Murdered Maiden

In this week’s episode, Paul and Kate head to 1875 New Hampshire, where a young girl doesn't make it home on time, enacting large search parties. Despite not having today’s technology, will the sharp townspeople be enough to find the missing person? 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the
last twenty five years writing about true crime.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
compelling true crimes.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring
new insights to old mysteries.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.

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

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Hey, Paul, Hi, Kate, how are you.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
I'm doing well. I have a question because every once
in a while I get very down about true crime.
It's hard to work in this space all the time.
It can be very sad, of course, and I think
the more that I allow myself to be affected by it,
the more I'm sort of like, oh, my gosh, I
need the inspirational stuff. So, since you were in the

(01:26):
field and you worked for so long, what were the
things that you saw, or maybe it's cases that you
worked where they could have been awful but you were
inspired by something. I don't know if it's the family
or a survivor or anything like that, where you just
kind of thought, Wow, this is a new perspective and
one that I would not think somebody would be able

(01:47):
to muster this up, but they have. Can you think
of anything like that?

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Well, I can think of multiple examples of I guess,
surprising resilience. Most notably, there's a case. This is the
Zianna Fairchild case. Seven year old girl. She goes missing
and she's missing for a long time. Her great biological
great aunt Stephanie, but she was one who actually raised

(02:15):
Theianna because Sianna's bio mom was in prison at the
time Zianna was born. Stephanie raised Theanna believe it or not,
out here in Colorado Springs before moving when bio mom
wanted her daughter back, Ziana went to Valleeo, California with
bio mom and the boyfriend, and Stephanie ultimately moved out

(02:38):
to Valleo. When Zianna went missing after having to walk
alone to her bus stop. She was a missing girl.
I forget exactly how long, like a year, and then
her skull was found in the Los g Ados mountains,
a dog brought her skull back. Stephanie reached out to
me when she found out about who I was and

(03:00):
asked if I could help on Zianna's case, which I did,
and I became friends with Stephanie. And here is a mother,
you know, when like I'm trying to find Ziana, the
rest is Sanna. That was part of my goal is
to get Stephanie Siana back. And I distinctly remember I
was so crushed when I found out that where Ziana

(03:23):
had been dumped, this is where you have wild boar
and wild boar eat carry on bones and all. And
I had to tell Stephanie, you know, I was like, oh,
I don't think you're going to get you're going to
find Ziana. I don't think she's out there anymore. And
I so dreaded that conversation and I kind of led

(03:45):
into this going it's going to be hard, and Stephanie just,
you know, straight up looked me in the eye and
said I need to hear it. And I told her,
you know, and you could see her eyes waver but
she just became even more resolute after that, and then ultimately,
you know, she's confronting Zianna's killer, who was Kurtistine Anderson.

(04:06):
She's literally going into jail confronting him. She's having to
correspond with him. And I know she has a book
out about her correspondence with her daughter's killer, you know,
and you could see through the letters, the exchange of
these letters, the torment that he was putting her through,

(04:26):
because this is when she didn't know Sianna was dead
before the skull had been found. But in many ways
she was. She was inspiring because even with such a
horrific tragedy, she really showed kind of perseverance. And you know,
there's so many aspects to her story that you know,

(04:49):
it's just it is one of those things where you go, yes,
this is she she suffered through so much, but she
really sets the bar in turn terms of showing a
level of strength and optimistic outlook in the face of
the worst thing imaginable.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
Well, and I know that you've experienced that with Golden
State Killer, you know, survivors and families and stuff, and
you know, I think, what an awful way to see
that to get you have to be able to get
an inspiration from it. But I think about that too
when we talk about our cases and the way that people,
particularly in the eighteen hundreds just tracked down killers, and

(05:31):
the you know, the detectives with the magnets on the
fishing line trying to find desperately find a weapon that's
been thrown in the river, and you know, Spillsbury, I
think pulling off some like these amazing things in the
nineteen thirties and forties in England. I think, you know,
I always am trying to pick out the things that
are not the things that I think people find entertaining.

(05:53):
I think it's the things that are for me, are
touching and that really do show character. And I tell
my it's that when you see whether you have grit
and what your character is oftentimes is when terrible things
are happening, and hopefully terrible things don't happen, but at
the same time, it's like, wow, who would have thought
that the person could have gotten through that? So I
was thinking that you've witnessed so many of those types

(06:14):
of stories that you must run into families where you
just go, man, I don't know how somebody can do
all this, And then it's inspirational.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
It is, you know, because I think about, you know,
what if it happened to somebody that was close to me,
you know, how would I respond? Yeah, you know, so
to see Stephanie, to see some of these other victims
that I've interacted with and how they've used these negative
experiences and these tragedies in order to do good afterwards,

(06:45):
you know, that's very inspiring.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
Good. Well, I'm glad to hear some of those. And
I wanted to start with that question for you because
the story we're going to talk about is one of those,
for me, very hard stories. And this is graphic, for
even for me graphic. There's a sexual assault, so we're
going to do you know, a trigger warning for that.
But but particularly some of the details that we'll talk

(07:09):
about with the injuries in the murder are difficult, and
I just want to tell people that we're going to
do a really good job I think of making sure
we only include the stuff we need to include. I
just really I cannot stand it when I either read
or hear or watch something in the true crime space
where it's so graphic and there's no point because now
I can pick out the things that you would want
to hear, and if it's not something that's going to

(07:32):
add and it feels gratuitous. I don't think it's good
to add you know.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
Sure, that's that's part of the struggle. Like if I'm
listening to a case or being asked about a case.
You know, for me, I need to know all no, right,
And I'm used to having all you know and and
trying to, you know, juggle the true crime aspect versus
me doing what I know I can do if I

(07:58):
have all the information. That's always been struggle.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
Yeah, and I give you all the information, but I
really try to think about it as making it not
gratuitous because it, boy, it bugs me. Anyway, we are
going back to the eighteen hundreds, which makes me very happy.
We're going to Pembrook, New Hampshire. So let's go ahead
and set the scene. So this is relatively rural New Hampshire.

