we
(05:08):
used and she signed it Justice for Edith. So this
is a story that's almost one hundred years old, and
this is what I mean that when we have family
members and then just people from the community one hundred
years later who feel really passionately about these historic stories.
That's why we do the show is you know, you
(05:28):
get to know by reading the backgrounds of these people
who have been murdered, we get to know them and
we feel like we know them by the end of
these episodes. Hopefully that's my goal. And so she felt
like she really wanted to know more details about this story,
and stories are important, and so throughout this I'm going
to want to talk a little bit about why prosecutors
(05:50):
work hard to try to put together some kind of
a narrative for a jury to understand, because that's how
we kind of get through life is through these kind
of stories.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Right, well, you know for sure, you know, and when
it does come to, you know, prosecuting a case, the
jury needs to understand, of course what happened in the case,
as well as the veracity of the information they're hearing
during the trial process, but they also have to make
a decision of guilt or not, you know, So it's
(06:20):
you know, it's important that the DA the prosecutors are
able to convey things appropriately and then in our system,
of course, that the defense gets their adequate representation. So
you know, now the jury is having to balance, right
the information that is more geared towards incrimination and the
(06:41):
information that's more geared towards exculpatory.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
But what if you as a prosecutor or as an
investigator pitching to a prosecutor a case, what if you
don't have a good story. What if it's like, I
don't know why he or she did it. I can't
explain it. We have some good circumstantial efface, we can
run the DNA, but we cannot find no matter what
we do, and a fair money hidden anger anything. They
(07:08):
were the perfect couple. What if there's no story to
sell a jury and not as much evidence as you
would like.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Well, having motive is ideal, you know, and that really
helps as part of understanding why the crime occurred. But
it's not necessary to prove who did the crime. So
that's part of you know, moving forward is sometimes there
are our cases that get prosecuted. We have no idea why,
(07:37):
but the facts are there. You know, the beyond a
reasonable doubt is there. You know, the information that supports
that legal criteria is present. Don't have to answer the
question as to what was the motive.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Okay, well, we've talked about all of this. Let's go
ahead and get into the story. We are in nineteen
thirty five Pennsylvania, which I love, love, love Pennsylvania. Let's
go ahead and set the scene. We are going to
start with the discovery. A lot of times I want
to get into who the victim was first, or who
the killer was, or leave it all a mystery. But
(08:13):
what I want to do is get into how the
victim was found and then we'll proceed from there.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
If that works for you, that works for me.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Okay. Saturday, June fifteenth, nineteen thirty five. We're in Bangor, Pennsylvania.
This is about forty miles north of Allentown, very close
to the edge of the Poconos. Have you been to
the Poconos. I have love it, love it, love it.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
I have not. Oh gosh, I know, I am sorry.
Road trip. You know, when I lived in Maryland and
I'm talking now like te second to the fourth grade,
I know if my parents we went up to Pennsylvania
and saw some of the sites up there, but I
don't think we ever even got up to Philadelphia. So
(08:58):
bangor Pennsylvania is I have no idea what that's about.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Well, we'll learn a little bit about it. Mostly we're
going to concentrate on the victim. So again, nineteen thirty
five American Sherlock was set nineteen twenty one to nineteen
thirty three, but I had to go kind of before
and after to cover my forensic scientist Oscar Heinrich's life.
So I feel pretty comfortable with the forensics that were
happening at this time period. You know, some blood stained
(09:25):
pattern analysis, not with this case necessarily, but that was around.
Fingerprinting was around, ballistics were around, a little bit of profiling,
blood typing. Not yet, I don't think so. Yeah, So
we're we're kind of in the nascent time of forensics here,
but there's some I think, some pretty good things that
we could pick up on here. Okay, there's an eighteen
(09:50):
year old woman who is not our victim. She is
going to be someone who makes the discovery. Her name
is Olga de Thomas. And she's watering her garden with
her mom and and this is June nineteen thirty five,
really dry a couple of weeks, it's the summer. So
she goes to the family's outdoor cistern. This is probably
the fourth time we've talked about a cistern. And yeah,
(10:12):
had you ever heard of it before you met me?
Had you been familiar with a cistern?
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yes, you know, just from the kind of the general concept.
I never had a case in which a body was
recovered in a cistern, but you know, on the West Coast,
you generally don't see those. Now, we had wells, you know,
out there in California. But in terms of this, this
concept of a cistern that was, you know, in all
(10:37):
these farming communities and everything else. Now, I mean, it's
that would be a new experience for me for sure.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Yeah, I mean, and cisterns kind of come in all
shapes and sizes and locations. I had a story set
in Austin on tenfold. That was a cistern in a basement,
which basements are kind of unusual. Here a cistern and
abasement where they would retrieve water. And it was lyne,
so you know, it's a container that can be underground
and it's lined in some way. We on my family
(11:06):
farm had a giant concrete cistern that was lined, but
it was above ground. So it's all over the place. Okay,
So we have Oga and she is pulling the cover
off of the family's outdoor cistern where she's going to
get some water. And this is a cistern that is
very deep, seventeen feet deep in her parents' backyard, and
(11:27):
there's not a lot of people who know it's actually
there because it's covered and not above ground, and it's
filled with eleven feet of water. So when she gets
the lid off, she sees something white floating in the water.
