Last Supper

On today’s episode, Kate and Paul head to 1871 Richland Center, Wisconsin where a dinner party held at a doctor’s home sees some of its guests leave in great distress. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the
last twenty five years writing about true crime.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
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.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Compelling true crimes, 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 3 (00:34):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
This is Buried Bones.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
Hey, Paul, Hey Kate, how's it going?

Speaker 1 (01:04):
This is a momentous day because this is our anniversary?
Can you believe it?

Speaker 3 (01:10):
Did I forget something? Here? I'm in trouble, aren't I?

Speaker 1 (01:14):
Your poor wife?

Speaker 3 (01:15):
You are?

Speaker 1 (01:16):
This is our one hundredth episode. Can you believe it?
Of Buried Bones? One hundred?

Speaker 3 (01:21):
Wow?

Speaker 1 (01:21):
How's that possible?

Speaker 3 (01:22):
It's gone by quick now they think about it.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
M hmm.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
I think it's gone by really quickly, and it is
due all to my brilliance in your charm, or it
could be my term in your brilliance and release sure
which one is?

Speaker 3 (01:35):
I think it's your charm and your brilliance, and I
just kind of show up.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
That's an excellent, very husband answer. I think, props to
your wife. So listen, I know you didn't get me
a gift, because I can tell you didn't give me
a gift. So I have a suggestion. I went to
special speeches dot com, which is the only places I
feel like gave me a reliable answer. I asked, what
is the one hundredth wedding anniversary gift? And I know

(02:01):
this is not one hundred years for us, one hundred
episodes and you know, I'm just trying to figure it out.
And they said, it's a ten carrot diamond. Wow, ten carrots?
You know how much time do you need to get
that together? Good God, But we've been together for a
long time and it's been just a great one hundred episodes,
and I'm here for a thousand more as far as
I'm concerned, and so are you.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
I'm assuming absolutely.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
This has just been This has been such a breath
of fresh air over the last one hundred episodes, you know,
getting to talk to you and here are the cases
and you know, meeting our listeners, you know, and I've
been out and about on various conferences and stuff, and
how much they enjoy the episodes. So yep, I'm looking
forward to the next hundred episodes.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Well, happy anniversary, Paul, before we jump into this next.

Speaker 3 (02:46):
One, happy anniversary back at you.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Okay, let's go ahead and set the scene. This is
a murder mystery. I say this with all our stories,
but this is a mystery truly. You know, you have
a bunch of people at a dinner party and somebody
ends up dead and we have to figure out what happened,
and we don't have a lot of those. Have you
ever done one of those murder mystery weekends? I really
want to do that one time.

Speaker 3 (03:10):
You know.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
It almost sounds like the board game Clue, right it is.
You know, the lights go out, somebody screams, and lights
come back on and somebody's dead.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
Yep, yep. There's a doctor, there's a you know, like
a boarder. There are a bunch of young women, there's
like a nurse, there's a little boy, and there's on
these multiple rooms a very specific murder weapon. Though, So
let's go ahead and jump into this for our one hundredth.
Of course, you know, I'm trying to bring you a
murder mystery, and this one comes from a listener. We

(03:42):
love our listeners. This is set at eighteen ninety one.
It's in Wisconsin and Richland's Center, Wisconsin. I can't remember
if we've done I feel like we've probably have done
a Wisconsin one before, but I just wouldn't be able
to remember what that is. Not that I recall listeners.
Once you've done one hundred episodes, are they start to
run together? The states do, at least the states start

(04:04):
to run together for me? Okay, so this is Wisconsin.
Richland Center is about fifty miles from Wisconsin Dell's which
is now a popular tourist destination known as the water
park capital of the World. My kids would go there
in a millisecond. They're into water parks. They would go
in December if I let them.

Speaker 3 (04:22):
Yeah, that's the way kids are.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
Your kids like the water parks too.

Speaker 3 (04:26):
You know they do.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
They haven't gone that much. When I was growing up,
I'd go to the water park. It was say, I
remember in San Antonio there was a really really cool.

Speaker 3 (04:36):
Water park there.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
Yeah, well, this is now very popular area. This is
sort of a you know where we're talking about, which
is close to turn of the century. This is, you
know now, a place that it's certainly not rural, but
you know, it's not Milwaukee or anything. And I don't
think the place plays as much into this as maybe

(04:57):
the time period. So let me tell you about the caric.
We have a young woman who is twenty three years old.
Her name is Ella. I'll remember that because I have
an Ella, Ella Molly, and she has a younger sister
named Lily, and Ella Molly is really well known. They
both are young attractive women. We say that kind of
will come into play later. She has a really busy

(05:19):
social life, and she and her younger sister are invited
to a dinner party at a local physician's house. This
is a guy named doctor George Mitchell. So he's a
country doctor, very well liked. He is a widower. He
had a wife named Minnie Mitchell, who died in March
of eighteen ninety, so this is not even a year

(05:39):
ago that his wife died. They had a ten year
old son, his name is Freddie. And the complications were
and this will be interesting to talk to you about.
Many died from complications from what started with after childbirth.
So she gave birth to a little girl named Latti,
and she had been ill ever since. So in my

(06:00):
experience with stories in the eighteen hundreds, they had called
that child bed fever. You know, this is I'm presuming
a bacterial infection. She was sick for a couple of months,
she just was not right, and she died. And this
was fairly common in this time period.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
Yeah, you know, I've gone to some of these old
cemeteries and you see, of course, you know, gravestones with
newborns on there, but then every now and then you
see the mom and obviously childbirth is very traumatic to
the body, and I could imagine, yeah, something happened where
she got an infection, probably went sepsis and you know,

(06:36):
passed away.

Speaker 3 (06:36):
That's ad.

Speaker 1 (06:37):
One of the things that I had read when I
was doing research was that it was often caused by
doctors not washing their hands oh before delivery.

Speaker 3 (06:45):
That makes sense, yep, for sure.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
Gosh, well, there are a lot of quirky things in
this story that I'll say, did you know that this
happened in the eighteen hundreds, And I'll be interested to
hear what you say so many died, and doctor Mitchell's
on his own, he has been for almost a year.
He has this ten year old and then, you know,
I immediately thought, how is he handling a newborn baby
who would have been almost a year old, about a

(07:08):
year at this point. And the baby went to go
live with her sister, with the mom's sister, with Minnie's sister,
which was completely normal. You know, a single man not
able to handle a baby. And even though he had money,
I didn't get the impression that he was excessively wealthy.
He's a country doctor, so that would have been normal.