(08:21):
It's eighteen seventy five, and most of the people who
live in this area are farmers or they work for
one of several nearby mills. And this town is about
seven miles away from the city of Concord, which is
New Hampshire's capital. So small area. And we're talking about
a couple of different towns, and I'll explain why in
a little bit. So here's the main family. It's the

(08:44):
Langmade family and they live on a farm about two
miles outside of Pembrook, so even more rural, and they're
in a village called Suncook. They have two kids. One's
a girl named Josie who's seventeen, and they have a
boy named Waldo love that name, who is sixteen. And
both of these kids attend school at the Pembrooke Academy,

(09:07):
which is in Pembrooke, in the town. Their normal schedule
would be that they would walk together, the sister and
the brother, and then they would meet up with one
of Josie's friends, who is a girl her age called
Lilia Fowler on the way, who is a neighbor. So
here's what happens on the day that we need to
focus on the morning of October fourth, Josie is running

(09:29):
late and her brother Waldo is ahead of her. He says,
I've got to go to school. I don't want to
be late to school, and she says fine. Lilia waits
for Josie. She's there. Josie's there, but Lilia says, I've
got to go. I can't be late for school. So
she catches a ride into town on a passing wagon,

(09:49):
which I guess was the thing. I mean, you just
hitch a ride with somebody who's you probably a neighbor.
These are small areas. They probably knew each other, so,
you know, her brother and her friend had seen her,
and obviously Josie's going to be the focus here, and
she was at home trying to get out the door.
So the path that these kids would normally take would

(10:10):
be past all the neighbors' houses and then there's this
stretch that goes through some woods. By the afternoon, Josie's
parents learn that she never made it to school. So
Waldo made it to school, and then Lilia, who caught
a ride on a wagon, made it to school. Josie didn't.
So this is in the afternoon. The question was once

(10:30):
the parents found out, who do they talk to? They
talked to the people along the pathway where Josie would
have gone by herself, including through the woods, so they said,
where's our daughter? Have you seen her this morning? Witnesses
in several of these houses, including the one that is
the last house before you enter the woods, say they

(10:51):
saw her walking that morning when she was, you know,
just running a little bit late, she was walking briskly
in the direction of the school. The parents find out
that she never made it to school. They were talking
to the neighbors. The neighbors spread the word. Investigations back
then were primarily handled by local constables and city marshals.
I wanted to find out because I was thinking, Okay,

(11:13):
when are they going to sound the alarm to investigators?
But these are you know, these investigators were far flung,
especially in these little rural towns, so it looks like
they were doing their own investigation. First, the officers worked
part time, so they were like tax collectors and officers
at the same time. And obviously, you know, they had
investigated cases, but this might have been outside their range.

(11:36):
So within a half an hour of the parents finding
out that their daughter's missing, there's a search party, and
over that afternoon and into the evening, one hundred men
accumulate to search Josie's route to school, and as the
night falls, they used torches to light the way. Before
I get to you know the next part of this,
I'll say, they're looking at her last movements, and then

(11:59):
they do. They form a line by torchlight and sweep
the woods, which as somebody who loves sort of darker,
kind of creepy things must have been an incredible sight.
It's like nighttime grid search. I guess it would depend
on the conditions. But would they do grid searches and
overnight searches in the middle of the night even today?

(12:20):
I mean, is this usually in all if there's somebody
who's missing, who's at risk, would it be bad weather
or what would stop them from doing something a search
at night like this all night?

Speaker 2 (12:30):
Well, it really is down to the exigency, you know,
and here you have a missing girl that's at risk.
The people that are in charge of search and rescue
will make the decision as to whether the conditions are
not viable for the search. But most certainly you see
at night, you'll see these types of searches, not with fire,

(12:53):
with flashlights, you know, but you have a grid search
where everybody is within arm's length of each other, if
not a little bit wider spaced, and they are told
they have to overlap, you know, they're what they're searching,
so everybody's looking. You know, there's multiple eyes on each
spot of land that they're walking through. And there's other

(13:16):
types of search patterns that can be done, so, you know,
back in eighteen seventy five. To be frank, I'm quite
impressed that they are doing a grid search. The order
of magnitude of how tough it is at night to
see versus during the day is huge. You know, you're
so much better during the day to see things. But

(13:37):
when you have an at risk youth, you do what
you can.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
Well, let me set this scene. They're in these woods.
I have a picture of the woods, eighteen seventy five picture,
maybe a little bit older, but I know they find
our body at nine o'clock, so it's pitch black outside.
It's just them with moonlight and starlight and the storches,
and they find her about half a mile into the
woods from the road. This is twelve hours later. So

(14:07):
if you look at your little packet, only look at
page one. For me, this to me looks like the
road that would be, you know, Academy Road, I believe
is where the road that she took to go through
these woods.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
Yeah, so this picture is showing God, it's maybe half
the width of a standard road today, but it looks
like it's dirt. It's going through very dense brush, trees, bushes,
you know, it's on both sides of this road, so

(14:42):
I can see the road kind of turn to the
left in the background and just disappear from sight. You know.
So this obviously there's limited visibility, you know, these kids
walking down this path, and they would be doing this
on a routine basis, you know. So that comes into
my mind as whoever killed Josie? You know, is this

(15:07):
somebody that knew the pattern and when he saw that
she was isolated, which is unusual considering she's normally with
her brother and her friend that just was happened to
station themselves at a location and sees Josie alone, fully
expecting kids to be walking through at this roughly this

(15:28):
period of time, you know, or is there somebody that
just happens you know, this was Josie a victim of
opportunity right now, can't say either way, but most certainly
an offender could easily hide along this route and there'd
be no witnesses to see that there's somebody there. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:48):
Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what the investigators say
about was this a crime of opportunity or what happened.
Let me give you the details about what happened with
Josie so she's seventeen, and when they come up on her,
they immediately note many things. She's been decapitated. Her clothes
are badly torn and covered in blood. Her body appears

(16:09):
to be badly mutilated, though the full extent is not
immediately clear, and they're not touching her. So once they
locate her, I'm assuming they have people sit there all
night until the next day. The searchers show up, and
then we'll have a corner investigator show up too. The
next day, they find her head deeper in the woods.