She doesn't think much of it. Animals would get into
the water sometimes, which just sounds disgusting, but I've seen
that pop up in a lot of stories, cats drowning.
(11:50):
The lid comes off like they would in a will.
So a few hours later she mentions it in passing
to her fiance is a guy named Joseph, and Joseph
goes and pulls it cover off the cistern and he
sees that the white thing is a body. He calls
the police. And this is a technical question for you.
The police struggle for hours to pull this weighted down body.
(12:11):
So if you're doing the math, there is seventeen feet
of cistern and it is filled with eleven feet of water,
so we're talking about six feet before she hits water.
It's a woman. The corner is trying to help get
her out. It's so difficult that he breaks one of
his ribs. How would you remove a body now from
(12:32):
this type of situation. Do you have any idea what
kind of mechanism they would use so that it doesn't
damage evidence.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
With the depth of this well, we are talking this
is a difficult body recovery generally speaking. This is where now,
if I'm responding out today, you know, I'm not equipped
to remove a body from this type of cistern, from
this type of depth. This is where I'd probably be
calling fire out, or i would be calling out different
(13:00):
aspects of let's say our public works department, you know.
And so they've got all sorts of equipment, So I'd
rely on these experts in terms of, Okay, what kind
of mechanism do you have that would allow us to
be able to get this body up and also assessed.
Do I even need to get a person, a sort
of a rescuer to go down there in order to
(13:20):
be able to maybe to get a some sort of
platform that this body could be moved on and strapped
on before the mechanism could haul the body up. The
big concern is you can't really do any type of
true forensic processing with the body down at this depth
inside the cistern. So all this removal needs to be
(13:41):
done in a way to protect the body and anything
that might be adhering to the body, the clothing, or
any other types of evidence within the water. I don't
want the body hitting against the walls of the cistern
coming up, so it needs to be it's not just
a yank the body up. It needs to be a
very controlled process. And then after the body is out
(14:03):
of the cistern and is documented and assessed on the surface,
of course, I want to see what is down in
the cistern, and my question would be can I drain
the cistern, right, you know, or is this something where
we might have to get the dive team out and
you get somebody down in there. Maybe there's a gun
(14:24):
at the bottom of the cistern or a knife, you know,
So that is important. And then of course the surface
around the cistern you have to pay attention to it
in terms of you know, there's activity with the discovery
of the body, and this is a form of contaminating
the crime scene because now there could be shoe impressions.
The cover has been moved, but is there anything that
(14:45):
the offender, whoever deposited this body there, has left behind,
you know. So that is all part of the crime
scene and it should be done in a very step
wise methodical way. You think about Oga being able to
see something white floating down in the cistern, well, you know,
before the top of the water, it's six feet down.
(15:06):
If this was a very narrow cistern, the light getting
down there for Oga to see anything probably wouldn't happen.
So I imagine that the opening of the cistern is
I'm gonna just speculate let's say three feet wide at
least something like that, which allows the water to get
down six feet into this hole and lights up what's
(15:29):
present within the water.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
So this is a cistern, and this is a detective
bending over and you see there's a big I mean,
I think you are about right. Maybe this is even
bigger than three feet.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
You know. Taking a look at this photo that you're
showing of the top of the cistern, what I'm seeing
is is that I'm surprised it's actually a square opening,
and that the cover appears to be a wood cover
that's possibly hinged and it's opened up. I'm estimating that
this square opening is roughly three feet by three feet,
(16:00):
which again I think would allow the light to get
down the six feet into this hole. So Olga could
have seen this body. Now that opening is completely flush
with the ground. So this is where now the offender
isn't having to lift the stone and the body up
over some sort of wall structure, literally could slide the
(16:24):
stone and eat its body into this this well.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
And look at the background. This looks rural to me.
There's brush, maybe it's even up against a hill. This
is supposed to be somebody's backyard, but this looks pretty
maybe isolated based on this photo.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
At least with ye. The backdrop behind the cistern, there's
a fair amount of dense vegetation, you know that would
be interesting is this Is this cistern completely surrounded, you
know by this type of vegetation and maybe there's a
trail that leads to it, because part of assess seeing, Okay,
how how well known is this cistern? Is this something
(17:04):
that somebody driving by, you know, in a neighborhood road
or on a let's say a trail would see, or
is this something where somebody had to have prior knowledge
that this sister existed in order to decide, yes, this
is where I'm going to take this body.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
I think investigators say, I don't think anybody except a
member of this family or a neighbor would have known
about this. And also, look, this is dirt. This is
your right flush against the ground. I think the lid
is would so it would have just melded right into
the dirt. It's the same color basically right now.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
In my experience, I've had cases that are kind of
what appear to be similarly isolated. So you think it's
only select individuals. What you don't know is people who
have kind of walked through here played in this location
as a kid. Creepers that are out there pushing through
the vegetation to peep into houses, you know, So you
(18:04):
can have somebody that has no connection to the family
or to the property that has knowledge that the cistern exists.