(07:29):
It still startles me a little bit to hear men
giving over children, because you know, they just simply can't
handle it. But thinking about the times, you know, I'm
always sort of not surprised, but still a little like,
oh gosh, I can't believe that. So doctor Mitchell, before

(07:49):
his wife Minnie died, they brought in a border and
you know, she was somebody who they were planning to
help take care of the baby a little bit and
just sort of clean up. They actually have a de
amount of people around and I'll tell you about that
in a minute. So her name is Rosa Zoaldowski. She's
twenty four and she's really good friends with Ella and Lily.
So Rosa has a friend who's getting engaged that they

(08:12):
all know, and they want to have a little dinner party.
And she goes to doctor Mitchell and says, can I
throw this party at your house? And he says, fine,
I'll be working, but I'll be coming back at some point,
and she says okay, So she arranges to have some
people come over. All of these are young women who
know each other from church. Ella and Lily don't go
to the same church, but Ella plays the organ on

(08:36):
Sundays at this church where all of these other women are,
so that's how everybody knows each other. It's just a
bunch of young women who are coming over for this
fun little dinner party, which is nice. So the doctor says, sure,
you know, clean up and all that stuff. Rosa had
been with the Mitchells just for context about three years
in eighteen eighty eight, and the doctor and the wife

(08:58):
took her in and she first worked around the house
and then she started working at a millinery. Do you
know what that is?

Speaker 3 (09:06):
Is that like a mill of some sort.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
It's a hat making shop. Oh, millinery, so she starts
working there. I think she's still doing stuff around the house,
but that becomes her full time job. She had moved
from a farm about ten miles away. Her family's still
on the farm Roses family, but she moves to Richland
Center in Wisconsin and the family relocates to Missouri, so

(09:28):
she's really part of Mill's doctor Mitchell's family. On Wednesday,
as planned, Rosa you know, reminds everybody come over and
you know, we'll have dinner and then we can all
go to church afterwards. She wants to serve oysters, which
would have been, you know, a really kind ofly a
delicacy in the eighteen hundreds, just like they are now.

(09:50):
Rosa had gone out earlier that day to get some
oysters and had gone to another shop and she bought
some chocolate creams for desserts. The chocolate creams was interesting.
I was thinking it was sort of like an egg cream,
but it wasn't. In this case. This is like a
truffle like confectionery, Like there's cream instead of a chocolate shell,
kind of like a ganache, which sounds delicious to me,

(10:11):
but I'm pretty sure it's not going to be on
any of your menus at a lot of sugar and
a lot of chocolate, it sounds good to me.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah, it's not nothing that would be eating right now,
but it definitely would be good.

Speaker 3 (10:22):
I don't deny that.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
Okay, good. So there are six women at this dinner party,
including Rosa and the Molly sisters. And during the party,
Freddy's around he's ten. There's a housekeeper named Anna McLaren,
and there's another one who they call Grandma Handy, and
these are all people who are in the house. So
you've got, you know, these six people, plus you've got

(10:45):
a kid and two housekeepers who are in the house.
And doctor Mitchell is away but just for a little bit.
So Rosa serves oyster soup for dinner, and then she
serves some oranges, and then they have cake for dessert.
There were two cakes, one that Lily had made and
the other was baked by another party guest. So they're

(11:06):
all eating and doctor Mitchell comes home after dinner is served.
So in the middle of dinner, Rosa says she does
not feel well, and she goes upstairs to her room
and she lays down, and it sounds like she's complaining
of stomach pains. She feels really sick. There's a party
guest who goes up to check on her, and she's
on her bed. She's really complaining about her stomach. The

(11:29):
other guests are concerned and sad about Rosa, but they
keep eating. I'm not sure I would be eating an
oyster soup after that is because I can you know,
I mean, you can imagine if you have bad oysters.
I would assume that that would give you a lot
of nausea and could that kill you? That kind of thing?

Speaker 2 (11:48):
I think it depends on, you know, the bacteria. You know,
you know, some of this food poisoning, the bacteria ends
up affecting the upper GI track. And that's the type
of thing food poisoning that you get pretty quickly after
you ingest the food versus other types of bacteria end
up colonizing your colon, and it takes several days before

(12:11):
that happens.

Speaker 3 (12:12):
That's like that E. Coli one five seven.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
They can take a few days before you actually start
developing symptoms.

Speaker 1 (12:19):
Well, we don't know what's happening with Rosa yet. We
just know that she has a really bad upset stomach.
So there's a guest who goes upstairs as I mentioned,
and checks on Rosa, and Rosa asks for Ella, her friend,
to come upstairs. Ella comes upstairs, she checks on her.
They both come back downstairs. As soon as Rosa kind
of hits the bottom step, she vomits into a basin

(12:43):
and decides she needs to lie down. So this is
pretty instant. You know, this is in the middle of
a dinner, definitely less than an hour after eating this
oyster soup and the oranges for dinner. I think they've
also gotten to dessert. At this point, she's laying on
this lab and everybody is, you know, concerned about her,

(13:03):
but essentially they clear out. They just said, well, you know,
they need to go to church, and she says it's okay,
don't worry. So the women pack up and they start
to go to church. And I don't know where doctor
Mitchell is right now. No one else is really around,
so Freddie, it sounds like it's upstairs. It sounds like
the other two housekeepers are upstairs, so it's really just

(13:25):
Rosa And at this point Ella and Lily are staying behind.
They don't plan to go to church. It's not their church.
So Rosa gets herself up and she says, you know,
at about eight o'clock, Okay, I probably need to go rest.
And she says goodbye and hand some some leftovers if
they want any. And as they walk home after Rosa

(13:46):
goes upstairs. As they walk home, Ella starts to feel sick. Okay,
so I have a pretty good physical description of what
Ella is telling her sisters she's feeling. But as of
right now, you know, this could be what food poisoning
any of this stuff the major indigestion. Would it happen
that quickly, like in the middle of dinner if you're

(14:06):
eating oysters or something that's gone bad.

Speaker 2 (14:09):
You know, I'm not sure, you know, this seems like
it is awfully quick, especially if it's a bacterial type
of issue. Maybe it's more of a poison you know,
that could impact things pretty quickly. So I don't know
at this point, but I was wondering if it's only Rosa,
then I would question what the source of the ingestion was,

(14:31):
or what the source of the illness was. Now that
Ella is starting to feel something, then yeah, maybe you know,
the common food that they've been eating could be a source.