(16:31):
It's wrapped in a blue oilcloth cape that she had
been wearing when she left the house. Oil Cloth is
a fabric that's been coated to make it water repellent,
probably like lindseed or something lindseed oil. We're going to
have three doctors do the autopsy, which is good. I'm
actually impressed with some of the stuff that happens in
this case. We talk about investigators all the time, but

(16:53):
just at first Blush, they said that her face has
been cut, there's a mark on her cheek that resembles
a boot heel, other things. Close to the road, the
searchers find a broken three foot club. It sounds like
it's cracked, but it didn't break into two pieces. The
club is made of red oak and an inch and
a half thick. It appears to have been cut recently.

(17:15):
One side of the club seems to have been whittled
to form a handle. They also find her schoolwork near
this club, and an apple which everybody said she had
been carrying earlier that morning. What do you think so far?
You raise your eyebrows when it was very clear that
someone had actually carried her head somewhere, not let it
roll down the hill or something.

Speaker 2 (17:36):
Well, I think right now. Absent other behavioral indicators, identification
of the body would often be done by taking a look,
having people who know the victim, by taking a look
at the victim, and obviously the faces the primary feature
that people will use to identify who the victim is.

(17:59):
The decapitation may have been a way to just delay
the identification of the body, but I can't say that
with confidence without really knowing more of what happened to her,
because there may be some very sick reasons that the
offender decapitated her. The initial thought, you know, her clothes

(18:23):
are torn, of course they're bloody, her body is mutilated,
and I can extrapolate in terms of the types of mutilation.
This is sounding like a type of offender that I've
seen at work with other victims, both in real life
as well in my own cases as well as textbook examples.

(18:47):
The presence of this three foot club that has a
handle already whittled into it, I think one of the
questions that I have about that is this, is this
an object that has some sort of purpose in you know,
for whatever could be happening in this particular area, or
was this an object that the offender made in order

(19:10):
to hurt somebody? And if that's the case and the
offender has that with him, that's showing pre planning.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
I can tell you this is not the kind of
object that would have been produced in these two towns
that are next to each other, Primbrook, where you know
she goes to school, and then where she's from. So
this is a this appears to be custom made.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
Okay, So you know this This sounds like the offender
is in this location and is armed with a pre
manufactured weapon. Could suggest that the offender was lying in
wait for the right opportunity, and Josie was the right opportunity,
Because I imagine that it's not just Josie, Lilia and

(19:56):
Waldo walking to school through this route. There's probably we
had waves of children that are walking through and so
here is a source of victim pool and now you
have a predator going to where the praise at and
just happens at that particular day. Josie, because she was late,

(20:18):
was the child that was isolated and the predator pounced.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
Well, I was going to save this for a later
but because you've been talking about it and you've gotten
so good at mentioning things that I am going to
tell you about. Like literally, I'll say, oh, I need
to tell Paul this, and then you'll say it. It's
like we're right here, Paul, you and me right here.
I'm going to go ahead and tell you now. So, yes,
you're right, this is a route that other kids would

(20:42):
have used. This is an interesting part once the investigation
really gets going into her murder. A classmate of Josie's
said that on the day that she was murdered, that
morning he was walking to school on that same road
and at the point right before there's a hill that
you climb and you could see the school and then
it's literally all downhill. After that, at the point right

(21:05):
before the final hill, he heard a rustling in the
bushes by the road. Kids. They liked to hide in
these bushes and jump out at each other, which is
sure a good way to get punched in the face
as far as I'm concerned. They love to scare each other.
And that's what the classmate thought it was happening. When
he heard the wrestling, he said, I know who did this,

(21:25):
Tom or whoever? Some kid and he said, you know,
he didn't jump out at him. So he just went
on to school and said, well, he's going to scare
the crap out of somebody. But then he got to
school and that kid was already there, so it wasn't
Tom or whoever. That kid was Okay. So there's a
witness who said he heard a rustling and it clearly
wasn't a classmate, and they had talked to everybody and said,

(21:46):
now it wasn't me.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
And you said that this was at the top of
the hill.

Speaker 1 (21:50):
He said, at the point right before the final hill,
So at the bottom of the hill, and there were bushes.
Well you saw the bushes, I mean.

Speaker 2 (21:58):
Yeah, so this is where if this is the offender.
And I think you know, it's likely it could have been.
You know, part of the evaluation of this location and
you put yourself in the offender's mind, is that the
offender is not going to choose, let's say, a switchback
location where you have no visibility down either stretch of
the road. You don't know who's coming, you know, so

(22:21):
you're going to position yourself where you can see victims approaching,
so you can evaluate the circumstances. Plus you can determine
further off in the distance, are there other people coming,
and then start plotting. If you see somebody that's isolated,
like Josie, and you look past Josie, because you've purposely

(22:44):
chosen a location where you can see down the road,
you see nobody is coming from that direction. I now
have my opportunity and the wrestling this classmate, who is
a male classmate. You know, I'm wondering if the offender
considered this classmate a victim and decided, for one reason
or another not to attack. And it may have been

(23:07):
because this was a male and that's not this offender's
preferred victim. It may be that he saw other kids
starting to approach and backed away. Who knows, you know,
but this location tends to suggest that, yes, you have
an offender who knows these kids are flowing through this
location and just liide and wait until the right opportunity

(23:28):
presented itself, and unfortunately that was Josie.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
Let's keep going something odd that I think will be
important later on. According to some reports, there are twigs
that are found tied together on top of Josie's body.
They're kind of vague reports, but it will pop back
up soon. They don't know what they were used for,
but there were twigs that were tied together and what's
described as a Frenchman's not. Why I don't know.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
Looking up this Frenchman's not. It's basically a a bowl
and knot with two loops. I know how to tie
a bowl a knot. It's something that can be used
at like camping. It's a knot in which it's very functional.
It's very strong. You know, if you were to tie
it around an object, you know it's going to be