So that's just always going to be a factor, no
matter how isolated this location is.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
So things we know so far. It's a woman who's
found naked, and I'll give you some more details about
how she died, damage, all that kind of stuff, But
we do know that very few people knew the cistern
even existed. So we can look at Olga's family just initially.
We can look at Joseph and her mom, and as
of right now, those are the only people that we
(18:41):
know know anything about this cistern. It doesn't seem like
it would be obvious to anybody but someone in the
family or a neighbor. So when they are pulling her
out and they layer on the ground, they note several things. One,
she has no clothes on except for a single dark
(19:02):
glove on one hand, the reason the body was so
difficult to remove is that a large rock had been
tied with a quarter inch eleven strand clothesline wire. The
wire was wrapped around her neck and throat, under both armpits,
and over one thigh before wrapping around her back. Two
additional links were made into loops which were then tied
(19:24):
about the rock. And the rock was one twenty five,
So the combined weight was two seventy five. So she
weighed about one point fifty and the rock was about
one twenty five, is what they're saying. Now. I found
a photo of the wire, so thick metal wire, and
there's the rock. Look at that rock.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Wow. Okay, so I'm looking at I'm assuming this is
one of the investigators that is holding up this this wire,
and it truly is a metal wire. The wire itself,
I can see, has been you know, shaped. You know,
they obviously at this point have removed this wire from
around the victim's body, but it is still kinked and
(20:03):
the wire has some significant girth to it. Now, I
can't tell if there's a shadow that looks thinner, or
if there's a thinner wire that was utilized and then
they cut that off, Like if there's thinner wire that
have been used as binding, but the wire that appears
to I can't tell if it's still connected to the rock.
And I'll talk about the rock in a second. This
(20:25):
isn't going to be an easy wire to wrap around
a body or that rock for that matter. You know,
I think it's something that a man would be able
to bend and shape. But it's, in my opinion, it's
a poor choice. You know, it's basically the offender could
have chosen a better material. Now, this rock that is
(20:49):
a significant rock. This thing is I would say this
is a boulder. It's at the left foot of this detective.
This detective I'm just going to zoom, is you know,
average male size. But this rock is extending up to
almost his knee, almost his knee, and it's got a
(21:10):
base to it. Now, I don't know what kind of
rock this is, you know, obviously you know, depending on
the stone.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
It's limestone. Sorry to interrupt you, it's limestone.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Well, limestone is not as heavy as granite, as example,
so you know it's not going to be you know,
if it was granted, it'd be holy smokes, how did
this person move this? But at the same time, you know,
this is a massive object for the offender to have
to be able to move while this stone is connected
(21:43):
to a one hundred and fifty Poundish woman, you know.
So I see this and I start thinking, are there
multiple individuals involved in disposing of the victim's body? Yeah,
I start I start leaning that way. I wouldn't say
it's impossible for a single offender to accomplish this, but
(22:05):
that's a much bigger stone than I was envisioning.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
So to me, there seems to be several different possibilities.
And before you know anything even about the victim, because
you don't even know anything about her or anything about
the potential killers we have here. To me, there seem
to be a couple of different possibilities for premeditation. One
is it's not premeditated at all. She's either killed there,
(22:30):
or let's say she's killed there. There's an argument, and
there happens to be wire that is laying around, because
this does look pretty dense and rule to me and
this rock, and they panic and drag her over and
figure out how to dispose of the body. Two, somebody
carries this wire, which doesn't look very easy to do,
(22:51):
to the scene, but not the rock. And then three
they carry both to the scene with the intention of
disposing of a body. None of them sound good to me.
Seems so hard, But it would have concealed the body, well,
I guess, except somebody looked into the cistern.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Right, you know, And that's really you know, getting answers
to that question. Was this material present right there by
the cistern? And that's of course interviewing Oga, her family,
other people who interact with the cistern. Is that something
that they say, Oh, yeah, that rock used to be
over here, and that wire, you know, was over on
this side. And so the offender just utilized materials at hand.
(23:29):
If this stone and if this wire is foreign to
the scene, then where did it come from and how
did it get to this location? And this also would
suggest that possibly the victim had been killed at a
separate location and then brought to this location along with
the material to weigh her down in the cistern. That's indicating,
(23:51):
at least for body disposal, the offender or offenders developed
a plan and chose the cistern because they had prior
knowledge of that system.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Well, let's move along and get to who this is
and what her injuries are. So I mentioned that ultimately
the corner was the one who helped remove her, and
he broke a couple of his ribs, one of his
ribs trying to get her out. She's naked, she's got
this single dark glove on. It is alarming to everybody there.