Speaker 1 (14:42):
Okay, it is happening quickly, though, and we are a
murder show, so let me remind you of that, Paul.
We do talk about murder an awful lot on this show.
I don't want to spoil things, understood, okay, So let
me give you a physical description of what's happening with Ella.
She says she has a sensation in her feet, but

(15:05):
she says, I need to keep going. I don't know
if she means a tingling in her feet. She feels
something and she now and then says pretty quickly, it's
going all over me. And before she and her sister
get home, Ella collapses on the ground. Ella and her
sister are both crying out for help. Lily does not
appear to have any symptoms so far, and some bystanders

(15:27):
help them get to the rest of the way home,
but Ella doesn't want anybody touching her, and eventually, once
they get her in the house, while she is being
carried in the house, she starts convulsing and she bites
her tongue so hard that it bleeds. I'm assuming now
this sounds like poison.

Speaker 2 (15:44):
Definitely, Yeah, I am moved off any food poisoning. This
really does sound like a poison that is now systemic
within Ella and Wondering di Rosa have the same symptoms.

Speaker 1 (15:59):
We have a ton of information about the symptoms that
Rosa had and the reason is just as of far
as right now, is that Ella was really the main
person who spoke to her, so you know, she was
definitely complaining about a hurt stomach, and of course she vomited,
and we have more information about what happens with rosa.
There are two doctors who come. One is doctor Mitchell,

(16:21):
you know whose party she had just come from, and
then other guys named doctor Haskell. They both look at Ella,
who is now full on convulsing, and they can't seem
to get the convulsions under control, and they cannot figure
out the cause. How do you get convulsions under control
without Is it with a medicine?

Speaker 2 (16:41):
Well, I think in this day and age, yeah, if
they have an antagonist to whatever the toxin is, then
possibly they would be able to provide that to the patient.
But back in the eighteen nineties, I'm not sure what
they would have given. I'm kind of curious because I'm
I'm sure that they probably had anti convulsants and I'm

(17:02):
just looking at this reference book that was written. It's
on toxicology and written back in eighteen ninety two, so
it is contemporaneous to this.

Speaker 3 (17:12):
Case.

Speaker 1 (17:12):
We haven't gotten this book, I think since the very beginning,
maybe the first Actually, I think, Paul, the last time
you looked at this book was the episode number one.
I think this was our first episode. That is true, right,
because it was William Rice. That's the last time you
looked at this book.

Speaker 3 (17:28):
Well, look at that. One hundred episodes later and I'm
pulling the book out again.

Speaker 1 (17:31):
You're still pulling your book from eighteen ninety two out.

Speaker 3 (17:34):
Okay, So page one thirty nine convulsives. Let's see what
they say here.

Speaker 2 (17:39):
In this textbook, which is called the Essentials of Forensic Medicine,
Toxicology and Hygiene, written in eighteen ninety two, it does
have a section in here about convulsives. And the first
convulsive is poisoning by nux vomica nucks vomica. Seeds and
the symptom are the same as those caused by strict nine.

(18:03):
Strict nine, which is an alkaloid. So you know, back
in eighteen ninety two they were very well aware of
some of these compounds that were causing convulsions, and obviously
these compounds can be fatal, you know. So treatment for
some of these convulsives is stomach pump the use of
charcoal chloroform should be administered to overcome the tristmas, which

(18:25):
I'm not sure what that is. Numerous remedies have been advocated, opium, morphine, nicotine, tannin, prosicacid.
It's like this hodgepodge of various compounds. I'm not sure
they're actually making the person better or not by adding
all of that.

Speaker 1 (18:40):
Well, I can tell you. Tristmus is the restriction of
the range of motion of the jaw. Oh okay, yeah,
Initially described in the setting of tetanus, it currently refers
to restricted mouth opening due to any etiology eteology, Is
that right? Yeah, So all of that is to say
they have some wacky ways of stopping convulsions. Is that right.

Speaker 3 (18:59):
It seems like, yeah, they have a variety of compounds
that they could administer, and seems like these compounds would
have been hit or miss, you know, in terms of
being effective.

Speaker 1 (19:11):
Well, you hit on one already. So she eventually does
have her convulsions slowed down, but her breathing is very labored.
She's conscious, but she can only give some partial responses
to questions and doesn't seem to make a whole lot
of sense in general. A third doctor comes to Ella's
bedside at five in the morning, and his name is

(19:31):
doctor Ludwig, and he's been called by the other two
doctors who sound like they're panicking. When he gets there,
he sees that Ella's eyes are bloodshot, and the other
two doctors said they gave her chloroform. She's been given
chloroform as an anesthetic and this was a thing and
they stopped doing it because it caused liver failure and
some cardiac problems. No for sure, So she was given chloroform.

(19:54):
And you had just mentioned chloroform.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
Yeah, yeah, chloroform. You know, we've used it in the
lab back in the day. You know, it's a solvent,
and it's a very toxic solvent. You know, of course,
everybody thinks of chloroform, you know from the movies where
you have a handkerchief that's been soaked in chloroform and
it's put over the person's mouth and they immediately pass out.
What really doesn't work like that, or at least not

(20:16):
that quickly. But it is something that I've used personally
in terms of within a lab environment, so I am
familiar with it.

Speaker 1 (20:25):
Sometimes with these old stories, we get descriptions. I know
it's not as technical as you want, but we do
get the doctors giving us descriptions that I think can
lead you to an impression of what the symptoms are.
This might be one of them. Ella has three fits
of convulsions while this doctor Ludwick is there and he says,
her tongue looks really swollen. It looks to him like

(20:46):
she has had typhoid fever for about two weeks. But
Ella was healthy just hours ago. So does that tell
you anything, he said, Just swollen, swollen tongue.

Speaker 3 (20:57):
No, not that I can think of off the top
of my head. But it's in resting.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
She dies at seven in the morning. This is eleven
hours after leaving doctor Mitchell's house. She dies with her
back arched in a convulsion, which sounds awful.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
I mean that sounds like tetanus STRYC nine, right, strict nine.
So you have this in terms of yeah, the muscles
end up just completely flexing, and that would be horrific,
you know, because it's almost like your whole body is
within one big cramp.

Speaker 1 (21:30):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 2 (21:31):
Okay, so we have Ella has died. Sounds like she's
ingested a poison something along the lines of Stryck nine.
What's going on with Rosa?