(24:19):
very secure. But it's also a knot that you can
utilize the loop in order to be able to put
more of the line through to make like a quick
release type of scenario, like using a twig in this
new loop that you put through the existing loop, and

(24:39):
so all you have to do in order to release
whatever the rope is tied around is to remove the
twig and now you can just boom. You can get
up and go real quick. Now, the use of the
two loops, you know, just with the real brief research
I did watching YouTube video, they indicated it's it's frequently
used in search and rescue because you can get two

(25:00):
loops around let's say a person's wrist, and so you
have sort of additional an additional safety measure that that
rope is going to hold on to the person while
you're trying to, you know, bring them to safety. So
that's that's my understanding of the Frenchmans. But I am
familiar with the fundamental bowl and not.

Speaker 1 (25:21):
Okay, well, hopefully that'll help us a little bit. Now,
I told you that they found closer to the road,
they found this club, and also that they found Josie's
schoolwork in an apple. These were items that were found
at the bottom of a hill. So I think this
is the hill that the schoolmate was talking about, the
last hill before you hit the school. So they're at

(25:43):
the bottom of the hill. The bushes are left or right.
Were not sure if she had climbed to the top
of the hill, she could have seen the school and
they could have seen her. So they find this stuff
at the bottom of the hill, right before she would
climb the hill. What they think is that the killer
attacked Josie on that road before she reaches the hill
through the club and you know, all of this other

(26:03):
stuff over it says a stone wall, which I didn't
see a stone wall anywhere, but then dragging her body
into the woods. I'll have an autopsy report right now
where they found that she had been sexually assaulted. And
then one other point before we tell you we commentor
we talk about the autopsy. She had been wearing a
plain gold ring that she always wore. She had worn

(26:26):
a gold enameled breastpin. She had five cents on her
and some other small items that were trinkets and they're
all missing.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
Those are souvenirs, you know, So that that really is
informative about this type of offender. This is now a
fantasy motivated offender. He's not taking these items because they
have value. He's taking these items because he has he
wants to hold on to them. They're a source of
memory for him. It's also a feeling a conquest. When

(26:55):
he looks at those items, he knows, you know, he'll
remember basically conquering Josie. So it's very informative about the
mindset of this offender. You know, the location of Josie's
schoolwork and apple, Yes, that suggests that's likely where she
is confronted by the offender, even though the club is there.
I need to know more about Josie's injuries to determine

(27:16):
what you know, was she you know, was she hit
like over the head with this club at this location.
It's also possible the offender just used his physical presence
that you know, threatened her with the club and then
made her walk back into the woods, further into the
woods before he attacked her and killed her.

Speaker 1 (27:35):
Okay, get ready for this. So if you all do
not want to listen to this, I don't blame you.
There's some pretty brutal details in here, so you can
please feel free to skip ahead. So, Paul, do you
want me to just kind of go through this or
I'll just stop at every paragraph and you can do
your hum and I'll know and to keep going, or
if you want to okay, okay, sure. Three doctors conduct

(27:59):
this post war examination. And by the way, in the meantime,
they've hired a detective from Boston who's coming in and
looking at a lot of stuff. So that's good.

Speaker 2 (28:07):
Good.

Speaker 1 (28:07):
So now we have an actual I mean, I assume
an actual detective who's coming in. Three doctors work on this.
They examine her body. Here's the first thing. They find
that her thumb and several small bones are broken on
her right hand, and they believe that she caught the
club when the killer was swinging it at her.

Speaker 2 (28:25):
Yeah, defensive injuries.

Speaker 1 (28:26):
It looks like she was struck twice, once on either
side of her head, and the doctors believe that the
boot heel impression was from the killer jumping on her head.

Speaker 2 (28:39):
Yeah. Well, I don't know how they're concluding jumping or
stomping or you know, holding her down, you know, with
the bottom of his foot. Yes, I don't think you
can draw that conclusion, but you can draw a conclusion that,
you know, yeah, he put her foot on her head
with force.

Speaker 1 (28:55):
And they see this mark and said immediately it's a
boot heel that's on her heart. She okay, remember that
investigator said that after he had subdued Josie close to
the road, he dragged her further into the woods. They
think she was still alive when this happened. Once away
from the main road. There are definite signs that she
had been sexually assaulted. Why do you think that they

(29:17):
would think that she was still alive? Would you see
more like that she was fighting as she's being dragged
or what would give them that indication?

Speaker 2 (29:25):
Do you think, Well, it's possible, you know, in terms
of her being still being alive, it may be because
of the assessment of the injuries to her head from
the club were not significant enough that the pathologist or
these doctors felt would have caused death. So that's one possibility.
There's also the possibility that there is a trail of

(29:48):
blood that suggests that there's still active bleeding going on
where you know, if she has an open wound and
there's significant bleeding that person along the length of this trail,
that her heart is still pumping. So there may be
several factors that they're they're looking at. And then it's
also well, what's going on at the sexual assault location.

(30:12):
And then ultimately you've told me previously you have body mutilation.
Was there, you know, a knife being used. Does it
look like she has defensive injuries as a result of
the you know, a knife or whatever is going on.
So there'd be multiple things that they could be relying
upon to say she's still alive at this location where

(30:32):
her body is found.