(24:23):
There's a researcher who I'm going to refer to a
lot named Brian Carroll, who did tons of me pulled
all kinds of newspaper articles and really put some great
stuff together. And he said that a single dark glove
had been a hint during this time period of a
secret criminal society of extortionists known as the Black Hand organization.
(24:43):
And so immediately that's what everybody thought. But it was
always a black glove placed on a victim if they
were murdered, not a blue glove. And this was a
blue glove. So you know already. I think investigators are
trying to figure out how did this woman end up
at the bottom of a well strangled? It sounds like
(25:04):
with the same wire. Now, will you also talk to
me about that? Would that have been easy with this
wire that you're looking at to strangle somebody with it?
Is it malleable enough? You think?
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Well, I think if the if the wire is something
that the offender could manipulate and since around the victim's neck,
then it's it's entirely possible. Right now, you know, I
need to know more about you know, the you know,
if they have autopsy results, does she have any other injuries?
(25:36):
You know, was she completely bound prior to possibly being strangled?
Is it possible she has other injuries to indicate that
she had been had lost consciousness. So just don't know
right now. But the wire itself, I'm almost got the
sensation in my hands in terms of how hard this
wire would be. Is that once this wire is bent
(25:59):
and it's bent enough to wear, it's cutting off circulation
to the victim's brain at least, you know, closing off
the jugular veins. And then all you have to do
is just kind of you don't have to tie it
a knot. You just have to kind of bend it
and it's going to stay in place. This is a
stiff wire, you know, there's no way it's going to
be tied into a you know, a bow knot. You know,
(26:22):
it's it Literally all you have to do is just
kind of sense the two ends around each other and
leave it in place. So yes, I think it's I mean,
it is entirely possible the victim could have been killed
using this wire, but I definitely want to know more.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Okay, well, let me give you more. So the autopsy
finds that there's a wound to her head, which is
a large bruise above her eyebrow extending to the side
of her head. They think that she was hint with
a blunt object before she was strangled with the wire,
and that her right wrist is broken, and we don't
(26:59):
know if this is the same rist that the glove
was on. Is it possible, though, that all of these
injuries are the result of the haphazard way they were
forced to get her out of the cistern or would
this have been obvious? I think the strangulation would have
been obvious. But what about this kind of bruise that
they're talking about.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Well, the fact you know a bruise is you know,
hemorrhaging of blood, you know, through the lower layers of
the skin and of course into the muscles. That would
indicate to me that if a bruise had formed, that
her heart is still pumping. The assumption right now is
that she's dead when she goes into the cistern because
(27:39):
of the metal or wire around her neck. But did
they just put that on at the last minute while
she was still alive and then thrower down in the
cistern and of course now you have at least an impact.
Don't have an answer to that question, but you know,
a theory could be developed that she had received a
blow to her head prior to being strangled. That blow
(28:03):
could have dazed her, maybe render her unconscious, just depending
on you know, how hard that blow would have been.
And then there really is little resistance from her to
the strangulation. Now her right wrist is broken, you know,
so is that? You know, it's like, well, where is
that broken at? Is? Is it just dislocated through the
(28:24):
wrist bones or was her you know, the the forearm bones,
the radius, the you know ulna, were those broken down
towards the risk that indicates at least a level significant
amount of force, you know, And and did the offenders
do that or is that a transport injury? I often
see bodies that have been they're dead, but now they're
(28:45):
being put into vehicles, removed from vehicles, drug across uh
you know, surfaces like the ground. Those bodies will have
a lot of a brace of injuries and all sorts
of surfaces and oftentimes with weird directionalities, you know. So
I call those transport injuries because especially like with this
body again, one hundred and fifty pound woman, this body's
going to be hard to move around because of the
(29:09):
sheer weight, especially if it's just a single offender. And
now you have that she's nude, all this exposed skin
that's going to be drug across rough surfaces, and so
you see that, you know. So that's again part of
why I like to look at photographs so I can
start accurately kind of reconstructing, you know, the sequence of
events fatal injuries versus transport injuries, and start forming opinions
(29:32):
as to what I think happened.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Let's talk real quick about time of death. The coroner
looked at her and said, I think she's been in
a cistern between four and eight weeks. Oh, I will
tell you, Paul, we know that she went missing. Once
we find out who this is in January and we're
in June. How can you be that far off unless
(29:56):
she was held for however long. But I will tell
you that no obvious signs of sexual assault, and she
wasn't pregnant.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Determining time of death is a very approximate science, if
you will. There's a lot of factors at play in
this case. She's floating in water, I'm assuming, I mean,
she's underground. I'm assuming that this water is fairly stable
in terms of its temperature, but is going to be
cold relative to the surface temperatures. Being underwater, She's not
(30:28):
exposed during that time to insect activity in all likelihood,
nor is there any marine life in the cistern, you know,
So in essence, she's refrigerated, not frozen, unless this cistern
would freeze at the wintertime in northern Pennsylvania, you know,
and that would be part of assessing, you know, what's
going on. But all of you know, that aspect is
(30:50):
a huge variable that can really throw off, you know,
let's say how much decomposition and other factors that pathologists
could potentially use to estimate time of death. If she's
in the water for six months, she's not in good shape,
you know, So that's going to you know, complicate assessing
(31:13):
you know, some of the aspects to what, you know,
what kinds of injuries she may have. So I didn't
realize that she had been in the water that long.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
About five months January, mid January to mid to late June.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Yeah, so I do think that the big question. Obviously,
it's kind of gross to think that the family could
be drinking the water as this body is sort of
you know, decomposing in that cistern. Yeah, but she goes
missing back in January. This victim, it's when does she
go into the cistern? That's going to be the big question.