Speaker 1 (21:42):
Rosa is slowly recovering and does not feel well one
little bit. Going back to Ella, just briefly, doctor Haskell says,
you know, he thinks this is Strict nine. He says,
you know, it's odorless. It has a bitter taste though,
and it attacks of course the nervous system. And he
says he's seen the arching of the back is a
calm signed for Strict nine poisoning. So if you're thinking

(22:02):
about suspects, aren't you thinking, you know, doctor Mitchell, whose
house this party has been thrown in, would be a suspect.
A doctor would absolutely have access easy access to Strict nine.

Speaker 2 (22:13):
Yeah, for sure. But you know, now we start timelining
this out. You know, doctor Mitchell is not present at
the beginning of the party. He comes home after the
party has started. You know, part of the question that
I have is the onset of Strict nine symptoms. If
these symptoms take a few hours, could there have been

(22:37):
an exposure to Strict nine with Ella earlier in the day,
You know, a few hours prior to the party, or
do these symptoms manifest themselves very quickly? And is this
something that Ella and Rosa had been exposed to while
the party was going on? And did Ella just happen
to have the larger day, so to speak, and maybe

(23:01):
Rosa was more accidental with whatever the you know, the
source of this this toxin was.

Speaker 1 (23:08):
Well, let's take one thing at a time. You know,
doctor Mitchell being in the house. He comes after dinner
has been served, but we don't know if they've gone
back for seconds. We don't know. You know, there are
not people paying attention necessarily to the place on the table.
He was there before the cake was served, and Lily
made the cake and another guests made the cake also,

(23:29):
so there's kind of a lot of possibilities. There's also
a little ten year old boy, you know, popping around,
maybe curious about, you know, the border's dinner party. And
you've got these two housekeepers. There's an awful lot of
people in this house. So while I'm not saying doctor
Mitchell is the one who did this, I am saying

(23:49):
there might have been opportunity to you know, give any
of these women some poison. I don't know why, But
the opportunity could have been there for sure.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
Okay, And then of course it's like, well, how is
a poison being administered If it is through the food
that the entire group is eating, then with something like strychnine,
I think everybody would be exhibiting some level of symptoms,
depending on how much is ingested and of course their
own personal sensitivity and response. So if these other individuals

(24:20):
that are eating the same food stuff aren't exhibiting any symptoms,
then I start to wonder, Okay, maybe Ella and or
Rosa were specifically targeted and the administration was more direct
to them in some manner, whether their drink was laced,
whether some object that only they would have touched, or Ella,

(24:42):
if she's the primary target, would typically have interacted with.
So the offender would be trying to just specifically dose
Ella through some mechanism, and Rosa just happens to also
interact or ingest, you know, whatever was initially thought to
be targeted towards Ella.

Speaker 3 (25:01):
That's my thought right now.

Speaker 1 (25:02):
Yeah, and right now, if we are investigators, we don't
know enough about the relationships between any of these people,
including doctor Mitchell whose wife had died, you know, a
year earlier. We don't know enough about the relationships just yet.
The corner has an inquest and they determine that they
need an autopsy, no kidding. So they take Ella's stomach

(25:24):
and remove it, and the DA and the corner together
personally deliver it to a lab in Chicago for an
analyst by a chemist at Rush Medical College. They could
do this in eighteen ninety one. There was some toxicology.
The chemist fine Stryck nine in her stomach, and he
says it is three eighths of a grain, and half

(25:44):
a grain is considered a fatal dose, so this is
slightly less. But this is all that he gets out
of her stomach. There could have been more in there,
so that is what ends up happening. So it's definitely
strick nine, right.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
And since it's within stomach contents, and this was orally
and ingested, you know, so what did Ella ingest that
the others didn't except for maybe Rosa.

Speaker 1 (26:07):
Well, let's keep going here. Ella is buried. A couple
days later, Rosa, who is the other victim, has totally
recovered and she attends the funeral. She collapses. She is
incredibly upset. She has to be home taken home by Sleigh.
I thought that was an interesting little comment. I mean,
it's winter in Wisconsin, so of course they have slaves.

(26:27):
And doctor Mitchell is there too, so we have a
in my opinion, a host of suspects here. But you're right,
it's like, how do everybody else except for these two
women get away with not being sick? And we have
to figure out what they individually have had that the
other people hadn't, So let's talk about the investigation. They,
of course, to do exactly what they're supposed to do.

(26:48):
They're talking to everybody in Ella's in her circle, including Lily.
They look at Lily, Lily was the one there with her.
They talked to everybody at the dinner party, they talked
to doctor Mitchell, and they talked to Rosa, and they
start asking things, you know, I mean, does she have
any enemies? And when they get to the question, did
anything happen that was a little strange? There is some

(27:10):
anecdotal evidence of some strange things happening, and they start
focusing it on somebody who was very close to Ella,
someone who they believe had a motive. Once they started
talking to people in town and the rumor mill starts churning,
and they start looking at another young woman, and they
start looking at Rosa.

Speaker 2 (27:29):
Well, that's interesting. The two women that are at the
party that are exhibiting symptoms. Ella is the one targeted.
She receives the fatal dose a Strict nine. But I
could see where Rosa, if she's the one administering and
having to handle the Strict nine ahead of time, trying
to take care not to poison herself, somehow ends up

(27:50):
getting a smaller dose a Strict nine. I kind of
like that scenario.

Speaker 1 (27:54):
Here's my question for you, Paul. They never collect the vomit.
That was the first thing I thought of. Well, le's
go get the moment that she supposedly had in a basin.
I mean, it wouldn't have been something flushed, It would
have been probably, you know, something that was laying around,
I mean a basin, So I guess it had been
washed out. Maybe was there any that you wipe her
mouth on a towel? Can they test it? They had

(28:17):
done none of that. There is no way to prove
that Rosa had any kind of Strict nine in her system.
Could she have made herself throw up fairly easily walking
down the stairs with Ella or no.