Speaker 1 (30:34):
Okay, here are the last bits that I think are
the most difficult. I want to preface this by saying
that they aren't sure whether any of this stuff happened
aside from the sexual assault, before she died or after
she died. But I mean, what I think is good
about these three doctors is they don't seem to be
assuming too much. There's a lot of this is what

(30:56):
we think, but we're not sure and we need more evidence.
They said that the killer ripped and cut at her clothes,
so this was in the woods, that he gashed her
body and mutilated her. But the newspapers, i'm sure, out
of propriety, don't describe the injuries in great detail. But
what the doctors say is that her volva had been

(31:17):
mutilated and partially cut away. The doctors say that the
killer used a knife or some kind of sharp instrument
to slit her cheek, her ear and her lip. They
do not know what kind of knife. I don't even
think they want to try to guess. They think that
she was alive when her head was cut off using
that same knife or a sharp instrument. And one more

(31:39):
line before you react to that her head had been
cut off at the shoulders, They say this was done
skillfully because of the way the first and second vertebrae
were separated.

Speaker 2 (31:50):
So this is a sexual statist and that's exactly what
I thought was going on. You know, he in essence,
this is the worst type of offender that any victor
whatever want to be confronted by, because he gets sexual
pleasure out of out of torture, out of inflicting fear
and doing these extreme violence while the victim is still alive.

(32:13):
You know, Josie's last moments were horrific. You know, the mutilation.
You know, part of that is the sadism that's going on.
Part of that, you know, some of the sort of
the behavioral experts, you know, they talk about this defeminization
and I'm not going to go into details, but this
is where specific parts of the female anatomy are targeted

(32:34):
by the offender. And let's just say obliterated or remove
from the victim's body, and it it's something that has hapened.
You know, I've seen it in person. I've there's plenty
of textbook examples of this type of offender. He's a
serial predator, there's no question about it. Now. Has he
committed other attacks prior or other attacks afterwards? You know,

(32:58):
I can't say that. But he is motivated by fantasy.
His fantasy is to inflict sadistic acts on his victim
and have them writhe in pain and scream out in
pain and be in fear before he kills them. And
then you know, the decapitation. You know, there may be
just what we would call an mo aspect to it

(33:19):
is to delay identification of Josie. You know this again,
this is a you know, it's eighteen seventy five, and
it just really underscores that this type of predator existed
before we even knew what a serial killer was or

(33:40):
that term was, right, That was really not until the
nineteen seventies that that term was even applied or used.
I go back that you think about the lore of
these various monsters, the werewolfs, the vampires, Well, some of

(34:01):
the victims of these monsters are probably victims of this
type of predator, and people didn't know what they were
looking at when they came across them, and they had
to come up with an explanation. Must have been a warewolf,
must have been a vampire. But the reality is is
that these predators have existed since the dawn of time.

Speaker 1 (34:20):
Yeah, well this was so brutal. Oh what about the
did you talk about this the second and the first vertebrae?
They thought it was done skillfully.

Speaker 2 (34:30):
Must be somebody medically trained type of dismemberment, right, because
they're not right. They're noticing, right, they're noticing, Oh, this
this person is cutting through the easy part of the
neck in order to remove her head. You know, it's
in between the vertebrae. This may suggest that you have
somebody that has some training. I wouldn't say it necessarily medical,

(34:50):
but it could be because they're you know, they've they've
butchered animals. They're a hunter. You know, they understand that,
but also understand this type of predator probably has killed
animals prior and has dismembered these animals and then learns, well,
the knife isn't going to go through the vertebrae. So

(35:11):
I have to go in between the vertebrae to get
this animal's head off. They learn this just because this
is what they're doing. It's like a Jeffrey Dahmer, you know,
who's butchering animals and putting there. You know, I think
I remember a picture of a dog's head being put
on a steak. He's got experience with animal anatomy, and
so of course that translates into dismembering humans. So it

(35:33):
really to me, It just suggests that this offender has
probably dismembered animal and or humans before.

Speaker 1 (35:42):
Well, I can tell you in the eighteen hundreds, I
would have a hard time finding a man who hadn't
at some point had to break down the carcass of
an animal. You know, I guess if you were extremely wealthy,
but not out here in the rural area. So that
wouldn't surprise me these days, yes, but not then. Okay, well,
I'm glad we've made it through that autopsy. As I
had mentioned before, the townspeople hire a detective from Boston.

(36:05):
The news goes everywhere, of course, and there are several
people of interests that are identified and arrested. Of course,
they shake down what they call tramps, which are the
homeless or itinerant men. The only black man in one
of these small towns is arrested and comes to nothing.
None of this happens. Everybody has alibis. The leads go

(36:25):
nowhere until this story gets really, for me, disturbing, and
not in a violent way necessarily, but in a just
a weird, creepy way. So here we go. We start
to have a suspect pretty quickly, even though they've sort
of looked through all of these different people who are
more likely suspects. They start to home in on this

(36:48):
guy who worked for the friend Lilia. Her dad would
hire people to do farm work, and there was an
odd man who was there. So I'll give you all
the context. So this is Josie's friend Lilia. She was
one who was supposed to go to school but she
called a ride instead. Their neighbors. Lilia's Father's name is

(37:10):
true Worthy Fowler, great name. So Fowler has hired several
men to do farm work the day before Josie's murder,
and among this group of men is someone who mister
Fowler doesn't know his real name, but people call him
the Frenchman. While they're working the Frenchman sees Lilia. This

(37:31):
is not Josie, it's Lelia coming home on the road
from school one afternoon. He asks her brother, who was
working with the men on this project, which route that
his sister Lilia takes to get to school. And then,
of course you know the story of the classmates saying
that there was somebody in the bushes. And now, of

(37:51):
course the detective and other authorities think that this guy
who nobody knows his real name, was waiting in the
woods Frenchman, and he was actually targeting Leah, not Josie.
But Lilia gets a ride to school on a passing
carriage and Josie comes instead, so that's what they think happened.

(38:11):
The issue, of course, is this guy's long gone, so
what do you think about that?