And so that's where now assessing the body. If the
pathologist is saying, what was it four to eight weeks?
(31:51):
Yeah for a time of death, well maybe he's looking
at the you know, the condition of the body isn't
as bad is what you had expected if had had
been floating in the cistern since January. Is it possible
that she had been held alive for a period of
time and then place killed and then place in the cistern.
(32:11):
Don't know at this point in time, but maybe the
difference of what the pathologist is saying and why he's
so far off is because she had been held alive,
so more information in terms of the circumstances. You know,
who the victim is when she goes missing. All of
that has to be kind of assessed within that context
and within that possibility.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Well, the victim is complicated, first of all, just to
get this out of the way, you know, they couldn't
identify her. There's nothing else in the well. It's just
her with one glove on, nothing else. They drain the cistern,
so they bring in some local dentists and they used
in mental records to discover that it is a woman
named Edith Ford. She is thirty seven years old and
(32:52):
she has been missing since January twelfth, so five months earlier.
She was last seen leaving her mom's house. She had
dinner there. Her mom is a widow and she was
very elderly. Edith was one of fourteen kids, but you know,
five of them had died. Her family was in poverty.
She was never reported missing. She would work at Atlantic
(33:16):
City as a waitress. There were rumors, unfounded rumors that
she was a sex worker when she would go to
Atlantic City. She also worked at a silk mill in Reading, Pennsylvania.
And you know, Bangor is about seventy miles from Reading,
in about one hundred and fifty miles from Atlantic City.
She was going very long periods of time away from
(33:37):
her family and I guess they just didn't hear from her.
So this is why this has taken so long, just
to discover her, but also you know, for her family
to essentially say, well, this is the last time we
saw her. Once they identify her.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
Okay, and where did she live relative to where her
body was found.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Edith lived in Bangor, in the town of Bangor, and
so everything is pretty centralized here, so I don't think
very far all.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Right, So that's that gives me some optimism.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
You know.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
Part of this investigation. Edith has been missing since January.
Now it's a matter of basically doing a canvas of
the town, and that could be done through flyers. Of course,
that's going out and contacting people. It's utilizing the newspaper
to try to determine if anybody saw Edith in town.
(34:27):
You know, after the family is saying, well she left,
you know, and she would be gone for long periods
of time. Are we able to narrow down, you know,
this window from the time that Edith was last seen
alive to the time that you know her body was found.
Do you have any information along those lines?
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Do so? Once the police find out who Edith is,
they talk to the mom, they find out that Edith
had been to her mother's house, her sister had made dinner,
and they point her towards where Edith lives. They go
and they find love letters from a local man in
his fifties who is married, and a lot of people
(35:08):
know that he has been secretly dating I guess not
so secretly Edith. He is an Italian immigrant. His name
is Giuseppe Chimo, married, he has a stepchild, and in
June seventeenth he's brought in for questioning. So he's part
of her tight circle and they're looking first at him.
(35:29):
So he is a cheesemaker, and as I said, people
know that this is a horribly kept secret. Sounds like
he has a pretty good business. He's described as having
a substantial dairy operation, and Edith worked for him at
some point. That's how they know each other. He's described
as wealthy. Italian immigrants were in Pennsylvania at this time
(35:51):
and accepted it. Sounds like, so this is a prominent
member of the community. His best friend lives next door
to the Thomas family where the cistern is, and he
lived there at one point.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
Also, Yeah, so he has at least a geographic connection
roughly a geographic connection to where Edith's body is found.
During the interview, does he indicate when he last saw Edith?
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Yep. So she has dinner that her sister made at
her mother's house on the night of January twelfth. She
met him at a tavern that night and they talked
for a while. He says, we had some drinks. He said,
I've got to go check on some cheese, which I
don't know why. I think that's funny, but he did.
He was a cheesemaker. He leaves. When he comes back
(36:39):
to see if Edith is still there. She has left
to the movies with another man, and that is it.
That's his story. She left. I have no idea what
happened after that.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
But she's at a tavern. Do the other patrons at
the tavern? Are they able to track them down and say, yeah,
they saw Edith with this other man.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
We don't have witnesses who say she left with another man.