Speaker 2 (28:27):
Well, you know, sure Rosa is vomiting, but I don't
think that that necessarily means that she orally ingested. Even
if it was accidental, I would have to take a
look at is there the possibility of transdermal absorption of
strict nine if it's in a powder form, could she
accidentally inhale it if you get some of the powder
wafting up into the air. Of course, the scenario that

(28:50):
you brought up, like if she's washed, you know, after
she handles strychnine and she's washing her hands or handling
a towel and then wipes her mouth or something maybe
as a just enough you know, where we have this
oral absorption to cause the symptoms. But there it's a
non fatal dose. So yeah, I think you know, the vomit.
Of course, from a forensic standpoint, to try to determine

(29:14):
why Rosa was feeling symptoms would have been critical because
in essence that her stomach is self pumping itself, and
so the evidence is going to be in that was
it a basin or an urn that she threw up
in m and that's gone.

Speaker 1 (29:27):
Yeah, obviously she could have been making up her symptoms
and then made herself throw up. I guess sure, coming
down the stairs. So here is some I think would
be soft evidence, and then a little bit harder evidence.
So the weird circumstantial evidence is that we are now
finding out some things. Rosa had visited Ella at work.
She worked at a store as a cashier. She visited

(29:49):
her that day three times. Rosa invited Ella and her
sister to a party. Right the party that night. The
second time, she asks Ella if she likes raw oysters.
Ella says no, but that Rosa, you know, give them
to everybody else. It doesn't matter to me. I'll just
eat the oranges in the cake and that's it. Ella

(30:09):
said to a coworker, that was really weird. She thought
that was strange. And remember Rosa made oyster soup because presumably,
if she's guilty, she knew that Ella would not eat
raw oysters.

Speaker 2 (30:21):
Yeah, but I'm having a problem that if the strych
nine is being put into the stock supply of the
oyster soup, that everybody is going to be having a
problem with the strych nine exposures. So somehow, if Rosa
is the one that's responsible, she is able to target
Ella who orally ingests strych nine through some mechanism. Maybe

(30:46):
it was if Ella's the only one eating oranges, you know,
maybe it was an orange that was laced with Strych nine.
So that's where I kind of move away from the
oyster soup. Unless Rosa as the one dishing out the
soup and has an opportunity in Ella's ball to put.

Speaker 3 (31:06):
The stryc nine.

Speaker 1 (31:07):
I'm picturing this as a formal dinner party. Maybe she
even hands dishes of the soup from the kitchen to
the housekeepers and have them serve these women. That was
not mentioned anywhere, but I could absolutely see formally everybody
sitting down and Rosa going in and out of the kitchen,
serving two bowls at a time, and being able to
sprinkle strick nine specifically in Ella's soup. But I don't know,

(31:31):
You're right, So we still are trying to figure that
part out, and so we're investigators, so you know, police
keep trying to figure out what's going on, and they
ask Lily give us a better timeline because their belief
and kind of what I was looking up. You can
tell me what you think what I just read for
strick nine on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

(31:53):
says exposures to high levels of STRICK nine may result
in respiratory failure leading to death and brain death within
fifteen to three thirty minutes. Wow, and seizures can start
within fifteen minutes. This is not a fifteen minute dinner party, Paul.
I mean, this is something happened as people were leaving
and they were on their walk home. I mean this

(32:13):
had to have started on the walk home is when
the seizures started.

Speaker 2 (32:17):
Right, man, So the exposure is happening, in all likelihood
within a half an hour of Ella leaving the house,
right yep.

Speaker 1 (32:27):
So we've got Rosa coming down the stairs. She feels okay,
And this is I'm telling don't blame me. I'm telling you.
The investigators are getting this in real time. Here and
Rosa is saying goodbye to the sisters and they were
walking out the door and she stops them and says,
wait a second, I have kind of a party gift
for the two of you, and it is those chocolate creams.
Oh yeah, and she hands them echa bag and Ella

(32:48):
bites into one end says it's bitter, and Lily says
don't worry about it. This tastes good to me. And
then within about twenty minutes it starts to happen, and
that's when investigators go, oh gosh, okay, let's take her
in immediately.

Speaker 3 (33:00):
We've got a lover's triangle and a jealous woman.

Speaker 1 (33:04):
Okay. Is that that's your prediction? That's what we think
he's happening.

Speaker 3 (33:07):
That's my theory right now. If everything is as as
you've laid it out, and Rosa pre plans poisoning Ella.
Rosa lives with doctor Mitchell, but I think doctor Mitchell
may be having some sort of relationship with Ella, and
Rosa also has feelings for doctor Mitchell, and now she's
taken out her competition. That is my prediction on this

(33:31):
right now.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
Ding ding ding for you, Paul. Luckily it's my next line.
Police say she's jealous, and I mean, this story gets
weirder as we go on here. But the newspaper reports
this that Rosa wanted to marry doctor Mitchell, she's known
him for three years, and that he had recently been

(33:52):
paying a lot of attention to Ella. There is zero
sign that either of these women slept with him, which
would have been surprising for me. If that had happened.
We don't know if Ella returned his affections. We don't
know what the affections actually were. It's a perception. Rosa
wanted to be with doctor Mitchell and she thought that

(34:15):
eliminating This is what the police are saying is she
thought that eliminating Ella would have been the way to
do it right.

Speaker 2 (34:21):
And that's a very important point when you mentioned the
term perception. You know, we talk about motive and during
an investigation you can't find you know, just like you said,
there didn't appear to be any type of relationship between
doctor Mitchell and Ella, but it's all how the offender
is perceiving things. There may not have been anything going on,

(34:43):
but maybe the way doctor Mitchell, you know, looked at
Ella at a certain time, Rosa interprets that as you know,
some sort of romantic gesture, and so in her head
she is now jealous, you know. So it's always always
have to think about the things from the offender's perspective.

Speaker 1 (35:02):
Well, let's keep going with this. You know, I have
said this a million times. People kill for the same
reason hundreds of years ago as they do now. Jealousy
is what we're talking about here. But the police have said,
this is what we think happened. This is why we
think Ella was targeted. We think that Rosa faked all
of her own illness and she put you know, STRYC

(35:24):
nine and the Chocolate's rtchu are now long gone. But
the police are saying, we have another concern, which is
they find out from doctor Mitchell that Rosa was the
primary caregiver of his wife and he did not think
anything weird about his wife's death nine months earlier after
she gave birth to the baby. But now they think

(35:47):
something weird happened, and they're going to exhume Minie Mitchell's
body because they think Rosa is attached to it.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
Okay, well, then that tells me that when many died
that possibly whatever post death medical oversight was inadequate, right,
Probably no autopsy, maybe just you know, a medical doctor
signing off on a death certificate saying, yep, you know

(36:14):
what sepsis, whatever the diagnosis was, But could there have
been the administration we see, you know, like caregivers who
have prolonged exposure to patients can chronically dose toxins at
low levels without causing you know, causing the dramatic symptoms,

(36:35):
and so like with Many, that's where I would expect
something like arsenic right, low dose of arsen over time.
But I am curious to see, you know, where this leads,
you know, with whatever they find during the exhumation, and
then if there's any any more information about the symptoms.