Speaker 2 (38:15):
It's entirely plausible, but it's just, I think, one of
many possibilities. But of course he's a suspect because why
is he asking about the route that Lily is taking
to school, back and forth to school. That's showing a
unusual level of interest in the details about this young girl,

(38:38):
you know, and her whereabouts. So it's possible that, yeah,
he planned on making Lily a victim. If the circumstances
were right, and then that morning Lily was not somebody
that he would be able to victimize. And while he's
out there, Josie presented herself, if you will, in terms

(38:59):
of of walking to school, not far behind the other kids,
but still isolated.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
Okay, well let's start putting this together. And this is
where I become impressed with some of the folks here
in New Hampshire. October eighth, we're going to go back
a little bit. This is three days after Josie's murder.
True Worthy Fowler comes into play. Lilia's dad. So remember
he knows this information. I think his son had said, well,

(39:30):
you're weird. Guy who now has gone as of the
day that Josie was murdered, asked this question about Leah.
He has this information in his head. Fowler happens to
be what's called a selectman of Suncook, where everybody's from,
and it's like a mayor. So three days later, while
he's ruminating on all of this and this mystery Frenchman,

(39:53):
he gets a letter from a judge in the town
of Saint Albans, Vermont, which is close to Canada. I'm
sure you know the letter is from a judge who says,
you need to hear about this. There's a murder that
happened in Saint Albans and it sounds kind of like
what happened in your town. To Josie. The judge says

(40:14):
that about a year earlier, the evening of Friday, July
twenty fourth, eighteen seventy four, there's a young school teacher
named Marietta Ball. She is at the school building where
she works. This is at night. She locks up by
herself and she sets off on a one mile walk
to a friend's house. Part of the walk is through

(40:35):
a wooded area. The road is not heavily trafficked. She
never made it to the friend's house. Her body was
found about halfway between the school where she locked up
in the friend's house. She was found off the road
in the woods. It's they say forty yards. I like
it when they say rods. It's forty rods into the woods.

(40:56):
You know that is now sixteen and a half feet
per rod, So it's you know, six hundred and sixty
feet off the road and into the woods. Evidence she
had been raped. Marietta has described, I don't know what
this means. Uncommon muscular strength. There are a lot of signs,
according to the medical examiner or the corner there, that
Marietta fought very hard against the attacker, but we don't

(41:17):
have a lot of information about the autopsy. There's a
mask that's found near Marietta's body. It's made out of
carpet and has strings that have been tied in what's
described as a Frenchman's not, which is the way that
the twigs were tied above Josie's body. A year later,
there you go, So what do you think about all.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
That well as Frenchman's not? You know, the commonality between
the two victims, You know, I think that's that's reasonably significant.
I don't know how much weight to put on that,
because I don't know back then in terms of, you know,
how common was it this particular not being used. I

(41:59):
would tell you today that would be hugely significant, because
you just never see that in all the cases in
which I've had knots. The reality is is that, with
the exception of one case, which wasn't even my case,
it was one out of Coronado, most of these knots
are what i'd call cluster knots. These are just the

(42:21):
offender tying half hitches on top of half hitches. I've
got neo shoelace knots, you know, whether it be a
granny knot or a square knot, which is basically the
same thing except to some slight differences in terms of
how they're tied. That's what you see. And so the
use of a specialized knot like the Frenchman's knot. Right now,

(42:42):
I go, yeah, there's significance that in both victims that
this knot is present. Both victims have. The where they're
attacked in the woods is similar. It's like a lying
in weight and the offender is comfortable utilizing let's say
the brush or the trees in order to hide. You've

(43:02):
got sexual assault in both cases. In Marietta's case, you're
not talking about any of the mutilation or the kind
of the sadistic aspects that we see in Josie's case.
But it sounds like we don't have those types of details,
because that for me would in essence if there was

(43:25):
similar mutilation occurring where I'm going, yeah, this is a
sexual statist at work that I would say the same
offender killed both of these women. Right now, It's say
it's likely these cases are related. I'd want more of
those types of behavioral details in order to say yes,
these are definitely related.

Speaker 1 (43:44):
Okay, well, let me tell you what they think in
Vermont about who did this to Marietta and why it's
so alarming that they're contacting you. This mayor in New Hampshire,
the authorities in Saint Almonds was certain it was a
guy named Joseph Lapage that had killed Marietta. There wasn't

(44:04):
enough evidence to bring him to trial, according to this judge,
but there circumstantially they thought it was him. I actually
honestly don't know why.

Speaker 2 (44:15):
But it's a French name.

Speaker 1 (44:17):
Well, he's from Quebec, Okay, and he was a wood
cutter if you remember the club.

Speaker 2 (44:23):
Yeah. So well this is where you know, you have
this nebulous suspect, you know, this hired worker that they
refer to as a frenchman in Josie's case, and now
you have this Joseph Lapage as a suspect in a
similar case. French name from Quebec, you know. So there's
some overlapping characteristics with suspects. In the suspect characteristics within

(44:48):
these two cases.

Speaker 1 (44:49):
I think most Crucially, he had since Marietta's murder, Joseph
Lapage and his family had moved to sun Cook, New Hampshire,
where Josie was from, so he's.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
In the area. So now now, now we have geographic
connections between the two cases, the suspect in the two cases. Okay,
this is churn. I always describe this, you know, because
having worked massive cases like Golden State Killer, you're looking
at different men all the time as suspects, and some

(45:21):
of these guys it's like just static. No matter how
what you look, where you look about this particular suspect,
nothing seems to do anything. It's just that there's nothing
going on with this guy in terms of elevating him
as a suspect. But then you come across somebody and
all of a sudden there's some connections being made. And
then this is where you have some churn. And this

(45:43):
is where what I'm saying with this Joseph Lapage, it's like, oh,
there's churn here. Now is he the killer? I can't
say that right now, but you know what's there's enough
here where he's he's percolating to the top and is
going to get my full attention.