So the problem for the investigators is, you know, Giuseppe
has some inconsistencies with his story. There are apparently no
witnesses who see her leave with either Giuseppe or a
mystery man, so there is sort of nobody is paying
attention to Edith. She just at some point vanishes. We
(37:19):
don't know with who, And he just says, I have
no idea what happened.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
And Giuseppe's best friend also has the geographic connection to
Olga's family and where the sister is found. Was this
best friend interviewed?
Speaker 1 (37:35):
He was, and he was the guy who owned the
tavern where they were. He was eventually arrested on a
gambling charge a few weeks after Edith's body was found,
but they never had enough evidence against him, and he
had not, you know, been somebody who she had been
kind of consistently involved with. There was another man that
(37:57):
she had dated, but he was in jail. Great ala,
Why so that was it for suspects. These three guys,
they kind of dismissed the tavern owner and really focused
in on Giuseppe. Because, let me tell you this little story.
There's a local newspaper who reported on a fight between
two women that everybody knows was Edith and Giuseppe's wife,
(38:21):
whose name was Esther. They don't name the women, but
everybody knows who it was. In the newspaper. I don't
know why they just didn't print their names, but they
weren't arrested. There was a physical fight between these two people,
and they called it between a man, a fight between
a man's wife and his mistress. The wronged wife hit
the other woman with a milk bottle and threatened quote
(38:43):
additional harm. So we don't know much more about that
information except that we are connecting it to these two women.
So now you have a scorned wife to throw into
the mix, hauling one hundred and fifty pound woman and
one hundred pound stone and tossing it into a cistern.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
First, you know, when did this fight occur relative to
Edith going missing? And second, what did Eser say during
her interview?
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Okay, it looks like this fight happened the year before
her murder. But there were a lot of rumors that
the wife, Esther and her son, who was Giuseppe's step son,
had confessed to the murder. This is newspapers reporting it
and people around town because of this fight that was reported,
(39:30):
and the police interviewed Esther and the step son and
nothing came of it. They just said, we don't think
that they were involved at all. The only thing I
could say is that the police didn't take it seriously.
They dismissed. It doesn't mean it didn't happen. It just
means they didn't see any kind of evidence and they
focused on the husband.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
So this is, as we discussed at the top of
this episode, one of the primary motives of why people
get killed is this lover's triangle. Just because Esther and
Edith got into a physical fight prior to Edith going missing,
that does not necessarily mean that Esser would be the
one that would have physically harmed Edith. But the dynamics
(40:14):
of this relationship between Edith and Giuseppe and Esser after
that physical fight probably changed significantly. Giuseppe's you know, his
marriage is probably not good, and there may have been
a deterioration in the relationship between Giuseppe and Edith, where
(40:36):
now he's thinking I've got to end of this relationship.
He places himself with Edith. He's the last one to
see her alive before she goes missing. He has general
knowledge of the location where Edith's body was found. He
also has a friend who is at the tavern owns
(40:58):
the tavern where Edith was per him last scene alive.
Of course, you've got this mystery man that he's saying
that Edith went to the movies with. However, there's several
factors that seem to be pointing at Giuseppe. And this
is where start taking a look at Edith and the
stone and the wire and how she's being disposed. Are
(41:21):
we dealing with more than one offender? I think from
an investigative aspect, is taking a look at the best friend.
Is he an accomplice? He gets arrested two weeks after
Edith's body is found. Now, it's an unrelated charge, but
that's something that investigators can leverage in order to get information.
(41:44):
You put jeopardy on somebody like that, we're going to
charge you with the maximum for this criminal charge. Plus,
if we find out that you helped either in the
homicide of Edith and or the disposal of the body,
we're going to charge you with this. Unless you cooperate
with us. You make him nervous, you make him go.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
Now, even though Giuseppe's my friend, I don't want to
go to prison. It doesn't sound like the investigators did
that in this case.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
Yeah, I think they really dropped the ball here. It
doesn't sound like the tavern owner whose name was al
Shook was ever interrogated about this. Let me give you
a little bit more information about Giuseppe's night, what he
says happened. He said that, you know, he went to
go check on his cheese, and when he came back,
(42:33):
she was gone to the movies, is what he had
been told. He said that when the movie was over,
he went over to the movie house. It was probably
the only one, and he said that he watched her
come out with another man, and they got into a
car with new jersey plates and they took off. Giuseppe
went back to the tavern and he stayed until about midnight,
(42:55):
and that was about it. He said that they went,
you know, and drank some beer somewhere else. But I
will say this, this is an interesting little note. You
and I talked about whether or not she had been
held because this time of death was so different, five
months versus four to six weeks. This is where the
nice thing about stomach contents comes in. The police said
(43:17):
to her sister, hey, what did you cook for her
that night? And she said that she had made pickles
and some liver and some potatoes, and that's what they
found in her stomach. So all that time she had
been dead. So it sounds like that's when she died.
Was that night that she went missing?