Speaker 3 (36:51):
That Many was exhibiting that.

Speaker 1 (36:54):
Led up to her death fever, you know, having problems breathing,
not feeling well for a couple of months, I mean,
just sort of suffering through. The doctors, including her husband,
said this is sort of textbook whatever you would call
that a bacterial infection after having problems after childbirth. So
those were the symptoms. What can we expect it for

(37:16):
nine months? She's been underground for nine months. There's a
chance she had been embalmed, because embalming really started in
the Civil War time period, but I don't have that information.

Speaker 3 (37:25):
And she was an autopsy I'm assuming.

Speaker 1 (37:28):
Now, not initially, but she has been.

Speaker 2 (37:30):
Now, yeah, so at least you know when she's going
into the ground, when she's buried, you know, her body
is intact, whereas a body that's been autopsy it has
obviously been opened up. The organs have been removed. There's
been a lot of disruption in this scenario. My expectation
that if you are dealing with the toxin that is
metallic based, you know, most certainly that would be present

(37:52):
in the tissues.

Speaker 3 (37:53):
You know, strych nine, you know, these.

Speaker 2 (37:55):
Alkaloids, you know, there's probably going to be a diminished
level just because it's an organic compound, and just through
decomposition that's occurring. Even with bodies that are embalmed, these
organic compounds will diminish over time.

Speaker 3 (38:11):
But it's possible that they could persist.

Speaker 2 (38:13):
But I think I'd be going after where the primary
concentrations would have been, you know, whether the stomach, contents, liver,
you know, if it's an oral ingestion of toxins, you know,
everything passes initially through the livers, or evidence of some
sort of toxin you know that has had an ill
effect on her liver and so on and so forth.

(38:35):
And this is where you know, I start getting way
out of my wheelhouse in terms of you know, various
toxins have target organs, target tissues, and so this is
where relying upon a toxicologist, you know, to determine, okay,
this is the type of samples I need from this
body to comprehensively determine whether or not there is something

(38:55):
like strychnine present.

Speaker 1 (38:56):
Well, let me tell you what they find and kind
of an odd explo nation that you've already talked about.
Minnie Mitchell is exhumed and they look at her stomach
and they find the presence of Stryck nine. So that's,
I guess, the good news. Here's the confusing news, Paul.
You use this phrase already. Her husband testified that he

(39:18):
was medicating her when she was sick with that word.
You said that phrase, you said, nooks vomica oh, which
is a medicine derive from Stryck nine that they used
for a lot of things. Incidentally, it has also been
used to treat erictyle dysfunction more you know.

Speaker 3 (39:34):
At the time or currently, No, currently, I.

Speaker 1 (39:37):
Believe, Okay, I mean, don't do it, do this and
home kids. But he was treating her with it, and
I don't have any information on how much. And of course,
I mean, I don't think once sir, Bodie's been in
the ground for that long, I'm not sure any measurement
would be accurate after nine months anyway, But it's there,
but he said, well, I gave her some of it.

Speaker 3 (39:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:56):
Well, and I think you know, when you start talking
about quantifying the amount of toxin in the eighteen nineties,
you know, I know, with Ella, the Chicago toxicologists said
like three grains, right, or three eighths of a grain, right, Yeah,
that's probably a very.

Speaker 3 (40:13):
Very rough estimate.

Speaker 2 (40:15):
But with somebody like many, you know, now, I think
what they're doing is they're likely doing crystal tests where now,
with certain reagents, if you have a crystal that forms
in the presence of strychnine, it tells you yep, it's
positive for strict nine. But they can't tell you exactly, well,
how much strychnine is present in these stomach contents.

Speaker 3 (40:35):
It's just that it's positive.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
That would be my guess, And any estimation that the
toxicologist is doing is going to be very very rough
at best.

Speaker 1 (40:47):
Well, thank goodness. I mean, I'm not defending Rosa because
I don't know about her guilt or innocence yet. But
they initially charged her with Mini's murder, but then they
drop the charges. I mean, I think even they in
eighteen ninety one, now that's not enough evidence, especially if
you've got the doctor saying, well, I did give her
Stryck nine to treat her. Yeah, so you know, if
we moved back over to Ella for a minute, they

(41:11):
start saying, okay, well, where if this is Rosa and
not the doctor or someone else, where is she getting
Stryck nine from which you know, throw a rock and
you could hit Stryck nine in a product of course.
In the eighteen hundreds, they find it in the house.
It's in a cabinet that anybody, including the ten year
old kid, could reach, and it is in a bottle
with a regular cork. Anybody could open it up. It's

(41:31):
clearly marked, and they're using it as rat poison. I
talk about rough on rats. This is not rough on rats.
So rough on rats in the eighteen hundreds has come
up in so many of my stories. That was a
mixture of arsenic and coal. But Stryck nine is another
version of rough on rats. And so they had it there.
This is not hidden under her bed. You know it's
there and anybody could have grabbed it so far.

Speaker 2 (41:54):
Sure, so it's you know, the if you want to
call it the murder weapon, is freely accessible. You know,
I think it is you know, it is stunning when
you when you start thinking about you know, here you
have this very lethal toxin that is just basically available
that anybody could access. However, somebody like Rosa would most

(42:15):
certainly be aware of how toxic it is, though probably
doesn't have any experience in terms of utilizing it, you know,
in order to kill somebody, you know. So this is
where now she's making If she's the one that's making
these chocolate creams.

Speaker 1 (42:31):
Well she bought them and then she added it in theory,
but just to Ella's Paul, because she must have really
given them their own little goodie bag, because Lily ate
one and said, this is fine. What are you complaining about?

Speaker 2 (42:43):
Well, yeah, the bitter taste is the giveaway. It just
seems obvious to me, you know, the bitter tasting chocolate
cream which should be chocolate and sweet. You know Ella's
immediately going, this doesn't taste right. So you know, I'm
completely on board. That's how Ella and tested the strict
nine and if Rosa is the one giving it to

(43:04):
her and her sister at the same time, that's definitely
looking targeted. There's pre planning.