Speaker 1 (45:57):
M m well, here we go. October thirteenth, the authorities
from New Hampshire Attorney General's Office arrest Joseph at his house.
He has his wife with him and four of his
five kids, and they search the house. They find a
coat with bloodstains on it and a pair of boots,
and the heel of the boot matches the mark on

(46:19):
Josie's cheek. I mean, I'm sure you could throw a
rock and hit somebody you had those kind of boots.
But still he has boots, pointy boots. It sounds like
so the local French community feels like Joseph is being
unfairly scapegoated. That doesn't surprise me. One of the community
leaders tells the police, wait a second. This guy was

(46:40):
with me all day on the day of Josie's murder,
so you got to leave him alone. The problem was
that when Joseph was with the police, he said, I
was lost in the woods all day during that time,
at the worst outbi. But I have said I often
have terrible outbies if something out and I was accused

(47:00):
of murder, so driving around in a circle in my
neighborhood listening to Taylor Swift, So you know this is
why alibi witnesses can be unreliable. I just couldn't believe it.

Speaker 2 (47:12):
So there you go.

Speaker 1 (47:13):
And we've talked about this, communities coming together to get
behind people even though they're sure they're guilty, and oftentimes
it's based on ethnicity or some you know, religion or
some kind of common factor where they're on the defensive, right.

Speaker 2 (47:28):
Right, right, No, absolutely, the.

Speaker 1 (47:30):
Police say anyway, and they put them on trial January
of eighteen seventy six. So now we get even more
background on Joseph. He's got a sister in law, so
it's his wife's sister. She travels from Quebec to testify
against him. So she says, in eighteen seventy one, so

(47:50):
this would be eighteen seventy one, would be three years
before Marietta, four years before Josie. In eighteen seventy one,
a masked man in Quebec threatened her with a club
and a cow pasture and raped her. So he was
wearing a mask that I had to look up, a
buffalo robe mask, which is cured buffalo hide that still

(48:15):
has the hair on it. Must have been absolutely terrifying
among everything else that was happening. She rips off the
mask and sees it's Joseph, and nothing happens to him.
I don't know if she doesn't, you know, because of
her sister, she doesn't report it or what happens. But
at least one person confirms his identity in a violent attack.

Speaker 2 (48:35):
Yeah, then there's I mean, obviously there's overlap.

Speaker 1 (48:37):
Maah.

Speaker 2 (48:38):
Here you have a club being used, and we see
the club being used in Josie's case, you see a
mask being used in Marietta's case. You have the geographic
connections of Joseph lapage between those two cases. And now
you have a sister in law offering a details on

(49:00):
her attacker that overlap with the Josie and Marietta cases.
He's attacking her out in a cow pastor. He's he's
comfortable outside. He's not the Golden State killer who's comfortable
breaking into houses and attacking people inside the house. He
likes to work in the outdoors. And these are sexually
motivated crimes. Now, you know, for me, it's the The

(49:22):
interesting aspect is with the sister in law and Marietta.
It doesn't we don't have information that is indicating the
sadistic aspects and sadism can you know you can still
the sexual assault can be sadistic in and of itself
in terms of I mean people say, of course, you know,
any sexual assault is sadistic. But when I use that

(49:43):
term sadistic, I am talking about a very very narrowly
defined set of behavioral criteria characteristics that indicates that this
person is getting sexual gratification through the you know, literally
the physical and psychological violence that they are doing versus
the sexual act in and of itself. But Josie is

(50:04):
sexually mutilated, and she's mutilated before she's killed, you know,
So this is those sadistic acts. So do we have
an offender that is actually escalating in his fantasy and
is really starting to display the sexual sadism that we
see in Josie at that point in time and didn't

(50:26):
display it fully in the prior cases.

Speaker 1 (50:29):
Yeah, I mean it seems definitely like escalation to me. Gosh,
he is keeping his trap shut this whole time through
this trial. So he is initially found guilty of first
degree murder. His lawyer appeals on the grounds that some
of the testimony and the trial should have been inadmissible.
It doesn't matter because when he wins the appeal, but

(50:51):
then there's another trial and he's convicted. He's sentenced to death.
So then the question is what happens. Do we learn
anything else from Joseph, and we do thanks to a priest.
You know, the French community is in denial. I don't
know if his wife is or his kids are. But
the day before he's supposed to be executed, which is

(51:13):
March of eighteen seventy eight, so this kind of surprises me.
He's a lie for another two years. So maybe this
was a a you know, jump in appeals or something,
but usually this would have been quick. Maybe New Hampshire
was more progressive. I don't know. So he's a lie
for two more years. On death row, the priest comes
in and he's set to be executed by hanging, and

(51:36):
he confesses. And the priest of course would not be
able to reveal information that Joseph said, but he convinces
Joseph to confess to the police. He confesses to the
murders of Josie and Marietta. And you were right about this, Paul.
Sometimes when I think people take things, oh they're going
to go hawk them there, maybe they aren't, you know,

(51:56):
trinkets or memorabilia or trophies or any of that. But
he tells him where to find in the woods Josie's
possessions like the ring and the breastpin and stuff. He
had hidden them, and he told him exactly where to look.
So he is executed. And there's a little bit of
a PostScript here. He's executed and then he becomes a
suspect in two eighteen sixty seven unsolved murders that happened

(52:20):
in Quebec. So these predate by four years the attack
on the sister in law. He had been in the
town when they happened, at the time when they happened,
and so he's dead at this point, there's no information.
Obviously they were able to get some information out of
them before. So it's a shame in this only to me,
in this circumstance, that he was executed, because if they

(52:42):
really thought he was a suspect, I mean, maybe they
could have gotten more information and closure from families, but
too right now.