Speaker 2 (43:36):
Yeah, that last meal is pretty gross. Don't be judging
pickles and liver.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
Although let me give you a better idea of that.
I love learning about food. Liver, sausage, fried potatoes, pickles,
bread and butter. And that's what shows up in her
stomach contents. So that's how we know she wasn't held.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
Okay, but you know this is this is an interesting
addition to Ja Seppy's story. You know, so he comes
back to the tavern, Edith and other man have left
and gone to the movies. He tracks down, you know
where they went to the movies and sees Edith leave
with another man. Per his statement, Now here's another factor
(44:15):
in terms of motive. You think that there would be jealousy.
He's been having an affair with Edith. He went out
to the tavern to have drinks with Edith. Maybe he
thought that that night was going to go differently. And
when he bails to go check on his cheese, Edith
gets bored and she finds another man to spend the
evening with. So you know, now again this is where
(44:40):
aspects of him just keeps adding up. I'm kind of curious.
As a cheesemaker. You know this cheese factory. Was this
metal wire that was found around Edith's body? Was there
a source of it at his cheese factory?
Speaker 1 (44:53):
It doesn't sound like investigators found. That doesn't mean there wasn't,
because now I kind of mistrust investigators here. That is it.
They are at a dead end. They cannot figure out
anything else. I know, this is very frustrating. I'm not
sure we've encountered investigators who have ever done less than this.
I mean, this is not seem like a lot. Giseppe,
(45:13):
he is brought in for questioning and he says, listen,
I'm a cheater, but I'm not a murderer. And that's it.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
Yeah, you know, and I most certainly can't pin EDI's
homicide on Giuseppe with the information we have, right, but
he's in play as a suspect. This man that Giuseppe
claims he saw with Edith and get into the car
after the movie theater would be in play if they
would have been able to identify the man. You know.
Part of assessing this case is the condition of Edith's body.
(45:42):
She's found completely nude. I'm assuming they never found her clothes,
and the place placement of this glove on one of
her hands, even though they say there's no signs of
sexual assault, and we've discussed this before, doesn't mean that
sexual assault did not occur. So, you know, any time
a woman's body is found nude, that generally is going
(46:06):
to suggest that maybe there had been some sort of
sexual motive to the crime. Secondly, the placement of the
glove on the hand, that's very unusual. I'm assuming this
is not Edith's glove. This is not something that she
wore that the offender just never took off. You brought
up this research that this other was it an author
had done on this case?
Speaker 1 (46:27):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (46:27):
Yeah, about this culture of you know, victims who were
killed by this black glove society or whatever you called them,
they would put a single glove on the killer's hand.
I'm assuming that this was something that was known to
the general public at some level and not just within
law enforcement. So there's two interpretations I have about the
(46:50):
glove on Edith's hands. One, let's say this is a
predatory crime and that the placement of the glove on
the hand was maybe like a taunt or it was
something that was significant to the fantasy of the predator.
But this very unusual black glove society that's operating in
the area suggests to me the more likely scenario is
(47:11):
that whoever killed Edith knew about this group and was
trying to stage Edith's death to make it look like
this group had killed her. If this is the case,
and you have that type of staging, that's because the
offender knows that the investigation is going to look at him,
(47:34):
and now he's misdirecting the investigation by utilizing this glove
and trying to throw it over onto this black glove society.
He just happens to use a blue glove. He doesn't
have access to a black glover or whatever it is.
You know that staging aspect is behaviorally hugely significant, and
(47:55):
you take a look at who likely would be focused
in on the investigation, it's somebody close to Edith, and
Giuseppe checks that box too. So the totality of the
circumstances right now, I think Giuseppe is what I would
consider a prime suspect. Sounds like the original investigators thought
that as well. They just didn't from an investigator standpoint.
(48:19):
From witnesses from forensics just did not have enough to
generate a level of probable cause where now there is
confidence that he was truly the killer. I don't have confidence.
I just go I'm I balling Giuseppe in Edith's homicide.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
Well, one really weird note that I just read about
was that there were a couple of letters that went
out before her body was discovered, but after she was murdered,
and they were purported to be from Edith. One went
to her brother that I went to Florida. I'll see
you later. Everything is fine. That's why nobody thought anything
(48:56):
of this, because she was kind of a roamer. So
it turns out that Giuseppe admitted that he asked a
woman to write this in her best woman handwriting as
if she's Edith, addressed to Giuseppe, her boyfriend who's married.
Dear sweetheart, I'm very sorry for what I have done
and can't write so well, I'm going away to Florida
(49:18):
and we'll stay there. And then she says, I signed
the name Edith. This woman. I don't know what she
was thinking by doing this, and then finding out later
this woman went missing, and the police of course said
what the hell, and he said, Well, the guys at
the tavern were gonna rib me for Edith taking off
and leaving. So I had this woman write these letters
(49:38):
when I was drunk to try to explain that she
wasn't dumping me for the guy at the movies. Instead,
she you know, was going off to start a new life.