Speaker 1 (43:09):
If we talked this out, if you really think about this,
So I was thinking bitter, Why would she not put
it in the oysters? But I think Rosa needed her
out of the house and on her way home for
this to work, and so kind of just shoving some
chocolates at her and saying, hey, why don't you try
one of these was a good way. Or she even
better would have waited till she gotten home and tried

(43:29):
one at home. I mean, the further away that she
got from Rosa, the better it would have been for Rosa,
I thought. But then I was thinking, servant, was something spicy?
Why are you giving her the opportunity to complain about
how bitter this is and some really sweet chocolate.

Speaker 3 (43:42):
Rosa may be completely oblivious to how the strict nine
would alter the taste, right, She just knows, Hey, this
rat poison is available. I'm going to give it to Ella, yep,
not knowing it's a very bitter tasting substance.

Speaker 1 (43:56):
So this all happens in January. She goes on trial
in June. They have to get a change of venue
because so many people in this area know about this
case and they're convinced of Rosa's guilt, which I have
to say is a sort of surprising. I mean, I've
been dealing with female poisoners over eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds,
and even though I know it's poison is supposed to

(44:18):
be a lady's choice of weapon, I still have found
that sort of over a broad survey of the stories
that I've done, that people are still disbelieving that women
would do this and this time period specifically. Of course,
I'm not surprised women do anything now, but in this
time period, be quiet, Paul. But in this time period,
you know, people were shocked and they were not Boy,

(44:40):
they just thought she was guilty, and they said, we've
got to change the venue.

Speaker 3 (44:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:46):
Well, you know, at least all the circumstances that you've
laid out to me and some of the objective evidence
elastomach contents with the Strych nine in there, you know,
this really does.

Speaker 3 (44:55):
Seem to point at Rosa for sure.

Speaker 2 (44:59):
Now I'm going to be shocked if you, you know,
send me on a whole one hundred and eighty degree
you know, tangent from that, like you have a tendency
to do.

Speaker 1 (45:10):
But watch it, buddy.

Speaker 3 (45:13):
I think I'm on board with everybody that's following the
trial back in the eighteen nineties. Is that.

Speaker 2 (45:18):
Yeah, it appears that Rosa was jealous of Ella and
the attention doctor Mitchell was giving Ella and decided to
off her competitor.

Speaker 1 (45:26):
So, just like the hordes of people who aren't even
letting this poor woman go on trial, yet you're jumping
on board with her guilt, I am too in a
way you're jumping on board, okay.

Speaker 3 (45:36):
And women are very capable of committing homicide in a
wide variety of ways.

Speaker 1 (45:42):
Yep, thanks for that. The courtroom is packed to suffocation.
This is a you know, not surprising at all true
crime lovers. In the eighteen hundreds, there are some some
interesting witness testimony that have to ask you about Anna,
who is the housekeeper in the Mitchell house. She testifies.
It sounds like Rosa wanted to testify, and her attorney's

(46:03):
very smartly shut that down. So Anna gets on the
stand and she says that after she heard that Ella
had died, but before Rosa was charged, which was just
maybe a two week period, Rosa had gone to Anna
and said, do you think that murderers can be redeemed?
And she also said that Anna was praying that day,

(46:25):
heard her praying that day, which I guess sounded really unusual.
Is this admissible in court? Really? I mean, does this
really have anything to do with the case.

Speaker 3 (46:33):
Well admissibility?

Speaker 2 (46:34):
You know, here you have Anna is hearing directly from Rosa,
you know, so this isn't Anna hearing it secondhand.

Speaker 3 (46:43):
She's hearing it directly.

Speaker 2 (46:45):
So I think I would argue, you know, that this
is admissible because Anna is a witness, primary witness to
that statement. I'm sure there could be arguments made, you know,
to try to prevent that statement from being admitted into
court in terms of relevance, you know, I could see

(47:07):
where the defense would object to relevance because it's not
Rosa making an explicit statement I murdered Ella. Am I redeemable?
It's more of this vague question, you know.

Speaker 3 (47:21):
And I think.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
That that's where you'd have the prosecutor and the defense
making arguments in front of a judge as to whether
or not the jury would hear that. But I think
at least because it's a primary statement from Rosa to Anna,
it's not secondhand, I think at least there is the
possibility that is admissible.

Speaker 1 (47:41):
Well, the defense goes to trying to show who has
access to the poison. It looks like everybody does. And
even Freddy has seen his dad put poison on top
of cheese to kill these rats. Yeah, and then you've
got the prosecutor on the other hand, really wanting to
nail down the motive. So here what witnesses say. Witnesses

(48:01):
say that Rosa said that many had said to her, essentially, Rosa,
if I die, then I think you should marry my husband.
Witnesses also testified that doctor Mitchell remarrying was a popular
topic of conversation around the women, among the women in
town because he was a handsome, somewhat wealthy guy. So

(48:25):
she is already around town saying that many said that,
you know, when she dies, that I should be gifted
her husband essentially, which just sounds delusional.

Speaker 2 (48:35):
Well, yeah, are these witnesses saying that they actually saw
and heard many tell Rosa this, or they're hearing this
from Rosa.

Speaker 1 (48:42):
This is Rosa.

Speaker 2 (48:43):
Yeah, so this is this is Rosa. She's she's got
a fantasy life in her head. She's also laying the
groundwork for, you know, down the road, what her plans are.
You know, she's hoping that her and doctor Mitchell are
going to become a couple. And that all just further
under scores the motive of why Ella gets targeted by Rosa.

(49:06):
If Rosa is perceiving Ella as now gaining doctor Mitchell's
attention and affection, yeah.

Speaker 1 (49:12):
And it gets a little worse because we have other
people chiming in. There's another doctor who testifies who's a
friend of doctor Mitchell's. And this doctor says, now, I
don't know how long they're waiting after many dies to
say stuff like this, but this friend of his says,
I think you should consider Ella as another wife for you.
She's a nice woman. I think you'd be a good match.

(49:34):
Rosa hears this. She goes to this doctor friend and says, hey,
I would would you recommend me instead of Ella. No
word on what his response was to that. I'm sure
it was bug off. But this is about six months
before Ella was poisoned, so she's seeing now doctor Mitchell

(49:55):
paying more attention to Ella again. I have not heard
one thing that says that Ella was at all interested
in this man.