Speaker 2 (52:48):
You know, and I would guess he has others up
and beyond those, you know, and imagine, I mean, this
is obviously they don't have DNA to link these cases together.
They really have a poor understanding of this type of
sexual predators, so they're not necessarily recognizing that this is

(53:12):
a behavioral characteristic that would be predictive that you are
dealing with somebody who is a serial killer, serial rapist,
serial killer, and so you probably have other communities that
this guy, whether he had a connection or he flowed
through and has committed similar crimes, and nobody's put two

(53:33):
and two together that this is this is their killer. So,
you know, I think they did a remarkable job in
terms of figuring out who Josie and Marietta's killer was
to be frank, you know, for this day and age
and for the limitations that they had. But I think,
you know, like the message that I want to underscore

(53:55):
in maybe some of our listeners, this is the first
time they've ever heard about, you know, the bruteality that
some of these offenders do to their victims. And this
is where I you know, we always want to tell
our kids there's no such thing as monsters, but the
reality is there are monsters, and these guys are the monsters.
And to see what they do firsthand to their victims,

(54:18):
it's absolutely horrific and I wish there was a way
to find them all and get them all off the
street and prevent these guys from being out there. But
there just isn't and you just have to be you
have to be aware and keep yourself safe.

Speaker 1 (54:34):
I mean, what a story. And I'm always looking for heroes.
And clearly the judge put it together. I mean, the
judge in Vermont read this story and was thinking, this
sounds familiar. This obviously happened. I don't know if the
news from what happened with Marietta Ball didn't make it
down to New Hampshire and this detective didn't put it together.

(54:56):
This seems similar. But you know, being able to get
information from him from Joseph right before his execution with
the priest, and then you know, turning this information over
getting him, convincing Joseph to confess to the police. I mean,
some of the stuff does go above and beyond. They
wouldn't have caught him if it weren't for the judge,

(55:16):
obviously sure, and for the almost victim's father to be
in a position in the community where he would have
been the one to receive this information from the judge.
So you know, we talk about jurisdiction issues today and
there's just it. You know, we've got two communities reaching
out to each other and getting information in eighteen seventy five,

(55:37):
which to me is pretty amazing.

Speaker 2 (55:38):
That's impressive, you know, And I actually put a lot
of stock into the strength the sister in law had.

Speaker 1 (55:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:49):
Absolutely, because Amy, she's going against you know, her own
sister to go testify against her sister's husband and is
putting it out there that she was a rape victim
of this guy. You know, so there's a lot of
barriers she had to overcome to have the strength and
the courage to get on the stand to testify against

(56:10):
you know, her brother in law.

Speaker 1 (56:12):
Absolutely, and picking up on things like the classmate who said, yeah,
I thought that was weird that somebody was in the bushes.
I mean, you're you have all of these people who
are able, the neighbors who are noticing Josie, you know.
I mean these are small communities were generally now, but
especially in the eighteen hundreds, people are looking out for
each other very closely, so you can see everything happening,

(56:35):
what happens to her, even though she's alone at the
time when she unfortunately encounters this guy. You know, we've
got enough people who have an eye out and are
putting pieces together pretty quickly. I was surprised. This is
a very upsetting story, but also in a lot of
ways inspirational that you have all of these people thinking, Okay,
what do we need the priest. We've got to get

(56:56):
a confession out of this guy, you know, And I'm
frustrated that they acute to him, and now we don't
know what's going on with these other cases.

Speaker 2 (57:04):
Sure, you know, and I think from an investigative side,
early on, when you were talking about the route that
the kids would would take and they're walking through a
neighborhood and then going through the woods, you know, for me,
I immediately was binning two different suspect pools. And one
of the common suspect pools is somebody who lives along

(57:24):
the route and is watching these kids day in and
day out and they just happen to be somebody that's
willing to victimize. And then the other route, and this
is what this Joseph la Page, this other suspect pool,
this Joseph la Page fell into, is that, well, what
is the transient population in the area, you know, And
you have to think about that very early on in

(57:48):
the investigations, so you can now start capitalizing on information
that witnesses may have as to who has flowed in
and out of your community. Nowadays, some times we get
that off of surveillance cameras and stuff. Back then it's well,
who's been here? And it turns out, you know, Lily's

(58:09):
dad was hiring this you know, pool of transience, if
you will, and brought Joseph Lapage into contact with his daughter.

Speaker 1 (58:17):
I still don't understand about the Frenchman's not on the twigs.
I mean, maybe that was some kind of rumor, but
I don't I don't think so. I'm not sure what
that what he was thinking with that.

Speaker 2 (58:27):
You know, the bowlan knot is a very very versatile
knot and it's a you know, of course, I'd like
to see how it was used to tie these twigs up,
but you know, it just it just tells me this
is a knot he is familiar with with being able
to tie. I can tie a bowl of knot, and
now that I've seen how a Frenchman's knot is tied,
I can tie a Frenchman's not, you know, So it's

(58:49):
I don't think it's anything that's behaviorally significant what he's doing.
It's just a knot he's familiar with, and it's an
he knows will be suitable for this particular application.

Speaker 1 (59:01):
Well, when I first thought about the story, I was
not thinking this was going to be a serial killer story.
And then I started reading it and thought, oh my gosh,
a serial killer from eighteen seventy five. You know, it's incredible.

Speaker 2 (59:12):
Well, and this is the same type of offender as
Jack the Ripper.

Speaker 1 (59:15):
Yeah, and the same ones that we're getting every you know,
in twenty twenty five too. And that's the point, Yep.
These guys have just like exactly what you said. These
guys have been around since the beginning of time. Well, Paul,
hopefully no serial killers next week, but I guess we're
going to see. I like the serial killer story every
once in a while, but I uh, sometimes I need

(59:37):
a little bit of a break. And that was a
hard one. But you did a great job giving me
some insight.

Speaker 2 (59:42):
Thank you. Yeah, Well you can always throw a serial
killer case at me anytime, Kate.

Speaker 1 (59:48):
Okay, good to know. Okay, I will see you next week.

Speaker 2 (59:51):
All right, sounds good. Take care bye.

Speaker 1 (59:58):
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 Emirosi.

Speaker 2 (01:00:09):
Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin, and Kate Winkler Dawson.

Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.

Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.

Speaker 1 (01:00:18):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.

Speaker 2 (01:00:21):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark, and Danielle Kramer.

Speaker 1 (01:00:25):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
Barry Bones Pod.

Speaker 2 (01:00:30):
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 (01:00:37):
Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life Solving America's Cold
Cases is also available now