It still wasn't enough for the police. So yeah, jist,
I mean, come on, this guy, but he gets away
scot free.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
I'm interpreting. I can't write so well. Well, her handwriting
is different to the Edith, and so there's that built
in excuse that her handwriting. Probably if mom were to
take a look at these letters, it should go that
doesn't look like Edith's handwriting. Yeah, as I said Jiusseppe,
who knows exactly why was this jealousy because he truly
(50:17):
saw Edith with this other man? Or was he trying
to preserve his marriage or trying to preserve his reputation?
It was Edith going to you know, threaten. Is this
a time in which she could have sued him over
the what did you call it? You've talked about that
in the past.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
Oh, the heartbalm, Yes, I think so.
Speaker 2 (50:37):
Yeah, you know, so there's I think there's several different
motives that Giuseppe had, and then everything else is adding up.
It's just too bad that they couldn't make a case
on him at that time. I bet there would have
been a prosecutor that would have filed this case and prosecuted.
I think there's enough potentially there. It all is dependent
(50:59):
upon on that time frame and what you know, prosecutors
felt comfortable with that they whether or not they could
prove the case to you know, a twelve member jury.
But right now, you know, just with what I know,
if I'm sitting on the jury, I'd go it's him.
Speaker 1 (51:15):
So really, the conclusion of this is nothing happens with Giuseppe.
His wife dies in nineteen forty one, this is six
years after the murder of Edith, he remarries, and then
he ends up living until nineteen sixty eight. Oh wow,
for a very long time. Nothing is reportedly happening with
(51:36):
him that we know of. So there you go. I
think somebody you and I are both pretty certain was
responsible for her murder has gotten away with it and
probably has gone on and lived a just a fine life.
I mean, unreal. So this is one of the frustrating
things about the time period. We have investigators in the
eighteen hundreds that nail the right people, and regardless of
(51:58):
what you think about their punishments, are punished. The right
people are punished. And then there are times in nineteen
thirty five where I think, while this probably could have
advanced differently with just a different investigator or something, I'm
disappointed in this case because I think that there were
some things that were missing. But there you go. I mean,
he was not that smart, but he did do some
(52:21):
stuff that it sounds like got him out of this.
Speaker 2 (52:24):
You know, part of the aspect of law enforcement here
in the United States is, you know, there's I believe
it's over fourteen thousand different law enforcement agencies, and there's
so many that's such a spread of experience and expertise.
You know, Banger is a town today that has a
population base of you know, it looks like over roughly
(52:48):
fifty two hundred people. What was the experience and the
expertise of the investigators that looked into this case. I
bet there was probably a chance that they had never
looked worked a homicide case before. Yeah, you know, so
this if this case had occurred in nineteen thirty five
in maybe a larger jurisdiction that had experienced investigators, knew
(53:09):
how to interview, knew how to do the follow up
on at the time, the type of physical evidence they
needed to look for, like going to the Geese factory
and looking for the metal wire source metal wire there.
I think that a case would have been made against
Giuseppe and probably relatively easily.
Speaker 1 (53:27):
Well, my eyes need to rest now, they're tired. They're
tired from all of us reading through. This was an interesting,
very frustrating case. But there are some things that we
covered that I'm always interested in recovering bodies from water
time of death. I'm always fascinated about how weather accelerates
decomposition or slows it down. How do we figure this out?
(53:48):
How did they figure things out in the nineteen thirties.
So this was a good case for you. I enjoyed it.
Speaker 2 (53:55):
There was actually a lot to work with in terms
of okay, because of the circumstance. Angel evidence, coupled with
some of the aspects with how Edith's body was disposed of,
gives great insight into how the investigation can be conducted
and proceed And then information that you ultimately told me
(54:15):
about Giuseppe. You know that that was It was just
kind of great to be able to put two and
two together, and at least I feel confident in my
conclusion in this particular case. There's been other cases I
haven't but this one, even though they didn't make an
arrest and get a conviction, I'm I am confident that
(54:36):
as we discuss this that we came to the right conclusion.
Speaker 1 (54:39):
I agree, and we will have another probably more ambiguous,
less conclusively drawn. I don't even know what the right
phrase is. I don't know if we're going to have
a case closed next week, but we'll try so. I
will see you.
Speaker 2 (54:53):
Very soon, all right, I'm looking forward to it. Thank you, Paul,
Thank you Kate.
Speaker 1 (55:02):
This has been an exactly right production for our sources
and show notes go to exactlyrightmedia dot com, slash Buried
Bones sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Emosi.
Speaker 2 (55:13):
Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin, and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 1 (55:17):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 2 (55:20):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1 (55:22):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 2 (55:24):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark, and Daniel Kramer.
Speaker 1 (55:29):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
ary Bones.
Speaker 2 (55:33):
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 (55:41):
And Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life solving America's
cold cases is also available now
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Kate Winkler Dawson
Paul Holes
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