Speaker 2 (50:04):
Nothing sure, but Rosa is again her. She has this fantasy,
and if something is interrupting that fantasy from her perception,
that's what gives her the motive to go after Ella.

Speaker 1 (50:18):
Yeah, you know, I did this story for Tenfold. I
think it was season four of Tenfold. More Wicked about
Clara Phillips, who was a woman in LA in the
nineteen twenties and her husband was I believe, a philanderer.
I mean he was sleeping with people, and she was
fixated on one woman named Alberta Meadows, and she was
convinced that they were sleeping together, and it turns out

(50:40):
they really weren't. Clara was so focused on this woman
that she draws her into rural part of LA and
beats her to death with a hammer, and she's covered
in blood. And she comes home and she says to
her husband as she takes off these bloody driving gloves,
I have taken care of our problem, and now I'm
going to cook you the best dinner of your life.

(51:01):
I mean, eliminating the problem.

Speaker 3 (51:03):
That is cold blooded too, right.

Speaker 1 (51:05):
Yeah, Well, Rosa is denying all of this. She doesn't
take the stand. She you know, seems like this mysterious woman.
She is found guilty, thankfully, and sentenced to prison in
eighteen ninety one. Okay, so a good thing happens. However,
there are people in the Richland Center community who are saying,

(51:26):
this woman got a raw deal. There's no real evidence,
it's anecdotal. Nobody saw her do it, and we think
it's the rumor mill that we think it's because she
really liked doctor Mitchell and people thought that was maybe inappropriate,
or she wasn't good enough for doctor Mitchell because she
was a border and other people could have done it,
including doctor Mitchell. So they start circulating a petition. The

(51:48):
case is appealed to the Supreme Court of Wisconsin. The
judge declines to overturn the conviction, but she's in prison
for six years and she is granted a pardon by
the governor of Wasisconsin on the last day of his
term and she's released.

Speaker 3 (52:03):
Well, okay, why is he granting her a pardon. Did
she have attorneys that were pursuing that with him.

Speaker 1 (52:10):
I believe so friends of hers, and I think he
just thought there was not enough evidence, and of course
she's a woman. He grants her a pardon. She moves
to Oklahoma to be with her family, who had relocated again.
And the speculation she really liked Wisconsin, but the speculation
is she wanted to get out of Dodge, because they
could have always anytime charged her with the murder of

(52:32):
Minnie Mitchell, which I'm sure George Mitchell would have enjoyed,
you know, having that taken care of. Also, so she
is gone. We don't know anything else. We don't know
if she poisoned other people, We don't know what kind
of life she led after this, but we know that
somebody who most certainly murdered a young woman in an
incredibly painful way, incredibly painful only served six years less

(52:56):
than six years.

Speaker 2 (52:57):
Yeah, you know, and I'm just kind of going over
the case in my head.

Speaker 3 (53:02):
You know.

Speaker 2 (53:02):
I think it is a circumstantial case for sure, and
I can see where under appeal Rosa's attorneys could be
making some very valid statements about the inadequacy of the
people's case.

Speaker 3 (53:17):
You know.

Speaker 2 (53:17):
So in some ways, from a legal standpoint, I'm not
having too much problem with the idea that maybe maybe
the conviction wasn't as strong as what it should have been. However,
I think I am convinced that Rosa is Ella's.

Speaker 3 (53:34):
Killer, you know.

Speaker 2 (53:35):
So that's just part of those you know, It's like
from the investigator side, yeah, Rose is the killer, but
legally is it a strong case, at least during our discussions.

Speaker 3 (53:46):
I don't think it's as strong of a case as
what it could have been.

Speaker 1 (53:49):
I agree. And let's hope she never offered anyone else
any chocolates after this, because how awful, I think for
doctor Mitchell then to go on and he's got two
kids with no mom for a woman he showed no
interest in, and a young woman and her sister and
just really over one person's just sort of delusions. I

(54:10):
found this to be a sad case, but really compelling.
I mean, I love a good dinner party. Somebody it's
gettings up murdered? Who did it? Kind of case. I
wish that there was a little bit more at the
end of this of justice for Ella Molly for sure.

Speaker 3 (54:24):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:25):
But also when you start talking about, you know, this
type of case back in the eighteen nineties, you know,
it's really really tough to have that solid, objective physical
evidence because they just didn't have the technology back then.

Speaker 3 (54:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:40):
I'm just glad they had toxicology, or the at least
this level of toxicology.

Speaker 3 (54:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:44):
Yeah, And that's something that as I you know, have
looked at in particular this this textbook I have from
the eighteen nineties. I'm quite frankly blown away about how
sophisticated they were, you know, well before you know, the
modern technology that we have today with the instrumentation and
the computers and our ability to really detect all sorts

(55:08):
of drugs and toxins. So it always impresses me, you know,
when we talk about some of these old cases with
those people that have developed expertise, you know, whether it
be you know, a crime scene investigator from way back when,
or an investigator or a pathologist, and seeing how the

(55:28):
ones that really were good, they were good, they just
didn't have the tools that we have today.

Speaker 1 (55:34):
Yeah, And then I always like it when we talk
about something like, you know, from American Edward Oscar Heinrich firing,
you know, a bullet into paraffin wax, and you saying
why I did that in the seventies or whenever it was.

Speaker 3 (55:47):
You're saying, I'm doing that in the seventies. I think
you just put about thirty years on my age.

Speaker 1 (55:53):
Sorry about that. You said you've done that, that kind
of technique you had learned a long time ago, that
kind of technique before. And I think that's you know,
I mean, I think that's great that sometimes thinks it's
just a good old fashioned police work and forensic work
that can catch some of these people. So we're off
next week, but the following week I'll have another mystery
for you to help me solve.

Speaker 3 (56:13):
All right, I'm looking forward to it.

Speaker 1 (56:19):
This has been an exactly right production.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
For our sources and show notes go to exactlyrightmedia dot
com slash Buried Bones sources.

Speaker 1 (56:27):
Our senior producer is Alexis Emrosi.

Speaker 2 (56:30):
Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin, and Kate Winkler Dawson.

Speaker 1 (56:34):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.

Speaker 3 (56:37):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.

Speaker 1 (56:39):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.

Speaker 2 (56:42):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark and Daniel Kramer.

Speaker 1 (56:46):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
Buried Bones Pod.

Speaker 2 (56:51):
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, and.

Speaker 1 (56:58):
Paul's best selling Memory Are Unmasked. My life Solving America's
Cold Cases is also available now